Greetings from my 90 minute commute. I was born in NYC and I've done all I can to escape it but it keeps luring me back with patently ludicrous salaries that are literally double what I'd make in Boston. My coping mechanism for having to deal with this hellish meat grinder is to live far the fuck away where I can afford a reasonably sized house and be surrounded by more trees than people. I took a gap year during COVID and left to go sailing around the southern US and Caribbean on a shitty old 1980s boat that's older than I am, shit really went off the rails during the lockdowns and it hasn't gotten much better. Since I've returned:
>Open-air drug markets literally outside my old HQ building in times square (less so now, but 2022 it was wild)
>ATV gangs from South Bronx now rip down Central Park West, on sidewalks, against traffic etc
>Security guard at HQ got stabbed in the gut by a crackhead for not letting him use the toilet
>Another $10 toll for driving below 60th St (after you've paid your $17-20 daily bridge tolls and $40-60 parking fee)
>Crackhead gets in my face for the first time ever and threatens to stab me for no reason at all right outside my new HQ on 53rd St (super affluent area)
>Guy just walking casually with an AR into the building next door and merking random execs

Shit went from dirty and chaotic to straight up unhinged. I transferred to the Greenwich office and now mostly drive, listening gleefully as every morning the faggot NPR presenters rattle off the list of subways that are delayed/offline and trains cancelled. When I do go to Manhattan I have a switchblade in my pocket because I'd rather catch a misdemeanor than be cut up without a fighting chance. Lunch from corporate goyslop depots is up to $18-20, all the other whites have fled to Westchester or heaven forbid Jersey to live with the jeets.

It perpetually stinks like boiled piss everywhere, but it's the only place I can make 500k for running Linux boxes.