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What would you miss about New York City if you left?
By
Emily Nadal
Published Mar 26, 2026
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Emily Nadal/Gothamist
By
Emily Nadal
Published Mar 26, 2026
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This column originally appeared in Looped In NYC, our weekly newsletter for where to go and what to know. (Sign up here!)
Last week, we asked our newsletter subscribers what they would miss if they left New York City. Here's what they said.
Growing up in New York City, I never really had a desire to leave it. Rarely did I dream of greener pastures elsewhere or fantasize about life in the suburbs. Sure, I’d wonder what it would be like to have a family car or attend a high school with a football team, but I was too distracted by the magic of the city to dwell on these thoughts for long.
That all changed in 2018 when I made a fateful decision: I left New York City.
I didn’t completely abandon my beloved home, I just crossed the Hudson River to Fort Lee. Even so, moving to New Jersey felt monumental, like I’d entered a whole new, unfamiliar world. One where everyone drove, the restaurants closed at 9 p.m. and people referred to locations by highway exits instead of subway stops.
When I asked my family and friends who moved away what they missed about New York, many had bigger answers, like the diversity, the food, the energy or the public transportation. But the beauty of living in New York City really comes down to the smaller things that make it so unique, the experiences reserved only for its residents. Avi Krishna moved to the West Village last year and already knows if he left, he’d not only miss the bagels from his favorite local shop (the name of which he is gatekeeping), but the staff there as well.
“Honestly, sometimes I just go to see the people,” he said. “Which is great because the bagel is amazing, too, I literally can’t lose.”
Grace Jahng Lee in Brooklyn also had some reflections around food.
“I just really love that you can basically find any ingredient in New York that you need,” she said. “Just the sheer abundance of special, ethnic grocery stores.”
While New York City is known for its diverse food scene, it’s also known as an expensive place to raise a family. But Zainab Imam has a different take. She’d miss:
“Whenever someone would see me trying to go up or down the subway steps with my daughter in a stroller and kind of struggling, someone would just quietly come help me and we would just sort of nod at each other. It was such a kind gesture,” she said.
Some of you submitted some out-of-the-box answers, like Ileana Mendez-Ruiz who moved to Guatemala and misses “same-day delivery [from] Amazon.” Or Alexander Ramirez, who now lives in England and misses “the weed.”
Others mentioned the parks.
“When I moved to Brooklyn, everyone was constantly going out to throw parties in the park,” said Logan LeWarn, originally from the Hudson Valley. “Seeing everyone really flood into the park, it was totally unique [compared to what] I had been seeing in the Hudson Valley or when I went to school in the Massachusetts area.”
Ashley Eyen is moving to Maplewood, New Jersey, but not before mourning all the things she loves about her New York City home.
“ I think there are just certain feelings that you don't have if you don't live here. Like the feeling of going over the [Manhattan] Bridge, right? Like, I can ride the Q train any day I wanna go over the bridge. But the feeling of looking out on the city and knowing you're going home I think is really specific and magical,” she said.
Then there were some responses that reminded me how much I miss the simple things, like walking… and even the trash?
“Walking around a rambling city is one of the greatest gifts we can receive. In New York City, like most things, this experience is simultaneously exhilarating, enhanced, discouraged, and simply made more difficult by navigating mounds of trash; random obstacles of forgotten particles,” said Jennifer Reinbold, who now lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. “Evidence of the erratic city life contributing to the reverberating energy experienced on a daily basis. What would New York be without its iconic piles of trash… even to the chagrin of locals and transplants alike.”
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