I am spending the weekend again in New York with a friend, Williamsburg to be exact.

I have been impressed with some of the little things that New York City and Brooklyn have and that Philadelphia probably should.

We went to the Ikea in Red Hook. We took a water taxi from New York City. It was free, since Ikea was paying for it. The Ikea is less than a month old and they have a nice waterfront park and promenade around it. That is where the water taxi docked.
When we headed back towards her apartment, we took a free shuttle bus they had to downtown Brooklyn right in front of the Brooklyn City Hall, which has several subway lines serving it.

On the large pedestrian plaza in front of City Hall there was what they called a Greenmarket. It featured farmers, bakers and other local food merchants. According to the brochure I picked up, they do these throughout the city and they even have locations where they accept food stamps so the less well off can partake.
The pedestrian plaza was surprisingly clean. There weren't any visible homeless or other types of vagrants. There were public recycling bins throughout the plaza, too. It looks like the mayor of Brooklyn is a competent one!

The subways were well maintained, didn't have a smell and they had trains that had a moving map display that kept updating where you were. Those trains were bright and the seats were quite comfortable despite being plastic. The biggest problem with them is that they were doing work on them over the weekend. Plus they run all night. No worrying about missing the last train home!

As I had said before, I thought the PATCO fare system was quite nice, but the MTA subway has it beat. For just $7.50 I can ride not only the subway, but the buses all day and night as many times as I want. No tokens or transfers needed. Just swipe the "Metrocard" in the reader and go. They even have unattended entrances where you can get in with just a swipe of the card. And unlike the PATCO system, you do not have to pay for the long term use card. I wound up paying less than a dollar a ride today.

On the subway line we took back to Williamsburg, they had signs and announcements on when the next train was going to arrive. They were pretty accurate too.

Every bus stop in both cities had a sign that said where you were and a map and schedule of the bus routes you could catch there. On the down side, none of the buses seemed to be fitted with bicycle racks.

Another amazing thing was the ease of getting wine and beer. Trader Joe's had its own wine annex! You could buy a six pack of beer at the supermarket.

Well going to Trader Joe's was an experience and a half. We waited about twenty minutes in line to get checked out and they had a person with a sign that showed the end of the line which snaked through the store. My friend told me that she has waited over a half hour before! That is impressively insane.

Plus, you can actually get decent pizza.

If you moved to NYC that city will then be dramatically less impressive.

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What's a newbold?

So where do you think Philadelphia needs a water taxi?

Have you been to the Italian Market and Reading Terminal Market?

PATCO is only a single line linking Philly to NJ. SEPTA is the public transit system - and their one day pass is only $6.

I don't think every NY bus stop has a map. and a schedule. And SEPTA's bus stops lists the routes at that stop (I would actually assume every bus system in the US would do that ... how else do you know what bus stop it is?)

That involves Pennsylvania liquor laws which prohibit it.

One, not sure what it has to do with Philadelphia and two, I don't think waiting in line to check out of a grocery store for 20 minutes is impressive.


If you hate sounding "like a New Yorker", don't.

I am far from saying Philly is perfect, but the observations on this one just seem odd and semi-inaccurate.

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One small nit - Brooklyn is part of New York City and not a separate city with its own city hall and mayor.

Other than that, I agree with most of your observations. The difference is one largely of scale. NYC is a city of nearly 8.3 million whereas Philly is 1.4 million. Plus, NYC has far more corporations and rich people. All that means more $$$ with which to run a 24/7 subway, keep things clean, etc. Plus, with the huge built-in customer base, companies like IKEA feel a major benefit in operating a free water taxi and shuttle service. NYC can also leverage the demand that many businesses and developers have for locating and building projects there by requiring them that, if they do, to put in improvemnets (e.g., the waterfront park by the Red Hook IKEA, various subway station improvements paid for by developers wishing to build adjacent buildings, etc.).

Regarding the statemetn by another poster that the Italian Market and RTM provide comparative shopping to the NYC greenmarkets, what the original poster was referring to are the famers markets set up throughout NYC (e.g., Brooklyn borough hall, Union Square, etc.) A comparison would be the weekend markets in Rittenhouse and Fitler Squares but those are much much much smaller in scale. NYC has its own version of the Italian Market in Chinatown where you can also get many fresh vegetables and fruits. What it does lack is a direct comparitor for RTM. The Chelsea Market is smaller and much mreom upscale (in other words, it's more of a wine and cheese type market than a regular market you go to to buy regular groceries). The closest in spirit to RTM is the Essex St. Market in the Lower East Side but it's much smaller. What, in my opinion, beats RTM hands down though is the Pike Place Market in Seattle.

Some Brooklynites still haven't gotten over the 1898 consolidation.

As raider.adam pointed out, the reason for the water taxi is geography -- the Manhattanites are on one side of the East River, the IKEA is on the other, and the transportation connections between the two are less than ideal (two busy bridges then a series of local streets they may not be familiar with, and the subways miss the site by a long shot). In Philadelphia, both the Philadelphians and the IKEA are on the same side of the river, therefore, no water taxi. Where a river does separate Philadelphians from some attractions they might want to visit -- the New Jersey State Aquarium, the Susquehanna Bank Center, Campbell's Field and the USS New Jersey -- a ferry has operated for about a decade. The operators charge for it, but that's because it's not run by any of the attractions but by an independent company. IKEA eats the cost of that water taxi.

As for 24/7 subway service, you are right that it's about money in this case: SEPTA felt it was no longer worth spending the money to provide it here -- it looks like a lot of us have already forgotten that the city's two subway lines used to run round the clock. Now, shuttle buses take the place of rapid transit service between 12:30 and 5:30 a.m.

Trust me when I say that goes on here too. How else would you characterize this city's pioneering "One Percent for Art" building requirement? Or "community benefit agreements"?

Agreed on Pike Place, which is about 10x the size of the RTM and includes multiple levels. But I wouldn't put the RTM down that much: it does what it does very well, and it's as much a legend among public markets as Pike Place is.

As for the closest Philly analogue to the Union Square greenmarket in New York, try this one, which has returned the city's one surviving public market shed to its original use.

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Sandy Smith, Exile on Market Street, Philadelphia
"Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier." --Gen. Colin Powell

A general observation on discussions of this type, which pop up with some regularity:

Perhaps before posting, the people making them should read the famous speech Baptist preacher Russell Conwell gave to raise funds for his new college, "Acres of Diamonds." From Wikipedia:

It seems that too many of us are unappreciative of the treasure that lies around us here in Philadelphia.

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Sandy Smith, Exile on Market Street, Philadelphia
"Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier." --Gen. Colin Powell

the poster obviously doesn't realize either that these improvements in Brooklyn are brand-spanking new -- the most "cutting edge" city in the US that's been boiling in Wall Street $$$ for the past 5-10 years (depending on how you look at it) just figured out how to deliver these kind of amenities.

they've been trying to get that ikea built since at least 1994, when I first moved to brooklyn. it is nice, though, and the water taxi rocks.

if he went a few blocks away from Brooklyn Borough Hall to the Fulton Mall area he'd see that "the mayor of brooklyn" hasn't ensured that all of the city is litter-free quite yet.

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be aware that what the GOP says does not mean what it reads and what We perceive as to what THEY say is or isn't, is not what THEY mean. You dig....Great! (ms. e)

Hillerman...how dare you come on this board and say something positive about New York! You are a gigantic jerk as well as wrong.

Seriously, though...I don't view waiting in a really long line at Trader Joe's as a good thing. Everything else sounds nice, though.

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http://www.rollingstone.com/news/sto...maverick/print

New York is also very, very, very expensive to live in.
No thank you.

This has to be a joke, right?
Mayor of Brooklyn?
Yeah, that only exists in Marty Markowitz's deranged mind.
Brooklyn hasn't had a city hall since 1898 when it became part of New York City.
You sir are a moron.