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

That response is also problematic though

i don't actually have a problem with the sound of music guy wedding! they seem nice. maybe you could read it as wes anderson twee or whatever but if maria von trapp was your great grandmother you are certainly allowed to be as twee as you want to be. plus, wow, what a place to have a wedding.

plus, dorky bookworm theology student does not a hipster make. more hipsters should pick up a book.

Yeah, honestly, they don't sound like hipsters. They sound like old-fashioned old-money theology students. Pretty sure opera and musicals haven't become hipster-bait yet (I quite like both, fwiw). I mean, I find it a bit weird that you'd want a big NY Times wedding article, and the name-dropping of brands is also suspect, but otherwise, eh. I'm sure that they'd annoy me in person but it's nice that people who have things in common have found each other.

I knew this was going to get posted here but dammit I thought these guys were kind of great.

Everything about that guy screams textbook old money WASP, I am baffled at "hipster" being used here.

Sound of Music, growing up on the Vineyard, latin education, theology grad school, even the bright orange laces in dress shoes -- that's all WASP stuff.

not to mention friends with the stilted speech of characters in a 1950s novel set at Princeton

You milquetoast lovers! I don't care if the guy is a hipster, I'm here to mock the ruling class in any guise

Von Trapps aren't old money WASPs!!

they were fierce nazi-smashing superheroes!

I didn't say the Von Trapps were WASPs (???)

they don't mention their parental pedigree in that thing. maybe that's in the regular wedding announcement.

Everything about that guy screams textbook old money WASP

Isn't that calling someone a WASP, or am I misreading you?

I've been to the Trapp family lodge in Stowe. The actual Maria is buried there. There's an apple tree growing right next to her grave and I picked an apple from it (this was the first week of October, ridiculous foliage everywhere) and it honestly was the most incredible apple I may have ever eaten.

Isn't that calling someone a WASP, or am I misreading you?

― tokyo rosemary, Wednesday, June 22, 2016 3:13 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh, IDK, I figured that's only 1/4 of his family, his name is Peters, and it said he was interested in "Christianity." But now I see they had a Catholic priest at the wedding so maybe not.

I didn't even think this guy seemed old-money WASPy. He seemed like a bookish weirdo. I LOVE bookish weirdos.

Does anyone not either wealthy or a low-wage worker grow up on Martha's Vineyard?

grapes?

They can cook (without the help) and enjoy Taylor Swift too. Rich people - they're just like us.

there are lots of working class people on martha's vineyard. who aren't rich. and teachers, town workers, hospital workers, etc. who aren't rich. a lot of people rent there and remain semi-poor and employed just because they like it there. tons of paycheck to paycheck people. and people who just do seasonal work and save up for the winter. most of the low-wage people are Brazilian. in the old days college kids did the work that the Brazilians do now.

there is a lot of stress on that island. people who love it there or who grew up there but who have a hard time making it. my dad was looking at the paper one day when we lived on the island and said: huh, there sure are a lot of AA meetings here...

theology grad student couple are cute as hell

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/25/your-money/investing-in-an-emotional-trust-fund-for-your-children.html

None of this is really bad advice. It's more the terms in which it's couched. How to raise your kids: think of it like a trust fund!

not the new york times but so great and i have to share it here. hahahaha!

http://jezebel.com/woman-visits-africa-1782893066

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/nyregion/pyrotechnic-party-of-legend-killed-off-by-social-media.html

sad old hippie elites cancel their illegal-but-police-protected-anyway party after it was discovered by people who weren't old hippie elites, are forced to vacation in rome and build a minigolf course out of boredom

xp jezebel is very easily the worst website of all time

That sort of thing has been done better many times by many other sites.

i'm easy.

for some reason seeing all those pictures of her made me laugh! i haven't thought about her in a while.

The opening sentences of the article qualx linked to:

On Sept. 29, 1973, Peter Schjeldahl and Brooke Alderson, who had met the previous spring at an opening at the Whitney Museum, moved into an apartment on the top floor of a walk-up at 53 St. Marks Place. It was the day W. H. Auden died, a fact that seemed to portend the lush bohemian life that followed.

wtfh?

This one is a masterpiece of the form:

http://observer.com/2016/04/are-we-doing-this-wrong-the-doubts-of-one-wealthy-new-yorker/

yeah, that is more like it. sorry, i promise never to link to Jezebel again. it was a slow news week! this is right out of Dickens:

Al and I are—technically—wealthy. We earn a substantial sum, one that comes with a hefty six-figure tax bill and a place near the bottom of the infamous “one percent.”

But despite the illusion of wealth on our pay stubs, I buy clothes on clearance with an additional Friends & Family discount code. I buy bourbon with a 10 percent-off coupon from the blue Valpak mailer addressed to “SMART SHOPPER.” And once, I cut a paper towel in half to make the roll last longer when the select-a-size roll I wanted wasn’t on sale. When that day comes—when you stand in your kitchen with scissors in your hand and turn one quicker picker-upper into two—even the most steadfast New Yorker starts to question what you’re doing here.

this is an A+ comment:

Jonas Schmidt · University of Massachusetts Amherst

Only the rich could write about something so commonplace as being poor and have it published.

Unlike · Reply · 1 · May 17, 2016 9:51pm

i'm untechnically poor in nyc, wonder if i can get a column

And once, I cut a paper towel in half to make the roll last longer when the select-a-size roll I wanted wasn’t on sale

and the heavens parted

I tear off bits of kitchen roll to suit my purposes & not waste the extra all the time. Didn't realise this was a marker of abject penury. Alas, alack, woe is me.

Aside from all the rage-gawking, their finances literally make no sense. Like unless the husband has a secret cocaine habit or something I cannot figure out how, with their housing expenses and their income, even assuming large student loan payments, they can't live larger than she claims.

Maybe they are socking away an obscene sum for retirement? Do they take $35,000 worth of vacations every year? Like I am supporting two kids in New York City on sooooooo much less money and basically feel like we live a materially good life albeit can't save that much.

Well, they clearly buy ridiculous things - hence the baby grand piano that they have in their "tiny" apartment (note to author - if you can fit a baby grand in it, it's not tiny).

I mean, in some ways I get it - the area that I come from was in days of yore called "bread & lard island", because the story goes that the people who moved there would spend their money on their nice big house and live off nothing but bread and lard in private. I understand that there is often a disparity between appearance and reality. I also understand that rents/house prices in major metropolitan areas are obscene and something really should be done about it. But I don't feel sorry for these people at all. They have plenty of choices, plenty of options, and if the worst things that happen to them include having to cut bits off kitchen roll or use a voucher to save some money, they can honestly just go fuck themselves.

It's a relatively minor quiddity but I can't wrap my head around thing like a $250k inheritance meriting less than a sentence. $250k is change your life money!

They bought a $735,000 co-op and used an inheritance for the down payment, so it's not like they have a multi-million-dollar mortgage to pay off. Even if their co-op fees are like $1500 or $2000 /month their housing costs should be a pretty small fraction of their take-home pay. Something is obviously missing from the story.

Their horse habit.

it's really worth reading til the end. her way out of this suffocating sitch? buy a cottage in the country! now why didn't I think of that??

it's the really the perfect twist

this is the prize winner for the year so far. it's gonna take something remarkably tone deaf to beat this.

top three moments for me:

"he was eating nuts in his underwear..."

“I’m going to cut you, white bitch!”

"playing outside with our beloved dog Tuck Noodle..."

I should really read the Observer more often!

I tapped out after "Instead we silently watch our paychecks turn to vapor as we pay for our high taxes and uncomfortable home."

And whining about an hour long commute? Fuck, come live in Australia, plenty of people -wealthy people even! - commute for much longer than that to get to the city for their jobs.