The Great Transatlantic Comparison

Now that I’ve finished up a week-long work trip to New York, having spent my life living in and around London, I feel like I am armed with the perfect amount of knowledge to compare the two. Given that Third Republic have offices in both cities, I’ve been to both cities, I’ve seen Love Actually, Snatch, Sex & The City: The Movie and Cloverfield, I’m clearly a subject matter expert.

Allow me to impart this knowledge upon you all as I compare them head-to-head on various subjects:

Mobile Internet: London

Now this may have been because I’m using my UK phones, but I found the mobile internet connection to be marginally better than that of when I was trying to chat to school friends on MSN back in the dial up days, when your Aunt inexplicably sending a fax at 8:30pm on a Friday would cut the connection out. Excessively slow and frustratingly unreliable, I'm pretty certain I'll be coming home to a ￡300 phone bill.

New York was not totally walked over though as mobile internet, as slow as it is, still works on the Metro system, whereas in London you’d be hard pressed to even get internet by the time you reached the escalators.

Cost of Beers: London

London is not the most ideally cheap place to live in the UK, in fact it’s one of the most expensive, but it is no New York. A pint of Guinness, a pint of Stella and half a cider in London would probably cost ￡12-14 ($15-$17). In New York, this round cost me $25.00 (￡20.23). And a tip.

Also, the quality of lager in New York is not nearly the same as in the UK. It’s like comparing stuffed crust Texas BBQ Dominos and the one you get from your local Nisa (or SevenEleven).

Late Night Drinking: New York

Bars in London, especially during the week, have an annoying habit of closing at a respectable hour. This is quite inconvenient if you’re looking to have a little bit of a mental midweek loose one.

Even at the weekends, bars will be shutting at 1am-2am and you’re stuck going to either to a club or to a casino. This is not good when it’s 4am on a Thursday and you’ve lost ￡400 on roulette and you’re listening to a strange middle-aged man tell you about how his kids don’t love him.

New York has a higher tolerance for allowing bars to stay open later and there is usually at least somewhere that is not a club and not a casino that will swap you beers for money.

Underground/Subway: London

The difference in quality of the underground public transport systems in both cities is pretty vast. New York’s system of having several entrances and exits for a station, yet they only work for certain directions of travel, and you need to have realised which one is which otherwise you’re going the wrong end of town, is quite annoying.

Also, if you had to wait 11 minutes for a Central line train in London there would be outrage so severe they’d have to implement martial law, yet is commonplace across the pond.

Cost of Underground/Subway: New York

Where New York lacks in a well-working system, they arguably make up for it with the cost. A 7-day unlimited travelcard for New York costs $33 (￡26.78). The equivalent in London costs ￡60 ($73.94). We do love a rip off in the UK so prepare to remortgage your house if you need to travel round London for longer than a week.

Simplicity of Navigation: New York

Whilst the unimaginative grid system of roads and blocks does not make for the most exciting travel, it is incredibly convenient. Knowing that it’s ‘down 2 blocks, turn left, then across 3 blocks’ is much easier than ‘head down Scrutton St, chuck a left and go all the way down Curtain Rd, turn left at the lights, right at Rufus St and it’ll be in Hoxton Square’.

When you’ve had a few beers and realise that the late night Metro system is slower than your ropey mobile internet connection, a walk home is sometimes in order. Good thing it’s pretty easy to figure out how to get somewhere. Also a lot of the roads are sequentially numbered. Handy.

Scale: New York

So New York may be easy to navigate, but if you are going to be walking anywhere, prepare to bring your running trainers or hiking boots and be fit enough to run a marathon. Where the underground is not the most reliable, if you’re late home you’re either going to be paying $40 for a cab or walking an hour and a half across 22,000 blocks, a bridge, a tunnel, an assault course, a bungee jump and a deep sea dive.

Walking through the ‘Shady Parts’: New York

Seeing as we’re on the subject of walking long distances, one thing that New York has the upper hand in is walking through the bits that are perhaps less reputable, or seemed to alarm people when I said I’d walked through them on my own late at night.

It may have something to do with most roads being long straight lines but a walk through some of the 'less savoury parts' of the outer city in New York had me feel less in danger of dramatic cinema-grade death than walking through Leyton late at night. Didn’t hear a gun go off once either.

Football Pubs: London

I understand that football (soccer) is not the biggest sport in America, one where the game has only been moderately popular in the last 10 years, but London has been home to a number of football clubs for more than 120 years. As it is the national sport, the following in London is incredibly passionate and that shows in the atmosphere in the pubs.

As the only Englishman in an Arsenal pub, watching an Arsenal game, in New York I was being asked why I wasn’t singing along to the songs (not withstanding that I wouldn’t sing in a pub unless it was karaoke night anyway) but I hadn’t heard any of them, the Americans have been making up their own chants and songs completely independent of the songs sung from the stands.

They were rubbish. Like when your 12 year old cousin thinks they’ll have a future as a singer songwriter. To be fair to them, they have a decent voice, but they’re no Adele.

Strangers Talking to Me: New York

It may have been the novelty factor of my accent, but people in New York were far more interested in having a conversation; whether that’s with a couple grilling me with 250 questions about London and Shakespeare and places to go in Europe, or a woman on the train asking me if I was Matt Damon, or a man talking to me about rugby and bringing up Pearl Harbour, either way they are better than Valerie down the local Whetherspoons telling me about her cats and estranged children.

Fast food: London

2am Donner Kebab = Good. 2am Chipotle = Gastrointestinal emergency.

Rubbish disposal: London

Aside from the fact that scaffolding companies must make an absolute killing in New York, the most noticeable thing about street level in New York is the sheer amount of rubbish left in giant piles on the street. Whilst yes, I did also notice people walking around with giant bags of tin cans on poles Pingu-style, there were also miniature mountains of rubbish dotted around the city. And by 'dotted' I mean everywhere.

I also didn’t notice anyone drunkenly dive into it after a night out, which would definitely have been par for course in London.

On reflection, my allegiances will always lie with my home city. I’ve lived here, I was brought up here and I work here. I like the price of beer, a curry down Brick Lane and my new found appreciation for the underground in London. But that being said, New York is as good as they say it is. Were a younger man I’d’ve considered moving there permanently, however I’m now too used to being a disgruntled Englishman that likes moaning about our incredibly average weather and controversial political decisions.

The buildings are taller, the airports are closer to the city and Times Square makes Picadilly Circus look like Carphone Warehouse. As much as I'd only live in one, I'd thoroughly recommend both.