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

Oh wait, it took me this long to realize that was hipster runoff. That's probably just a model shoot or something.

glad 2 see i post on a message board w/ so many people who are just better than these silly parents

Max, it's just that most of our parents, however fucked-up, were better at this than these entitled idiots.

The ice-cream man used to visit the street where I lived until I was 10. For a few days he came around 6 o'clock (cue proto-ADD response from local kids), the parents complained amongst themselves about dinnertime ruin and finally one of the moms played fearless leader and asked the guy if he could re-adjust his route to arrive after dinner instead, with the implication it would be more profitable for him that way.

But the complaints are not just coming from effete organic-food zealots with too much time on their hands. The 18th Ward in Chicago, which banned ice cream vendors, is made up of working-class African-American families. Ms. Reiley is a stay-at-home mother. Ms. Heidel-Habluetzel is a real-estate agent who is an active volunteer at her children’s school. And Ms. Sell owns and runs a restaurant in Brooklyn with her husband, a chef. “I’m not a health freak by any means,” Ms. Sell said. “But I notice what happens to my daughter when she eats these sugar-filled things with all these additives.”

I like how the topic sentence is about how not all of the complaints are from yuppies, but then her list of examples of complaining parents in sentence three and four are all yuppies. "Working-class African-American families are against this too! But enough about them..."

first they came for the drug dealers, and i said nothing, because i was not a drug dealer
then they came for the ice cream vendors etc etc

ps someone should really do something about all these squirrels in public parks, my dog goes crazy whenever he sees one and gets really hard to control. it's shameful how they flouce their bushy tails everywhere, it's like they are deliberately provoking my dog.

i don't have a problem with squirrels but why can't they just build their nests somewhere else? so i can have a nice day in the park without having to chase after my dog around.

lol when did u all turn into closet libertarians?

glad 2 see i post on a message board w/ so many people who are just better than these silly parents

yah its hard 2 to imagine a group of ppl collectively lamer than ilx posters but there u go

btw this may come as a surprise to you but people do generally work to control animal populations in cities

good job missing the point

no, i got that you're being a dick

btw this may come as a surprise to you but people do generally work to control animal populations in cities

repping 4 serial killers?

or just vampires?

Today's bait:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/business/economy/21inequality.html?_r=1&hp

Pity the poor entrepreneur:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/08/21/business/21inequality.600.jpg

In 2007, Mr. McAfee sold a 10,000-square-foot home in Colorado with a view of Pike’s Peak. He had spent $25 million to buy the property and build the house. He received $5.7 million for it. When Lehman collapsed last fall, its bonds became virtually worthless. Mr. McAfee’s stock investments cost him millions more.

One day, he realized, as he said, “Whoa, my cash is gone.”

His remaining net worth of about $4 million makes him vastly wealthier than most Americans, of course. But he has nonetheless found himself needing cash and desperately trying to reduce his monthly expenses.

He has sold a 10-passenger Cessna jet and now flies coach. This week his oceanfront estate in Hawaii sold for $1.5 million, with only a handful of bidders at the auction. He plans to spend much of his time in Belize, in part because of more favorable taxes there.

Next week, his New Mexico property will be the subject of a no-floor auction, meaning that Mr. McAfee has promised to accept the top bid, no matter how low it is.

“I am trying to face up to the reality here that the auction may bring next to nothing,” he said.

lol i don't see how not wanting to micromanage the rather innocuous goings-on my neighborhood's public spaces makes me a "closet libertarian"

Mr. McAfee, whose tattoos and tinted hair suggest an independent streak

no, i got that you're being a dick

― congratulations (n/a)

http://tsfiles.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/pot-kettle-black.jpg

max these people are officious cunts! your local ice cream van's incessant theme tune has clearly driven you round the bend!

fyi to all i would probably sign a petition banning the fucking ice cream jingle and all ice cream trucks if possible--if u want ice cream u can go to the fucking ice cream store--feel free to killfile me

Fuck that shit, I want all my food and drink brought to me in a questionable van with an irritating music-box jingle.

One day, he realized, as he said, “Whoa, my cash is gone.”

^^^ i no that feeling :/

when that happens i just steal the popsicle from the ice cream man, fuck him

I dunno: if a big problem in your life is "insufficient shade trees," you have a pretty nice life, but I still like that people will get together and try and put in some trees, you know? I guess I'd feel different if these people were trying to control other people's natural behavior, but what they're trying to control is something the city regulates either way.

BTW I never got a call on whether I'm an officious cunt for wanting to do something about the food cart that blocks the sidewalk. I could just walk the dog around into the street, but that's a pain and marginally dangerous, and I don't want the dog thinking walking in the street is okay! If the Times asked me what I thought about it, I'd probably say that food cart annoys the hell out of me: am I an awful person?

I also once thought about reporting a restaurant for putting tables outside without a permit, because they were taking up the whole sidewalk! Also the parking garage that leaves cars sitting on the sidewalk! My life is pretty nice, and the only reason I care is cause it's irritating walking a dog when people are blocking everything. Does this make me the worst person in the universe?

no, what makes you the worst person in the universe is that you dont suffer enough to have larger things to care about

I love the way that all these stories have to feature a half-arsed disclaimer like this - "The relative struggles of the rich may elicit little sympathy from less well-off families who are dealing with the effects of the worst recession in a generation" - before returning to crying about the guy who had to sell his Cessna.

I think if everything annoys you and you are unrealistically ranty and never apologize, that makes you a hater, hopefully one that can age into "curmudgeon". If you go around asking everyone if they think your being annoyed is okay with them, that might make you neurotic.

i do think theres something narcissistic in the attitude that the whole world and everything in it shld be ordered to your satisfaction and that u should never suffer irritation. the city has been doing roadwork on the street outside my apt all week and i keep getting woken up by it which suxx cuz i have a really, really hard time falling asleep in the 1st place but i have no expectation that the city wld structure road work so as to minimize its effect on me. i no thats not a perfect analogy and drivable roads are a lot more impt to more ppl than soft serve and popsicles but u get me

i mean im pretty squirmy abt making moral judgments and i no there are times when u need to take this line to avoid being taken advantages and noble resignation has it owns drawbacks as a lyfe philosophy so idk w/e

fuck dogs, gimme a sidewalk cafe

tbh nabisco your dog annoys me and i hate tripping over its leash when i'm trying to get a gyro.

why can't you just take your dog to the park where there is room for dogs and designated dog spaces? are you afraid he will beg you for ice cream and youll have to give in then he'll get fat and never be prom king?

how do I get the dog to the park without walking up the street?

Carry the dog LOL?

Then again it's not like the people screaming against ice cream haven't used the words 'inappropriate' and 'reasonable' in thrilling combinations designed to create compliance for quite some time, and if it works...

put it down, get a cat

how can the gyro vendor sell his gyros if he is not on the sidewalk i ask you nabisco.

i don't get this lunch cart thing. it sounds like he has literally walled off the entire sidewalk!

maybe an ascii diagram would help.

at 2am i can't walk past a taco truck w/o hipsters begging me for some greasy treats

choke up onna leash dude. no one wants po but a screwdriver in a dog's eye for trying to bite of a guy's lunch.
and
how come bitches always wanna walk so slow, side-by-side on the subway steps?

I mean, look, I know we all have different levels of where we think people are unreasonable about trying to control their environments. But part of what I think is cool about civic life is that there's a realm where, if you care a bunch, you can actually go make your preferences known. Like you can go to community board meetings and complain about sidewalk seating permits, or the number of liquor licenses on your block. Half of the people who bother doing that are just batshit and weird and entitled, it's true! But on the other hand the whole point of it is so normal people can go and say, you know, I live here, and just for the record, I'd kinda prefer it this way. That's kind of a cool system.

xpost - he doesn't have gyros. The problem is that he sets up at the narrowest part of the sidewalk, right next to the line/smoking area for a nearby venue. (And he sets up there on nights when the venue's full.) So the sidewalk is totally impassable. Between the two things, traffic is actually walled off. Which makes one think: hey, this is dumb and a nuisance, and he needs to move down past the venue.

never mind your dog, what about parents having to navigate their strollers down those blocked sidewalks?

glad to see someone's thinking of the children

name names; we need google maps ref

\<-width of sidewalk->| 
\                     |
\  CART  v VENUE ROPE |
\ .----. |            |
\ |    | | people in  |
\ |    | | line or    |
\ .----. | smoking    \
\        |             DOOR
\        .-----------------
\                     |
\<-width of sidewalk->| 

is the cart there primarily to sell to people at the venue?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lnkm9ReVyo

haha Sarah, is there any answer that question that doesn't make the cart's placement really, really dumb, traffic-wise? it's partly aimed at the venue but it's also a busy street at night in general. I have like zero doubt that someone who's not me will make it move (probably the venue), because look at the diagram, that's just idiotic, nobody can walk by.

definitely, if it's selling to people other than those at the venue, then moving a bit wouldn't really hurt business much, is why I'm asking.

nabisco that diagram exceeds all of my expectations!

though it's hard to work out what the first steps towards the kind of citizen engagement you're limning would be, were you to spearhead the drive to rationalize the current sidewalk situation, but yeah that's some bullshit