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

living in a hood that your friends dont want to get to is a great way to lose friends ime

i bet it's also just one of those things where people think life will be better once they've crossed this major accomplishment off their checklist and then they find it doesn't make them happy after all. great, you have a house, now how are you going to solve your existential angst? (i think i am unlikely to buy into this particular dead end but think of "getting married"/"having a family" that way, which is its own road to pain, i'm sure.)

too much time for navel gazing, these people

They should spend that time with Time Life home repair books.

i agree more enthusiastically with the recent comments in this thread than with any ilx thread in a long time.

btw i dig my new rental house that's in a "walkable" and amenity-rich neighborhood and near a huge transit center.

For some people, 'burb life is all that and all you can eat salad and breadsticks at the Olive Garden.

Grrr false binary. I live in a close-in suburb but am still in walking distance of cool bars, restaurants, clubs, galleries etc.

nyt feature as cry for help/open-ended indirect dinner party invitation

Who the fuck did this guy think would fix a broken sink? Elves? I am not sympathetic in the least.

Jenny, have I mentioned that my roommate had to unclog a toilet some weeks back, and when I came back two hours later and it still wasn't done, she was surprised it hadn't somehow fixed itself in that time?

I was not sympathetic either but I ended up having to do it anyway, because she had never used a plunger and was clearly NEVER going to get it done. At least I made her go out and buy a plunger at 10pm in the cold.

There are these pay-as-you-go supers known as "plumbers".

For homeowner dude, not you. Obviously you can plunge yourself.

(We don't have a super, we have a landlady who is great but doesn't live in the building.)

Grrr false binary.

Don't be angry. I was not trying to be nuanced in my analysis. Just saying that some people like living in the suburbs, and don't suffer the same existential angst as Mr. Broken Pool, and that is totally okay. I am honestly not judgin' anybody for preferring suburban life, and I am familiar with Evanston, IL, so I know the 'burbs is not all Olive Gardens and McMansions. Peace.

Also, Laurel, I am totally your roommate. This is one of the top five reasons why home ownership is most definitely Not For Me. (Our toilet paper holder fell off the wall two years ago and it's still broken, because that doesn't seem worth a call to maintenance, and well, it just never seems important enough to make a special trip to the Toilet Paper Holder Store.)

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/01/07/garden/07menspan-1/articleLarge.jpg

"I was happier being a roadie for the Church, back when I owned nothing."

[begins to hum "already yesterday"]

Mr. Berks, a playwright

Am I the only person who immediately pictured Philip Seymour Hoffman in Synecdoche New York when I read about that guy?

I mean playwright, fixing the sink, etc.

Jenny, have I mentioned that my roommate had to unclog a toilet some weeks back, and when I came back two hours later and it still wasn't done, she was surprised it hadn't somehow fixed itself in that time?

introduce your roommate to the healing powers of baking soda... works on most clogs.

and this totally works:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5150PX0OY9L._SL500_AA280_.jpg

dude probably has a GARAGE in which to put TOOLS and GREASE to make things go.

His garage door opener broke and he doesn't know where to buy replacement batteries in the suburbs.

does he have THE INTERNETS though? i didn't know how to jump start a car earlier this year (at my house thank goodness) and wound up reading from my laptop as i did it.

he probably writes plays on a typewriter

His house is so vast, he has no power cords long enough to reach any of the outlets.

Without his beloved nearby corner store, this man cannot buy tissues with which to dry his tears of loneliness.

oooh man i had a roommate who wouldn't buy milk at the corner store when we ran out, and would instead wait for his weekly or biweekly trip to the supermarket, because he thought it "might be more expensive" at the corner store. this meant i had to buy milk at the corner store on my way home from work ALL THE TIME, so i asked in shock if he'd ever actually compared the prices, and the answer was no. !!!!! (sometimes i like it when friends who become roommates go back to being just friends, it's better not to know things like that.)

lol that is like my mom raising her eyebrows when i tell her that i buy most produce every other day or so, instead of just stocking up for the week, as if it gets more expensive that way???

corner store milk probably is more expensive :|

i've stopped buying larger quantities of milk and just buy it by the pint -- usually the pints of soy creamer from trader joe's do me fine. that way i use it up before it goes bad, and it's cheaper than spending money on something i won't get to use.

corner store milk is slightly more expensive, but i would buy milk and bread there anyway because slogging a mile and a half to the grocery store after work in midwinter for those two things wasn't worth it. the thing that gets me is that he never went into the corner store to find out, despite it literally being on the way home from the subway station.

now i live two blocks from a store and have roommates who replace groceries when we run out though <3 i also buy produce every few days instead of stocking up, i think you wind up wasting less that way.

figure the money i save by not driving ever more than off-sets whatever losses i take by going to the co-op in my hood or the $$$ grocery across the street

lol that is like my mom raising her eyebrows when i tell her that i buy most produce every other day or so, instead of just stocking up for the week, as if it gets more expensive that way???

― into the young coconuts (gbx), Friday, January 8, 2010 4:35 PM (1 hour ago) Bookma

^^^ parents don't remember what it was like to live in a city & have to walk your groceries 10 minutes or so home w/o the aid of shopping cart or car or w/e. aside from some type of basic greens, i usually don't buy veg until the day i'm gonna use 'em. same with meat. it helps that there's a market across from work & within walking distance of my apt, though. if the supermarket was out of the way or inaccessible it would be a slightly different story.

exactly. living across the street from a(n admittedly $$$) grocery totally changes your habits. esp since my mom lives like 20 min away from any grocery store, in the country, and only shops once a week. i'm like "oh shit i need a pepper" and then go buy a pepper

I lived right across the street from the local food co-op in a small town for three years and just bought whatever I needed that day, sometimes in the middle of dinner when I realized I needed a lemon or something. It was actually quicker to walk there than it was to go upstairs. I miss that so much now and it took a long time to get used to planning and buying ahead for a week now that I live a long way from where I like to buy most of my food.

I don't mind stocking up on bread, grains, meat, potatoes, and canned goods for 1-2 weeks at at time (freezing the meat, natch) but I am continually realizing I need a tomato, or a lime, or some broccoli, and I wish the veg market weren't 4 blocks away. Yes, I am that lazy.

i live in the produce section of my supermarket

oh i stock up on grains/canned goods, for sure. but that's like a monthly trip to the bulk section at the co-op

you guys would all cry bitter tears of blood if you moved to the suburbs fyi

Four blocks is nothing, my grocery store is almost a mile away.

If they moved to the burbs they would have cars with which to make 16-bag shopping trips.

that's pretty much the trade-off.

(i live in the city, v. near the grocery store, but have a car i only use to get the hell out of the city. kind of a waste of money but also really nice to have the flexibility.)

I wish the veg market weren't 4 blocks away

Read as vag market.

why buy the milk...

i mean the cow

whatever

presumably the vag market is for when you can't get the milk for free

is that before or after you've married the cow?