New York City.
What a city. What a vast amount of all the things. All the people. All the buildings. All the businesses. All the streets. All the subways, entrances, lines, stops. What opportunity.
Specialization of every kind. When you have 1.5 million people living in 34 square miles things get real interesting. This go-round I stayed in an AirBnb in the Village. I enjoyed it as I hadn’t stayed there before.
It was rather a whirlwind trip. Went up Monday, came home Wednesday. I was there to do some very specific things, which I did.
My main takeaways were, 1) NYC is a super fun place to visit. I would not want to live there. 2) NO ONE does hospitality like the south, and in particular, like Winston-Salem. 3) We can do better.
Here are some cultural aspects that I enjoy about NYC: 1) people from everywhere. 2) Walking/public transportation is for EVERYONE. On the subway, I saw homeless people, moms/parents/family with kids all the way through businesspeople in very expensive suits. 3) Specialization- within 1 mile of where I was staying, there was a Pomme Frites (fries) only store, a mac n cheese shop, an organic smoothie shop, (in our building) there was a shop that specialized in oatmeal only things and right down the block was an Insomnia Cookies which was DELICIOUS and delivers you warm, fresh cookies until 3 o clock in the morning. Of course every one of these places was small. Holes in wall, most of them. 4) Mix of Small/Large – in the Village it was mostly cool, small stores like mentioned above, but there were also CVS pharmacies and Starbucks’ around the corner. 5) Tourism is a big. Deal.
- A) PTI is a treasure. After dealing with the nightmare that is La Guardia, I fell even more in love with our airport.
- B) Travel is good for you. Getting some distance and seeing how other places do things makes you appreciate your own home more.
More to come.
❤ Mackenzie
Winston-Salem Ambassadors 