In case someone else lands upon this. If you do "GET _template/nyc" after putting that, you will find the template has no mappings. Three changes are required. "mapping" should be "mappings" and (as Magnus pointed out in the other thread) "location " needs that space to be removed. "_default" should be "_default_".
This works.
PUT _template/nyc
{
"order":0,
"index_patterns":"nyc",
"mappings":{
"_default_":{
"properties":{
"location":{
"type":"geo_point"
}
}
}
}
}