From Pride to Disappointment: Daniel Kandler Reflects on the New York City He Once Knew

There was a time when walking through the streets of New York City felt like stepping into the center of the world. The skyline inspired awe, the energy was electric, and opportunity seemed to be on every corner. For Daniel Kandler, a proud New Yorker in his early twenties, the city represented everything America had to offer—ambition, grit, diversity, and the freedom to build something from nothing.

Today, he hardly recognizes it.

“What happened to New York?” Daniel Kandler asks. It’s not a rhetorical question—it’s a real, painful one. “This used to be a city that rewarded hustle and stood for law and order. Now it feels like everything is upside down.”

For Daniel, watching the transformation of New York City over the past decade has been both personal and political. A lifelong entrepreneur and family man, he built his early career with the city as his backdrop. Long days, longer nights, and a sense of camaraderie with others chasing their dreams. There was crime, sure. But there was also accountability. There was noise and chaos, but there was also a code—spoken or unspoken—that held the city together.

That code, he believes, has been broken.

From soaring crime rates and rampant shoplifting to the vilification of police and a political class seemingly more interested in ideological purity than practical governance, Daniel Kandler sees a city that’s lost its way. “It’s no longer about making New York work,” he says. “It’s about signaling virtue, no matter the cost to the average person trying to raise a family, run a business, or just get home safe at night.”

Kandler points to the revolving door justice system, policies that discourage law enforcement from doing their jobs, and a general disdain for traditional values as symptoms of a broader decay. “You can’t tell me things are better now than they were twenty years ago,” he says. “Not when every third storefront is boarded up and people are getting attacked on the subway.”

It’s not just crime that bothers him. It’s the ideological shift—the sense that hard work, patriotism, and family values are somehow outdated. “In the New York I grew up in, success wasn’t something to be ashamed of. It was something to chase. Now it feels like if you’re not on board with every progressive talking point, you’re the villain.”

Daniel Kandler doesn’t pretend everything was perfect back then. He acknowledges the city has always been a balancing act between chaos and culture, commerce and community. But where once there was balance, he now sees imbalance—skewed heavily by political interests disconnected from the daily struggles of real people.

“It’s not about left or right,” he says, “it’s about common sense. And somewhere along the way, New York lost it.”

These days, Daniel spends more time in Florida, a place he says still embraces the values he holds dear: safety, personal responsibility, freedom of speech, and support for those who keep communities running—especially law enforcement. “You don’t have to agree on everything, but there has to be a baseline respect for law, for order, and for the people who make cities livable,” he says.

Still, the disappointment lingers. New York will always be home in some ways. The memories, the friends, the long walks down Fifth Avenue with coffee in hand—they’re part of his DNA. But the city itself? He’s not sure it can come back from where it’s gone.

“I wish I could tell my kids the same stories I used to tell about this city,” Daniel Kandler says, pausing. “But I’d be lying if I said it was still that place.”

He holds out a sliver of hope—maybe one day the pendulum will swing back. Maybe the voters will demand accountability. Maybe the city will remember what made it great in the first place. But for now, his love for New York is mixed with sorrow.

“I didn’t leave New York,” he says. “New York left me.”