I live in New York City!
I'm a college student, so a shitload of free time whenever I'm home, so yeah.
Since discovering board games like a year ago, I've mingled with a bunch of different board game groups in NYC, mostly through meetup.com, because of my insatiable urge to play board games and lack of enough friends that play. Anyways, I'll talk about my experiences.
First and foremost, there's the huge
NYC Board Games and Card Games meetup group, which has a ton of people. There are biweekly meetups that regularly hit up to 40 people, and other smaller weekly ones and such. A lot of older board gamers, but a group of diverse people. Theor best meetup in terms of location is their TriBeca Whole Foods one because of its amazing venue. The cafeteria is well lighted and has plenty of space. It might be strange to play in public, but still, safety in numbers, LOL. There are meetups at a Murray Hill Cosi, Kings Games in Brooklyn, Citigroup Plaza on Lexington, and a private small basement club in Chelsea. Anyways, there are a lot of gatherings and nice people, so it's fun. It's a bit awkward at times just because there are different people, but overall a smooth experience if you want to join.
Next is a smaller group of
NYC Tabletop Games. It usually meets at the Citigroup Plaza at Lexington as well, but at the same time as a hoard of Magic players on Monday. The group has a lot of younger people, mid twenties and thirties, and they play a bunch of card games and stuff. Less on the eurogames and harder games though. I've been there once and they were cool people.
The Reddit.com NYC meetup group also has a small
frequent meetup for board gamers. I haven't gone yet, but it seems to usually consist of 5-10~ people and gathers at someone's apartment. It shares the same demographics as Reddit, which are, again, college aged gamers. It's in Brooklyn and also usually plays Dominion and more of the newer lighter games.
For the Queens people, fear not, you aren't excluded. Your borough has its own damn
meetup group. However, as I haven't gone, (fuck queens), I can't testify as to its audience and attendance, but some members also frequent the NYC Boardgames meetups so they seem to share similar audiences.
And most recently, there's a new Thursday weekly meetup at a FLGS in Williamsburg named the
Twenty Sided Store. I've gone to the one weekly night they offered and it was great, so I plan on visiting again. They have a store copy of Dominion (no expansions) but sell all of them. Also seemed to be mostly younger board gamers. It's also a big M:TG hub, iirc.
And there are scattered other meetups that I haven't noticed, either because they're private or small or far away. There's supposed to be a weekly meetup at
The Brooklyn Strategist, but I haven't gone since I discovered it because it seems a bit pricy. And there's a
Settlers Meetup group and a
Monopoly Meetup group that I haven't checked because I'm not very into those games. But to each their own!
Anyways, that's pretty much my experience in the last two years in New York. I haven't noticed that many different attitudes, but I'm not very attentive to these things, sooo. But yeah, plenty of board gaming in New York, which I love.