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

Locals joke that the only slimming down this town knows is liposuction

die

miss u l.a., don't miss ny times articles about u

just because people in other cities are ugly doesn't mean u have to take it out on los angeles, nytimes

Here's basically what I think about this. I don't mean to seem like I care about material things, like social status. I just want four walls and adobe slabs for my girls.

McArdle again:

At the end of his book's harrowing account of mortgage mistakes and credit card crises, Edmund Andrews writes: "While our misadventure had certainly been more extreme than those of many other Americans, our situation was not all that unusual." And indeed the book reads like the story of an American Everyman, easily sucked in to the alluring world of easy credit as he struggled to blend a new family. The terrifying implication is that it could happen to you--to anyone who leads with their heart and not their head.

But en route to that moral, it turns out the story has been tidied up a little. Patty Barreiro, Andrews' wife, has declared bankruptcy twice. The second time was while they were married, a detail that didn't make it into either the book or the excerpt that ran in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine.

It continues from there.

That seems to be a pretty big omission.

Whatever else you want to say about this guy, he was at least polite and diplomatic enough to be nice and vague about his situation, and not call his book Alimony for the Ex-Wife and Bankruptcy for the New One: I Blame Them and Should Have Been a Bachelor

what i'm taking away from all this is that the financial crisis was exacerbated, if not caused by, dimbulbs and women

if not and perhaps even

Edwards responds and McArdle responds back.

McArdle otm. "All that happened in 1998, and it obviously had nothing to do with the story in Busted. It never even occurred to me to mention it" doesn't pass my smell test, for what that's worth.

Wowowow is she working hard to report this evenhanded. His roundabout response is pretty douchey (and evasive).

er, evenhandedly

The more she presents about this all the more I'm kinda astounded.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/nyregion/08trustafarians.html

williamsburg: full of entitled assholes!!

i always used 'trustafarian' to refer to white kids with dreads and subsidized weed habits (nyu lol)

"trust fund babies/bitches" works okay.

actually a lot of that article rang kind of false to me--are there really a lot of people like this?

“They say, ‘You want me to work eight hours?’ ” Mr. Illades said. “There is a bubble bursting.”

i just like to lol at all the landlord and developers who conspired to build like a dozen new condo buildings within two years, half of which have become abandoned construction.

that sounds like an onion article

Area Man LOLs at Developers

biggest lol: "my parents have money and support me financially -- no one must know my secret shame"

gotta maintain that cred, right?

hardly a new phenomenon, I know, I just enjoy how the article lays it out there in this anthropological fashion -- "tribal custom dictates you don't talk about daddy's money"

obviously the stigma's not that bad if the NYT can get people on record about it.

that or kids in williamsburg will say anything to get in the times

the girl in the photo is auditioning for ... what? a mumblecore porno?

she's a playwright

like that chick in... that one mumblecore film.

which fucking sucked.

'hannah takes the stairs'

kind of redundant writing 'thnat mumblecore film that sucked' amirite.

you tell me Mr. Mumblecore, I've never seen a Mumblecore movie.

chick from article

http://www.freewilliamsburg.com/archives/2008/08/misha_calvert.html

you tell me Mr. Mumblecore, I've never seen a Mumblecore movie.

― Mr. Que, Tuesday, June 9, 2009 8:59 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i saw it for ca$h

okay Mr. Mumblecore

if she were my offspring i'd cut her off too

no daughter of mine steals colt .45

snape kills mumblecore?

haha i knew i recognized that chicks name

no wonder she was willing to talk to the nyt

u mean mumble

I'm with Max, btw, in terms of reading this and finding it slightly hard to believe this type represents quite as high a percentage of the Williamsburg population as is suggested. (Getting sort of scoffy claims from third parties about this demographic's willingness to work real jobs also seems unconvincing to me, or anyway incomplete.) Maybe I'm just naive and Midwestern about these things, though.

I'm also trying to decide: if I had investments that provided me with $3-10k of income per month, would I be awesomely productive and fit? Hideously obese? Drug-addicted? Bored and aimless and depressed? Incredibly well-read? I do know one or two people who have the money to not-work and actually focus their time and accomplish cool things; I so don't trust that I'd have the personality to do that. I would probably watch loads of TV and be really depressed, and then occasionally spend a bunch of money on clothes to make myself feel better.

she seems horrible obv, but 'misha calvert' is a really great name imo

"snape kills mumblecore?

― harbl, Tuesday, June 9, 2009 9:10 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink"

loooool

well it seems like the article collapses a whole range of experiences, from "mom & dad help out a little with rent each month" which is like, who cares, all the way to "mom & dad set up a trust fund that means i dont ever have to work" which is like, infuriating but whatever--and im sure its possible that the latter kind would flip at the idea of having to work a regular job but the former it seems likely are already working fairly regular jobs (and are likely based on what i know about williamsburg and people my age also doing some kind of creative art/writing/designer wallpaper as well) and may now just have to get more hours or devote less time to their artisan ice cream making or whatever.

theres a germ of an interesting in that article somewhere, about how the unbelievable amount of cash in this city and the country as a whole has probably supported a much larger hipster "population" or "culture" in NYC than ever before--but i dont think parents and trust funds have as much to do with it as the sort of unbelievable number of "media"/"creative professional" jobs that were created (and have now been lost) over the last 10+ years that allowed people to sustain themselves doing sort of "artsy" things with and around other "artsy" people

^^^good post

Posted by: hammond's organ | August 12, 2008 05:10 PM

I am sorry did the chk not clear that week from mommy and daddy... poor little misha and her hot pants. i hope you fall onto the L train tracks.

I am sorry did the chk chk chk not clear

Yes, the all over aspect of the article was little annoying to me. I know plenty of responsible non-rich-kids who get some help from their parents with rent sometimes, or who have periods of living at home in between jobs, or because they prioritize paying back insane student loans with their small salaries over having their own places. Having a decent relationship with your family and being unable to buy into a real estate bubble that really just ended on entry level wages is sooooooo not the same as not working because of your trust fund.

That said, I also found it hard to believe the ridiculousness of some of those examples...but the world is full of odd situations, just because something sounds like a caricature doesn't mean it can't happen.

something that is getting lost in this discussion is that the brooklyn ale house makes amazing bloody marys

The Onion headline could be something like: Sustainable Knitting Store Unsustainable