What We Are Glad to Get Rid Of - Part 2 of 2

In the previous segment, I showed the disgusting squalor that millions of residents endure in New York City.  Now, I'll show you the outlying squalor that compounds those problems. 

     In Prague, Lewis and I will cherish the fact that utility companies and power plants are NOT located in the center of the city.  Only American cities have power plants--with smokestacks, air pollution, and water pollution--near residential neighborhoods... because they were designed by Neanderthals.  For Prague, the power generating plants are on the perimeters of the nation, and the only nearby one is 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) away from the city-center.  In ugly comparison, one-quarter of Astoria is occupied by Consolidated Edison's power generating plants.  In the picture below, ConEd and Sewage Treatment plants occupy the waterfront land above the yellow line.  That is a huge chunk: a quarter of Astoria.

Seen below, its eight smokestacks are the first thing that people see as they drive over the Triboro Bridge.  That's a lousy greeting to the area.

In the next image, ConEd also took the waterfront land within the yellow line for another power plant monstrosity.  Within the red lines are low-income government-created Housing Projects (sadly notorious for crime/poverty).  Those things consume another big portion of Astoria.

     Due to unchanged greed, New York does not use hydro power from its two rivers, and it deliberately neglects the full capacity of Niagara Falls (yet Canada uses its side of that waterfall to generate abundant affordable energy)!  Prague smartly utilizes its river for hydro power, and it relies on renewable power from solar parks and wind turbine farms.  Starting in the 1930s, nine hydroelectric dams operate on its river.  NYC ignorantly refuses that because ConEd was founded as a monopoly by a massively-corrupt financier who decreed that it should always exist by using fossil fuels to enrich other financiers. 

On the topic of Housing Projects, the next map shows another Housing Project (in red) is north of the prior one.  They are also neglected by the city with problematic crimes.

Due to federally-created ghettos called Housing Projects, many areas of NYC suffer from poverty and crime.  Such things aren't found in cities like Prague.

Throughout NYC, "The Projects" contain 400,000 people, and a majority remain impoverished.

     After a decade living in Astoria, we can attest that police sirens arrive at those places, each day.  Each day!  Twice per month, police helicopters hover over them--causing an atmosphere that sounds like a battlefront.  Fire trucks arrive several times per week, blaring their whiny sirens.  With so many fire alarms per month, it's skeptically amazing that nothing burned down.  It's more incredible that the city doesn't fix the problems.  Repeatedly deploying tax-paid resources should instigate a remedy for those areas.  But since the police and firemen get paid every time they respond, they're happy to keep those problematic areas.  Overpaid NYPD and NYFD are notorious for responding to issues but never solving them.  Meanwhile, taxpayers pay for it while enduring never-ending noise pollution.  (NYC insists on having emergency vehicles blare their sirens constantly, whereas European and Asian cities avoid noise disturbances by only momentarily using sirens in heavy traffic.  NYC's emergency vehicles drive slowly, as if drivers are paid by the hour, so the noise pollution of a passing siren exists absurdly for 2-5 minutes).  Here is a video, and you can hear that NYFD's sirens sound like snoring sheep...

Between two of the Housing Projects, ConEd filled an entire block with electricity transformers.  Sadly, that is near two public schools.







Known for being greedy, corrupt, irresponsible, slovenly, outdated, and expensive, ConEd is infamous for having several disasters per year.  



NYC doesn't care, and authorities always declare that the water and air don't need to be cleaned.  Unchanged since 1852, NYC is merely content to be making money... not giving back.

     Power rates for NYC and Long Island are among the highest in America (and the world), yet those exorbitant costs produce inferior results.  The U.S. Department of Energy reports that NYC is the "epicenter" of power grid congestion.  Yet, nothing changes or improves.  In 2014, a project called Champlain Hudson Power Express was approved to bring cheaper renewable energy from Canada.  Residents were hopeful for a lessening of pollution from ConEd's smokestacks and a decrease in their electricity expense.  It is now 2024, and nothing has happened (due to corruption and stalling).

     Being in Prague, Lewis and I will be gleeful to reside in a safe city.  It's continually rated as one of the safest in Europe.  Meanwhile, people living in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx, pay extra taxes to NYC (in addition to taxes for federal and state governments), yet after 100 years, the same neighborhoods are full of deadly crimes.  

     Manhattan is a small overpopulated mecca of finance and commercialism.  You might think that it generates enough money to sustain itself.  Yet, it sucks tax money from four large boroughs and doesn't redistribute the wealth for maintenance.  

It repays the boroughs by returning its "bowel movements": garbage dumping, sewage, antiquated steam heat vents (that obstruct traffic)... 

...pollution from outdated electrical power plants, hugely-unreliable public transit, daily traffic gridlock congestion on highways and bridges, and filthy train yards.


Few places in NYC have suitable parkland.  Most are straddled by noisy bridges, trestles, elevated highways, train tracks, or elevated subway routes.  Only cavemen design a city like that...













Greedy developers uncaringly built residences next to them! 





Residents in NYC's boroughs are conditioned to subsisting beneath bridges.  It demonstrates how little NYC cares about its citizens' wellbeing, after a entire century.







Astoria's main subway route is elevated.  It was overdue for an overhaul in 1930, but that was neglected further.  It has not been improved much in 100+ years.  



It is terribly dirty and noisy!  I can hear the subway trains rumbling (and honking their horns), even when I am four streets away!  It's much worse for businesses and homes that are uncaringly (greedily) erected alongside the tracks.  (NYC would put buildings on nuclear waste dumps, if it could).  It is a rust-stained blight for each community that it tramples.

Making it worse, those unsightly structures (neglected since 1910) are rusty, dilapidated, full of pigeons, and unpainted.

Use this video to hear how loud the train are when they pass overhead...

     To the unwise, realtors greedily charge $2,000+ per month for a mere STUDIO residence THAT IS DIRECTLY NEXT TO THE NOISY SUBWAY because of the convenience of having it at their doorstep.  Click the images to make them clearer...

No thank you.  Only fools pay that price for such noise.

     Meanwhile, Prague only began its subway (Metro) routes in the 1970s during its Soviet Occupation, yet it smartly outclassed wealthier NYC but putting them underground.  It continues to outperform NYC by adding new routes to connect its boroughs, and it is planning an interconnecting circular route like London and Copenhagen have.  NYC will never do it.

Typical of NYC, measly bike paths were an afterthought (to lure renters by claiming to have a cycle path), and they are unsafe to use.  America consistently chooses to neglect a Cycle Culture and prefers to enrich corrupt auto-makers.







There's not enough space for bikers and pedestrians to safety share the lanes.  That is NYC's uncaring attitude.  It has billions of dollars of income but syphons it elsewhere.




Even when biking paths were installed, they were merely afterthoughts that lacked priority.

Below, the sign tells cyclists to ride onto the sidewalk, because busses are allowed to stop there, on the cycle path.  That area is often full of people waiting for the bus at Costco Shopping Center.  So stupid.

Too many New Yorkers don't care about littering.  Their discarded coffee cups are in inappropriate public places.

In Czechia, people behave responsibly and keep their cups and food wrappers until they find a trash receptacle.  They don't litter.  That's why their streets, stores, and parks are so clean.  It's not hard, so we're unsure why America can't do it.  Furthermore, systems of garbage containment are used in Czechia because it is smart, and that's what we expect in this modern era from a truly first-world nation. 

Throughout America--but especially on every street in NYC's five boroughs--people uncaringly leave their dog's poop on the sidewalk.  That's gross.  It forces you to "watch where you're stepping" on every sidewalk... like a mine-field or obstacle course.  It happens every day... of the year.

Across America, garbage is crudely left on public streets... often spilling broken glass and smelly food onto the sidewalks.

Trash attracts rats and vermin, and the odor during summer is nauseating!  People hold their breath while walking outside.

     You can read online about the Rat Attack on NYC's Ann Street.  Famously, the rat problem was very close to City Hall, yet the uncaring authorities did nothing for 10 years until a horde of rats attacked people.  That is typical of NYC.

     A man named Dreiser relocated to NYC from the Midwest in 1894.  He lived in shabby apartments because those were the only affordable ones.  He wrote to his family, "A whole section of Elizabeth Street is used for the sale of stale fish, and the crowd is swarming over the sidewalk and into the gutters.  The street lingers in this condition until six o'clock, when the shops and factories turn loose their hordes of workers.  The public transportation in this area is packed as only the New York  companies can pack their customers... and in cold, old, dirty and vile cars."  If you go to NYC's Canal Street now (which intersects with Elizabeth Street), you will see that nothing changed or improved in 130 years!  That lack of progress is typical in NYC, and it's disgusting.  It's like a third-world nation.

Even profitable grocery stores in NYC lack cleanliness.  Yuck!

Please watch this young man's video.  He immigrated from a "developing country" in Europe because NYC promotes a fake image, but he was disgusted by the truth...

People in our neighborhood display grossness at the laundromat, too!  Ignorant parents let their ill-behaved children put greasy food and dirty shoes in the laundry carts (where our clean clothes are supposed to go).

Underpaid immigrant employees do a sloppy job... often putting customers' clothes on the dirty floor!

None of the laundromats maintained their machines properly.  Looking at the laundromat attendants proved their sluggishness.

NYC has been dirty for centuries, and few people/institutions do anything about it.

Prague is a "normal" city, so it doesn't have any of those third-world problems.  We love that, and those standards make our taxes worthwhile!

 

     Living beyond America, Lewis and I will always be glad to escape terrible public transportation and traffic congestion.  One of the worst daily experiences of NYC is having to depend on its unreliable subway, which is part of NYC's long-neglected infrastructure.  The MTA operates a 100-year-old crumbling subway system that is a bottleneck of constricted access to Manhattan, and it hasn't added more trains or routes since 1917.  Just like NYC, the MTA doesn't care and faces no consequences to care.  Whenever we intended to use the MTA's transit system, we had to double-check online to make sure it was operating.  That's nonsensical.  Even after saying that it was okay online, the system often stopped or broke.  On a weekly basis, hundreds of trains are delayed... not arriving at stations for 20-40 minutes.  What kind of subway is late so frequently?  Even worse, malfunctioning signals caused trains to be rerouted or skip stops (often suddenly).  Overcrowded stations made your attempt to get on a delayed train even worse.  Being told to exit a delayed train was the worst (so the train could skip stations and get ahead).  Then, you had to wait for the next train, which was usually overcrowded.  Passengers on elevated routes in Queens and Brooklyn suffered more by having to wait outside in freezing winter wind, rainstorms, snowstorms, scorching summer heat, and muggy humidity.

Click these images to make them clearer/bigger...

If your train got delayed at the station before entering Manhattan, there was barely any internet/cellular signal to alert anyone.  Clearly, NYC is not a first-world city.

     Some folks might pay extra (in addition to their prepaid Metro Card) use a vehicle to avoid the problematic public transportation.  That has its own problems.  To learn about the rip-off price scams mandated by ride-share services and taxis in NYC, please use this link...

https://halfwindsorfullthrottle.blogspot.com/2019/04/new-surcharges-for-car-service-or-ride.html

     You might wonder why where the MTA's profits go?  In addition to millions of ridership fees (four price increases in seven years) and its advertising fees, the billion-dollar agency gets a staggering 75% profit from tolls on the Verrazano Bridge.  Trucking companies pay $20,000 per month to use it!  Additionally, the MTA operates seven toll bridges and two toll tunnels... used by hundreds-of-thousands of people per day.  Yet, since the 1910s, it is allowed to be hugely-corrupt with everything, and the money disappears into MTA paychecks.

     Overhead announcements at stations are incomprehensible.  In a typical scam, the MTA overpaid for new-yet-crappy loudspeakers.  Those "new" speakers crackle, and they are used with outdated microphones, so the words are still obscured... while train traffic muffles it further.  The whole system is useless.

On the trains, disgusting passengers disrespectfully use it like their personal spaces.  They trim fingernails, eat food, drop food, abandon food wrappers, litter, breakdance, demand money, argue, act as peddlers trying to sell candy or fruit, do graffiti, urinate at night, masturbate, and spit.  They behave like they're in a third-world nation.

Above-ground stations are dirtied with pigeon poop because the stations lack anti-pigeon spikes (and the dumb people feed the pigeons--which is like feeding rats and cockroaches)!

That explains the oversized flocks of pigeons in dirty NYC, and they leave feces on cars, apartment balconies, and park benches.  They also use water fountains as birdbaths, which is hugely unsanitary for humans (yet stupid New Yorkers still drink from that water)!

If NYC was smart (or cared), it would launch an awareness campaign to avoid feeding unwanted pigeons.  But nobody said NYC's authorities were smart, as seen below...

Despite their high taxes, Americans don't expect much from their government agencies.  Lacking wherewithal, the sloppy federal Post Office is a classic example...

During our 13 years in Queens, bike rentals were non-existent in Astoria.  You still cannot rent a bike.  Yet, there are plenty of car rental companies.  The only way to have a temporary bike was monopolized by one of America's largest banks; Citibank had a pricey bike program on ridiculously-heavy bicycles.

Even with the annual subscription, if you used a bicycle for more than 45-minutes, you got charged $0.15 per minute.


In Prague, we'll appreciate seeing tax-paid street sweepers that actually vacuum/remove dirt, instead of NYC's that merely blow it around--causing plumes of dust that often cover pedestrians.

     Please watch this short video, and turn the sound on...

How can citizens expect a clean environment when the local Sanitation Department looks decrepit and unclean?!  The one in "expensive Astoria" was neglected since 1931.  Notice the broken windows, stains, crumbling walls, and rusty doors.  How do you keep a neighborhood clean if the facility is filthy?!

Despite all of that, people foolishly relocate to NYC from other states/nations and pay exorbitant rent for crap like this...

     Yet, even near the priciest apartments, the city cannot hide its slovenly qualities.  Merely steps away from luxury hi-rises that charge $6,000 per month for a small apartment, the area looks like a slum: beggars, homeless people, half-naked drug addicts, shrieking people who belong in an asylum, trash strewn along every sidewalk, discarded litter compressed against fences, pigeon poop plastered on dented cars, grab-and-run thieves, and dilapidated buildings sagging since 1880.

     Seen above, the realtor sign announced "luxury apartments" priced at $1,800,000.00!  Yet--seen in the photo below--that building is next to a slummy Discount Store and a decrepit Convenience Store full of men wearing ankle "house-arrest" bracelets.  One of the area's impoverished Housing Projects is across the street from those million-dollar apartments.  There are no restaurants "around the corner"; the nearest decent one is nearly one mile away.  The closest grocery store is a half mile away.  The only subway station is 3 miles away.  (Adding hundreds of new inhabitants to the area doesn't help the overcrowded subway).  That's the environment that the developer expects people to overpay for.

Please watch my short video, taken on a nearby street of another luxury condo across the street from a dump.

     In 1842, the world-famous author, Charles Dickens, visited NYC.  He criticized it this way: "This is the place: these narrow ways, reeking everywhere of dirt and filth... Debauchery has made the very houses prematurely old.  See how the rotting beams are tumbling down, and how the patched and broken windows seem to scowl dimly, like eyes that have been hurt in drunken frays."  It hasn't changed after nearly 200 years!

     On a national level, disgusting things are getting worse.  To understand it, please watch this New York Times video...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw9UXsnWWUI

     Full of gratitude for Czechia's priority of Public Safety, we will be thankful to be away from America's unfixed "gun crazy" culture and ever-increasing quantity of mass shootings.

     Please watch this comedic 4-minute video about how Australia solved its gun violence issues...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cECZQ7rJ8CM



During our first time in Prague, Lewis and I saw a News report about a mass shooting in the U.S.A.  

     Putting things into perspective, America's oldest gunmaker, Remington, is owned by a NYC-based finance conglomerate named Cerberus Capital Management.  Cerberus is named after the guardians of Hell.  Its products were responsible for the 2012 mass-shooting of 20 school children.  When those families tried to sue, the American government protected the company with immunity.  Meanwhile, the gunmaker filed for bankruptcy protection with the government, claiming that it didn't have enough money to pay any victims.  After the taxpaid authorities betrayed the taxpayers, it helped the gunmaker restructure its $980 million of debt to begin production again.  Those are terrible priorities.

America's government is adept with warlike maneuvers, while giving useless platitudes to innocent victims.

Lewis and I will be overjoyed to live in a culture that enforces sanitary codes, too.  NYC was infamous for being slovenly (despite its wealth), and it was the worst city in the word for the COVID pandemic.  Watch this short video...

NYC is also notorious for being inundated with rude people and bitter attitudes!  Here's a video clip from the 1980s...

     Despite new generations of mankind,  that ugly mantra continues to this day.

     Yet, people foolishly overpay vast amounts to live in the USA's squalor.  Enormous expenses are outlandishly needed for childbirth, SAT exam-preparations, tuition, college education, cars, car maintenance, fuel, auto insurance, medical insurance, hospitals, therapy, home ownership, home improvement, rent, cellphones, monthly utility bills, legal assistance, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, retirement/nursing homes, public transportation, and bequeathing assets.  Click on any of these images to make the bigger and clearer...

     For us, it will be a relief to interact with decent-tempered people who don't honk car horns incessantly at the slightest annoyance, who don't get angry if you look in their direction at a café, and who don't holler at someone telling them not to litter.  That is immature and insecure behavior.

     In contrast, people in Prague hospitably approached us because they sensed we were visitors.  If we approached them, they didn't cringe with scowled faces like Americans who are fearful when strangers approach them.

Please enjoy this short video to see an example...

      We will be grateful to finally have an effective police force.  NYC's overpaid police--the largest in the world with the highest budget--lets decades occur while the same neighborhoods remain infested with crime.  Several times per week, the same areas have police cars responding to crimes, yet the crimes never diminish.  Cops merely collect overtime-pay to continually arrive after crimes happen, instead of eradicating them.  As a born-and-bred Manhattanite, Lewis was robbed on the streets twice in his lifetime.  Twice in NYC, my identity was stolen and used to illegally make fraudulent purchases with falsely-opened credit cards.  The police did as little as possible, and no resolutions were given.  They merely got paid to file paperwork and let us solve our own issues.  In the USA, identity theft is the fastest growing crime... and the biggest police force on the planet can't be bothered to quell it.  On average, victims of such fraud spend 60-160 hours of their own time to regain pre-theft status... and I can attest to that!

     Compared to the bloated NYPD, Hazzard County's Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane seems like a genius.

     As shown in this short video, too many New Yorkers are apathetic about stopping crime... or helping one another.

 That is sad and disgraceful... yet commonplace.

Despite its billion-dollar wealth, NYC is notorious for having vastly-outdated infrastructure, so every rainstorm needs a Flood Warning.  Please click on the image below to make the article clearer...

     Lewis and I lived in one of the most-expensive cities in the world--that somehow still had the most inferior infrastructure!  What were we paying for?!  What benefits did we get back?

     People do not continue paying for pricey things like Hermès or Mercedes, if those things fail to provide excellence.  So, why pay the highest prices to live in America's most-expensive city, when it constantly underperforms and fails?  NYC wants to be the costliest place, but it doesn't want to provide civilized decency.

Making it worse is America's culture of being overworked.  Immigrants are shocked when they arrive.

Watch this quick video...

     Yet, America's business and political leaders say...

     Lewis and I witnessed how American companies mistreat their employees, and America's government provides the least protection for employees of any "first-world" nation in the world.  We won't live in a place like that.  That's not a place to plan your future.
     Why would anyone want to pay into a system that continuously promises to improve but remains stagnant?  For 40 years, America guzzled billions of tax-dollars but hasn't improved its infrastructure, power generation, roads, traffic congestion, airports, gun violence, crime, medical costs, ineffective insurance, human trafficking, education costs, over-taxation, pollution, overdevelopment, travel times by public transportation, railway speed, or an equalized Life-Work Balance.  As the richest city in the nation, NYC epitomizes that.

     Generations ago, my forebears emigrated from Europe to the USA.  Lewis' ancestry involved immigrants from Taiwan and Shanghai, China.  Nowadays, you don't see hordes of people moving to America from places like Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, Taiwan, Poland, or Ireland.  That's because it's no longer the place to restart.  Their homelands are better.  Now, the only people who don't see the reality of America are peasantry immigrating from third-world countries, émigrés from dictatorships, Latin Americans lured by labor, and brainwashed Americans (who live in their own bubble and often don't know the names of other nations).  I'm certain that when Latin Americans stop coming, the USA will rely on refugees... instead of fixing itself to attract first-world folks.

     We know that we're better suited for being elsewhere; we're often told that we're "too nice" to be from New York City.  Furthermore, as the slogan says, if we survived NYC, we'll do great anywhere!

     After enduring NYC's trash, landlords, police, and transit--while enduring the USA's scams, for-profit medical system, innutritious food industry, and overpriced crap... things can only get better.  Like our grandparents and great-grandparents, Lewis and I will bravely emigrate out of our homeland for a better life in another country.  We chose well in Czechia!  

     Please go to the next part to see the national level...