NYT/Sunday Styles to Poors: Be careful what you wish for. (Or: "Fuck your upward mobility, hoi polloi.")
I remember reading this in March and somehow didn’t get around to posting it until now. The (euphemistically titled) You Say Recession, I Say ‘Reservations!’ is about the hopes schadenfreude of
the city’s middle class, especially those in the creative class, who have felt sidelined as the city seemed to become a high-priced playground for Wall Street bankers, (for whom) the implosion of the brokerage house Bear Stearns raises a tantalizing possibility: participation in an economy they have been largely shut out of.
Surely, they can’t be suggesting that most people view investment bankers as overpaid, useless twats who have fucked our economy into a low-cut sock, can they? No. They’re suggesting that most people hate investment bankers because they can’t get into Kobe Club. Not so amazing.
But what is amazing is the pullquote from this article that appeared that day: it was right next to this line, and it was something along the lines of “New Yorkers eager to take advantage* of a recession should be careful what they wish for.” The line wasn’t even in the article. I need to find a scan of it. It was right next to this part - the rub, of course:
The trickle-down effect may allow people like Ms. Lyon to buy an apartment, but it could also make the city a far less desirable place to live. During the last prolonged slump on Wall Street, after the crash of the stock market in 1987, a combination of large job losses at banks, trouble in the credit markets and a glut of new commercial and residential real estate on the market (sound familiar?) battered the city . Office vacancies soared. Housing prices fell, with bad loans leaving some buildings worthless. Crime surged. And tourism plunged.
Funny enough: that’s a New York that everyone I know could really live with.
Then again, the NYT’s definition of crime could use some expansion. But in the end, all is well in Candy Land: foreign investors will cut the dirty ferals from moving in.
But, at least so far, New York real estate prices show few signs of declining. The weak American dollar is encouraging thousands of foreigners to buy what seem like bargain apartments. “The condo market is not negotiable because we have Europeans throwing so much money at it,” said Darren Sukenik, an executive vice president for luxury sales at Prudential Douglas Elliman.
*Emphasis mine.
Otis Redding - Cigarettes and Coffee
Sure, you might find a better 3AM song, but it’s not going to be easy. You know why I drink black coffee? My dad weaned me on it. I was nine. We were at the water park late, right before closing, and there was no hot chocolate. He put together a cup of black with two creamers and four sugars. Brilliant. I would find him drinking it in the mornings - black, always - reading the paper, the man in his place of peace. It tasted like shit the first few times he let me try it, but then he started drinking flavored coffee. Insidious. Any additional sweetening to that would make null and void the sharp, distinct quality of having it with the terror of the oncoming week (you’ve never read the Review Journal on a Sunday).
And the cigarettes? Since 8th Grade, but that was just a dabbling. In 9th Grade, I spent a BBYO event in Sara Starrfield’s - a senior - jeep in Scottsdale, long past curfew, where she played me The Bends for the first time and introduced me to Kamel Red Lights, a brand I haven’t been able to smoke since. I was a precocious dork and she had friends who played pool and drank whiskey, and clearly, they were fucking maniacs. I was in awe, and she was in love with my friend, another senior, Ben Newman, who was in love not so much with someone else as he was with anarchy and marxism and Valley Girl. Eight years later, and they’re still never going to be as good as they were then, when I was getting away with something, when something was happening.
But this isn’t a song about one thing - it’s a song about two things: the moment right before the moment you’re having is over, when you know you’re going to leave, and move inside from a doorstep, or from the diner to the parking lot to the car. Or the moment right when you know a moment isn’t over, but it will be. And you want to prolong it. You want to make it last. You want to be stuck in that strange space that is 2:45 AM forever, and it’s fair. It’s fair because at no other time do certain things make total sense that wouldn’t at any other time. This isn’t a bad thing, and those feral-looking freak addicts in the diner with you? Right now, they’re not just not such bad people - they’re your people. And for a second, New York reminds you of the city you never knew but you’ve always been sentimental for. And then that’s gone, too.
But really, like most Otis Redding songs, it just makes me want to fuck.
(Download here).
So I can preempt you and assuage any hesitations you might have in regard to that actually happening:
1. If that’s the case, I will never - never - move up in rank past “young’un.” Calling up the dinosaurs has been part of the jig since freshman year of high school, when Goldschläger was king and Zima was queen. I’ve learned to embrace it - it’s part of the fun of drinking with me. I have a mason jar to lend you if you have any questions.
2. Any kind of change in tone would be marginal at best. Really! Listen: leave me at the wheel for a day. Seriously.
Closer look here. Have you been reading this enough? It is bad, truly. Please make it harder than that, which, really: ducks in a row.
3. Summer’s here, my god, that shit is here, only the smell is forthcoming. A visit to the Astoria Beer Garden proved my memory to be totally incorrect in it being a decent place; I’d make a joke about a it being a schnitzel party, but it really was that depressing.
4. The “widow” thing has yet to work for me, but I haven’t tried it on Sean Young. Sean Young? You thought Sean Young was hot? I think they actually have a term for that.
187 on the 02138.
If you think my research is bad - and it absolutely is - go here.
But this presents a not-so-tricky problem: the writer could have just linked to the original YM post noting the “single serving site meme,” but that would require both he and his Ivy-League level readers to (A) understand or figure out what a single serving site is and (B) be able to read the address bar to get the joke (thus making the process time on the joke a little longer…like, less than a second). Then again, they never were ones for proper attribution.** Also, guess what? Larry Tribe apparently called Obama the best student he’s ever had. Almost as solid as the Wright endorsement.
**It goes without saying that there aren’t good young turks aplenty who haven’t plagiarized there - though we haven’t tried to back that one - yet there is an inordinate amount of famous ones who have. Furthermore, someone needs to do a study on their total fuckwad to person-I-could-spend-more-than-two-minutes-in-a-room-with ratio, as evidenced by this nonsense.
At least I know his name. No wonder they all think I was you. You are even worse at typos than me.
Fixed. Hey, I might not know how to spell their names, but at least I can identify my friends when I see them. Oh, wait….
By the way, you do realize that “Patrice!” is the new “Emilio!”, right?
I don’t use that word so liberally. I said I’d take my lumps, but we are talking about someone I met twice, each time as drunk as you were last night.
At that rate: fair enough.
Bloggers? Media Types? They All Look The Same In The Dark.
Okay, we’re doing a little better now - holding down half a bagel and a little bit of water. That being said: let’s talk about last night.
- David Karp - wearing the same hoodie as James from Gawker, as it’s been well documented - was there. He did not speak in full paragraphs as has been previously reported, possibly because he was drunk. Either way: this was an inexplicably severe letdown.
- To whomever was there taking photos: you were really wearing a Gawker shirt, weren’t you? This is akin to wearing the shirt of the band whose concert you are attending. FAIL.
- James Del - wearing the same hoodie as David Karp, as it’s been well documented - was busted talking about difference between the two girls who he offered to buy drinks for, and which one he actually intended on buying a drink for (“definitely not her friend”). They were right behind him as he was saying this. Unfortunately, neither of them necessarily understood what was going on, so he got off clean. To you, sir: huzzah. But this was still not the best social faux-paux of the night…that comes later.
- Drinking with editors to whom your copy was due two days ago? Fun! Sorry, Andy!
- What the fuck was that viral marketing robot thing doing there? No, really whose goddamn idea was that? He got lucky - had I not had my mature face on for the company I was keeping, he would’ve gotten a mason jar full of the frozen White Death launched at that stupid LCD screen he was wearing. You know when you get in a cab drunk, and the Taxi TV comes on, and all you want to do is turn it off or kick it in because you’re wasted and it’s too bright and that light is just making you sick? This was like that, except he was at a bar. Homie, if you’re reading this, show up again and I’m taking mom’s advice. But really: what was in those Mason Jars? Roofies? Fuck.
- Now, speaking of the White Death, TAN, if you’re reading this, I would love to meet you one day. Just don’t let 99 introduce us, because he has no idea what you look like.*
- The Boss is far nicer in person than I’d ever want him to be, though he kept on asserting that he was nicer than anyone else. I still take issue with this.
Sven has a charming Patrick Bateman-esque quality to him.
- Oh, and speaking of cabs, the last thing I remember from last night before getting home is pointing to the radio and asking “Is this Ghostface?” before passing out in the back. Amazingly, I gave the driver the directions to Nance’s place in Astoria, and he got there without me having to give him directions once thereafter. I paid him - that was an ordeal - got out of the cab, ralphed, and went to bed.
- I also puked blood this morning. Firsts! The top of my face is red because I burst a few capillaries as well, or something. Good times, friends. Let’s do it again!
*I had written out the best parts of that encounter and refrained from posting it. Seeing as how I’m sure you’ll get your chances in legion to call me out, I’m going easy. But goddamn, that was superb. “Patrice!”
This assertion is useless without photos.You people want photos? Really? I’m fine without. Unless you have a strong desire to see the variations of neon-yellow bile I’ve been producing all morning. What the fuck was in those mason jars, and how did I wake up this morning with one in my bag?