It’s where everyone wants to be—the city with more mythical significance than probably anywhere else in the world. Sinatra wasn’t lying when he said that if you can make it here, you’ll make it anywhere. This place will try your patience, pillage your pocketbook, and may once in awhile leave you crying on a street corner. If you’re planning to make the move, here’s a list of eight things you might hate.

Everyone comes here. Well, okay…maybe not everyone, but a lot of people. I’ve heard it said over and over again that most people living in the city aren’t native New Yorkers, and I believe it. I don’t know the exact percentages, but last summer I saw an influx of post-college kids wandering the subway tunnels and peering out from behind MTA maps…and I’m already starting to see more of them this summer now that school is out and college grads from all over the country have completed their commencements, packed their moving trucks, and arrived here to make it big. Competing with the ginormous population that already lives here, this drives up the prices of almost everything. Which means…

…Rent is damn expensive. My first four months here, I paid more for a room in a three-bedroom in a sketchy part of Brooklyn than I had in my most expensive apartment I’d had before, a two-bedroom in Bloomington, Indiana. Furthermore, your apartment will probably be about the size of a postage stamp, and you’ll probably have more roommates than you ever thought could fit. A bathtub is considered a luxury. A washer/dryer in your unit, rare. And a dishwasher, almost unheard of. And because your rent will be your biggest bill and will probably eat up the majority of every paycheck. As a result…

…There’s a good chance you’ll be broke all the time. I had weeks when I had two hundred dollars to my name—but I had to pay my utility bill, buy a MetroCard, order dog food, and get my suit dry cleaned for a job interview. So in order to avoid the potential casualty of coming up in the red when the rent was due…

…You might have to work two or three jobs to get by for awhile. When I moved here, I worked retail, bartended, modeled for painters and sculptors, answered phones at a call center, and took night shifts proofreading at law offices to make ends meet. It was infuriating to hear from my friends back home in the midwest calling, their voices full of concern: “Wow, are you doing okay? Steve told me you were having to work three jobs…we’re really worried about you. Are you getting enough to eat?” Yes, I was…barely. I worked more than I every though I was capable of working, I didn’t sleep a lot, and I developed a caffeine addiction of massive proportions (the vestiges of which still accompany me today). But Starbucks wasn’t in my budget. It was infuriating, and even more so…

…You’ll be within a brief train ride of some of the world’s best food, drink, and entertainment, but you probably won’t have the money to afford it without putting yourself into credit card debt, nor the time to actually enjoy it. I had a really long stretch of the beans-and-rice diet, and there’s still a stack of ramen noodles in my cupboard left over from the time when I wasn’t even sure I could afford real groceries. The social ramifications of this lifestyle are clear…

…It means you might not meet anyone outside of work. This is the most crowded lonely place in the world, because so many people, despite being in close proximity to one another, are so wrapped up in their professions (or their finances) that they can’t meet up for drinks, or go to the flea market on Saturdays after brunch, or eat Thai food out six nights a week. They’re all too busy working. Some people get by this by tapping into contacts they already have–sorority sisters, fellow college alumni, high-school classmates, that kid who sat next to you in kindergarten that now lives down the street. But this leads to other problems, including…

…You might meet a lot of people who are a lot more financially endowed than you. Which can be depressing, especially in a city where there’s plenty of opportunity to throw money around—on trendy clothing, amazing food, and summer trips to Long Island (or further). Some people resort to spending on credit in order to keep up, which is never a good idea. And also…

…Geography itself can be limiting. When you’re not in the city, it’s tempting to think that public transit will be speedy and efficient, and that you’ll be able to get wherever you’re going in twenty minutes or less. However, when you live in BedStuy and you decide at eleven-thirty that you want to meet friends from Inwood in the Lower East Side, it’s probably going to be a solid hour before either of you arrives at Essex Street–because you have to wait for the G train and then transfer, and they have to ride over two hundred blocks in an A train that’s going local. You start thinking of these friends as your “long-distance friendships” and you rarely see them, except on long weekends and holidays (and then it takes even longer, because the trains are running on a holiday schedule).

But there’s a lot good about the city. Believe me, I wouldn’t be here if there weren’t. Tomorrow I’ll share with you some of my favorite things about this crazy place.

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