quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

I change my sheets at home like every half a year so hey

and I assume you meant 'made beds' there alfred

gives me an idea for a tv show: 'made beds: the untold stories of hospitality workers in the mafia"

gives me an idea for a tv show: 'made beds: the untold stories of hospitality workers in the mafia"

http://www.frapstr.com/wp-content/gallery/sliders/robert_stack.jpg

fuck folding a sheet

the article is fine, but oh the lede...

For those of us who live here, the expense of New York City is something we’ve long since adjusted to. Designer tank tops for $140, truffled hamburgers for $150, studio apartments renting for upward of $3,000 — even in the midst of recession, these things seem somehow normal, the price of admission to the greatest city in the world.

http://frugaltraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/going-deep-for-the-cheap-in-new-york/

Men Happy to Be Free from Home Ownership

AS a business consultant for start-up ventures, Kirt Greenburg, 41, roams widely from his base in Atlanta. But the frustrations with his 3,300-square-foot colonial revival house, where he lives alone, follow him everywhere.

his 3,300-square-foot home, where he lives alone

EMPHASIS MINE FUCKING A

lulzy headline alert: Young Pianist Thrust Into Elite Group

omg that NYT article makes me want to kill on so many levels - the "woe is all these rich people" whiny privileged lament; the pointless gendering of a phenomenon in a headline when the rest of the article repeatedly states that women have homebuyer's remorse, too; the trite gender stereotypes; the fact that when poor people do something stupid like buy something without thinking it through and end up in a bad place, they don't get to be studied and soft profiled in the NYT but instead just get a lot of high-handed "Well they should have known! Where is the personal responsibility??? Are there no prisons??? Are the union workhouses still in operation???" bullshit.

“I’m in my 30s. If fixing something made me happy, I would have learned how to do it.”

oh wait, no he's not.

lol i didn't make it further than the first paragraph or so of the homeowner article but the playwright's lament about couch moving is on some cheap seats fight club stuff

xpost - yeah you guys said what i was going to say! it's full of lolz!

Alan Berks the renter had spent his evenings with friends at African dance nights and jazz clubs. Alan Berks the homeowner lost an entire day rearranging the living room furniture. “I did find a spot for the couch that made me happy,” he said. “I was proud of myself. But where the couch is — that’s how I’m going to measure my happiness from now on? I remember thinking: ‘This is how people live? Why am I doing this?’

and:

And routine maintenance distracted him from writing. “Why would I have any interest in fixing the bathroom sink?” he said. “I’m in my 30s. If fixing something made me happy, I would have learned how to do it.”

hahaha this guy.

I mean, if someone is so lacking in self awareness that it never occurred to him that being within walking distance of restaurants and bars and shops and people and coffee and art and fun is a quality of life perk that he might miss if he moved out to the suburbs and away from all of his friends, then that person can sit in his 1300 square foot house with its unused pool and fucking rot for all I care.

The only perk of that article is that it validates our decision as white yuppies to be Renterz-4-Lyf.

as a renter i can say that i have also moved a couch around a couple of times, it's not just for rich homeowners

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/01/07/garden/07menspan-1/articleLarge.jpg

this is some real michael corleone alone in tahoe shit : /

yeah i spent like 3 days fretting over couch placement this fall but i think i might have ocd, so

routine maintenance distracted him from writing

THAT GUY LIVES IN A 3300-SQ-FT HOUSE ALONE and he's complaining that it feels EMPTY.

Or like, if it never crossed any of these clowns' minds that if they bought a house, they would be responsible for fixing and maintaining the property? Who the fuck did this guy think would fix a broken sink? Elves? I am not sympathetic in the least.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/01/07/garden/07men-2/popup.jpg

this house looks like shit, maybe because this guy generally kinda sucks

i don't know, i think this bit is sort of sad:

His real estate agent described the home as an ideal spot for parties and sit-down dinners. But most of his friends live in condos and apartments across town, where they eat takeout and drop into restaurants, he said.

sounds like his friends don't want to come over, most people are excited to be invited to someone's house for a meal. or maybe they don't invite him along because he's so far away. moving into a distant, big, empty house as a single person seems very lacking in self-awareness to me too but it's kind of poignantly misguided.

man, i still do not have the urge to live alone. have never done it for more than a few months subletting and don't see the appeal.

a lot of these people seem to have gone into the house-acquisition process without doing any research whatsoever on the house in question/

emo homeowner can eat my fuc

"this isn't exactly the kind of party i imagined"
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/01/07/garden/07men-2/popup.jpg

"how come no one wants to drive to the suburbs and swim in my pool"
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/01/07/garden/07men-2/popup.jpg

xp Or maybe he's a jerk and his friends are all glad that he moved way the hell across town. I bet they'd come over if he fixed the pool.

And I mean, come on. If you can't afford $500 to repair your pool filter, you are not rich enough to buy a house with a damn pool. Use the pool at the Y or swim in municipal fountains like the rest of us.

honestly, i think there's something about finding the correct living space that people don't take into account. like i think a lot of people consider size and location and don't consider the psychological pleasantness of the house or apartment in question, and they end up in a place that makes them miserable and they're not sure why. the last couple of times i've moved, i've been really aware of that. little things like the particular street something is on or the size of windows or whether it's carpeted or is hardwood make a big difference. i bet these folks went for size over quality.

i bet these folks went for size over quality.

^^The truth bomb of mainstream American life?

i imagine that everyone has little regrets about the place they buy, but most of us have the decency to keep this to ourselves rather than letting someone from the nyt interview us about it/photograph our shame

Definitely. I think they unthinkingly bought into the idea that Success = moving into a big house in the 'burbs by a certain age. For some people, 'burb life is all that and all you can eat salad and breadsticks at the Olive Garden. For other people, it is like being sent into exile and cut off from everything you love. But all it takes to avoid that trap is to employ the tiniest bit of critical thinking and self-reflection, and if someone makes enough money to purchase the houses described in this article, that person should be at least capable of that. Thus I remain obstinately unsympathetic.

yes

I am far more sympathetic to people who purchase condos/houses that turn out to have lots of problems that didn't turn up in an inspection, or people who thought they were getting a good deal on a condo only to have the developers skip town and leave them with toilets that flush directly into the dirt crawlspace. It's this "How did I know I would be unhappy in a giant empty house for away from all of my friends????" lament that makes me bananas.

if you want to live a happy, active life, i kinda think that you have to go for a nice neighborhood near a bustling area w/a lot of culture, or you have to live in a really nice small town (which in my case would ideally also be within close proximity to a major urban center, and yet not a suburb.)

The most classically NYTimes thing about that article for me was the way it asserted a "trend" that was refuted by the statistics in the same article, like almost literally "Although statistics show no difference between men and women in this regard, and although there is no increase in anti-homeonwership sentiment among either gender, a growing number of men are disillusioned with homeownership."

to me it's like complaining about having too many choices of awesome things to do with your life and you're pissed because you chose the wrong one. stfu and deal with your choice.

i know some folks who just apparently spent 1.2 million on a home that has a nice view, but is impossible to get to and is kinda charmless and too small for the price. i think they like it because it's "quiet", but it feels like a real dead-end to me.

living in a hood that your friends dont want to get to is a great way to lose friends ime

i bet it's also just one of those things where people think life will be better once they've crossed this major accomplishment off their checklist and then they find it doesn't make them happy after all. great, you have a house, now how are you going to solve your existential angst? (i think i am unlikely to buy into this particular dead end but think of "getting married"/"having a family" that way, which is its own road to pain, i'm sure.)

too much time for navel gazing, these people

They should spend that time with Time Life home repair books.

i agree more enthusiastically with the recent comments in this thread than with any ilx thread in a long time.

btw i dig my new rental house that's in a "walkable" and amenity-rich neighborhood and near a huge transit center.

For some people, 'burb life is all that and all you can eat salad and breadsticks at the Olive Garden.

Grrr false binary. I live in a close-in suburb but am still in walking distance of cool bars, restaurants, clubs, galleries etc.

nyt feature as cry for help/open-ended indirect dinner party invitation

Who the fuck did this guy think would fix a broken sink? Elves? I am not sympathetic in the least.

Jenny, have I mentioned that my roommate had to unclog a toilet some weeks back, and when I came back two hours later and it still wasn't done, she was surprised it hadn't somehow fixed itself in that time?

I was not sympathetic either but I ended up having to do it anyway, because she had never used a plunger and was clearly NEVER going to get it done. At least I made her go out and buy a plunger at 10pm in the cold.

There are these pay-as-you-go supers known as "plumbers".

For homeowner dude, not you. Obviously you can plunge yourself.

(We don't have a super, we have a landlady who is great but doesn't live in the building.)