From this week’s New York Sunday Times Real Estate section, under the headline “Lives Streamlined for a New Era” comes this beginning:
Few things keep Jason Bell awake at night. But last fall, worried about the direction of the economy, Mr. Bell laid off three employees to make sure his small interior design firm would stay afloat. He took similar actions at home. To avoid getting into financial trouble, Mr. Bell, 36, and his wife, Marion, an architect, decided to move out of their 2,200-square-foot two-bedroom TriBeCa apartment, which cost them $6,950 a month in rent.
They considered moving with their 8-month-old baby to their weekend home in Millbrook, N.Y., but neither wanted to commute for two hours in each direction. So in December they went hunting for a smaller apartment in Manhattan. Each time they saw a place that seemed promising, they went home and spent hours drawing floor plans to see if their furniture would fit. Finally, in February, they settled on a two-bedroom apartment in the financial district for $4,500, which, while one-third cheaper, was also only 900 square feet.
They chose it even though they knew their possessions would not fit. They considered ditching their oversized sofa and buying a new one, but balked at the expense. Ultimately, their Tiffany china went to the country house, as did the dining room table for 12, a large kitchen cabinet and much of their cooking gear.
The article is written apparently without irony. It is, however, such an epic of cluelessness as to beggar the imagination. Having to move from an apartment renting for $7000/month to one renting for $4500/month! Being forced to leave the china at the summer home! Proactively laying off three (nameless) employees! Oh, the agony! The shame!
If you are wealthy, then, to the Times, you are a story in your own right. If you are not, then you tend to be reduced to a number: so many hundreds of thousands laid off; so many millions without health insurance. There are those who are important as individuals and those important only in aggregate.
14 comments
April 12, 2009 at 11:13 am
ben
The new apartment is 166% more expensive per square foot than the old apartment; they were paying $3.15 per and now they pay $5 per.
One wonders if selling their whole other house was up for discussion.
April 12, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Marshall
I write chapters in books about history sometimes and I have spent too many hours staring at old copies of the New York Times during the 1880′s and 90′s. They have always done this. If you look at the Times during the Panic of 1893 they are writing these types of articles about the poor poor rich people.
April 12, 2009 at 12:25 pm
PorJ
The New York Times really changed over the years. Back in the 70s it retained at least some acknowledgment of its working-class readership and many of its editors were both classic and new lefties. Then it got overtaken by the Reagan eighties and Wall St.’s “Greed is Good” mantra because, 1. That’s where the advertising dollars were – i.e.: who really purchases Bulgari jewelry and Rolex watches? – 2. It had national ambitions once the technology existed to have it easily delivered in NYC, Chicago and LA every morning, which moved its editorial interests away from working class New York and more towards America. It never really recovered. One can only imagine what the great John B. Oakes, for instance, would have said on the editorial pages about the current health care disaster.
But part of me also wonders if there isn’t some implicit irony here. I mean, this stuff – like the Times’s “Escapes” section – is really pornographic in that it exploits widely-held middle class fantasies of excess. Its aspirational in the classic sense and trades on the same narcissistic impulses which keep the lottery in business. Tocqueville was right. This stuff is like an obscene American Dream – whether you read it with (unacknowledged) envy, outrage, or a wry smile. And everyone ends up reading it, so we’re all suckers – no matter what we think. And the editors know this – because not many of them can pay $7,000 a month for an apartment, nor can own a home in Millbrook – so they write and edit these pieces apparently irony-free to hook us. And it works.
April 12, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Kieran
Real Estate porn is par for the course in the Times, right?
April 12, 2009 at 1:47 pm
kid bitzer
but look; they tell you that he’s a sober, prudent, risk-averse person in the first line.
he’s not a thoughtless, spendthrift, wastrel; no, when times got tough, he fired his employees. proactively!
i mean, after you’ve seen him making tough, self-denying sacrifices like that, how can you expect him to give up his massive china cabinet?
what, are you some kind of class-war communist?
April 12, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Jacob Christensen
There are those who are worse off: Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende today reported about a businessman who not only had to let his chauffeur go but also had to drive a Toyota instead of the old BMW after filing for bankruptcy.
The stigma of failure.
April 12, 2009 at 4:47 pm
ekogan
That’s why the NYT is not available in most places in Brooklyn and Queens – it’s all New York Daily News and New York Post. The NYT is not for natives, it’s for people who come to New York to make their fortune.
April 12, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Witt
I thought this article was going to be just another example of the trend that silbey mentions, but midway through it took a turn that made it surprisingly kinder:
April 13, 2009 at 7:16 am
Barry
“In 2002, Jennifer Tobias, a librarian, bought a 325-foot studio with a large roof deck in the East Village for $199,000. “I’ve always been very happy there,” she said, particularly during the summer when she would sleep on the deck at night.”
A librarian bought a 200K place to live? I can only imagine that there was a substantial check from her parents involved.
Then again, if you can’t get the odd 50 or 100K from you parents, you might as well change your name and leave the country, right?
April 13, 2009 at 7:18 am
North
Another example of the same trend, now with fancy law firms. Silbey, I think this
is the best summary explanation of why these articles stink.
April 13, 2009 at 8:23 am
silbey
I swear, the Times is going out its way to prove my point over the last few days. The law firm article (a legal firm is giving its associates 1/3rd their salary to take the year off: 80K is the example salary) is at least a bit more sensitive to the high end nature of this. The individual vs. group perceptions goes to, I think, the people that those at the Times encounter. I always try to think how reporters end up with the people in the articles and a lot of times it is through contacts in their circle. Even the drycleaner fits that model (“hey, have you heard about the drycleaner who’s giving cleaning away?”). They _don’t_ have contact with folks at the lower end of the scale, so such people become groups instead.
April 13, 2009 at 10:57 am
Erik Lund
“Lawyers defending trees in British Columbia?”
Laid-off lawyers laying off loggers. Hmm.
April 13, 2009 at 1:31 pm
North
This reminds me rather of Eddie Izzard’s bit about the British royal family, where the Queen meets someone and says, “Hello! What do you do? You’re a plumber? What on eaaarth is that?”
April 13, 2009 at 7:47 pm
Barbar
The New York Times produces such a large number of articles that fall in this category that I doubt that the writers and editors are truly “clueless” about what they’re doing. These articles on the wacky escapades of privileged people often appear on the “Most E-Mailed” or “Most Blogged” lists.
Right now the most e-mailed article in the business section is “Recession Pain, Even in Palm Beach.”