<p>overate, overeaten</p>
<p>I would have to concur on the pizza. I have tried pizza at virtually every top Zagat-rated pizzeria in New York, Boston and several other cities in the United States, and have traveled through the Rome and Naples areas in Italy (eating at several "famous" pizzerias as well as places completely and totally off any tourist's path). New Haven beats them all hands-down. The main reason is that New Haven is still a city of neighborhoods - families have roots there going back 400 years and people feel a strong sense of pride in their particular neighborhood, which translates to good food because the popular places don't get sold out to a high bidder like in other cities, and have been around in some cases since the 1920s. Many neighborhoods even have a small town "square" or park, just like in Italy or elsewhere in Europe. The pizza itself (not from everywhere, just the famous places) is simply different than it is anywhere else.</p>
<p>If by "Sally's and Pepe's bubble," you mean incredibly expensive luxury apartments and million-dollar condominiums for blocks and blocks, yes that would describe the area around downtown New Haven. There are a couple areas where local landlords (including the city government, which has owned a couple of large parking lots near the city center and won't start developing them until next year) haven't woken up and realized how much their property is worth, but pretty much everything else is under construction for yuppie apartments. Property values downtown have quintupled just in the past five years. The trend is not totally unique to New Haven; you see the same effect in areas such as Williamsburg Brooklyn ("Billyburg"), the LES in Manhattan and certain districts towards the southern parts of San Francisco.</p>
<p>Regarding students' involvement in New Haven, many get involved far beyond their campus. This holds true for Yale students as well as students from other colleges such as Southern Connecticut State University, which is even larger than Yale and also located in New Haven. Unlike with a larger city, everything from the Mayor's office to local government, courthouses, nonprofits and local businesses are extremely accessible to anyone with any kind of initiative and friendliness. There is obviously a "Yale bubble" where many students are preoccupied with the thousands of things going on on the campus every day, but that's true of anywhere.</p>
<p>I concur, PoX. It's melted cheese, isn't it?</p>
<p>simigenu-
the issue is that new haven ISNT a big city, and doesnt pretend to be. you just cant compare new haven to boston and new york. however, for being a small city, it does a pretty good job of providing entertainment options to students.</p>
<p>Most people have little knowledge of what ingredients truly go into a great pizza, because they simply have never tried one or looked into precisely how they (should be) made. Spend a few years in Italy and you'll see.</p>
<p>Sir, If you are suggesting that I am ignorant of pizza knowledge, sir, or pizzeria, you should know I can concoct a pizza from scratch with no reliance upon the pre-processed ingredients your beloved parlours must substitute for the loving attention available only to the home cook. Preparing a dinner for loved ones rather than a stampede of drooling red-eyed patrons with a fat fist of bucks allows for a luxurious artistry that commerce cannot imitate. No need to study Italy to surpass your pizza sweatshop. For architecture, opera, and pretty girls on those little motorscooters, book early if you will. But Sir, if I am to continue to tolerate your hyperbolic juggernautistry, you must desist from this assault upon my open-faced cheese assemblage pronto.</p>
<p>I have tried "home made" pizzas from the finest-trained chefs, and none have ever even come close to comparing with what you get from what are, essentially, great old neighborhood bakeries. As we all know, sir, artisan bread from the best local bakeries beats out any kind of home-made bread, hands-down. And pizza is at its essence a type of bread, but topped carefully with ingredients of which the selection and proportions of each item are almost as important as the bakery temperatures, characteristics, cooking times and bread components. Unfortunately, while home made pizza can be very good (and often better than your typical "corner pizzeria" which - even in places like Italy - usually follows a fairly straightforward recipe, leading to a familiar cardboard-like commercial pizza taste), it simply doesn't compare to pizza made by neighborhood masters. And anyone who has ventured to anywhere on the peninsula south of Milan knows that a trip to Italy is about more than opera, architecture or the way people dress - it's about food!</p>
<p>my dear posterx, a delightful offering! You are so much more a meaningful contributor to the fund of human knowledge and spirit when you draw from personal experience rather than statistics. Let the entity Yale New Haven fend for itself a while and continue to treat us to further earthly delights that indeed prove more an endorsement of the city and college you love than the empty and petty comparisons with other renowned fiefdoms that likewise sport their prideful champions,... now, if you would, describe that first hot bite.</p>
<p>Is New Haven a city where one could get around okay WITHOUT a car? And which neighborhoods in the city would be considered safe, affordable, and convenient to campus or public transist.....and groceries/pharmacy? I may apply to their MA program, so that's why I am asking.</p>
<p>there are private vendors to shop at right around the yale campus, so you really don't need a car.</p>
<p>Most graduate students live downtown, around Yale, or in the East Rock and Wooster Square neighborhoods. All have access to everything you need and are very wealthy, convenient and safe areas. Because of gentrification, they aren't as affordable as they used to be, but if you share a place with other students it's not bad. There are markets, a downtown supermarket, and hundreds of stores.</p>
<p>A car would be nice to have because you could drive to the beach in 5-10 minutes, go to endless apple and raspberry orchards in 10 minutes, see neighboring towns, go mountain climbing, go shopping at the downtown IKEA and be able to drive heavy furniture back to your house (or bring groceries back), and get to all sorts of other places within a very short drive. However, you can get away with a bicycle and just spend an extra 5-10 minutes getting to most of those places. A car would be more useful for grad students there than for undergraduates, since grad students spend much less time on the central campus. But, I know a few graduate students at Yale who own cars, and they use them about once a month.</p>
<p>darn, a relapse,..</p>
<p>"Is New Haven a city where one could get around okay WITHOUT a car? And which neighborhoods in the city would be considered safe, affordable, and convenient to campus or public transist.....and groceries/pharmacy? I may apply to their MA program, so that's why I am asking."</p>
<p>I have lived in New Haven for years now, in between downtown and East Rock. It's a 10 minute walk to Sterling Library (I use it but don't attend Yale). I pay $300 a month, including all utilities, and share a nice apartment in a safe neighborhood (not a single incident since I've lived here, except for a purse-snatcher) and have no problem buying groceries or conducting other daily activities. I don't even know how to drive. Public transportation is reliable and easily accessible from this area, although I do wish busses ran more frequently on the weekends. That won't be an issue for you if you're going to Yale, though.</p>
<p>I wish my utility bill was $300 a month,...</p>
<p>Pip-pip, you reminded me that one of those small-but-intangibly-significant reasons I loved Yale was because they keep their library open to the public. It just seems to me like if you're going to have that trove of resources, as Yale does (as do several other schools), it is a small but kind service to the community to open that library up so that all might benefit.</p>
<p>Best,
DMW</p>
<p>thanks pip, i definitely look forward to applying. if accepted, it would be interesting to see what New Haven has to offer.</p>
<p>dmw, good point about the intangibles.</p>
<p>In fact, if you're an average member of the community you can't check out books and you have to pay to have stack access. I get around it by showing an old student ID card (w.o. an expiry date) from another university I attended that was part of the Research Library Consortium. However, there are other contributions Yale makes to the community.</p>
<p>Is there a train system through New Haven? I know Boston and NYC aren't too far but I just wonder if anyone knows travel times and such.</p>
<p>I'm looking at Yale and my biggest concern (other than getting in, obviously) is New Haven.</p>
<p>new haven is a major amtrak hub in new england. also, you can take metro north to nyc for only $13 (they go at least once an hour). check <a href="http://www.amtrak.com%5B/url%5D">www.amtrak.com</a> for pricing and schedules</p>