20 Comments
User's avatar
Ruth Ann Harnisch's avatar

I am the sponsor of this series. Had I known that someone was going to hate on the Native New Yorker Telling Me What This Place Used To Be I would have paid double. I, who have never lived in Queens, can give a detailed tour of where many things used to be, or if they still exist, what happened there to any number of people native to Woodside and the Boulevard Gardens. I forwarded this to the conductor of This Used To Be tours saying "Not every word of this applies to you personally but a lot of the words apply to you personally."

Expand full comment
Mar's avatar

ruth ann i adore you for this & for sponsoring the hell gate podcast <3

Expand full comment
Ruth Ann Harnisch's avatar

Gotta live up to that description of me in the intro, you know? Also, Hell Gate is one long Hate Read some weeks! And the podcast is my window into what The Kids are thinking. Old Lady Harnisch loves every one of the hosts every week.

Expand full comment
Delia Cai's avatar

LOL…incredible!

Expand full comment
amelia's avatar

OMG. A PERFECT PAIR. can you hear me cackling from states away?

Expand full comment
Mar's avatar

as a native new yorker...hard agree. the city isn't a personality (also a note for many a 20-something influencer who just moved here), it's built off interesting people. be an interesting person!

Expand full comment
ang's avatar

i laughed. but also kind of weird piece that doesn't seem to get class

Expand full comment
J. Wynona's avatar

Yeah, I was kind of with it until the "brownstone" part.

Expand full comment
Sister Trout's avatar

Five stars, no notes.

Expand full comment
Jackie Fishman's avatar

Hmm- this comment from a native New Yorker.. proud of my lineage but also knew growing up in the 60s-70s that I could never live there as a real adult. Still I love going back as a tourist and often do so with friends who also grew up there as well as my husband. I still get off on the freedom of the crazy anonymity the city affords..you can be as weird as you want when you walk around Manhattan. I'm a Queens girl, but when I go back to that borough I am floored by the same feeling I had as a young adult--too many damn people! New York was not the end of my world, but it certainly was a good beginning!

Expand full comment
Liza Bautista's avatar

“You know you have them cornered when they yelp “transplant!” before scurrying back to their parent’s Park Slope brownstone or Upper East Side condo” …yeah cause no one can afford to live in their own hometown on their own.

Expand full comment
fromnewyork's avatar

dam, explained me thru and thru. go back to wyoming! jk

Expand full comment
Jena Kingsley's avatar

Came here to say…I am a native New Yorker. 😂

Expand full comment
Dana's avatar

Do you feel better now?

Expand full comment
paolo's avatar

glad its called hate read bc i hated reading that one 👍

Expand full comment
212 Blog's avatar

This sucks

Expand full comment
hay's avatar

blog name checks out

Expand full comment
Tahirah Hairston's avatar

lmao, ngl...it's giving gentrifier's manifesto. are native new yorkers insufferable at times? yes. but, i would be too if people kept moving here, extracting resources, fucking up affordability, and displacing people. being a native New Yorker and complaining about transplants isn't the same thing as complaining about people moving to Wyoming or Ohio--those places aren't being bled dry. as a detroiter, i'm always going to stand up for native New Yorkers because i know what it feels like (on a smaller scale) to watch your city change beyond recognition, where you can't afford a home or to open a business, because of the people who move there with no respect for who was there before them.

Expand full comment
Arman's avatar

On point

Expand full comment
Jess Chermak's avatar

Fuckin' gold, here. Such a gift, thank you.

Expand full comment