The Worst Things About Winter in the City

As a child, you may have associated winter with sledding, hot chocolate, and days off from school. But now that you're grown, it's just the dark, frigid months occupying the space between the booze-fueled binges of Thanksgiving and St. Patrick's Day.

Winter is even worse when you live in the city. The suburbs offer the comfort of moving from heated homes, to heated cars, to heated offices. Living in the city forces you to choose between the uninsulated windows of your apartment, a frigid subway platform, and your office (which is inevitably sweltering, despite what anyone does to the thermostat).

We commiserate with you shivering, North Face clad masses: Here are the 10 Worst Things About Winter in the City.

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Your favorite coffee shop is everyone's favorite coffee shop. During the winter, you learn this lesson the hard way. A spot that's reasonably crowded during pleasant weather will you leave you waiting hours for a seat mid-winter, when there are no parks and food trucks to divert would-be latté sippers.

Mounds of coats and sweaters serve as warning signs blocking you from every table. You're forced you to wait awkwardly, macchiato in hand, hoping for someone to cut their marathon squatting session short so you can secure an uncomfortable stool. To top it all off, the door will be swinging open and closed so often, you might as well be sitting outside. Tough life.

Thanks for meeting me for a date. Let me just take off my hat and reveal my ratty, unkempt hair. Oh, don't shake my hand or hug me, I have a cold. Hold on, I have to blow my nose. Sorry, anyway, thanks for meeting for this date. Yeah, I know they have a dress code, but it's too cold for a suit coat, so I wore this puffy orange parka that my mom sent me. Wait, you're not my date? It's the other girl in the peacoat with the scarf covering her face, and the beanie pulled down over her forehead? Sorry, my mistake. Have a nice night.

This is the conversation that inevitably occurs during every date during the winter, increasing the odds you'll be forever alone. Winter is so sad.

You might be able to get away with a less-than-stellar wardrobe in warm weather (jeans and vintage t-shirts, all day, err-day), but winter is less forgiving. There is no hiding from the fashion police during the winter. Layers upon layers of ratty flannel and moth-ball ridden sweaters will reveal you for the hand-me-down wearing fashion failure that you are.

You're only saving grace is how quickly it gets dark. Maybe people won't be able to clearly make out the disastrous Russian nesting doll of an outfit you're wearing. Just kidding, they totally will.

During the winter, your friends in the city will annoy the hell out of you by throwing parties for undeserving occasions in an attempt to beat the sudden onset of seasonal affective disorder. New Years, the Super Bowl, the Oscars, and even the Golden Globes become desperate attempts at luring you out of your home.

Meanwhile, we'd rather be sitting at home watching The Wire than risk life and limb going across town to your ridiculous anti-Valentine's Day party. Can't we just postpone all of these until it's warm enough to wear shorts?

Just how tiny your apartment is won't dawn on you until you're forced to spend long stretches of time in it. While summer is a heady mix of long hours at work and longer hours at the bar, winter is just a depressing pivot between eating unreasonable amounts of pizza and falling asleep.

This means you'll be afforded plenty of time to examine the fatal flaws of your apartment's design. You'll discover the unreliable nature of your apartment's heating system, how poor the paint job is, and just how many cockroaches have made their way into your pantry. And to think, you would have thought you snagged a deal if you hadn't spent the entire winter in the city, cooped up in your glorified closet.

We used to love snow, we really did. And then we moved to the city. The snow of our childhood was idyllic white powder covering sweeping meadows. In contrast, snow in the city is a melting, sooty mess that is as awful to witness as it is to step in. Plus, you're guaranteed to have an absentee landlord on your block who skimped on the $5 dollars it costs to get their sidewalk shoveled, making muddy shoes and socks inevitable.

If you love snow and plan on jumping into the urban sprawl, we recommend bringing a picture of winter back home with you to the city, because you may never enjoy anything that falls from the sky again. Unless it's a meteor to deliver you from your pain. You can only hope.

Tired of sitting around at home? You can always hit that empty bar. Summer in the city is all about drunken revelry on patios and balconies, and attractive people looking even more attractive as they drink their way into thinking you're attractive.

But winter in the city? Winter is about sliding up to the bar next to one of the regulars who live a block away, staring at the bottom of a shot glass and praying for spring to arrive. Sure, winter beers are more flavorful and have a higher alcohol content. But they have to, so that you can get drunk enough to forget just how terrible winters in the city really are.

"Where is the damn train?" This is the question that you'll find yourself asking most often during the winter. Sure, it's sort of of nice to have it replace "What the hell am I doing with my life?" as the phrase most often replayed in your mind. But, that aside, there is nothing redeeming about waiting for public transportation in sub-zero temperatures.

Whether you're freezing your ass off at an outdoor bus stop, or sweating beneath your layers in a dank underground subway platform, there is no feeling more uncomfortable than your winter commute.

Sure, growing up generally means no more snow days. But those of you who grew up in the boondocks can probably recall a day or two from your youth when the roads were so bad that your parents just couldn't get to work.

Thanks to the marvels of modern transportation, you'll always be able to get to work. Cities offer endless ways to make it to work on time, making all excuses invalid. Subway's closed? Take a cab. Can't find a cab? The walk's not that far.

There is no real excuse for missing work in the big city. That might be part of the reason why everyone shows up fifteen minutes late for work each day and leaves three hours early every Friday for happy hour. The big breaks don't come, so you have to steal little ones.

The only thing worse than how cold it is outside are the people making small talk about how cold it is outside. During the summer, there are plentiful diversions. But most of winter, particularly after football ends, is spent talking about winter.

Women have it even worse. Every asshole in a parka suddenly thinks it's appropriate to comment on how she "must be cold in that outfit." What do they expect the outcome of a conversation like that to be? "Wow, I'd never thought of that. You are a wonderful conversationalist. Would you like to swing into the McDonald's bathroom and have sex, not only for pleasure, but also to keep warm on this frigid day?" We don't understand.

Don't worry if you don't have time to get outside, your friends on Facebook and Instagram will keep you up updated on whether it's "cold", "really cold", or "super cold" out there. They're all so observant.