Michael, it is very interesting that you chose New York and I wish you all the best. I say that it is interesting because I chose to move from New York to San Francisco at the end of last year. One of the main reasons is the attitude of each respective city.
New York will always have a special place in my heart as I grew up in lower part of brooklyn until I moved to Jersey in 7th grade. It was one of the greatest times of my life. I only returned to the city after I graduated college two years ago. Maybe it was a personal experience but after working in NYC(manhattan) I thought it was one of the coldest and most distant places I have ever experienced. It was the feeling of the city, for all the "if you can make it here you can make it anywhere" there is a lack of collaboration, it is selfish, it feels like people are only out for #1. There is this aura of being better than others, almost snobbishness, which is something I have yet to find in San Francisco.
San Fran is also incredible in terms of the level of intellectual curiosity that you see in most people. Individuals and groups are building,creating, innovating. I don't remember who said it(maybe it was Paul Graham in Hackers and Painters) but there was a comparison of modern day San Francisco to Florence during the Renaissance. I tried to look for resources in New York, but it felt like I was always meeting the same kind of people. I found that people were just living, going to restaurants, talking celebrity gossip. There was no ambition to better oneself, there was no ambition to learn. There is ambition to make money though.
Your point about groupthink is well noted. I would like to point out that artistically, culturally, and musically NYC and SF are not that different. SF is the city of free thinking and has spawned many radical movements (Summer of Love, Beatniks, LGBT social movement), and continues to be ripe with underground/subculture movements. I cannot say NYC doesn't have the Village, but it is a remnant of what it once was as it has undergone extensive gentrification.
Either way these I think are two of the more open cities in the United States and have an environment where one in theory can succeed. Personally I believe that San Fran simply has a different mindset which is embodied in the people.
You can be as successful as you want to be, just be wary of the environmental factors that may sway you into a lifestyle that makes you feel as if you are running in place
SilasX, it would be great to hear your comments of this bootcamp.
These programs are awesome. I got accepted to devbootcamp but because I just moved out to SF(OCT) I don't have enough funds to do it in Feb-Mar(hopefully this summer). The Hungry Academy is an awesome idea which I would totally do if it wasn't in DC. Why are more companies not doing something similar?