Social life among these families as among those on other canals is necessarily restricted. No families mentioned the attractions of towns except those who made a practice of wintering in New York Harbor. Even among such families those docking at the Manhattan piers had a great adlvantage over those docking in Brooklyln or on the Jersey side, as far as accessibility to the city was concerned. One harbor boatman who was interviewed in a Brooklyn basin said that he hardly dared to go ashore alone at night because of the stories he had heard of holdups. The usual reply to the inquiry regarding social pleasures was a reference to other boat families, and sometimes this reference was deprecatory. One mother said: "You don't like to mix with the other boat people. You don't know anything about them."