Am I the only one,

[mawilson 2,133]

you can't live comfy in the city on $150k

I won't argue with you there, although I will say that a number of factors can make your life

in NYC a lot more comfortable on $150K.

Rent control is one - if your monthly rent payments are less than $2k, $150K leaves you

with $5-6K of monthly disposable income.

The things that most 6-figure income NYers seem to consider necessities don't even appeal to me - the $5 coffees, the boring 'designer' black clothing, the restaurants that are all hype where the food really isn't that wonderful. It will be difficult until G gets a job and we can (hopefully) find our own place but somehow we will manage - I pray that Queens still remains affordable in the next couple of years.

Boring because you can't afford it?

Or is it because the "white Wall Street people" who make a lot more money than you are all boring "azzholes"?

[rebeccajo 14]

you can't live comfy in the city on $150k

I won't argue with you there, although I will say that a number of factors can make your life

in NYC a lot more comfortable on $150K.

Rent control is one - if your monthly rent payments are less than $2k, $150K leaves you

with $5-6K of monthly disposable income.

The things that most 6-figure income NYers seem to consider necessities don't even appeal to me - the $5 coffees, the boring 'designer' black clothing, the restaurants that are all hype where the food really isn't that wonderful. It will be difficult until G gets a job and we can (hopefully) find our own place but somehow we will manage - I pray that Queens still remains affordable in the next couple of years.

Boring because you can't afford it?

Or is it because the "white Wall Street people" who make a lot more money than you are all boring "azzholes"?

Ooooh. Watch that, Mark. Your conformity is showing.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

BTW plenty of 'wall street people' aren't white.

[Jenn! 918]

I know plenty of people that have the money to buy those sorts of things, but realize that they are merely status symbols and it is not obligatory to spend in direct proportion to your income in order to ensure quality.

[mawilson 2,133]

BTW plenty of 'wall street people' aren't white.

Pattu Rani was the one who called Manhattan a "rich, increasingly white enclave".

Which is total BULL, of course - Manhattan is about as white as a kaleidoscope.

[Nasturtium 500]

I know plenty of people that have the money to buy those sorts of things, but realize that they are merely status symbols and it is not obligatory to spend in direct proportion to your income in order to ensure quality.

Which is true There is a certain bourgeoisie-ness though to being MC-- the need to collect stuff or have stuff as a sign of status. I personally don't care-- and you seem like the type to not care either To me it's about what is important-- really important-- to you and spending your money there. A car is not important to me, so I have my same, crappy, first car. What was important to me was working overseas for a while, and even volunteering to get more experience. So I spent my money in that capacity instead.

[mawilson 2,133]

I know plenty of people that have the money to buy those sorts of things, but realize that they are merely status symbols and it is not obligatory to spend in direct proportion to your income in order to ensure quality.

Agreed, although I doubt they do it because those things are boring or the food is not that great.

Ooooh. Watch that, Mark. Your conformity is showing.

Her class envy and racial hatred are showing.

[Imua 0]

BTW plenty of 'wall street people' aren't white.

For the record, I didn't say that all WS people were white - just than statistically Manhattan is becoming more white as minorities are priced out - Harlem is the most obvious example, as is Washington Heights. There was an interesting NY Times article about this a while back.

BTW plenty of 'wall street people' aren't white.

Pattu Rani was the one who called Manhattan a "rich, increasingly white enclave".

Which is total BULL, of course - Manhattan is about as white as a kaleidoscope.

Thus the qualifier 'increasingly'.

[Jenn! 918]

Come on, Pattu Rani, you know you really want a soy latte right now. Admit it!

[Imua 0]

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/...0out&st=nyt

September 12, 2007, 11:28 am

New York Shows Gain in White Residents

By Sewell Chan

New York City lost white residents in every decade since 1940 — including 361,000 white residents who left in the 1990s — but has gained more than 53,000 since 2000. Is the city population getting whiter?

As Sam Roberts explains today, if the trend continues, New York will be one of a handful of major cities — with Atlanta, Boston, San Francisco and Washington — where whites had become a minority, but where black flight has exceeded the departure of whites in recent years.

Preliminary Census data suggest that Boston became a majority-white city last year.

Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 34.8 percent of New York City’s population in 2006, a slight increase from 2005. The citywide trend was propelled by growth in Manhattan and Brooklyn, the only counties in the region where the number of white residents increased since 2005, the Census Bureau reported. The increases in those two boroughs over several years helped drive the overall citywide numerical increase since 2000 as well as the possible percentage rise since 2005, Mr. Roberts writes.

To be sure, the city’s population has historically been in flux, so the city’s distinctive diversity — exemplified in Queens, where nearly half the population is foreign-born and no racial or ethnic group makes up a dominant plurality of the population, let alone a majority — has not changed appreciably.

Nonetheless, shifts in demographic patterns, no matter how small, could have important effects on political and social dynamics in the city. New York has had only one nonwhite mayor (David N. Dinkins, who served from 1990 to 1993). With the proportion of black residents having declined relative to other racial and ethnic groups, any black candidate seeking citywide office faces an even greater imperative to assemble the kind of broad multi-ethnic coalition that Mr. Dinkins established in 1989 (only to lose four years later to Rudolph W. Giuliani).

In an interview with City Room, Madhulika S. Khandelwal, a historian, professor of urban studies and director of the Asian/American Center at Queens College, contended that the racial and ethnic categories in the Census are often too simplistic to capture demographic trends in New York City. She offered these reflections:

We talk about immigration and race as separate things, but what is actually happening is that when the Census counts people by race, they are given these large exclusive categories – white, black, Hispanic, Asian and so forth. I teach courses on immigration in New York City. Almost always, the students don’t understand these very exclusive racial categories and the way the Census divides people by race.

For example, there is a large Jewish population coming from the former Soviet Union; that’s one of the largest immigrants groups now. How would you categorize them by race? They look and say, “I’m not black, I’m not Asian, so I guess I’m white.â€

Asians have grown in every borough, but there’s not only growth in the Chinese population from China, but ethnic Chinese from Vietnam and other countries in Southeast Asia. There has also been a big growth in Indonesians and Malaysians. Also, South Asians, who are not commonly understood as Asians, have seen some of the largest growth.

There has been a large growth in the Guyanese population in the last decade or two. When they come into the United States, the question arises: Are they of Indian — what we call Indo-Caribbean ancestry — or black? What is going on in the neighborhoods, at the grass-roots level, is a lot of identity formation involving racialization, a very complex process. One way of categorizing them is as Asians, because they are of Indian ancestry. But just saying “Asian†doesn’t capture the complexity of their migration history.

The relative growth of other Hispanic groups has been pretty substantial, whereas Puerto Ricans and African-Americans have been for generations. People who under the Census are called black are in fact immigrants. They may not consider themselves African-Americans.

We also talked with Joshua M. Zeitz, a historian and author of “White Ethnic New York: Jews, Catholics, and the Shaping of Postwar Politics,†a study of Jews, Italians and Irish in postwar New York City, published this year by the University of North Carolina Press. Mr. Zeitz said he saw more signs of continuity than change in the recent Census data:

There are historic levels of immigration to New York and other cities nationwide, where the proportion of the population made up of first- and second-generation Americans is reaching the levels you saw in the early 20th century. New York City today, like the New York of 80 years ago, is made up of very self-contained enclaves. The neighborhoods remain the same, but you don’t have as self-identifiable a culture among Jews, Italians and Irish. But you’re getting entirely new ethnic enclaves of Chinese, West Indians and Dominicans, for example, that are just as self-contained, insular, and rich in culture and community as were the Italian, Irish and Jewish neighborhoods of 50 years ago. The difference is the cast of characters.

Dr. Zeitz said he did not think the slight increase in the white population and the slight decrease in the black population should necessarily be a cause for concern.

“One of the tragic current in postwar American history was the creation of so-called chocolate cities and vanilla suburbs,†he said. “The more viable a multiethnic and multiracial city is, the more it sets a model for the rest of the country.â€

Of black migration out of New York, he said, “African-Americans are exercising the same possibility of mobility that Italians, Jews and Irish did in the 1960s and 1970s.â€

Edited May 7, 2008 by Pattu Rani

[Imua 0]

Come on, Pattu Rani, you know you really want a soy latte right now. Admit it!

I do enjoy a grande green tea frappuccino on occasion, just if I made it a regular habit I would be broke...

[mawilson 2,133]

Thus the qualifier 'increasingly'.

I honestly don't see why it even matters. Increasingly white, so what?

I don't see it as a bad thing or a good thing, and I'm definitely not going to apologise for being white.

[Imua 0]

I know plenty of people that have the money to buy those sorts of things, but realize that they are merely status symbols and it is not obligatory to spend in direct proportion to your income in order to ensure quality.

Which is true There is a certain bourgeoisie-ness though to being MC-- the need to collect stuff or have stuff as a sign of status. I personally don't care-- and you seem like the type to not care either To me it's about what is important-- really important-- to you and spending your money there. A car is not important to me, so I have my same, crappy, first car. What was important to me was working overseas for a while, and even volunteering to get more experience. So I spent my money in that capacity instead.

Same here, also I chose to volunteer in a country where the dollar goes far. I am happy I got Europe out of my blood and worked in Italy when you could get 1,000 lire to the dollar - I don't think I will see Europe again.

[Jenn! 918]

Dolma, where in Italy were you? What was your job?

[Trompe le Monde 1,107]

Manhattan has definitely become more safe, but also boring. Whether that has to do with becoming "increasingly" white or the money, I couldn't say. But every time I've gone back, some great place is gone and replaced by a boutique hotel or some pncy shop selling stuff upper-middle class white people like. It's also full of fauxhemians with ironic mullets.