New York is still dealing with a dangerous, invisible enemy

New York is a great place. It’s a great place with a diverse people, culture and experiences having to be had. It’s a place where you can go and spend days and days just wandering the streets, looking at all the impressive architecture around there. It’s a place where you will see some of the best performances that you could ever imagine. It’s a place to which people travel thousands of miles to indulge in the many things that the city has to offer, including its rich art scene. It’s also a place where you may have some of the most unimaginable experiences that will keep defining your life as you go forward. When you’re standing and overlooking the Manhattan skyline, you may really start feeling small. Feeling insignificant among all the tall buildings towering the skyline.

New York is also the place that you go when you want to live out your dreams. Whether you want to work on Wall Street, or have a career at some promising tech company, the city has so much to offer. It’s a city that’s expensive to live in, where there is so much money moving hands every single day. It’s a city where you can feel the spirit being strong all the time. If you have never been to a city that has millions and millions of people tucked into a small geographical area, you may soon find yourself very overwhelmed by all the noises and smells that it has to offer. If you’re coming from the countryside and you’re used to that traditional country smell, you will definitely find your various senses experiencing a wide range of new things as you approach the city. You can find people hustling anywhere you go, just trying to make a dollar. You can find people putting on impressive acrobatic shows in the subway, where they will jump around and make various tricks that most people could not do, and some of them even do these tricks while the subway may be in motion. If you haven’t yet experienced New York, it surely is an experience that is worth it. Before anyone leaves this place, they can’t say that they have really lived if they haven’t been to the place that never sleeps. It’s no joke that there are countless songs that have been written about the city that never sleeps. 

When all the glory has been put forward, there’s also no hiding that New York is a city with a lot of baggage. As with many other big cities, it’s a city that has seen its ups and downs, and it may also be a city that isn’t just a lot more overwhelming compared to your small town Midwestern town, but it’s also a city where crime does show its ugly face on occasion. It’s a city where you will want to make sure you do stay aware of where you go and how you act, especially after the fall of darkness, as can be the case with lots of bigger cities. While that may be the case, it’s a city that has still managed to put a lot of its dirty past behind it, and it’s a city that is surely a lot safer than it used to be.

I often retell the story of when I originally fell in love with the city. It was a sunny evening night and I was standing on the Brooklyn side of town overlooking Manhattan. It’s a view that you won’t get anywhere else, and it’s a view that inspires. It was the same night, while staying at the hostel that I had chosen to stay at, that I met a couple real New Yorkers. The kind that had been there longer than the city had been relatively clean. They were the real kind of New Yorkers that you could tell had experienced the stories they were telling me about. The stories about how the place used to draw a significantly different crowd. Back in the 80s and 90s when the crime levels were significantly higher than they are today, and people would make sure they were friends with the right people. It was an inspiring time talking with them, simply hearing everything that they had to share. They were telling me stories that I could never see happen in the city that I came to fall in love with that day. Despite the fact that it was not my first time in the city, it was the first time that I had the sort of feeling about the city. The previous times that I had visited, I had never taken the time to truly sit down and have a beer who could tell me real stories. I had previously always experienced the city as a tourist. It was the same trip where I got talking with a bunch of strangers on the subway – one was a limo driver. You could tell that these people were the kind that you would call real New Yorkers. They had the accent, the fast way of talking. Everything.

But New York is also a city that has a different side to it. A side that is often forgotten. In the midst of its expansion, buildings were built. Many of them are old. Many of them stem from a different time. Many of them have mold. Many of them have other issues. And when you are in a city, where lots of the housing was built back in the day, you get to experience some of the issues associated with old buildings, including the use of lead paint. With all its glory, we often forget that old buildings come with old building problems, and if they aren’t addressed, they often persist. Old building problems can be many, but one of the worst things are lead paint, and especially when it isn’t addressed.

Most renters may not be aware of the dangers, but the metal will accumulate in your body as you’re exposed, and living in a place where the walls are full of it will usually lead to exposure. With all of its glory and impressive Broadway shows, we sometimes forget that there are hidden dangers included in the walls surrounding the space where many people are sleeping.