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At first I thought (Skidoo) there so we know he’s not referencing the Jim Carrey movie.
America City, America
Washington, DC
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In 1899, people were walking around shouting '23' at each other and laughing, and confused reporters were writing articles trying to figure out what it meant.
I keep hoping that he’s forgotten, but he or someone in his entourage isn’t cooperating.
Apparently the Silicon Valley bros want to build their outside-the-law cities in Greenland.
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He’s got the words Louisiana Purchase rattling around his noggin and this is what we get.
America City, America
The second season of The Wire is incredibly underrated. People who loved the first season were perplexed–why was this season about white people? Even worse, unions? Where’s the gangstas???? This massively missed the point David Simon was making in The Wire. Meanwhile, in public discussions of the show, media types rave about the deeply flawed fifth season because they like the story about the media, which I find unwatchable as Simon decided to settle old scores against the Baltimore Sun. But Season 2 is really great. In painting a larger picture of Baltimore, the decline of the white working class and industrial jobs and the desperation of those trying to hang out to what they had was a perfect addition to the larger discussion of city and its role in America that Simon offered.
Season 2 would not have been the same with James Ransone, who played the idiotic Ziggy Sobotka, an inept relative of the local union leader who was a disaster, in way over his head, and trying to be a big man when in fact he was a pathetic little twerp. Hard to see how that role could have been played better. Ransone committed suicide this weekend and is dead at the age of 46. His work in that role is well worth remembering today.
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21435 tho I’m open to arguments for swapping 3 and 4 (maybe) Erik Loomis is a goober
America City, America
I’ve been meaning to write about this interesting essay by Michael Green, about how the poverty line could be pegged at $140,000 per year, if we’re talking about what he calls “the cost of participation” in contemporary American life.
Some of the claims in the essay are hyperbolic, and it was largely derided by the green eyeshade battalions of the dismal science, but it nevertheless struck a nerve for good reasons. For example:
Critics will immediately argue that I’m cherry-picking expensive cities. They will say $136,500 is a number for San Francisco or Manhattan, not “Real America.”
So let’s look at “Real America.”
The model above allocates $23,267 per year for housing. That breaks down to $1,938 per month. This is the number that serious economists use to tell you that you’re doing fine.
In my last piece, Are You An American?, I analyzed a modest “starter home” which turned out to be in Caldwell, New Jersey—the kind of place a Teamster could afford in 1955. I went to Zillow to see what it costs to live in that same town if you don’t have a down payment and are forced to rent.
There are exactly seven 2-bedroom+ units available in the entire town. The cheapest one rents for $2,715 per month.
That’s a $777 monthly gap between the model and reality. That’s $9,300 a year in post-tax money. To cover that gap, you need to earn an additional $12,000 to $13,000 in gross salary.
So when I say the real poverty line is $140,000, I’m being conservative. I’m using optimistic, national-average housing assumptions. If we plug in the actual cost of living in the zip codes where the jobs are—where rent is $2,700, not $1,900—the threshold pushes past $160,000.
The market isn’t just expensive; it’s broken. Seven units available in a town of thousands? That isn’t a market. That’s a shortage masquerading as an auction.
And that $2,715 rent check buys you zero equity. In the 1950s, the monthly housing cost was a forced savings account that built generational wealth. Today, it’s a subscription fee for a roof. You are paying a premium to stand still.
Green emphasizes that for couples with young children, childcare costs are a devastating addition to household budget. For many people in their 20s and 30s, this means “choosing” to be childless, because it feels fundamentally unaffordable. This of course helps explain why the birth rate has been cratering for decades — it’s now quite literally half of what it was when I was born at the peak of the baby boom. And the birth rate in the US is still a lot higher than in much of the developed world, The worst situation, not surprisingly, is in countries that still have strongly patriarchal traditional cultures, i.e., women are expected to do all childcare and other domestic labor, but where women also now have a certain degree of economic and social freedom. In places like South Korea, the consequence of that combination is a total fertility rate of less than one — a completely unprecedented situation in all of recorded history, and no doubt in the entire history of the species, or otherwise we wouldn’t be here to blog about it.
The Times had a piece today (gift link) that used Green’s essay as a jumping off point. The basic economic problems here are well known: the cost of housing, of childcare, of health care, and of higher education. These things are all central to any concept of a middle class lifestyle. Of course another big factor in all this are changing standards of what’s considered an acceptable version of such a lifestyle:
Mr. Thurston, from Philadelphia, said he wanted children. But right now, he and his partner must climb three floors to their rental apartment. Their car is a two-door “death trap.”
His salary, about $90,000, would need to cover student loans and child care. He also wants to live in a good school district and pay for extras, like music lessons and sports leagues.
“I know you don’t need those things,” he said, “but as a parent, my job is to set my child up for success.”
Even for those who own a home, the thought of children can be daunting. Stephen Vincent, 30, and his partner, Brittany Robenault, a lab technician, first went to community college to save money. Then, he said, they “ate beans and rice” for several years to save for a down payment.
Now an analyst for a chemical company with a household income of about $150,000, he likes his lifestyle in Hamburg, Pa., and wants to keep it.
“We live in the richest country in the history of human civilization, so why can’t I eat out twice a week and have kids?” he said.
To the skeptics who say these trade-offs are simply lifestyle choices, there was a rejoinder: Hey, you try it.
“It’s very easy from a place of wealth and privilege to say, ‘You should be happy with something more modest,’” Mr. Thurston said.
But, he said, “it would kind of suck to live that way.”
Alicia Wrigley is grappling with the trade-offs. Ms. Wrigley and her husband, Richard Gailey, both musicians and teachers, own a two-bedroom bungalow in Salt Lake City and feel lucky to have it — they say they could not afford it now. But juggling in-home music lessons with their 2-year-old’s needs can feel like a squeeze. They want another child, but wonder how it would all work.
“I know it’s possible,” she said, looking through the window at her next-door neighbor’s house, which is exactly the same size.
That neighbor raised six children there in the 1970s. One way mothers then would cope, Ms. Wrigley said, was to “turn their kids out all day, and they’d just run around the neighborhood.”
She said she would not do that today, not least because someone might report her.
“The world,” she said, “is fundamentally different now.”
This is reminds me obliquely of a passage in The Road to Wigan Pier, Orwell’s study of life in a mining town in northern England in the mid-1930s. Orwell is interviewing a family of eight living in a four-room house (I would guess this would probably be in the neighborhood of 800 square feet or so), and he asks them when they became aware of the housing crisis. “When we were told of it,” is the reply.
. . . commenter Felix D’s question about this passage led me to look it up, and it’s somewhat different than I recalled, but the gist is the same:
Talking once with a miner I asked him when the housing shortage first became acute in his district; he answered, 'When we were told about it', meaning that till recently people's standards were so low that they took almost any degree of overcrowding for granted. He added that when he was a child his family had slept eleven in a room and thought nothing of it, and that later, when he was grown-up, he and his wife had lived in one of the old-style back to back houses in which you not only had to walk a couple of hundred yards to the lavatory but often had to wait in a queue when you got there, the lavatory being shared by thirty-six people. And when his wife was sick with the illness that killed her, she still had to make that two hundred yards' journey to the lavatory. This, he said, was the kind of thing people would put up with 'till they were told about it'.
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I wish I could do anything as well as George Orwell could write a sentence
America City, America
image via loopnet.com
In 1815, retired clothing merchant Aaron Henry purchased a large tract of land in Greenwich Village. The recently bucolic neighborhood was seeing an influx of activity since the erection of the nearby State Prison. In 1817 he erected two frame structures at the northeast corner of Perry and George Streets. (George Street would be renamed Bleecker around 1829.)
Like the slightly smaller building next door, the corner structure was two-and-a-half stories tall. Its peaked roof would have been pierced by two dormers. In 1820, both buildings were sold to Samuel Torbert, who apparently leased them. As early as 1830, Daniel McCroly and William Tiet's "weaving" business occupied the ground floor of 385 Bleecker Street.
The upper floor and attic were rented. Living here in 1847 and '48 were the families of John C. McCollam, a carman; and carpenter Elihu B. Price. The commercial space continued to house fabric concerns. In 1855, Robert Scott ran a dyeing shop here, while the family of John Burns, a smith, occupied the upper portion of the building.
As early as 1858, James Black manufactured buckram--a stiff, rough fabric--here. The wooden building was threatened early that year. On March 11, The New York Times reported that a fire had broken out at 8:00 the previous evening. "The fire originated in the dyeing-room, and was caused by an imperfection in the flue," said the article. Happily, it was quickly extinguished with little damage.
Around 1860, the Cyrus Patten family moved into the upper floors. Patten was a jeweler. He and his wife, Lydia, had at least one daughter, Mary J., who taught in the girls' department of School No. 15 on Fifth Street. At the time, Jacob Moore, ran the ground floor fabric business. By 1863, Richard Moore, presumably a son, joined the business.
Lydia Patten died at the age of 65 on October 14, 1863. Her funeral was held in house two days later.
Mary J. Patten, who had recently married Joseph Masten, was no longer living in the Bleecker Street house. Interestingly, however, Henrietta Katkamier moved in. She was a teacher in the girls' department of School No. 15--very possibly replacing Mary Patten Masten's position there. Henrietta boarded with Cyrus Patten through 1866, when he moved into Mary and Joseph Masten's home in Yonkers, where he died at the age of 77 on December 26, 1874.
Elizabeth Miller, the widow of Thomas Miller, occupied the upper floors in 1867, apparently renting rooms. Henry Freund, a die maker; and Mary Danneker, who surprisingly listed her profession as "segars," lived here that year. Eliza Friend ran her fancygoods store at street level and lived in the rear.
Eliza's venture would be short-lived. On September 9, 1869, an advertisement in the New York Herald read, "Fancy Goods Store for Sale--In an excellent location, with apartment, doing a good business in dressmaking and stamping. Inquire at 385 Bleecker st."
It may have been John H. Timm's purchase of the building that prompted Eliza Friend's move. Timm lived around the corner at 77 Perry Street and moved his grocery store into the Bleecker Street space.
It was about this time that Timm raised the attic to a full third floor and extended the building by filling in the passageway behind it to create a new entry to the upper floors. A simple cornice and fascia and an updated storefront were installed.
image from the collection of the New York Public Library
In 1879, Timm leased the store to Flannery Brothers, composed of Thomas E., Joseph F. and John P. Flannery. The brothers established a saloon in the space, adding it to their others at 635 Hudson Street, 613 Third Avenue and 802 Greenwich Street. Interestingly, according to John P. Flannery on October 7, 1892, "This business is in my mother's name, Catherine A. Flannery."
The Flannery Brothers saloon lasted here until 1897, when John H. Timm leased the space to James Mulligan. The Flannerys left nothing for the new leasee. An auction took place on May 11 offering:
Elegant Ash Counters with Cabinet Back Bar and 5-plate Mirrors (to match), Patent Ice House, Lunch Bars, Mirrored Wall Case, Screens and Summer Doors, Tables, Vienna Chairs, Partitions, Cash Register, Glassware, Chandeliers, Storm Doors, etc., in lots to dealers.
The process was repeated six years later when an auction of the "saloon fixtures" was held on July 29, 1903.
John H. Timm continued to lease the store space to saloon owners and their businesses continued to be short-lived. In 1912, Thomas McFadden ran the saloon, followed by Jonathan Reilly, who was superseded by Frank Barbiere in 1915.
A distinct change came in the post-World War I years. The Polimeni fishing tackle store occupied the space by 1918. While anglers could shop for fishing rods and lures, Polimeni's ads clearly noted, "No Bait."
Seen here in February 1932, the upper shutters have been removed. Street signs are affixed to the second floor corners. from the collection of the New York Public Library.
In 1934, the building's wooden facade was covered with a thick layer of stucco, leaving only the wood-framed windows to testify to the structure's venerable architecture. By then, the Waverly Grocery store occupied the ground floor space. Following the repeal of Prohibition, in 1938 the store's owner, Sam Rabinowitz, obtained a license to sell beer "for off-premises consumption."
In September 1980, the Johnny Jupiter store opened here. The Villager reported a month later, "its white shelves are filled to overflowing with a rainbow of colors decorating fragile and delicate cups and saucers, plates, glasses, ashtrays and many beautifully designed jars, metal hanging baskets, crocheted pillows and table cloths."
Johnny Jupiter was supplanted by Simon Pearce, described by The Villager reporter Joan Foley on December 10, 1987 as "one of the finest craft stores in the Village." A Marc Jacobs cosmetics store opened around the turn of the century, replaced in 2017 by leather goods store Tde. (short for the Daily Edited).
image via camelotrealgygroup
No one passing 385 Bleecker Street today could guess that under the gray-painted stucco is one of Greenwich Village's oldest extant buildings.
A beaut
America City, America
Or, if you prefer, the Bill Cassidys:
The measles outbreak in South Carolina is “accelerating” with no end in sight following Thanksgiving and other large gatherings, state health officials said Wednesday.
As of Wednesday, 111 measles cases had been reported in what’s known as upstate South Carolina — an area in the northwest of the state that includes Greenville and Spartanburg.
“We are faced with ongoing transmission that we anticipate will go on for many more weeks,” Dr. Linda Bell, state epidemiologist for the South Carolina Department of Public Health, said during a news briefing Wednesday.
Twenty-seven of those cases have been reported since Friday. “That is a significant increase in our cases in a short period of time,” Bell said. She attributed the spike in part to holiday travel and get-togethers, as well as low vaccination rates.
According to NBC News data, the K-12 vaccination rate for measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) in Spartanburg County was 90% for the 2024-25 school year, below the 95% level doctors say is needed to protect against an outbreak. In neighboring Greenville County, the MMR vaccination rate was 90.5%.
Avoidable sickness and death resulting directly and foreseeably from specific policy choices is the overriding legacy of Trump 2.0 and its supporters and enablers.
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whats the difference in the fatality rate between autism and measles
America City, America
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