#NYC

[theopiumeater]

anthony bourdain - clips from roadrunner & a cooks tour

[rainstormyday]

American here. I definitely agree that NYC, LA, and Chicago are top three. There are several contenders for number 4, and I'll list what I think below

By size/population, the next two on the list are Houston and Phoenix, not necessarily in order. I think Houston is more impactful culturally, definitely moreso than Phoenix, so Houston is a contender. Its also farther away geographically from any of the top 3 cities (Phoenix is a couple hour flight from LA, and aesthetically I'd like the fourth one to be spread out from the top 3, so one from the South. Houston fits this well). Houston is also where NASA is located, important for US culture and history

Washington DC and Philadelphia are both important politically, DC more than Philadelphia, but not necessarily culturally. Although politics does drive culture, so you can definitely argue that they fit the criteria. Though neither of them are in the South so I won't include them in the final tally.

I added the South criterion after writing half the above paragraph, so I will now take this into further consideration. I'm from Tennessee, so this is probably biased, but I believe both Memphis and Nashville deserve to be contenders, both are important in music history which is one of the most important parts of culture, while Memphis is important for civil rights history (it's where MLK was shot, for example).

Another Southern city that should be considered is New Orleans. I don't know much about the city itself outside of fiction, having never been there myself, but it definitely has a unique culture, more unique I feel than any other major city.

Now I have to choose between Houston, Memphis, Nashville, and New Orleans. I find it easier to cross out Nashville than the others, though that's probably because I live near Memphis and it's more important to me personally. And while New Orleans has its own unique culture, I'm not sure how widespread it is, to impact the rest of the country. Houston is NASA territory, as I've said earlier, but winning the space race doesn't seem as prevalent in culture as music is. So my final, biased answer is Memphis.

New York City

Los Angeles

Chicago

Memphis

looking for opinions both from americans and non-americans: what would you consider to be the big 4 american cities in terms of like, vibes-based cultural impact?

[2k14today]

[un-piacere-mia-bella]

try as you might, you will not be able to escape the smell of pot in nyc. it lurks and lingers and wafts and breezes and the contact buzz will hit oh so suddenly and you will be unable to escape it.

[haikumaker]

Times Square in the 80s

[neigealaplage]

my heart is with New York, always forever 💙

[kick-a-long]

The truth is that many Jews already left. NYC was attractive to Jews for its Jewish community and standard of living. By standard I mean art, culture, food, philosophy and yeah price. The city functionally exists for no one and is propped up by abusive working conditions with insufficient wages and a deep delusional nostalgia.

The art scene largely depends on 1. How many people buy art and 2. How cheaply can an artist live do they have time, energy and respect enough to make art. The art scene fell apart when it got too expensive and the average New Yorker didnt have money to divert from food and rent. They all moved to Hudson valley to paint or create in barns.

The culture scene is falling apart because art history, even as recent as the 1990s has been vilified and politicized out of control. All art is political but good art should address humanistic aspects as well. Attendance at museums is still high but the curators are increasingly focused on social media seo type shit. Theater and musicals and concerts are WAY out of budget to see every weekend let alone throw money away on an experimental or shitty show. It’s all branded because there’s no way to pay for it with tickets and drinks alone. There is nothing to do and no one is doing anything with passion they aren’t already trying to monitize on some tech platform.

Food is a big one. NYC has great food except if you want to eat at a classic nyc diner, the nyc diner culture being directly transplanted to the river towns. There are still diners but they aren’t cheap, fast or good food and you can’t linger because fast turnover is the way to pay rent. The price of terrible food is too much, most people order in which kills business that don’t want to adapt to online advertising and give middle men apps the cut. There also just isn’t jewish food culture left. They all left for places where it’s easier for Jews, just like huge numbers of the original black population of Brooklyn. You’ll find both in river towns (which are actually more diverse than some nyc areas in terms of mixed ethnic communities) Pennsylvania, Maryland, North Carolina. These are places to raise a family, go to public school, exist safely and affordably.

Philosophy? NYC comes from a different school of political blue than the west coast. It’s socially libral but very conservative financially. It also comes out of close communal living with sometimes hostile neighbors and cultures. The younger generations in nyc who were either raised there or moved here have no idea about that reality. They were trained on socials which are largely driven by west coast values where you have more space in between people in every aspect of life. Car travel not subways, trendy parts of town being expensive to who can pay to travel/park/entrance fees/clothing etc. NYC philosophy died with frictionless capitalism and internet culture becoming the predominant social order. NYC culture was in person friction personified. It was open bluntness and fearless perspective. It was diagnosed terminal in 2001 when it became an American symbol of whatever and became a domestic and geopolitical political entity rather than a financial entity mixed with and supporting a cultural entity. The pandemic is what actually killed it because there is no longer a logical argument for living in a place either hate crimes, terrorism, uncontrollable spread of disease, disgusting and under staffed hospitals, disgusting and under staffed schools, no affordable spaces to go, no art or entertainment worth participating in and no future of raising a family in a house you own that you pay for with a job you can rely on keeping. All of that and the cops and all levels of local government are somehow racist and underserving everyone’s communities at once.

There are no New Yorkers. There are like 10000 old people from the 70s (or their kids) living in rent controlled apartments, a constantly increasing influx of criminally underpaid immigrants who keep the city functioning but who are living on less than slave wage and in unsafe situations and housing*, and the financial asshole class mixed with the trust fund fakers who wear the costumes of whatever favorite historical moment of nyc they like, from the 50s beatnick artist in squats to 60s drugs and sex to the seventies grunge and punk to the eighties prim and prude town and country to the 90s intellectual yuppy going to the opera to the 00s hipster beers, brats, Everyman organic vegan, to the 2010s of who the fuck cares… none of it is real, all of it is transitory, no one lives in NYC who has any influence about where it’s going, mamdani is such a fucking encapsulation of the hollow, fake, bullshit leftist paternalism that brings socialism to the ignorant savages while having million dollar weddings on their estate compound surrounded by twenty foot iron walls and patrolled by armed guards paid for by his mother’s tax dodging movie career.

He sits on a thrown decked in gold, high as a kite, preaching that identity politics, noble socialism, slick ticks with no tie to reality, and the divine right of kings will save a dead husk of a city from rotting like some kind of to be canonized saint corpse (clap children if you want tinker bell to live!!) … well there’s never been a clearer sign that the city is no more.

And once the parasites get tired of living off diminishing nostalgia and social capital, they will leave and nyc will, like a forest burned to the ground, start to regrow from nothing. I will probably be dead after a long life of gardening and raising my family. I’ll probably die in a car accident because I’m not supposed to have to deal with cars, I was born and raised in nyc where I know thousands of tricks and tips about how to ride the subway safely while black out or broken down emotionally.

*my point is more that the city of my youth used to argue about how to get everyone fair wages and housing, now it’s a system of letting everyone abuse immigrants because they don’t have papers. Rather than integrate them better and faster with good schools and hospitals and housing and reporting facilities so they don’t have their rights violated (which degrades all our rights) or have to rely on insular community safety nets… we have ad campaigns extolling the benefits of tribalism and scapegoat he said she said BULLSHIT.

I thought they wanted the Jews to leave Israel. Now we’re not safe in Brooklyn either?

Thanks for globalizing the intifada, Zohran!

[cellny]

Homesick

[monomicandids]

3 minutes 44 seconds

[kkimura]

お誕生日〜！🥳

リクエストにより、フレンチビストロっぽい、ステーキとフライドポテト！

美味しいナチュラルワインも用意して！　めちゃくちゃ絶賛されたー！嬉しい☺️

プレゼントは速攻キティに奪われましたけどね。。

Birthday dinner!!!🥰

French bistro style steak and frites!!!

With a nice natural wine to go with the steak!! 🥩🍷

The present got stolen by Kitty right away but it was such an amazing dinner!!!

[scopophilic1997]

scopOphilic_micromessaging_1410 - scopOphilic1997 presents a new micro-messaging series: small, subtle, and often unintentional messages we send and receive verbally and non-verbally. (2025)

Jerry Garcia (Grateful Dead guitarist, vocals, & songwriting) would have been 83 today. RIP.

[coloursteelsexappeal]

1997 Mitsubishi 3000GT SL