Posted on 07/03/2018 11:19:46 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
New York has been my home for more than forty years, from the year after the city’s supposed nadir in 1975, when it nearly went bankrupt. I have seen all the periods of boom and bust since, almost all of them related to the “paper economy” of finance and real estate speculation that took over the city long before it did the rest of the nation. But I have never seen what is going on now: the systematic, wholesale transformation of New York into a reserve of the obscenely wealthy and the barely here—a place increasingly devoid of the idiosyncrasy, the complexity, the opportunity, and the roiling excitement that make a city great.
As New York enters the third decade of the twenty-first century, it is in imminent danger of becoming something it has never been before: unremarkable. It is approaching a state where it is no longer a significant cultural entity but the world’s largest gated community, with a few cupcake shops here and there. For the first time in its history, New York is, well, boring.
This is not some new phenomenon but a cancer that’s been metastasizing on the city for decades now. And what’s happening to New York now—what’s already happened to most of Manhattan, its core—is happening in every affluent American city. San Francisco is overrun by tech conjurers who are rapidly annihilating its remarkable diversity; they swarm in and out of the metropolis in specially chartered buses to work in Silicon Valley, using the city itself as a gigantic bed-and-breakfast. Boston, which used to be a city of a thousand nooks and crannies, back-alley restaurants and shops, dive bars and ice cream parlors hidden under its elevated, is now one long, monotonous wall of modern skyscraper.
(Excerpt) Read more at harpers.org ...
I’m glad they mentioned Boston. Although so much smaller than NYC, I see Boston as very much an NYC wannabe. It’s going in the same boring, overly affluent direction. It’s no fun anymore.
Pittsburgh, I still like. Pittsburgh reminds me of Boston in the70s/80s. It has character, and there are places you can live even if you don’t have a fancy job. It’s diverse in all the right ways. But it will eventually be like a bland cookie-cutter shopping mall and look like NYC with 3 rivers.
Boston is close to completely devoid of a middle class. There’s the ultra rich who can afford a $3500 rent on a studio apartment, and there’s the ultra poor, who shoot each other nightly in the greasy neighborhoods.
I read this artical and it seemed to take forever.Its quite long.
It might have been “great” in the mind of the author but it was an armpit since the 70s and last time I was there it was just a really CROWDED armpit.
The arts that are not an armpit are Disney-fied to the point where you could be at a Disney park and not know the difference.
I think this person is comparing the NYC of the movie “On The Town.”
I could not care less. I think we should pass a law that if you live or work in a city larger than 500k that you cannot vote in federal elections.
One possible solution to American idiocy.
It is true internationally too, London, Paris and Rome are now all pest holes that market themselves as the world's elite. You just aren't supposed to know about the no-go zones.
We left Seattle 7 years ago. Every day - EVERY SINGLE DAY - I walk into my living room or onto my deck, and look out at the five acres of lawn surrounded on all sides by forest and thank God for where we live.
And the total price was a third the price of a three bedroom rambler in a middle class suburb of Seattle. This includes a brand new house (when we bought it).
And the annual property taxes are less than one month’s Camry payment.
We are completely done with the cities. Been there, done that.
Sounds great. Hope I can end up in something similar, away from the DFW growing overcrowding.
If Pittsburgh gets Amazon, sell and leave.
The challenge is my 150 mile round trip commute. But hey, it’s half beautifully maintained two lane twisties and no cops, and the rest is 80+ mph on I-65 where cops don’t care until you do over 85. And I do it in an FR-S which is on its seventh set of tires. It beats sitting in stop and go traffic for 20 miles but for the same amount of time. :)
But my car now has over 150k miles on it. Fortunately, modern cars are built to last. I just did my FIRST brake job 2k miles ago. Not a lot of call for using your brakes around here. All the yield signs look like stop signs. It’s kinda weird.
Good article, but can someone explain the difference between a condo and a townhouse as it pertains to Manhattan? Thanks.
The artist Vik Muniz did Close one better, providing three dozen images of various friends, relatives, and cultural celebrities dressed up, reported the Times, like “normal people,” including “the restaurateur Daniel Boulud holding a bag with a fish tail sticking out; the designer, actor, and man-about-town Waris Ahluwalia”; and Mr. Muniz himself, “in a Rockwell-esque scene of him tripping, spilling papers from his briefcase,” as well as his son, dressed “in a tiger suit, like a Times Square mascot on lunch break.” Isn’t it marvelous? The artists are depicting themselves and their celebrity friends imitating us, waiting for a train and doing all the perfectly ordinary things that we ordinary people do!
When I read this the first thing I thought of was Marie Antoinette milking a groomed and manicured cow !
Whereabouts are you now?
condo=1 story
town house= two stories
A long rant by an aging lover of the State.
South central rural KY.
No, living in NYC has very much degraded and I'm really doubtful it can make a comeback. Not with its appetite for all things libtard.
This is what happens when you make war on the middle class and their values.
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