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

I dunno, the piece seemed to be coming, like, a decade late? It'd be like a Times piece on IKEA opening up in St. Louis.

Boise is still a city and not rural iirc, so it would in fact be "citified"

I mean, unless you're talking top ten US cities or smith

i want a whl fds

iirc your part of the country is like doubly-hippie compared to who fds ppl

I may be misjudging based on the Vermont wedding I went to that had blueberries from next door and pulled pork grilled by a guy who raised the pigs. He also played guitar at the wedding.

yeah i can goto any number of farms and buy grass w/e but who wants to do that

Key question is did he also raise his own guitars. Because if so

hard to tell, didn't ask

I found out pulling pork is really good for your skin, it's an epiphany that could lead to a nyt quiddities article if monetized properly

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/realestate/for-starters-the-upper-east-side.html

When Arielle Grabel, 27, who works in public relations, was looking for an apartment three years ago, she firmly stated her terms: nothing above 20th Street. After she saw what was available, she adjusted her demands to “O.K., nothing above 40th Street.”

“And then I was saying: ‘O.K., if the best I can do is the 50s, that’s not so high,’ and then eventually, ‘O.K., 74th Street it is,’ ” said Ms. Grabel, who, for a monthly figure she characterizes as between $2,100 and $2,300 month, has a large studio with glossy floors and marble countertops in an elevator building.

She has two good friends in the neighborhood, but has been unsuccessful in recruiting others, even if it’s just to come uptown for drinks and dinner.

“They say there’s nothing to do up here,” said Ms. Grabel, who herself prefers the night life downtown. But perhaps her sales pitch needs a bit of work. She tells her friends the Upper East Side isn’t that bad, not that far from the action, and the people aren’t that old.

rent window characterisation is beautiful

Didn't click through but...

@nytimes: "Are you coming to bed?"
"I can't. This is important."
"What?"
"There's an article about xkcd." http://t.co/EXLyI2mPqE

Though the book won’t appear for six months, “What If?” quickly reached No. 2 on Amazon’s best-seller list on the strength of pre-orders, trailing only a history book from Rush Limbaugh.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/26/business/media/bookstores-forsake-manhattan-as-rents-surge.html?action=click&contentCollection=Europe&module=MostEmailed&version=Full®ion=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article

on the subject of fewer and fewer bookstore in manhattan.

idk if it really qulifies for this thread but a few parts made me roll my eyes --

“How can Manhattan be a cultural or literary center of the world when the number of bookstores has become so insignificant?” he asked. “You really say, has nobody in city government ever considered this and what can be done about it?”

because lol
and

She said she was concerned that bookstores in high-rent areas like Manhattan would shift their merchandise away from more accessibly priced paperbacks toward more expensive items with wider profit margins.

“My worry is that to make these rents, people are going to have to make the bookstore a place where only wealthy people can be,” she said. “The higher and higher these rents go, do you have to bring in these expensive leather journals and art books that only rich people can buy?”

Main points I think: This article seems to focus on purveyors of new merchandise, and in addition to the rising rents I think it's impt to address things like amazon.com, kindle/ebooks, and the larger profit margins of selling used merchandise.

Sad to see no shout outs to sellers of used books like Strand, Housing Works, Mercer St Books, East Village Books etc not to mention the healthy crop of used bookstores in Brooklyn (Book Thug Nation [lol worse name), Human Relations, Molasses Books, Here's A Bookstore in Coney Island etc. Interesting that there's gonna be a McNally Jackson in wburg, cuz i hadn't heard about that. Cool I guess?

It's funny how we're supposed to nostalgically agree that an undefined period when bookstores were more popular/profitable is the ultimate good. People used to only get their newspapers from newsstands, too, and all their clothes were handmade. And stuff. I love books and I made them for a living for 15 years but nothing is out of reach of change, whether you think of it as "progress" or blame it on amazon.com--and I'm happy to blame a lot of things on amazon.com, but I keep coming back to the idea that various phenomenon of history are...trajectories, not...closed circles.

phenomena, I mean. Typing while netflix loaded and started playing and I got rushed. Just for one example of storytelling and how books aren't the only vehicle besides in-person verbal performance.

After scouring Manhattan for a second location for her bookstore, Sarah McNally finally decided to open one in Brooklyn instead.
After scouring Manhattan for a second location for her bookstore, Sarah McNally finally decided to open one in Brooklyn instead.
After scouring Manhattan for a second location for her bookstore, Sarah McNally finally decided to open one in Brooklyn instead.
After scouring Manhattan for a second location for her bookstore, Sarah McNally finally decided to open one in Brooklyn instead.
After scouring Manhattan for a second location for her bookstore, Sarah McNally finally decided to open one in Brooklyn instead.
After scouring Manhattan for a second location for her bookstore, Sarah McNally finally decided to open one in Brooklyn instead.
After scouring Manhattan for a second location for her bookstore, Sarah McNally finally decided to open one in Brooklyn instead.

brooklyn, who woulda thought???? thanks nytimes, good to know!

"guess I'll take a chance on Brooklyn, nowhere else to go"

is anyone trying the nyt now thing

I will now that I am aware of it

kind of wondering what the ipad version is like. Ability to read a device-optimized version over coffee or w/e in the morning would be nice.

I didn't dl it on ipad yet but the iphone app is nice

it'd be nice if I could make it default to international edition stories like the website

the one thing I want is the ability to auto dl the whole thing for offline reading, which is only relevant for me for 10 mins of my commute but its a very read-my-iphone 10 mins

so do you have to get a separate sub from the nyt to use nyt now?
these tiered things always suck tbqh

really throwing down the gauntlet today http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/13/fashion/hanley-mellon-clothing-line-fashion.html

The walls of the pad he and Ms. Hanley Mellon share at the Pierre are lined with paintings by Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Damien Hirst, Peter Beard and, Mr. Mellon said, “Taylor Swift.”

“You mean Sam Taylor-Wood,” Ms. Hanley Mellon said.

Hah I know a Mellon

“I’ve never been to Africa, but I feel like I have this deep affinity for it,” Ms. Hanley Mellon said. “I’ve read every Hemingway, we collect Peter Beard, I’ve watched ‘Out of Africa.’ It touches your soul to visit and smell the smells, and you can’t recreate the experience without immersing yourself.”

Of course, being mobile has many connotations in the age of new media, which Mr. Mellon feels ambivalent about. “In the old days you’d have to travel to India or China for inspiration, and these days you’ve just got Pinterest boards and you can create looks from home,” he said. He does have an Instagram account, asliceofmellon, despite believing that “technology has made us lazy.”

i know a melon

http://nutritioncheckup.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/cantaloupe.jpg

But Mr. Mellon is an unabashed fan of embracing new technologies, including Bitcoin, which the company accepts as payment and to which he was introduced by the venture capitalists Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.

“Now we just need a hashtag,” Ms. Hanley Mellon said.

sometimes its unclear if the reporter despises the subjects but not today

http://i.imgur.com/F3CGzRb.png

trustfund cokehead layabout recommends u buy fake money

hanle y mellon

Fun fact: It's actually pronounced Mey-on

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/04/13/fashion/13MELLONS/13MELLONS-master675.jpg

Amazing pants.

My brain is slow, I was thinking "man those are some horrible jeans, and..." my eyes traveled to the right and my brain just glitched

it looks like someone photoshopped a garter belt and stockings onto him

“I’ve never been to Africa, but I feel like I have this deep affinity for it,”
“I’ve never been to Africa, but I feel like I have this deep affinity for it,”
“I’ve never been to Africa, but I feel like I have this deep affinity for it,”

THANK YOU

lol

also, cross-post from rolling hipster studies, but this needs to have a home in this thread:: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/13/realestate/new-york-boomers-on-hipster-turf.html?_r=0

A few weeks later, the Berners moved from a two-bedroom apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn, which they were renting for $4,500 a month, to a 39th-floor waterfront rental in Long Island City, Queens — the price tag a more modest $3,850.

barf, new york is gross guys

The people in that article really great. "I FEEL LIKE MAYBE I'M NOT HIP ENOUGH FOR THIS NEIGHBORHOOD" stfu.

haha I mean really GRATE

Aldo Sampieri, who is in his 50s, ventured even deeper into hipster territory. After 16 years in a loft near New York University, Mr. Sampieri, a painter and graphic artist, moved to Williamsburg in 2010. And last August he paid $760,000 for a renovated century-old townhouse on Moffat Street in Bushwick, a couple of subway stops farther along Brooklyn’s hipster trail. And he has only good things to say about the perks of living in a youth-oriented part of town.

“It helps you be looser, not so uptight,” Mr. Sampieri said. “Your mannerisms change. You feel comfortable wearing more eccentric clothing.

“I’ve always had a very funky life,” he added. “I was married, divorced. I have no family. I can do what I want. And when you’re in a neighborhood filled with people of different ages, you feel like you’re not that old. Seeing young people walking around makes you feel happy, more alive. You find yourself playing bass with some guys in a studio, leading a life that a person my age usually can’t do.”

cue sienfeld bass

something about the way the light reflects off Mr Mellon's hair and face in that pic above. he's wearing a mask, right??

also those are some weird-ass pants

all I keep thinking of is Andy's stockings in the Erasure Oh L'Amour video

I used to sew ties in a neck tie factory and we made a lot of woven silk patterned ties, some of which looked a lot like his pants.

I actually really do like those pants. They seem like horrible people, but those pants are fine by me.