What do you Philly folk have to say about the mentality of this article? How can Philly struggle so much with basics, while New York doesn't know what to do with itself?

http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/cultur...721/index.html

Excerpt:

I didn't read the article, but I like philly better cause the super-rich don't live here. Sure the prices here are a little higher than the flyover states so you might have to be medium rich to afford a place overlooking rittenhouse sq, but housing is at least mostly affordable if you're able to find a decent job to commute to in, say, NYC. :-)

Can I go and kick whomever wrote that...please?

Good gawd, and the writer probably came from Bumblefluck, Nowhere before he/she got "lucky" and landed in NYC.

BTW, Kelly, we do have wealth here, they fly under the radar. It's a Quaker/Philadelphia thing.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xCiKCxfYqE

"If we can't learn from our mistakes, what's the point of making them!" ...my friend Richard.

"You are protected by the enormity of your stupidity." Mother to son Victor, in "Notorious"

Why sling the mud 90 miles south when you can go 2 miles east,south , north, or west of Manhattan. Have these people seen parts of their own city or metropolitan area?

Perhaps the first article I've ever read where I started becoming physically ill due to its contents. What a disgusting unlikeable pretentious lot.

It's eat or be-eaten in a lot of NYC. And don't let NYCers talking about themselves get you all twisted up... NYC is still not the rich-capital of the world!

London has operated on these principles for centuries, my friend. New York has only been this way since after the despair of the 1970s faded. And London, by the way, is still home to more of the world's billionaires than NYC. The shopping choices shows. NYC is way more convinent for luxury, but London is much more varied, exotic and classy. City life in Britain also requires a lot more dress-up than NYC does; so the high-end shopping is basically a staple diet--even for the common.

NYC has nothing to show to compare to Harrod's department store, the absolute quintessential department store for the entire world. Crazed people from far-off countries literally fly from whatever hovel country they live in (like... bleah... Austrialia... LOL) to beat down Harrod's door. I don't think there are many places on the planet where you can grab a £27,000 fur coat and a £1.95 quart of milk under one roof.

[And let me tell ya... when Wanamaker's was in its prime time... Harrod's even as it exists now makes Wanamaker's look like a Gap Limited Outet]

I had the pleasure of living in Earl's Court (buying in Earl's Court, while there's not much classy property there, is still extremely expensive). Most of London is brownstone after brownstone, with little back gardens and wide sidewalks. It isn't graced with a lot of skyscrapers, but the transit options there make living in a far-flung out city easy. It's nothing to live all the way up north in Wimbledon and work in the Docklands. In Philly that distance would be like the Hajj. In NYC that distance would put you past the Tapen Zee bridge.

And even with all that... London's uber-wealth just isn't flaunted. You can spot billionares going to the same theatre to the same play on the West End Savoy that cost you £50--the same what they paid for [London theater is EXTREMELY CHEAP! It is a MUST-DO if you go there!] It's also nothing to see Hollywood stars and BBC actors on the bills on many West End shows. For less than 100 pounds I got to not only see Patricia Routledge 3 rows back from center stage for an Oscar Wilde play (The Importance of Being Earnest) but I also got to chat with her at the after-play party. [And she can really sing!] And this is one of the best-known comedy actresses in all of Britain! [Molly Sugden, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders are the other ones.]


As much as telling your out-of-state friends you're paying for a $1.3 million dollar apartment in Manhattan seems to shock and awe the folks back home... in Manhattan it still means that you're a nobody! Who needs that? Is the lifestyle really worth it? Does it help your retirement or you not saving anything for floating all the debt--because most real-estate owners are not paying for their pads in cash--they're paying for it in high-ass debt.

15 years ago the very idea of buying an apartment up there was just unheard-of. All that has changed since Guliani, really. There are good sides and bad sides to everything of course, and the bad side to NYC is that basically there is an "electric fense" which keeps out most of the poor and pushes those people out into the Bronx.

Those people living here in Point Breeze probably would feel right at home, and probably would live safer in the Bronx. This is the hidden side of NYC that's not talked about much. And is the borough most have written off. "Oh don't go up there" people say.

There are some sides of Manhattan that have just started turning and there are some good deals to be had. For instance, if you really have to have a place in Manhattan--Spanish Harlem is probably the best buy right now if you need space. You can get pads for less than 300K and about the same space as most Philly high rises.

Washington Heights has not completely turned and only recently some buildings there are coming out of rent control. If you're willing to put up with almost no-subway access... this is an area to look at.

Other than those two zones (almost every Harlem brownstone has already been flipped repeatedly), you're pretty much eff'd and you're gonna have to shake that Fannie Mae heiny!

For me, if I had to jump ship from Philly but stay in the Northeast, I would just skip over NYC and go to Boston [got more extended family in Mass]. I cannot deal with drawing $100 out of an ATM machine twice a day.

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Buh-bye.

Social Manhattanites actually isolate themselves and are insular because their culture of wealth actualy limits their travel to wherever their rich friends travel. Which. of course, would be the world capitals and choice resort locales.

The more adventorous lot work in the Conde Nast Building and actually do travel to a bit more places (then splash it up in the travelogues/rags).

Suburban Newark is really weird to live in, I'd imagine as an NYC commuter. Since you spend most of your work day in Manhattan, whatever reason for you'd need to visit or tour any of NNJ? Almost everywhere in Newark you turn you'll see Manhattan, all the transit sucks you into New York, and really... there's not much spending you need to do in NJ except gas/car repairs/trips to Home Depot and maybe groceries. Everything else you can get in Manhattan and order delivery to your Jersey home... so it's just easier/simpler to shop over there.

NYC has sort-of won the city vs. suburb fight by keeping the centers of employment, in particular plus $85K salary work, in NYC. Everyplace else outside the boroughs is mostly "back office" operations. Jeez even going through MetroPark all I could think of was... even if you are the big cheese working in any one of these buildings here... you are still pond scum in the grand scheme of things... since you're 2 or 3 departments away from the top--who are still in Manhattan.

Philadelphia is quite different. We're far enough away that we have our own corporations and business ownership centered here to some degree. NYC is also quite lacking in some areas... like out-of-the-box technology companies... NYC has none of that. [Philly metro does have a few companies who do some cool electronics work, and a few other dot coms] And before our decline started, we were the world capital of textiles and manufacturing while Pittsburgh had steel.

A bonus of Philadelphia being close-enough, is that if train service ever improves (maybe with the second train tunnel on the west side), that you can actually work in Manhattan and then splurge the cost difference in Philadelphia. I've considered it many times. For what I do, I can easily ask for $120K and that is nothing over there. But over here, that more than makes up for the Amtrak tickets (or I could splurge and use Acela from time to time).


As far as Center City goes... it has one thing almost NO Manhattanite has.

The ability, in many cases, to work within walking distance from your home.

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Buh-bye.

When I lived in London (on Vincent Square), I spent some time with some really really wealthy folks. Being my 1st time in London I was a bit set back by their lack of snobbery.

I remember eating at a run down KFC the 1st week there when I struck up a conversation with a nice middle aged couple. As we left, they went out and hopped in their $350k Bentley. Ran into them again at a local pub watching a game and getting tanked. I worked with a number of mega wealthy folks, and they were all cool. Perhaps as an outsider I didnt see the true snob in them...but they were nothing like the NYC snobs I had run into in the past. Refreshing to say the least. I did spend too much $$$ at Thomas Pink and Charles Tyrwhitt...thank god for 40 hours of OT per week!

I need to visit London soon...

I'm not quite sure I know what you mean Joe. Unless we're strictly talking about the article in hand.
I often hear people complain about those same things towards recent trends in Philadelphia. The well off yuppies are an opposing threat to Hipsters, Artists, and the regular working man alike by the way some people talk in this town. You can only say that its only a CC and its surrounding enviro thats being affected. It may be true but we can't forget Manhattan is a 27 square mile island out of a 300+ city. We as Philadelphians think more of the whole picture as opposed to New Yorkers.

The article itself is typical NYT's garbage. Anyone who throws Philly in the same boat as Cleveland hasn't been to either place.

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Sarah Palin = Thomas Eagleton

The party that values "absintence only" education and rallies against fornication.

Bashing Cleveland makes us no better than the writer from NY bashing Philly. I'm not going to go there. I've never been to Cleveland but I have been to some really really dreadful parts of New York City, so I agree wholeheartedly with the above comment about who is NYC to criticize anyone? NYC has more people living below the poverty line than the entire populations of Philadelphia and Cleveland put together.

Seeing how Manhattan is 1/5 of the 5 boroughs they shouldn't be throwing stones at any other city.

By basics I mean over taxed businesses, under collected property taxes, social apathy towards crime, inhospitable environment for job creation, and cow-towing to the suburbs.

I think the city in of itself should work harder to be the attraction, but it settles for mediocrity left and right.