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

the OG Hastings:

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/5/10/1336644662757/Old-Town-Hastings-008.jpg

about an hour from Central London on the train

actually the OG OG Hastings got washed away by the sea about 200 years ago iirc

"My wife and I both work in creative fields — I’m a writer and she is a marketing executive at a fragrance company"

Since when is being a Marketing Executive a creative field??!?!?

Well, since when is writing business books a creative field? Let's face it, the term has been debased beyond repair at least since people started thinking of Don Draper as an artist.

Fair cop that book looks shitty.

accurate:

David Brooklyn 4 hours ago
Oh, good. Another horrible article from the Times' real estate section. I'll paraphrase it so you don't have to read the whole thing:

"We had a noisy downstairs neighbor in Brooklyn so we desperately went searching for a new home, though with our modest budget of just over a million dollars (we are, after all, 'creatives'), we just couldn't find anything worthwhile, so we bravely ventured north to Hastings-on-Hudson, where we were shocked to find other people just like us, fellow victims of gentrification who had also been pushed out of Brooklyn, and together we've created a little ex-urbanite utopia where our kids can frolic and we still get to eat artisanal jam on gluten-free toast. I may have lost some of my street cred, but now we get to hang out with the town's mayor at parties! Whew."

Patricia Hastings 12 hours ago
My husband and I, a native Brooklynite, moved to Hastings about 4 months ago in search of more space. We bought a big one-bedroom overlooking the Hudson that we could probably never afford in Brooklyn or Manhattan. I just can't stand living in Hudson. With the blaring volunteer sirens going off every few hours every single day of the week, it's like living in an episode of the Twilight Zone where the town alerts residents to find the nearest bunker to hide in an alien attack. The town usually has about 3 people on the street. Another scene from the Twilight Zone? No, just Hastings where it's quiet yes, pretty yes, but a desert of culture, energy or people. Whenever I I state that my husband and I just moved here from Brooklyn, the first question is always, "Oh, do you have children?" When I say, "um, no," I receive a look of pity or blank incomprehension as if to say, "Well, why on earth did you move to the suburbs if you don't have any kids?" And the commute? I always get a seat which is great, but my wallet sheds a tear every time I have to shell out mucho bucks to get to the city only just to shell out more for the subway. And if I happen to miss my train but I now have to be a slave to the train schedule? I can't just wait for the next F train and waltz into work 15 minutes late. Nope. I have to wait another 1/2 hour then schlep on the subway to be 50 minutes late to work. The suburbs aren't what they are cracked up to be and I can't wait to get back to civilization.

Well on the point about not having kids, I have to second the "yeah duh" chorus.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/fashion/our-bare-shelves-our-selves.html

"When I was 13, in the early 1990s, I dug through my parents’ cache of vinyl records from the ’60s and ’70s. We still had a phonograph, so I played some of them, concentrating on the Beatles. Their bigger hits were inescapably familiar, but a number of their songs were new to me.

Were I a teenager in 2015, I may not have found “Lovely Rita” or acquired an early taste at all for the Liverpudlian lads. The albums stacked up next to the record player, in plain sight for years, would be invisible MP3s on a computer or phone that I didn’t own. Their proximal existence could have been altogether unknown to me."

"If I’d merely clicked on the first MP3 track of “Sgt. Pepper’s” rather than removed the record from its sleeve, placed it in the phonograph and carefully set the needle over it, I may have become distracted and clicked elsewhere long before the B-side “Lovely Rita” played."

Obv it's a bit first world problems, sure, but that article discusses something I actually (and I'm imagining many parents on this board) do think about.

"how will i make sure my child has the same taste as me"?

"Consider the difference between listening to music digitally versus on a record player or CD. On the former, you’re more likely to download or stream only the singles you want to hear from an album."

b-but Shuffle. every day i hear things that i wouldn't think to pick out and listen to.

"how will i make sure my child has the same taste as me"?

― big WHOIS aka the nameserver (s.clover), Saturday, December 5, 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

More like if my child's only interaction with books/music is through an iscreen will that interaction be a positive one.

this is why i make sure the only music my child listens to is music i play myself on the bamboo marimba.

On the former, you’re more likely to download or stream only the singles you want to hear from an album. The latter requires enough of an investment — of acquiring it, but also of energy in playing it — that you stand a better chance of committing and listening to the entire album.

http://mic.com/articles/129322/hair-salons-quiet-chair-option-finally-relieves-us-of-chitchat-pressure#.qmUEzbiT7

Not many agonies, but felt the need to note this somewhere:

“It truly was this Burning Man meets chic Hamptons garden soiree with Hawaiian bonfire and bluegrass music lovefest,”
http://www.vogue.com/13384686/weddings-lauren-schwab-bobby-webster-east-hampton-longhouse-reserve/

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/01/08/fashion/mens-style/new-york-bachelors-yearn-for-more.html

"He is not alone in his increasing distaste for a life that many married men would say they envy. With the freedom has come certain costs: isolation, regret and the feeling that, although you may still feel 25 in your heart, your knees are starting to ache and the years are slipping by fast."

BREAKING NEWS

“Tonight I’m doing nothing,” he said. “I could go out, grab a girl, have sex, have fun. But the sense of life is to have kids and try to give them as much as you know. I believe in the power of the universe. I believe the day you go somewhere where you aren’t supposed to be, you end up falling in love and having babies. Definitely, I’m not giving up.”

kinda hope that guy doesn't have kids...

also, those guys should file a class action suit against the illustrator of that article.

what a bunch of babies

self-absorbed men unusually slow to notice mortality creeping up on them, what else is new

you guys are harsh. we're all self-absorbed! (choffel sounds kind of awful, but the other dudes don't.) i don't really get how the article counts as news, but style section i guess.

IDK, as someone who married one of the "good ones" at 27, why should I feel sad for someone who has an extra ten years of singeldom and then says "OMG WHY ARE ALL THE GOOD ONES TAKEN?"

"Americans are getting married later and later. The average age of first marriage in the United States is 27 for women and 29 for men, up from 23 for women and 26 for men in 1990 and 20 and 22 (!) in 1960."

i got that from the internet.

and that info just makes me think: go women!

from the comments, omg at this

I regularly encounter those in their thirties who use all sorts of diversions of work, dead end relationships and denial, that in the end, force a too late confrontation with time, mortality and infertility. Depression and regret may ensue. For women this can lead to the decision to get pregnant via technology or a casual friends sperm donation, absent a partner. For men, not so easy.

Yeah, I also just find it extremely hard to believe that it would be difficult for a 35 or 37 or 42-year-old man with a decent career to get married if he really wants to.

lol

my cousin recently had a kid on her own. she's in her 40's. sweet top secret govt job in d.c. cute baby. she's totally happy. never been married. don't think she's against it, just never happened. modern life!

Only in the NYTimes would the most sympathetic character in a story ask someone out to the Canary Islands.

Previously, Ms. Vucetaj’s male clients had their eyebrows shaped — she keeps them clean and straight, with absolutely no arch — alongside her female clients in a salon furnished with antique furniture, flowery rugs and sparkly lights. “The guys were troopers,” she said. “They’d sit with the women and the chandeliers.”

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ln3nhsDcKv1qlv2xjo1_500.gif

Not the New York Times but I think this wedding story really belongs here

http://www.vogue.com/13384686/weddings-lauren-schwab-bobby-webster-east-hampton-longhouse-reserve/

The four-day celebration was split between the bride’s parents’ waterfront Southampton home and the dramatic sculpture gardens and art-colliding landscapes of the LongHouse Reserve (where permanent installations from the likes of Yoko Ono, Willem de Kooning, and Dale Chihuly are scattered throughout the property). “It was important that all of the events felt authentic to each of us individually and to our relationship,” Lauren said. “We wanted our friends and family, who were traveling from all over—Australia, London, Prague, Hawaii, and California, to name a few—to feel a part of our lives, deeply appreciated, and connect with the other important people in our lives. We carefully and thoughtfully designed every component of the wedding to encourage these feelings, from our save-the-dates and invitations featuring a picture of us at Burning Man, to the menu at the rehearsal dinner—designed by Bobby with Art of Eating and inspired by his childhood in Hawaii—to the ceremony that we wrote and designed . . . and the wild after-party!”

GGGGGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

it was really hard to figure out what to quote from that

omg that's fantastically onion-esque. especially the "We carefully and thoughtfully designed..." sentence.

oh lordy.

During cocktail hour the butterfly performers (no detail was overlooked, down to the tiny, artificial flutters on their eyelashes!) presented a durational hour-long dance around Kiki Smith sculptures and in and out of the pond. All the while, dancers drew in guests to write wishes for the newlyweds that they subsequently attached to Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree.

thx, thread, for continuing to deliver the goods. sometimes i forget that caricatures of wealth really do exist

http://media.vogue.com/r/h_1600,w_1240/2015/12/23/34-lauren-and-bobby-wedding-selects-vogue.jpg

fun

lol @ monitor wedges

http://media.vogue.com/r/h_2000,w_1640/2015/12/23/27-lauren-and-bobby-wedding-selects-vogue.jpg

If only they'd had Matthew Barney shoot their wedding video.

the caption for that band shot:

"Dan Bailey Tribe, a Montauk-based band with an amazing reggae, island vibe, played during cocktail hour and had little Nakoa mesmerized."

a couple of others:

"Bobby and I wanted the wedding to incorporate unexpected elements (such as performance artists) for entertainment during the cocktail hour. This particular concept was inspired by a Radiolab episode that we had listened to called “Black Box,” about the transformation that a caterpillar goes through during chrysalis and what the butterfly brings from its caterpillar life into its new life. The outfits and headdresses were designed and handcrafted by Shige and Ximena of Leimay."

"Our cake was designed by Lael Cakes’s Emily Lael Aumiller, an adorable Brooklyn baker of vegan and gluten-free cakes. We did a tasting and were so taken with Emily, her confections, and the overall experience that we decided to go the gluten-free route despite not being GF ourselves! We chose a vanilla bean cake with strawberry basil buttercream and fresh strawberries."

it all sounds delightful