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

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/nyregion/the-appraisal-high-priced-rentals-are-all-the-rage.html

But all that pales in comparison with the most expensive rental listed in the city, a mansion at 4 East 80th Street that is available, furnished or not, for $210,000 a month. Paula Del Nunzio, the Brown Harris Stevens agent marketing the house — a 35-foot-wide French Gothic limestone with more than 18,000 square feet of space just off Central Park — said that the biggest worry in finding a tenant was not the income requirements (roughly $8.4 million to $9.5 million, going by the industry standard of 40 to 45 times the rent), but the way a resident might treat the house.
“You would check and be sure they had other homes in other places of similar magnitude, that they would be quite accustomed to that kind of environment,” she said.
Despite the stratospheric price tag, the rent is, in an extremely narrow sense, a bargain. The house, built for a Woolworth daughter and more recently owned by the health club entrepreneur Lucille Roberts, is also for sale at $90 million. Assuming a 20 percent down payment and 30-year-fixed loan at 5.5 percent, it would cost $408,808 a month, before insurance and taxes.
“You could look at it that way if you wish,” Ms. Del Nunzio said. “The thing is, what it’s really about would be instant gratification, and instant status — instant presence in New York.”

whats it like living in new york

i lived a few places in new york city
the best place was an unzoned basement with five to six other people. my room was large but underground and windowless and one night a pipe opened up over my bed.
instant gratification, instant status - instant presence.

what came outta that pipe? there are several possibilities.

Super-heated steam.

a ray's famous pizza

i think it was water? i hope it was water.
four of my roommates were ethiopian, one had a startup company and the other one was an aspiring model
it was like "the real world" except i was clinically depressed
i did a photo shoot for spin magazine in that room that never got published! instead the world got cocaine blunts and fluxblog centerfolds

"Are MP3 Blogs Changing The Music Industry?"

thank you

i wish i could find that noz centerfold online. Noz, u out there? can you scan this in?

everyone who lives there, please post what living in new york, the big apple, is like

in looking for that centerfold i found this so i feel like time well spent:
http://www.thedailyswarm.com/headlines/cocaine-blunts-noz-scaggs-and-chris-weingarten-source-hip-hop-history/
http://media.thedailyswarm.com/images/headlines/cocaine-blunts-noz-scaggs-and-chris-weingarten-source-hip-hop-history_top.jpg

ROSS DOUTHAT: What's Wrong With Suicide?
June 8, 2011, 10:41 AM

http://i.imgur.com/zH1nx.jpg

We had asked where they were from in an off-handed fashion, my companion and I. We weren’t especially concerned. But in provenance-conscious, environment-attuned Seattle, such a question can all too easily be heard as a challenge, a taunt: assure us that these mollusks weren’t the denizens of some distant seabed, relocated through a lavish outlay of fossil fuel. Prove to us that they’re bivalves from the ’hood.

http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/travel/eating-in-and-around-seattle.html

they were all called Colin.

"MUSWELL HILL JOURNAL"

So Portlandia

Bono roughing it at an Italina trattoria in NYC:

From a Jon Pareles article on Spiderman

SHORTLY before midnight on a rainy Thursday, Bono was headed to work, bearing plastic bags of takeout food from Esca up to a Manhattan studio on a nearly deserted West 48th Street

Italian

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/17/us/17meatless.html

going vegetarian one day a week is a big trend! in aspen!

“We roast our own beets,” said Tenille Folk, the director of food services for the Aspen School District’s middle and elementary schools.

idiot

seriously, beets take forever. way to waste energy, tenille

i am not gonna front on a slow roasted beet

slow roast on this

“It’s very interesting, but for some reason when people come to Aspen, they want to eat meat,” said Mimi Lenk, a vegetarian for more than a decade and the manager of Syzygy, a downtown restaurant where elk, bison and lamb are the big sellers.

Mimi Lenk, of Syzygy

“It’s not government’s role, or municipal government’s role, to be talking about personal choice,” said Torre, a City Council member, who uses only one name.

!!

“It’s very interesting, but for some reason when people come to Aspen, they want to eat meat,” said Mimi Lenk, a vegetarian for more than a decade and the manager of Syzygy, a downtown restaurant where elk, bison and lamb are the big sellers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uuwh7h3hKs&feature=related

also, this

“It’s not government’s role, or municipal government’s role, to be talking about personal choice,” said Torre, a City Council member, who uses only one name.

i have met this person

torry torri torre

i'd never see them if she had no loot

i just read the new yorker piece on vat grown flesh; think that's gonna get popular WAY before "poopburgers"

Think this
http://www.artisanalpencilsharpening.com/index.html

might as well be posted in this thread as anywhere else

haha i just watched a torre video

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/realestate/more-parents-buying-apartments-for-their-children.html

I think poopburgers have been around in Japan since the 90s.

11.
Eilat
New York
June 17th, 2011
3:09 pm
As someone who has literally clawed herself up from humble, miserable, stressful beginnings as the daughter of a working class retail salesperson and homemaker from a fundamentalist Christian family who has given me and my siblings zero support in terms of college of big life purchases such as real estate, who has endured years in her 20's renting rooms with several roommates on the perimeter of Manhattan, who finally, in her early 30s, college educated (with a Master's degree, believe it or not), $60K in student loan debt, and 10 years' of miserable job after job finally has a respectable and stable salary (although still barely considered 'middle class' in Manhattan), who still has to split the rent (though this time with only 1 roommate) to live in the city in which I work and love, I cannot help but find the reality of someone my age or younger who has not worked as hard, who has probably never tasted the bitterness of a hard life or struggle or survival insecurity, who has probably less individual drive and intelligence and charisma, 'gifted' a Manhattan apartment rent-free from their wealthy and coddling parents and then sneer down on the rest of people like me who cannot yet afford to buy anything in Manhattan as simply and utterly UNFAIR, hurtful, disgusting, and blood-boiling. I realise that parents have every right to support their children as they see fit, and I though my nature is not to be jealous or angry, but this is the kind of stuff that creates resentment and bitter disillusionment in the American idea of supposed fairness and equality. I view these coddled children as pampered and ungrateful, and from my rough life experience, there is nothing that can convince me otherwise.
Recommend Recommended by 111 Readers

i agree that no one w/less charisma than me should be able to own an apartment

she has literally clawed her way through life

she has a Master's degree in clawing

from a fundamentalist Crustacean family

i have literally clawed my way through life

signed,
a cat

recommended by 111 readers

Eliat would have been OTM had she included "when the Revolution comes, these motherfuckers are first against the wall."

quiddities and agonies of the self-righteously unwealthy

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/fashion/new-yorks-core-club-a-portal-to-power.html

in how many ways can the times call people nouveau riche in one article