This weekend the NY Times did an article on Saturday regarding the increasing demands of high-end apartment buyers - the additional monies spent on decorating, re-building interiors, adding amenities, and the millions of dollars these changes might cost. And the Times mentions this is part of a Second Gilded Age series.
Admittedly not everyone can spend $10 Million overall on an apartment. The article even shows a graph in which the average median cost of the high-end apartment has moved into the tens of millions, with the very top ends in the low 40's.
Indeed. Let us not be impressed dear friends. Though the writers at the Times are well informed gents to be sure, they have perhaps not factored in the effects of 140 years of inflation since the First Gilded Age. Let me explain with numbers:
In 1877 when Cornelius Vanderbilt died he left an estate of $105,000,00. In 1877, 50 cents would buy a BARREL of flour. That's enough food to last about a month. Annual wages for a servant averaged $200. Now imagine what a servant would cost today - maybe $35,000? That said, how much is that $105,000,000 worth today? Oh around $18,375,000,000.00. Yes, that's $18 BILLION dollars.
So how incredible is an apartment that costs $45,000,000 then? Not a heck of a lot. This is not evidence of a Second Gilded Age. That dinky apartment had a price of about $250,000 in 1877 dollars. Isn't that still a lot of money? Not when you consider that the great-grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt erected a manion at 664 Fifth Avenue that cost $5,000,000 in 1877 dollars! In other words the house and all its contents came to around $875,000,000 in 2007 dollars. WOW - that's a Gilded Age. Gold-Leafed dollars I'd say.
So perhaps the rustic folks over at the NY Times will pull out a handy calculator, and adjust for some inflation. We'd all be less ready with Class Warefare to be sure. They should begin to take notice when someone (and I don't mean a corporation) knocks down a skyscraper and erects a ONE BILLION mansion on the site. Then you'd have a Second Gilded Age. If that does happen, I do want to visit the house.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
The 51st Street Torture Chamber
Setting aside the few hedge fund managers and wealthy elite living in walled-off lives in the stratosphere of the Upper East Side, today was a typical 'too-much is too-much' day in Manhattan.
Its Sunday, right? Well I don't know. I had the misfortune of being in Mid-Town in the West 50's and decided to come home. The streets were filled with loads and loads of those people we know don't live here: tourists, bridge and tunnel voyeurs, and all the other errata of the human genome that doesn't fit, just walking mindlessly in seemingly endless mobs. Walking and walking, sometimes standing mindlessly in the middle of the sidewalk, sometimes peering up at traffic lights (Science's latest invention to prevent cars from colliding they didn't know about).
What is MidTown West about anyway? Its as if Mayor Guiliani, being the prosecutor that he actually is (and not the Mayor he thinks he was), thought merging businesses and tourism was some great idea. What's it got us? A bunch of office workers colliding with a bunch of tourists/shoppers and and its just CONGESTION and not "synergy" or whatever the frickin marketing crap was that coincided with the bad choice to allow monster office buildings in Long Acre Square. Cleaning up the Ho's on 42nd street was replaced by people falling all over each other.
Is there some special benefit to jamming office workers and tourists into the same space? Yes - the corporations that relocated out of MidTown's Plaza District got a big cut in real estate costs. But as typical the Citizen must pay for this - its the office worker who now has to stand in the spectacle of utter tourist bullshit day in and day out. Its like you're now a service worker, forced to see all the gimmicks and stimulus meaningful to the *FIRST EVER TO MANHATTAN* tourist slob. It wears thin even for the tourist in about 1 week. Imagine what it does to all of us who have to push through the crowds, the signage, the hawkers, the pedicabs, all that crap, just to get down to a roasting hot subway platform.
Speaking of which, what is it with the 51st Street Station of the 1/9 Train anyway?! That frickin train station must be a ConEd STEAM PIPE interchange or something. NEVER go down there with clothes on, or at least only in February when its 10 degrees outside - the heat will melt you down into a whimpering beggar, hoping for an end to the torture. Your dry cleaner loves the 51st Street Station.... how many thousands of victims must suffer in its holds and deliver their sweat-soaked garments to the cleaners? And what unfortunate workers must handle those smelly garments?
I see now the image of Vincent Price, in his black shroud peering down at us in his role as Sebastian Medina - Medievil Inquisitor - as he waves his arms around the Pit and the Pendulum - "Die my dears from sheer heat exhaustion, or end it all now, and throw yourself under the razor edge of Death...the wheels of the 1/9 Train."
And the architect of this municipal mess wants to be President of the US? Come on, Guliani was a flop at Planning. He's a crime-stopper, nothing more. Let's give him a post in NYC, but leave the prosecutor out of the White House. We already have enough problems with Attorneys General as it is!
I say tear down the 51st Street Station, and install the 51st Street IceBox that just happens to have a train track and platform running through it! Why all that money being spent on the 2nd Avenue subway could be pruned a bit, siphoned off in some creative accounting scheme, and re-directed to the Torture Chamber.
Its Sunday, right? Well I don't know. I had the misfortune of being in Mid-Town in the West 50's and decided to come home. The streets were filled with loads and loads of those people we know don't live here: tourists, bridge and tunnel voyeurs, and all the other errata of the human genome that doesn't fit, just walking mindlessly in seemingly endless mobs. Walking and walking, sometimes standing mindlessly in the middle of the sidewalk, sometimes peering up at traffic lights (Science's latest invention to prevent cars from colliding they didn't know about).
What is MidTown West about anyway? Its as if Mayor Guiliani, being the prosecutor that he actually is (and not the Mayor he thinks he was), thought merging businesses and tourism was some great idea. What's it got us? A bunch of office workers colliding with a bunch of tourists/shoppers and and its just CONGESTION and not "synergy" or whatever the frickin marketing crap was that coincided with the bad choice to allow monster office buildings in Long Acre Square. Cleaning up the Ho's on 42nd street was replaced by people falling all over each other.
Is there some special benefit to jamming office workers and tourists into the same space? Yes - the corporations that relocated out of MidTown's Plaza District got a big cut in real estate costs. But as typical the Citizen must pay for this - its the office worker who now has to stand in the spectacle of utter tourist bullshit day in and day out. Its like you're now a service worker, forced to see all the gimmicks and stimulus meaningful to the *FIRST EVER TO MANHATTAN* tourist slob. It wears thin even for the tourist in about 1 week. Imagine what it does to all of us who have to push through the crowds, the signage, the hawkers, the pedicabs, all that crap, just to get down to a roasting hot subway platform.
Speaking of which, what is it with the 51st Street Station of the 1/9 Train anyway?! That frickin train station must be a ConEd STEAM PIPE interchange or something. NEVER go down there with clothes on, or at least only in February when its 10 degrees outside - the heat will melt you down into a whimpering beggar, hoping for an end to the torture. Your dry cleaner loves the 51st Street Station.... how many thousands of victims must suffer in its holds and deliver their sweat-soaked garments to the cleaners? And what unfortunate workers must handle those smelly garments?
I see now the image of Vincent Price, in his black shroud peering down at us in his role as Sebastian Medina - Medievil Inquisitor - as he waves his arms around the Pit and the Pendulum - "Die my dears from sheer heat exhaustion, or end it all now, and throw yourself under the razor edge of Death...the wheels of the 1/9 Train."
And the architect of this municipal mess wants to be President of the US? Come on, Guliani was a flop at Planning. He's a crime-stopper, nothing more. Let's give him a post in NYC, but leave the prosecutor out of the White House. We already have enough problems with Attorneys General as it is!
I say tear down the 51st Street Station, and install the 51st Street IceBox that just happens to have a train track and platform running through it! Why all that money being spent on the 2nd Avenue subway could be pruned a bit, siphoned off in some creative accounting scheme, and re-directed to the Torture Chamber.
Who Killed Diana?
In this Sunday's article of the Daily Express further facts come out regarding her death - the bodyguard speaks and reveals who was at fault. In short, the driver was drunk, he says.
The British Government has apparently decided to open a formal inquiry after all these years. That should be sufficient time for certain memories to start failing, for facts to fall out of alignment, verification to be all that much more difficult, and therefore a generalization is all that will result from this.
Diana died because the people smothered her with attention. Like some giant dumb baby doll, the English people wanted their Diana - and the iron arm of the press was there to sledgehammer their will into being...albeit in this case the hammer killed the very object of their affections. The photo guys are paid like bounty hunters for the pics. Bounty hunters are not known for being civilized.
More ridiculous than the on-going obessions with this unfortunate accident is Fayad's reported belief that the British Government had something to do with this - like the driver wasn't drunk at all, and they planted booze in his apartment, as well as his bloodstream (how does one plant alchohol in a bloodstream one wonders?). The obvious flaw with his idea is that if the driver were not drunk and involved in the plot, he wouldn't on someone else's orders crash himself to death - how ludicrous is that? Its not like the security chief of the Ritz Carlton was expecting to meet virgins in heaven... pretty sure he wasn't a Muslim.
My best advice: leave Diana to Rest in Peace. Remember the dear lady, and mark it down to America's Number One Cause of Death: DRUNK DRIVING.
The British Government has apparently decided to open a formal inquiry after all these years. That should be sufficient time for certain memories to start failing, for facts to fall out of alignment, verification to be all that much more difficult, and therefore a generalization is all that will result from this.
Diana died because the people smothered her with attention. Like some giant dumb baby doll, the English people wanted their Diana - and the iron arm of the press was there to sledgehammer their will into being...albeit in this case the hammer killed the very object of their affections. The photo guys are paid like bounty hunters for the pics. Bounty hunters are not known for being civilized.
More ridiculous than the on-going obessions with this unfortunate accident is Fayad's reported belief that the British Government had something to do with this - like the driver wasn't drunk at all, and they planted booze in his apartment, as well as his bloodstream (how does one plant alchohol in a bloodstream one wonders?). The obvious flaw with his idea is that if the driver were not drunk and involved in the plot, he wouldn't on someone else's orders crash himself to death - how ludicrous is that? Its not like the security chief of the Ritz Carlton was expecting to meet virgins in heaven... pretty sure he wasn't a Muslim.
My best advice: leave Diana to Rest in Peace. Remember the dear lady, and mark it down to America's Number One Cause of Death: DRUNK DRIVING.
The East Side Slasher
Wow! and we thought getting barbeque chicken was about as mundane as ever - then along comes the knife-wielding Jack the Ripper of the upper east side - who didn't bother to conceal his weapons or himself before hacking away at a 67 year old regular.
I was walking past a newstand when I saw this article and immediately it looked like a yellow-journalism piece from the 1890's, or a scene-bit from a cliche'd Hollywood schlock horror film. I would say this is evidence that instead of entering the Age Beyond History as some intellectuals have suggested, we are instead going back to the age of bad old mistakes and horrors of a society not really managing itself. The Second Gilded Age is attended by many of the horrors and ills of the first.
I was walking past a newstand when I saw this article and immediately it looked like a yellow-journalism piece from the 1890's, or a scene-bit from a cliche'd Hollywood schlock horror film. I would say this is evidence that instead of entering the Age Beyond History as some intellectuals have suggested, we are instead going back to the age of bad old mistakes and horrors of a society not really managing itself. The Second Gilded Age is attended by many of the horrors and ills of the first.
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