Rich Kids Pay Big Bucks for Ghetto Life

Ah, yes. Yet another lovely Times article ("The Price 20-Somethings Pay To Live in the City," 11/12/10) touting the courage and steadfastness of unfortunate rich kids who must live in the city in apartments paid for by their parents. This fine piece of journalism might be a month old, but it chronicles an ongoing problem for the well-off recent grads of NYC. Their apartments (like nobody else's in New York, obviously), are pretty freaking small.

And they're also sometimes in high-crime areas. Abe Calvin Quezada, a 22-year-old interning at a recording studio in Manhattan, recently gave up his sub-par room in a loft in Bushwick for a renovated tenement near Marcus Garvey Blvd (that's in Bed Stuy), which boasts a tiny 10-by-6-foot bedroom. He thinks this apartment is nicer than his Bushwick flat, but finds the neighborhood downright "fishy," recalling gun shots outside his window and a sighting of a handgun-toting motorcycle rider on a Sunday afternoon. He doesn't feel very safe, especially since he works late.

If I heard this story from someone living in this neighborhood who grew up there, or because it was literally the only place they could afford (with a legit paying job), or because they had no other choice, I'd sympathize with their complaints. But to Mr. Quezada, who chose this spot because it was something Mom was willing to subsidize so he could keep his unpaid hipster lifestyle going, Boo Fucking Hoo.

As for further "tales from the front lines" (more on that terminology later), there's Stefan Rurak, 26, an Oberlin-educated furniture maker who moved to New York 5 years ago and currently lives in an illegal, 9-by-12-foot space in the back of a former furniture store in Greenpoint. He gains some of my favor by at least admitting he "lucked out" by finding this place for so cheap, but loses it all when he insists that the area isn't yet swarming with "college kids in tight pants," and that's why he likes it (leave it to a hipster artist to get all excited when he thinks he's still the only one in the neighborhood. It's like the thrill experienced by the first Jamestown colonist)."It's not that I like New York so much," Mr. Rurak says. "But things happen here that wouldn't happen in other places."

Yup, you're right, Stefan. Only in New York City do people like Mr. Quezada have the privilege to live in and finance tiny apartments in shitty, crime-ridden neighborhoods to fulfill their "dreams," whereas many people living there would literally kill for something better. Only in New York do privileged dweebs find immense self-gratification in downgrading their lifestyles, whereas everyone else is busting their asses to upgrade theirs. Only in NYC does someone like you, Stefan, get a flat-out burst of praise in the Times for living in an illegal room in Brooklyn, when poor families are so often being thrown out of shit holes like that for legal and monetary reasons, even while working full-time, backbreaking jobs and having literally no where else to go.

Paid work is hard to get -- I know that. If you can afford to have an unpaid internship, and if Mom is willing to pay your rent, that's seriously great. But you better feel lucky. Don't expect people to feel sorry for you because you live in the ghetto (or a window-less closet) to sustain your artsy hipster lifestyle, when you could have stayed in your parents' house or in a huge apartment back in Cleveland or wherever you're from. Cut the ego trip: you're not suffering; you're living large.

And to the folks at the New York Times, please refrain from using war lingo like "front lines" in idiot pieces like this -- I don't care if you're being "ironic." Save it for articles about actual war and global tragedy (last time I checked, you guys report on that stuff too). It's obnoxious, disdainful, and makes a mockery of just about everyone on the planet.

Article Here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/realestate/14cov.html