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

we have a nanny fwiw and for us it's not anything about someone else raising our kid, more about two working parents and not wanting to put him in daycare at this age. i feel like the little dude has responded extremely well. it also helps that my wife works from home 80% of the time.

― christmas candy bar (al leong), Monday, 25 February 2013 23:11 (10 minutes ago) Permalink

yeah when/if we get to this point we've said that a nanny would prob be better than daycare

also Ned painfull OTM

http://baseballfordinner.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/indiana-jones-and-the-last-crusade-you-chose-poorly-motherfucker.gif

my mother had a nanny when she was a little girl. she also lived in the UK and the British Caribbean during that time, they had a comfortable upper middle-class income, there were uncomfortable & icky class and racial politics going on (e.g., my mother's nanny in the Caribbean was Indian, and there was a lot of tension b/w white Britons, Indians & blacks). so i always wince a little whenever i read about folks getting nannies b/c of all that. i also have no kids, so i haven't had to face the necessity of having to get a nanny.

(my "nanny" was my grandmother -- unlike my mother, i didn't live in the UK when i was a little kid, my father never would've gone for a nanny & at any rate we wouldn't have been able to afford one.)

'Designer fashion is no longer just for gay men and Europeans.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/nyregion/5th-avenue-subway-station-traps-unwary-riders-behind-locked-exit.html

One rider, Anthony Thavar, first insisted he would go over the turnstile, then grew paranoid about a possible police effort to root out fare beaters. (He repeatedly asked those near him if they were officers.)

“I’m not going to jump for $2,” he said finally.

He swiped his card. “Insufficient fare,” the machine read. He walked a few steps to the emergency gate, pushed it in vain, then returned to the turnstile. Without a word, he dashed underneath. He did not appear to regret his choice.

“Jumping turnstiles, what’s up!” he shouted gleefully as the escalator carried him away.

Some paused for minutes at the turnstiles, contemplating a moral calculus that, according to transit officials, appears to be unique to 53rd Street.

this may be the most nyt-quid-ag sentence ever

look at the chain of reported fact there

“Jumping turnstiles, what’s up!” he shouted gleefully as the escalator carried him away.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_me2e80Z73h1rq2tz6o1_1280.jpg

sorry lol hueg

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/realestate/the-hunt-come-sit-with-me-while-i-cook.html

One apartment, for $1.095 million, with monthly charges of around $1,100, was gorgeously done, but its one bathroom had only a shower. The seller had small children, who were bathed in a portable tub. That was a deal-breaker.

“We wanted a bathtub,” Ms. Ferrin said. “We talked about it. Friends from outside of the city were, ‘What do you mean, no bathtub?’ ”

Other friends from outside the city were, 'One million dollars, holy fuck, I'm going to kill you.'

sometimes i feel like otto there, drifting out to sea while bart simpson watches, life preserver in hand but never thrown.

I'm just going to post this byline without comment

Amary Wiggin, a writer living in Brooklyn, is working on a memoir.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amary-wiggin/should-men-pay-for-dinner_b_1000740.html

Wow, what a dumb article.

which led me to this which is kinda like teasdale reporting
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/parentingcom/quvenzhane-wallis-the-c_b_2765922.html

I wish we lived in a world where Quvenzhané could wake up the morning after the Oscars and search the Internet with her mama to find herself on our best-dressed lists...Quvenzhané Wallis is a lot of things. She is smart. She is sassy. She is talented. She is beautiful. And she is a child. She is not the c word.

Now, when I'm out with a new guy and our check arrives, my arms hang limply at my sides.

V sexy.

She is smart. She is sassy. She is talented. She is beautiful. And she is a child. She is not the c word.

mindblowing opinion

c-ops

Cap'n Savenzhane over here

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/realestate/automated-parking-garages-for-the-car-obsessed.html?hp

ONE OF THE BIGGEST curses the wealthy must endure in their otherwise pampered lives is the dreaded valet parking. You toss the keys of your Bentley to a parking attendant, who ends up changing your radio presets, sweating on your seats or, worse, leaving a scratch on your pristine paint job. Is this the good life?

But imagine a different world, one free of such proletarian strivers. You pull into your high-end condo building, drive your car onto a steel pallet and shut off the engine. The glass door of the oversized elevator closes and you and your car are whisked upward at 650 feet per minute. The elevator stops on the floor of your apartment and deposits your car in your parking space. You get out and walk a few steps into your home. As an added bonus, a glass wall separates your private garage from your living room, so you can stare at your fine automobile from your couch, as if it were in a showroom.

That reality doesn’t quite exist yet in the United States.

That reality doesn’t quite exist yet in the United States.

we should all be ashamed

My brother's building in a Baltimore suburb has robotic parking - power went out during a storm for a couple of days and he was doubly fucked.

that long quote is the reason the word "bafflegab" was coined

I've always liked using "hyperbullshitic" myself.

not quid ag but nyt in general. what we always needed, a more 'social' nyt experience.

http://www.nytimes.com/marketing/prototype/index.html

where are you getting 'social' out of that!

'quick access to comments and sharing'. i grant its not the whole of the redesign, but its what jumped out at me. anyway, the whole thing just _feels_ more zippy web 2.0 share-happy floating css bobbins-ish.

magic drawers openin 4 u

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/realestate/condo-wanted-hot-and-cold-running-quiet.html

yeah saw that. Almost want to make a separate thread for NYTimes articles that mention that someone's parents bought them an apartment

Wow, what the hell is even the point of that article? Would put that in contention for top ten of this thread.

tbf, that's a regular feature of the real estate section, wherein they describe a person's real estate hunt.

however, it does have a classic quid/ag setup of "I thought having my parents buy me an apartment would be perfect, but it turns out to have drawbacks"

always taken aback by expenses like monthly maintenance fees and property taxes; makes ownership overall not that much more attractive than renting

unless mom and dad are buying it for you

always taken aback by expenses like monthly maintenance fees and property taxes; makes ownership overall not that much more attractive than renting

yeah srsly

Yeah, that's a case-by-case thing, but it's often true in many parts of NYC. It's not quite as simple as monthly cost to rent vs. own bc there are factors like the tax deduction and the fact that at least some portion of your mortgage goes to equity (small amount in the first few years, more as you go). NYTimes Rent/Buy calculator is great, especially if you use the advanced features.

yeah i understand that the major appeal is that some portion of the money you pay each month goes into equity that you can later recoup. but $400 a month = 3600 a year, plus property taxes which I'm not really about in nyc but I can imagine easily being 7000-10,000+ on a $400,000 place in NYC, plus the monthly mortgage payment and interest on top of that...

I guess the benefits are never having to worry about getting kicked out/buying in to a good school district/whatever equity you can recoup when you decide to move

prob not as big an issue of nyc but the danger of your house's market bottoming out and your house being worth substantially less than the equity you have in it / have left to repay

yeah I mean regardless on what you do you are making a bet on the real estate market

regardless of

Renters pay property tax, it's just invisible to them because the landlord has factored it into the rent.

right

yeah i understand that the major appeal is that some portion of the money you pay each month goes into equity that you can later recoup. but $400 a month = 3600 a year, plus property taxes which I'm not really about in nyc but I can imagine easily being 7000-10,000+ on a $400,000 place in NYC, plus the monthly mortgage payment and interest on top of that...

I guess the benefits are never having to worry about getting kicked out/buying in to a good school district/whatever equity you can recoup when you decide to move

― 乒乓, Wednesday, 27 March 2013 16:19 (2 minutes ago) Permalink

Nah, property taxes aren't going to be anywhere near that high, plus there are some condos that (inexplicably, imo) have tax abatements. Anyway, I'm just saying if it's a matter of, like, $2000/month rent, none of which becomes equity, or $2300/mo total ownership costs, where even like $400 of that goes to equity and then you get another couple hundred bucks a month back at the end of the year in tax savings, it can still be beneficial even if it's more per month (assuming you can actually afford it). In a lot of NYC neighborhoods I think monthly costs of ownership tend to be much higher than rent though.

As far as betting on the RE market, yeah you're doing that. NYC has a low vacancy rate so it doesn't always seem like the riskiest bet, but at the same time, buying in some Brooklyn neighborhood where prices have doubled in the last five years still seems a little scary to me.

Having looked at a lot of co-ops in queens, there are definitely a good number of situations where the finances of buying are significantly better than renting even accounting for all the money you're flusing into monthly fees etc., and assuming price appreciation no better than inflation.

and that may be the most bougie post I have ever made on ILX

the benefit is that you can cash in your chips when you leave and take your 400k to like utah and buy a mcmansion

that assumes you paid off the mortgage in the first place

and that you bought a place in the first place

no i bought a place in the second place

in the first place, I bought my second place on 3rd Pl.