I’m always harping on how expensive is to live here. New York Magazine has several interesting and true articles.
the dollar is only worth 76 cents here. What’s fourteen cents? When you multiply it by X amount of dollars a lot. Yes I did mean twenty four cents.
Does money come between friends? Uh, yes in many small and not so small ways. Lucia and I have been friends for 29 years this month. We were ex hippies who met at a job that paid five dollars an hour, but the benefits, life long friendships were exceptional. Many of my other friends worked there, or I met them because of friends at Summit.
Plus you could live on five dollars an hour even here, then. I would be lying if I said that Lucia didn’t resent or envy me at times. I’m not rich and because I can’t count on much Social Security or a pension, pray that I will be able to continue having the life style that I have now, or hopefully a better one when I’m older.
A long time ago Lucia and I realized that we have the type of friendship that is really family, and we can’t let things like money come between us She makes what would be a decent salary almost anywhere else. But there’s the small matter of feeding Little Luce, and trying to save for Little Luce’s college—a lofty goal at this point, and saving for Lucia’s future. Plus paying New York prices for things.
I often pay when we go out. It’s not as if we’re going to four star restaurants or consuming copious amounts of liquor. But more often now Lucia pays. Pride is powerful. But I her convinced that I’m inept, because I am in many areas, and she’s not, so that should make up for the cost of a dinner.
It’s a weird situation to be in on both sides. Friends With Money was so on mark, We saw it together and it was a bit uncomfortable. The recent sale of Stuy Town and Peter Cooper Village almost ensures that Manhattan will home to the rich and poor. Without a vital middle class you can’t have a vital vibrant city, It really is that simple. Bloomberg has plans to develop the Long Island City waterfront. Should have been done decades ago.
Until I was four my family lived in Sunnyside, one town in from Long Island City. Some of my earliest memories are of walking across the 59th Street bridge. I have always wondered why it wasn’t developed when it’s so vast. It’s a great thing but it’s not a solution.
Manhattan needs middle class enclaves like Stuy Town and Peter Cooper. Developing the waterfront in Long Island City will be great for Queens, most diverse borough in the country–or County everywhere else. It will be like Dumbo in Brooklyn, Dumbo is becoming incredibly expensive with wonderful building that I would love to live in.
I assume plans for developing the waterfront will include many affordable apartments, but as with Stuy Town will become unaffordable, within a generation. That’s no answer.
In the interest of full public disclosure, the Gigi Cafe mentioned in the article is one of my two favorite soup restaurants.
I have been suffering from an allergy and believe that it found a new and different life force last night. the whole night seems surreal. Even coughing hurts. I hope that I do sleep tonight for the first time in six nights.
When my doctor diagnosed the allergy several years ago, he told me that it wasn’t deadly, I would say that I thought he was making a joke but I was relieved because it felt as if….Lucia thinks that I have the flu. She’s a mommy so that gives her diagnose rights.
I did go to a class last night because I was feeling stir crazy. I didn’t talk basically because I couldn’t talk without sounding as if I were a fog horn. And just in case it was something more, I didn’t want to spread my germs.
Have I told you how germaphobic New York has become?
Won’t go into everything that happened once I came home, but I do think I will need several days recovery and won’t be around blogs. Again I apologize, but you don’t want me around heavy machinery, people or your blog.
Hey pia, long time no write. Been largely offline lately… anyway, wanted to say a thing about money and Manhattan. We (my wife and me) are in the top 3% of US households in terms of annual income (which takes less than you might think). That should be pretty good, right? Yet in our neighborhood (UES), we feel like the poor family who just moved here from the Ukraine. This has all been brought home recently because we’re deep in the middle of our quest to place our daughter in a pre-school. In Manhattan, of course, getting your kid into a good pre-school– the right pre-school– is about as easy as getting her into Yale. (And I’m told, if you offer to build them a gym during the interview, some palces will take the deal, just like, well, Yale.)
Anyway, good to drop by again. I won’t be a stranger.
I used to go out with my younger brother quite often. i always paid for everything, regardless of how broke I was (am).
Then one day it dawned on me that my little brother actually makes signifacantly more money than me.
The next time we met for lunch, I swallowed my pride, and casually joked, “So, you want to buy today?”
And he most certainly did. Money can be a strange friend… or a friendly stranger.
I hope you feel better, Pia.
On about the money thing, it’s fun to take advantage of the dollar being so rubbish at the moment.
Electrical goods sometimes go for sale in the US at the same dollar price as they do Sterling in the UK – so we just buy from the US and get them half price…
You mean 24 cents per dollar.
interest observation about friends and money… I like to pay my own way, to treat others occassionally, but not make a habit of it, unless they are truly down on their luck. I see someone corrected you on the math!
Goodpoint, Mexico is severely lacking a substantial middle class and see the mess they are in.
Way to go New York…
About fifteen years ago, a friend and I wound up each pulling on separate ends of a one dollar bill inside a Burger King.
It was a bit of an epiphany. I let go of the dollar and haven’t worried much about money since.
Although I do have one friend now who seems to often forget his wallet whenever we do something. It’s more humorous than anything. And probably would make a good blog entry.
Hope this comment finds you feeling better.
You’ve got a wonderful home here. I’ll be back!!
-Sylvia
Some of my friends are all about the green and doing things way outside the bonds of my budget.
I mean, I get by fine, but they want these crazy $100 dinners.
It’s more pressure than it probably should be. The whole keeping up.
This is why I left London…where the dollar was 52cents. It just wasn’t practical to live there any more. Especially if you’re use to one dollar being two (like it was in ‘My Appalachia’). But I ramble.
Your doctor sounds like mine. “It probably won’t kill you, else you’d be dead by now.”
Sleep is the miracle drug. Get loads. Failing that I could always send you some of Pa’s magic elixir. “That stuff opens you up it does.”
Feel better.
feel better
Things are going up everywhere, pretty soon we will all have to move to Wyoming.
Pia, hope you’re feeling better. Yes the sale of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village was pretty much the death knell for the middle class hopes in Manhattan.
Get plenty of rest and drink plenty of liquids.
I’ve become a germophobe since I’ve been here! Especially since I got the staph infection from hell, which put me in the hospital for a week. The word “abscess” was never even in my vocabulary (unless we’re talking about the tooth variety and I never had one of those either) until I came here.