Move over Manhattan – Queens just claimed your crown.
“Queens is what Manhattan used to be. Manhattan is a shell of itself,” a Queens native declared in a viral video that’s dividing New Yorkers.
“I forget that there’s a huge subset of people who have never gotten to experience how cool Manhattan was,” the woman, who is from Flushing and goes by @leveluponepercent on social media, said in a TikTok post.
“All the people who brought all the unique experiences, the cultural experiences, the independent experiences have been pushed out, and you now have these gentrifiers who have hiked up prices, hiked up rents, and they’ve brought nothing to contribute to the culture.
“All they’ve brought are matching workout sets and $10 lattes and $20 smoothies and waiting in long lines for mediocre food,” she fumed in the one-and-a-half-minute-long clip, which has amassed 350,000 views and 1,550 comments in the month since it was dual-posted to Instagram alongside the account @NewYorkers.
“Now, anytime I want a fun, unique, cultural experience, I head to Queens. I go to Flushing, I go to Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, Astoria, and that’s where I can get a taste of these things again.”
Queens is one of the most diverse places on Earth, with around 360 languages spoken among its 2.3 million residents.
Manhattan, with 1.6 million denizens, is home to the most restaurants in the five boroughs – over 6,400.
The woman, who didn’t want to give her full name to The Post and would only say she’s in her mid-30s, grew up in Flushing and Bayside before moving to Manhattan after college.
She said she witnessed the borough’s alleged decline first-hand while living for over a decade between the East Village, Tribeca and West Harlem leading up to 2019, when she began splitting her time between the West Village and Westchester.
“I feel like [Manhattan] has become really sterile — it feels like a mall. All of the things that made it special have disappeared . . . there was a point when there was a big startup culture, and that was so fun and so cool,” she said. “Now, I go down Eighth Avenue in the West Village and it’s a Starbucks, then it’s a Baskin Robbins, then it’s a Five Guys. So all of the cool, fun places that made it nice and interesting are all gone.
“Anytime I want really good food, I go to Queens. Anytime I want a cool, unique experience that we wouldn’t have in Westchester, I go to Queens,” she said, adding that she’s even considering swapping her residence in the Village for one in the World’s Borough.
“I agree completely,” one Instagram user wrote, and reminisced on a period when “Time square [sic] wasn’t an amusement park and corporations didn’t have their names lit up on our beautiful buildings.
“What was once an amazing metropolis is now a commercial bore,” the commenter said.
Others scoffed.
“Queens will never be Manhattan. Not even on its best day,” one commenter wrote.
“New York is just a place of constant change and that’s what makes New York New York so this idea of new people coming and changing New York makes no sense,” one user pointed out.
Others noted the reality of living in the Big Apple past your 30th birthday.
“You’re just getting older. Manhattan is still the Sh-t!” wrote another.
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