New Yorkers reveal the worst things about NYC life — from diarrhea streams to homeless vomit
Being a resident of the Big Apple can really bite.
Sure, living in the city that doesn’t sleep has its perks — access to world-renowned art, first-rate restaurants, a vibrant array of global cultures, to name a few.
Yeah, yeah. That’s all great.
But being a New Yorker isn’t all Tony-winning shows on Broadway and late-night cocktails at Zero Bond.
In fact, a griping group of Gothamites has taken to social media to reveal some of the most distressing mishaps they’ve endured while in the survival-of-the-fittest struggle that is life in the concrete jungle.
“On an E train that was severely delayed for the night shift due to construction, a homeless man projectile vomited on me and laughed,” confessed a curmudgeon in Reddit’s trending “Ask NYC” thread last week.
The unidentified — but justified — lady bellyacher continued explaining that once she made it to her building she “decided to 86 the clothes (they were old) in the trash chute. Boom, there’s my new next door neighbors while I am my bra and thong.
“I just looked at them and said, ‘A homeless man threw up on me,’ and went inside and showered,” she recalled.
And serving as a human barf bag isn’t even the worst fate a New Yorker has had to suffer.
“[I was] rushing up the steps to the subway, I trip and catch myself with my hands,” penned another grumbler.
“Only to see someone had s—t wet diarrhea at the top of the stairs and it was… running down the steps… the ones I was touching,” the Manhattener added. “Yeah. I ran through Times Square holding my hands out like a Barbie doll away from me.”
An equally disgruntled city dweller even copped to low-level theft in the name of survival.
“My girlfriend slipped and broke her ankle on the ice in a park. Got to her, called an ambulance. Waited over an hour in 22 degree weather and said ‘F–k it,’ ” wrote a no-nonsense NYCer. “[I] commandeered a park wheelbarrow and two very nice gentlemen helped me wheel her down to the street like a drunk in an old movie.
“On the plus side, the Uber was much cheaper than the ambulance would have been,” noted the makeshift mastermind.
It’s unlikely that the viral horror story swapping was intended to dissuade outsiders from relocating to New York.
Instead, it seems the buzzy bulletins were meant to give the uninitiated a not-so-subtle glimpse into the reality of what life is like in the oft-romanticized five boroughs.
Folks like content creator Benton McClintock, 26, received a rude awakening after he ditched his hometown in Alabama for the West Village in late 2023.
“[New York City is] so lonely, it’s disgusting, it’s not what it looks like in the movies or the shows at all,” he whined in a TikTok post with over 1.3 million views.
And disenchanted 3-year-old Jette Blackman, from Sydney, had cyberspace in stitches when she gave an unflinching review of Midtown’s “stinky” and “rubbish”-laden streets during her inaugural trip to NYC at the top of the year.
“You said it’s pretty,” groaned the tiny tourist to her cackling mother as they ambled through Times Square. “Mama, don’t lie to me next time — lying is not fun.”
Online, additional grumps within Reddit’s “Ask NYC” community continue to share their most traumatizing incidents, including getting splashed in the face with a bottle of urine after it had been run over by a car or taking a hard tumble on a busy subway platform while running to catch a train.
But the terrors of the city apparently aren’t limited to what happens in public.
“[While walking home] I encounter a loose brick, trip and face-plant…My leg is bleeding and my hands are scraped,” confided a faultfinder from Brooklyn.
“I get home ready to wash my cut as well as my hands which have now made contact with a Williamsburg street,” she wrote. “I start washing my hands with the light off, then switch it on and see the water is brown.”
“Like, s–t colored,” she added.
The complainer concluded, “We call the landlord who says it’s normal….The silver lining is that it was rust not human waste.”
