Florida, You’re No New York

The points of exit and entry illustrate the profound distinctions between the two. After landing at Palm Beach International Airport, the ride home takes far less time than the trek from security to departure gate in the hellscape known as LaGuardia. The airport’s unfinished $8 billion face lift has made things worse, converting Terminal B from a dingy warren into a cavernous shopping mall choked with duty-free tchotchkes, a cordillera of escalators and a Vegas-esque “water feature.”

Florida is easy compared with New York City. Admittedly, one has to drive everywhere, but the roads are wide and pedestrians are few—in part because it is sweltering much of the year.

Florida can’t touch New York City’s sui generis cache of brains, talent and industry. But everyday life isn’t lived at the Frick or the Metropolitan Opera or Le Bernardin. New York has an edge on some mundane matters—24-hour pharmacies, bagel shops, nail salons—but it trails Florida on countless other quotidian benchmarks.

Florida largely works and usually costs much less. In Florida, $16 will get you an hour on impeccably groomed public tennis courts. An hour on indoor courts near Grand Central Terminal used to set me back $240—and that was in 2010. I received Covid boosters at a West Palm Beach grocery store in moments. By contrast, picking up a prescription in Midtown recently was a classic Manhattan horror show, replete with surly queue and overwhelmed pharmacists. Florida cleans up in the taxes department and—summer aside—in weather, too. Two miserable words I’m happy never to hear again: wintry mix.

But the New York City sense of accomplishment—I survived another day here!—has no equal in Florida. When the sun sets behind the palm trees, there is no satisfaction at having persevered through a metropolitan obstacle course, nor the thrill of being part of a city like no other.

Manhattan has abundant ore for complaining—the favorite pastime of New Yorkers. The law and order of West Palm Beach seems bland compared with the Big Apple’s endearing squalor, menace and Mad Max anarchic spirit. Sidewalks that were empty during the pandemic are full again, with electric bikes and scooters ripping willy-nilly through crowds.

In the subway, squatters terrorize riders foolhardy enough to brave mass transit. The streets reek of marijuana. What else? The filth, the graffiti, the people rampaging along the avenues or slumped on sidewalks.

Aboard the Hampton Jitney last week, I said how wonderful it was that the pandemic had ended and New York City was back. The passenger beside me raised an eyebrow. “I guess that’s why,” he observed, “we’re on a bus getting the hell out.”

Ms. Cronin is an associate editorial features editor at the Journal.