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A New Yorker Is On A Mission To Find Nice New Yorkers
By
Jen Carlson
Published Sep 4, 2014
Modified Sep 4, 2014
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By
Jen Carlson
Published Sep 4, 2014
Modified Sep 4, 2014
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New Yorkers giving other New Yorkers change to use the payphone... is nice! (via Matt Adams)
Are New Yorkers nice? Of course they are. This one time a nice young man offered to share his umbrella with me when it started pouring rain. He didn't even expose his genitals to me, which was nice. The judgment that New Yorkers aren't nice, or always in a hurry, or loud, is a generalization. As our Native New Yorker Jake Dobkin put it:
"New York has a reputation as a loudmouth town, but this is an oversimplification. It is true that we New Yorkers are passionate and outspoken, and in public we express our opinions confidently, punctuated with appropriate gesticulations. But we are not rude or vulgar on the street, in the presence of strangers, and certainly never in front of children."
Still, one New Yorker wants to change things, and has set out to prove New Yorkers can be nice. The project's organizer posted on Reddit, "I am born and raised in New York, and too often do I hear about how New York is the 'rudest city' in the country. I whole heartedly disagree with this. I have started a personal project to explore and document 100 moments of New Yorkers being nice." This will all be documented over Instagram, and the website Nice New Yorker (that the URL was not already taken could be telling!).
So, if you see something nice, say something.
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Jen Carlson
Jen Carlson is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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