advice on moving to NY

[Evident Weasel]

Hi All,
long time lurker, first time poster... I was hoping you guys with a bit more New York experience might be able to give me a bit of advice, I'm going to be moving to New Yrok soon as a pretty permanent relocation and I have a couple questions that I can't find answers for online so I thought maybe I could ask the opinions of a few New Yorkers on a friendly local messageboard!

In the UK I bank with the co-op, mostly because of their ethical banking policy, is there a similar bank in New York?

I understand some cell phone networks are better in the city than others, especially for 3G data, any idea who's best these days and if it's possible to get a SIM only contract?

I'm really interested in the transition town movement and in urban agriculture in general, The only transition town nearby is all the way over in rochester, does anyone know of any similar groups actually in NY City, especially in Manhattan or Brooklyn?

Now the nerd questions:

Do I need to put a new PSU in my PC or am I OK to flick the switch from 240v to 110v? I really don't want it to blow up!

Does anyone know how the IT Job market is in NY these days? should I anticipate difficulty finding work or is it like London where you can always find desktop support jobs?


As I say, I've tried looking around the internet for answered to these questions but I've either found no information at all or a whole heap of confusing and contradictory opinions! I figure If I'm going to trust opinions from strangers on the internet it might as well be yours!

All the best and thanks in advance for any advice you can give!

 

[editor]

I've no idea about banks - when I worked there I stuck with my UK account - but your laptop will be fine. If you're taking over a desktop PC, then you'll just have to switch the voltage over.

There's quite a lot of activist/green stuff going on - the Bluestockings bookstore at 172 Allen St on the LES might be a good place to start hooking up with people: http://bluestockings.com/

 

[Evident Weasel]

awesome! thanks for that link, I'll look out for them when I get over! I remember being told that Washington Mutual were the closest Co-op analogs but I think they've shut up shop now. I'm probably going to keep my UK account open for a while but this is looking like a permanent move so I'd better get myself set up with a US account as well.

 

[Flavour]

Damn, you're a little too late with the banking thing. It sounds like you don't have a Visa or job in the US yet, do you? In which case you are going to find it quite hard to open a bank account with anybody! So my advice to you is to set up a HSBC account in the UK before you leave as its the only bank with consumer branches in both NY and the UK (to my knowledge). You *could* have joined Washington Mutual before July 2009 (as I did ) and then been automatically transferred to become a Chase Bank customer (a bank who wouldnt otherwise have given me an account) with the takeover. Sorry about that.

Phones... if by SIM only you mean Pay-as-you-go - DON'T BOTHER. It's a massive massive waste of money! You will be charged for calls and texts RECEIVED as well as sent and your credit will disappear very quickly. Again without a Visa/citizenship/green card you'll find it difficult to get a contract phoneline but if you have one of those things, or, a friend in America who'd be willing to put you on their contract, then again your out of luck. T-Mobile and Sprint are decent networks apparently.

As for IT jobs I couldn't say but I imagine it is like London, but yes, high turnovers are a fact of life.

I'm not really sure what a transition town is but there's a bunch of rooftop/urban farming going on over in Brooklyn and I'm sure Queens too. Manhattan, almost certainly nothing except on a very small scale.