May 26, 2020

"There’s a closed Facebook group... called Into the Unknown, 'for those of us who have decided or are considering — willingly or otherwise — to join the exodus from NYC to greener pastures, as it were'..."

"Faced with a June 30 deadline to renew the lease on their two-bedroom duplex in Brooklyn, Naomi Mersky, 44, and her husband decided to bail. 'We know we’re lucky that we have options,' she said, but they also couldn’t keep paying rent indefinitely if their kids, ages 5 and 9, didn’t feel safe. They’ve bought chickens and are looking into starting the next school year in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, where they’re living in a summer cabin they own. Krista Sudol, 42, a mother to two young children who just lost her job in fashion 'and possibly my career,' summed up the zeitgeist bluntly: 'I love New York so much I could cry, but for the first time ever, it feels all wrong.' For many artists who came to the city to make it big and wound up waiting tables, the city’s promise that hustle and paying dues leads to achieving your dreams is starting to feel like a broken contract.... Since March, Nancy Lee, 39... confirmed she’s pregnant, gotten engaged and hunkered down with her fiance — who is also out of work — and their pug, Biggie, in an East Village studio apartment. 'It’s just resonating that I think it’s my time to leave New York,' Lee said. 'The value of living here is the way of life. And if the sexiness has worn off, then why pay the expensive price tag?'"

From "Frustrated and struggling, New Yorkers contemplate abandoning the city they love" (WaPo).

One thing about living in NYC (which I did for 10+ years) is that your lease keeps coming up for renewal, confronting you with the question whether this is where you want to be. That happens at a specific time, and you have to say yes or no. When you have a house, you can sell at any time, but you have to initiate and do the hard work of selling, and you've probably settled in and it's complicated to clear out all your stuff.

And yet, I think people who live in NYC find it especially hard to leave, because so many of them have the feeling that NYC is utterly unique and better than everywhere else. That's how I ended up living in NYC. I married a person who felt like that about New York, and my vague notions of wanting something quite different were no competition for the overwhelming power of New York. But it was hard living there. So many simple things, like getting your laundry done, become an ordeal. But at least you never think, Step One, buy chickens.

And yet... I have to Google... people who raise chickens in nyc...

I get lots of hits — like "Raising chickens in NYC: Laws, tips, and everything else you need to know" ("I think in the future, community-based urban agriculture will continue to grow because tackling food issues also allows people to tackle other social and economic issues within their communities such as racial equity, gentrification, and climate change").

People don't know how to keep it simple. It's hard living in NYC, but people make it harder for themselves. There are people who raise chickens in NYC. There are people who live in a studio apartment but get a dog — a pug named Biggie. And then there's the part where your animal-tending pastime has to be interwoven with things you're supposed to be thinking about. You've got to take care of those birds and make it feel like that's helping with climate change. And racial equity. And for God's sake put that pug on a leash.

70 comments:

readering said...

I started NYC 1977 and lasted 15 years. Have said many times, to live in NYC you need to be young or rich.

Kevin said...

From "Frustrated and struggling, New Yorkers contemplate abandoning the city they love" (WaPo).

Had to be WAPO.

"The city sucks and we're leaving" articles don't pass muster at the NYT.

Lucid-Ideas said...

A while back I made mention of how the big cities are becoming increasingly less attractive. Peoples' exhibit A...

Wa St Blogger said...

There is a lot of overhead living in a densely urban environment. Sometimes you have to experience a different kind of life for a while to realize what the difference is. There also comes a time in many people's lives when they question the assumptions they have about what really matters. NYC bills itself as a place to be, but that place is not for everyone. It is a huge marketing scheme. Some people dream of being an actor, and artist or a New Yorker. It is a level of prestige and image signalling. A for of consumerism because of the amount of money you have to spend to keep up. I read a great book many years ago called "your money or your life". For a New Yorker, how much live do they expend for the money they need to have the prestige of living in NY where they can make such great money? Oliver Wendell Douglas had the right idea.

rehajm said...

The value of living here is the way of life. And if the sexiness has worn off, then why pay the expensive price tag?

Yah. The appeal of the urban environment for us: 10 minute commute to the office- always, like Friday afternoon when everyone's sitting in traffic or a snow storm. Aren't working around a bus or train schedule. Share a car and put 5K on it a year. Walking everywhere 100 great places to get food within two blocks. Have the extra drink and stumble home if you want. 'Assisted living' at the condo building. Someone to collect the mail, the Instacart order. Friends are close by. Fly out when you get sick of it.

Now, not so much. The threat of another couple rounds of insatiable leftie government shaking down taxpayers- there's a crisis, dontchya know?

Wyoming sounds good right now...

RK said...

I'm glad they're moving to another blue state.

MadisonMan said...

On my rare visits to NYC (Manhattan), I would see people with dogs and I'd just think: What a horrible life for a dog! Cooped up in an apartment all day. And unless you're super rich and can afford a dog-walker, what a PITA for a dog owner! Taking the dog down the elevator (or worse, many flights of stairs!) just to go for a walk. Maybe things are better in the other boroughs.

Big Mike said...

What I hate about transplanted New Yawkers is that they maintain their stupid voting patterns that made New York City a place they wanted to leave. If it was up to me each red state would prevent people from moving in from downstate New York, upstate New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania, anywhere in New England, any urban area in California, or Maryland other than the panhandle or Eastern Shore.

Lurker21 said...

“Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft” -- Someone who wasn't Kurt Vonnegut

People moving to New York when young and leaving when they get older is something that's been going on for a long time. I suspect people who were attracted in the Sixties by the cities glamorous image probably got out in the Seventies when the city was going to hell.

One famous exodus happened during the Great Depression, when members of the Lost Generation left the dying city for rural Connecticut and Pennsylvania. No jobs, no money, nothing to buy. The fact that one could now buy liquor legally just about anywhere also may have lessened the city's unique appeal.

Now that Fairfield, Litchfield, and Bucks counties are pretty much full up, the (no longer so young) exodusers are looking further afield.

Michael said...

I was once offered a job in NYC. The offer was delivered at an early breakfast meeting. The offer included a driver to haul me to and from the northern suburbs where it was assumed I would live with a wife and two small children. The evening before I had walked the streets and determined that everything from laundry to groceries to schools would be impossibly difficult. I left the breakfast meeting and got in the limo they provided and we headed up the FDR to Laguadia and an airplane to another meeting. And all the way up the drive I saw streams of black Lincoln zContinentals with the little crook lamps n the backseat and saw all the men reading their papers as they were driven to Manhattan and their work. Hundreds and hundreds of black Continentals. I declined.

Susan said...

Whatever you do, NYC abandoners, do not come to South Dakota.
City folk come and look around then decide they need to have the local laws mimic the repressive cesspool from whence they came.
The next thing you know they are agitating to outlaw farming, mining, logging and multi-use of government lands.

Stay the heck away. And keep your chickens with you or the mountain lions will eat them.

Fritz said...

Big Mike said...
What I hate about transplanted New Yawkers is that they maintain their stupid voting patterns that made New York City a place they wanted to leave. If it was up to me each red state would prevent people from moving in from downstate New York, upstate New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania, anywhere in New England, any urban area in California, or Maryland other than the panhandle or Eastern Shore.


Hey, unfair, Southern Maryland is red, too.

n.n said...

In all things diversity breeds adversity. We need to shred the liberal license that socially justifies people... persons to indulge color judgments.

Howard said...

It's libtards duty to move from New York City to battleground states and defeet Trumpf

Ozymandias said...

The Cooper vs. Cooper unleashed-dog saga posted earlier illustrates the increased attraction of leaving NYC. To the extent they’d acknowledge one another at all, New Yorkers together under challenging circumstances would usually react as fellow sufferers—a wan, wadda-ya-gonna-do smile, a slight shake of the head. Now, everyone is everyone else’s potential accuser, intimidating, surveilling, collecting evidence, and calling in the cops with smart phones. NYC is now utterly unique in a much different way. Who wants to live in a city populated by hall monitors?

Michael K said...

What I hate about transplanted New Yawkers is that they maintain their stupid voting patterns that made New York City a place they wanted to leave.

Vermont was ruined by New Yorkers with second homes. Notice these people have a second home in the Berkshires.

I don't even like to visit NYC.

Jack Klompus said...

NYC - where insignificant people move to convince themselves and others that they have something unique or special to offer the world simply because they live in that overrated, overpriced hole. Robert Cook syndrome lives on.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

My brother-in-law raised chickens for awhile. Actually, it was supposed to be his grandchildren who were doing it for a 4H project, but the coop was built on his land and he ended up doing most of the work. They were free range, he opened the gate to the coop in the morning and closed it in the evening after the chickens came in to roost. The eggs were good, but it was a hassle. He would periodically use his tractor to move the entire coop to a new area because the chickens would end up eating all the grass in the fenced in area of the coop. This was out in the country. I can't imaging trying to keep chickens in NYC.

Yancey Ward said...

Well, at least these ladies didn't get spit out the bottom of the porn industry.

Michael K said...

The value of living here is the way of life. And if the sexiness has worn off, then why pay the expensive price tag?

About 30 years ago, I was talking to a well known surgeon whose office was in NYC. He told me they kept their office locked and patients had to call and say they were arriving for an appointment. Too dangerous to just let people walk in the waiting room.

What a life.

Freeman Hunt said...

"So many simple things, like getting your laundry done, become an ordeal."

I hardly ever see this mentioned, but that always seems like the biggest downside to city living.

mesquito said...

I live out in the country. I’m pretty much on a first-name basis with everyone with a mile or two. And many more out further than that. I have no wish to move or raise chickens.

CJinPA said...

Blue Staters flee the coastal big cities and move to middle America. Red Staters move to the big cities. And talk of doing away with the Electoral College goes away.

Freeman Hunt said...

Why does everyone want chickens? People are always pointing out to me that I have plenty of room for chickens. "I don't want to be a farmer."

Besides, a fox, two raccoons, and a skunk live in the yard. I don't think the chickens would like it.

Lurker21 said...

Sheep grazed on west Central Park's Sheep Meadow from the 1860s until 1934, when they were moved to Brooklyn's Prospect Park and later to a farm in the Catskill Mountains. The sheep's owners relocated them because they feared that impoverished New Yorkers would eat the animals.
-- Incredible photos of New York City when it was covered in farmland

Bay Area Guy said...

Just don't bring that leftwing NYC nonsense to other states.

Yancey Ward said...

Seinfeld covered this.

Yancey Ward said...

If you want to keep the New Yorkers out, just tell them that chickens have to be leashed.

MadisonMan said...

but (laundry-doing) always seems like the biggest downside to city living.

I hang my laundry out to dry on the line -- sunshine is the best disinfectant for odor-causing bacteria. Do people do this in the city? It seems like pollution would just make the clothes dirty again.

Amadeus 48 said...

Heh. Somebody run that tape of Trump singing the “Green Acres” theme with Megan Mullaly at the Emmies in 2006. That’ll put it all in context.

Chickens! I had a friend in college who did the full peace and love thing. He and his beautiful wife (she was a photographic model in Seventeen Magazine) went back to the farm, trying to get along as his great-grandparents had. I ran into him 15 years later at a reunion. He said the toughest thing was livestock. You could never leave them unattended. The cows needed to be milked; the poultry needed to be looked after. You couldn’t take them with you. You had to wait until your kids were old enough to leave at home with the cows.

There is a reason Jed Clampett moved to Beverly Hills.

elkh1 said...

NY is the greatest city in the world for the filthy rich who travel on limousines or land on helipads, never touching the seedy parts of the City that most people call home. Jobless, studio dwelling, exorbitant-rent paying, virus-incubating-subway riding New Yorkers are deluded fools to believe they share the glamour of the city.

readering said...

Thanks Lurker21. For someone who lived 4 years in Morningside Heights, and whose father grew up in University Heights, fascinating.

Bob Boyd said...

As someone who lives in a very nice rural state, I've become seriously concerned that the pandemic and a new, working remotely trend will turn what has been a trickle of big city folks moving here into a flood and they will totally fuck this place up.
What can be done short of seceding and building a wall?

Amadeus 48 said...

Well, we lived in London in the ‘90s. Everyone from NewYork we met thought they had gone to heaven. The folks in this article are suffering a version of Stockholm Syndrome.

London has its problems, but it is paradise compared to New York. Just as expensive, but much, much better.

Wilbur said...

Everyone ... well not everyone, says Mr. Kimball ... thinks of Green Acres in this situation.

A better comp may be The Luci-Desi Comedy Hour. It's ridiculous but funny:

From https://everythinglucy.youns.com/i-love-lucy/i-love-lucy-episode-172.html
Betty Ramsey has good news, House and Garden magazine wants to do a picture layout on the Ricardos' home; Ricky has bad news, the bills are piling up and he's slowly going broke.

Lucy suggests they raise chickens to bring in a little extra money. Very little investment is required. Lucy reasons: "What can a little grain cost, fifty cents? That's chicken feed." Ricky advertises for an experienced couple who can care for the chickens in return for a percentage of the profits, and who should answer the ad, the Mertzes. Fred's poultry experience: "For the past twenty-five years, I've been hen-pecked!"

Counting their chickens before they're hatched (literally), Lucy and Ethel buy five hundred baby chicks before Fred has a chance to finish the required coop. In the meantime, it is imperative that the chicks be kept warp, so they place the creatures in the den and turn up the heat to ninety degrees.

They then find that Little Ricky has accidentally left open the den door, and the baby chicks are crawling all over the house. While everyone is frantically corralling the birds, the House and Garden editors arrive. Unimpressed, they depart. The Ricardos don't mind, maybe next month they'll make the Chicken Breeders' Gazette.

Mr Wibble said...

Why does everyone want chickens? People are always pointing out to me that I have plenty of room for chickens. "I don't want to be a farmer."

I swear its mostly aesthetics. Blame instagram and youtube for selling upper-middle-class women the fiction of living some sort of farmhouse chic lifestyle where your kids play "close to nature" and you serve your friends a gourmet omelet made from fresh eggs and homegrown herbs or somesuch nonsense.

For men, it's appealing to someone stuck in an inside job that involves staring at a computer all day to think about a job where they work outside with their hands.

Michael K said...

He said the toughest thing was livestock. You could never leave them unattended. The cows needed to be milked; the poultry needed to be looked after. You couldn’t take them with you. You had to wait until your kids were old enough to leave at home with the cows.

Why do you think my great grandfather had 12 kids ? Even that was not enough. They had "hired girls" and "hired hands" that can be seen on the census forms. Life in the 19th century on a farm.

I once considered moving to a small town in northern California and taking over a solo surgeon's practice. The local hospital, would even subsidize it. The town surgeon wanted to retire. I thought a lot about it. The problem was you were NEVER off call. No vacations and no weekends off.

It would have been interesting and might have been fun. I sometimes think I should have done it.

Rick said...

Why would you focus on how great your city is rather than yourself? It seems an admission there's nothing interesting about you.

New Yorkers are deluded fools to believe they share the glamour of the city.

Ego management.

Michael K said...

London has its problems, but it is paradise compared to New York. Just as expensive, but much, much better.

I have two friends who live in Chichester. That really is paradise.

One hour on the train to London if you want to go there. The trouble is that a house is a million pounds. The Englishmen, as opposed to "Britons" are all moving down there. Our friends said "If you see a brown face, it is an NHS doctor."

Sebastian said...

"if their kids, ages 5 and 9, didn’t feel safe"

Due to crime? Traffic? Not, God forbid, due to non-existent WuFlu risk?

Anyway, NYC is overrated. Especially for those of us who prefer the company of people we love over the company of strangers.

It only worked as a tourist and rich-people destination. No tourists, no NYC art and music and theater. And vice versa: no restaurants and art, then no rich people. No tourists and no rich people and no art and no restaurants: then no low-wage jobs and no taxes and no social programs.

Not saying it can't come back. But the model is riskier than the virus.

Lloyd W. Robertson said...

Hmmm... domesticated chickens living in close quarters with people. Haven't we been learning about zoonotic infections? Maybe worse than dogs?
WSAVA:
"Zoonotic diseases that backyard poultry may spread to humans include salmonellosis, campylobacteriosis, and avian influenza viruses. Since the 1990s, numerous widespread outbreaks of human Salmonella spp infections linked to contact with backyard chickens have
been documented in the United States. Some humans—including children younger than 5 years, humans with weakened immune systems, humans 65 years of age or older, and pregnant women—are at higher risk for serious illness from poultry-borne zoonotic diseases."

Rocketeer said...

Chickens are fine, if you want them to be chickens and know what that means. What I don't understand are the loons I see that put them in diapers, and have chandeliers in their coops, and put flowery chintz curtains on their laying boxes, and kiss them on their breaks and let them in their houses. Hello, h. pylori.

Idiots.

And did I misread the article? I took it to mean that they are currently in their "summer cabin" in the Berkshires, plan to stay there, and have chickens there, not in NYC...

jaydub said...

One of the things I loved about living in Madrid (briefly) was having to step over the piles of doggie doo that the dog owners left on the sidewalk. In fact, sometimes it seemed that Spanish dogs were specifically bred to be able to lay a pile in the exact center of the sidewalk. That poo if left in situ has the tendency to dry out, disintegrate and become airborne. Laura Maxwell, she of the public restroom phobia, would be chagrined to learn that scientists estimate that bacteria from fecal material -- in particular, dog fecal material -- may constitute the dominant source of airborne bacteria in NYC, i.e., the public restrooms her precious progeny use may be much more bacteria free than the air they breathe.

Mr Wibble said...

I once considered moving to a small town in northern California and taking over a solo surgeon's practice. The local hospital, would even subsidize it. The town surgeon wanted to retire. I thought a lot about it. The problem was you were NEVER off call. No vacations and no weekends off.

Were you just passing through when an accident forced you to do community service?

stlcdr said...

Raising chickens...always trying to keep coyotes out...

Fresh eggs are nice, but that's also when you find out that the eggs from the store are specially selected for their aesthetics.

PM said...

First time I went to Manhattan I thought I should've been born there. Great place on the company dime. Kids educated there. Sure they came home communists, but they're both independent and employed. Gonna be a long way back to a wonderful town.

Leland said...

How can we shut that down, so the New Yorkers can stay in the paradise they created for themselves?

Michael K said...

Were you just passing through when an accident forced you to do community service?

Not sure what this refers to but I did a lot of "Community Service" running a trauma center in Orange County,

A small town setting was attractive,. Orange County was small town when I moved there in 1972. I could have stayed in LA and done heart surgery but I hated the city. You can't do heart surgery in small towns (aside from the occasional gun shot of the heart.)

Readering said...

jaydub, that is a strong memory of growing up in central London.

Churchy LaFemme: said...

Chicken are filthy, obnoxious animals.

Much better to encounter them pre-rendered into broth and nuggetts.

KellyM said...

I can't imagine raising chickens in NY - where the heck do you go with all the poo? It's more than what one could use in a garden.

But as Michael K said upstream, having livestock of any sort means your mobiity/flexibility is now kaput. Growing up we rarely took vacations due to the need to manage the livestock. It's one thing to ask a neighbor to look in and feed/water the pets but then to ask them to do the same with the turkeys and cattle we raised was a bit of an imposition.

At least with babies they're portable!

cubanbob said...

readering said...
I started NYC 1977 and lasted 15 years. Have said many times, to live in NYC you need to be young or rich."

Yes indeed. Preferably both. A half solution is to move to Philly. Center city has the urban vibe without the negative vibe of Manhattan.
As expensive as Philly is, it's still very reasonably compared to Manhattan. Of course it's still an hour plus depending on which train or bus but then again the commute from other places to the City are nearly as long. And if you really jonesing for the Manhattan feeling the trains run late or there is the weekend. Eventually one gets over it. Still, with this virus, things are not going to be normal in the City for a long time. The City is going to go to crap for quite a while. And the people there are going to have to elect another Rudy to flush the prog crap out enough to make the city livable again.

Birkel said...

Shithole city.

daskol said...

I know some families like the ones in this story: own their vacation home, rent their city places. Makes a lot of sense, once you get sick of the city, to decamp for wide open spaces if your work allows for it. It's also the beginning of summer, when many people who are able to leave the city for the island or the country. Even some folks I know who don't own a second home are taking the opportunity of remote work--most large companies, from financial firms to law firms to media--are not expecting to compel people to return to the office in 2020 (the companies are still struggling to get offices open ASAP for those who want to come in--the lonely and those without comfortable work from home arrangements). For those who think this is the death knell of NYC, or who wish it, I think you'll be disappointed. This city is constantly chewing up people, spitting them out and then more people line up to pay exorbitant rent for the experience. Will a virus do what 9/11, high crime rates or simple common sense has never been able to accomplish, and put a real lasting dent in NYC? I don't know about that. I do know that the real estate market, at least for the summer and probably the rest of 2020, is looking like a better buying opportunity than has been found in a very long time. Some interesting opportunities out there if you're bullish on NYC's longer term outlook.

Expat(ish) said...

@MichaelK - @MrWibble was referring to Doc Hollywood (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101745/) from 1991.

It's a great romcom type movie, you just have to ignore MJF's public politics.

-XC

Lurker21 said...

I can't imagine raising chickens in NY - where the heck do you go with all the poo? It's more than what one could use in a garden.

You feed it to the cows, if you aren't worried about BSE.

-----

Company the musical that was about modern marriage before it was about being gay, is also about the love-hate relationship with New York. "You're always sorry, you're always grateful" doesn't just apply to marriages.

daskol said...

I do like the quick pace here: for weeks, we've been hearing about the vigilante mask police, and they are real and legion. For a while now you could expect dirty looks from passersby if you went about outside unmasked (stores won't let you in without a mask). But in the past couple of weeks I've already seen enough backlash that people are becoming way more careful about policing masks. "What are you looking at, motherfucker," or the more polite "walk on lady, yeah, you, just keep walking"--a couple of examples of the mask police backlash I overheard while running some errands this weekend.

tim maguire said...

I lived in New York because it has an energy nowhere else has. Everything was hard there but it was worth it. Until I had a child. Then I stopped doing all the things I lived in New York to do. But all the hard stuff was still hard. So we left. I'm in Toronto now. It's a great city that quickly enabled me to build the life I wanted to build and could never have built in New York. I'm glad I left, but I miss living there. I miss the energy.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

NYC is like a a cross between an amusement park and a cult.

...eventually you get sick of the rides, but too deluded to realize.

MBunge said...

"And yet, I think people who live in NYC find it especially hard to leave, because so many of them have the feeling that NYC is utterly unique and better than everywhere else."


A lot of people would be happier and even relatively more prosperous living in Mason City, Iowa than New York City, but they've been convinced being nobodies in The Big Apple is somehow better than being somebodies in River City.

Mike

Lurker21 said...

"Nobodies" in New York City can convince themselves that they are having great adventures that "somebodies" in Mason City can only dream about. Even the problems and difficulties bring to mind Seinfeld or Friends or Neil Simon plays.

DavidUW said...

Some other article pointed out as above the NYC model: a crust of rich people and their servants.

Nothing is manufactured there, and if it is, it’s the “creative” work that can easily get done remotely.

The “middle class” drones: the associate investment bankers, mid level lawyers etc have been moved to other cities really since 9/12.
Citibank has all their juniors in buffalo. Goldman in salt lake.
Retail banking HQs are North Carolina.

If there’s nothing to keep the rich crust there- restaurants etc, well, the winter home in Florida is looking like a full year home.

None of my NY clients are waiting out the pandemic in NYC. NONE.

They’re all in: Florida, Puerto Rico, Pennsylvania, and further afield.

Joan said...

I grew up in and near Boston, but at one point spent quite a bit of time in Manhattan, to the point that I had the Delta Shuttle routine down pat and could get door-to-door in about 3 hours, including MTA to Logan, and cab from LaGuardia to 79th & York. It was a real eye-opener for me to spend time in NYC. Boston is tiny by comparison; you could literally walk from one end of Boston to the other in a few hours, whereas NY just goes on forever. NY was simultaneously the place of more-more-more people and cars and buildings and pollution, while everyone was making do with so much less: less space, absolutely tiny kitchens, smaller families, tiny grocery stores. The biggest thing there was always less of, in Manhattan? Time. You had to shop every couple of days because your kitchen didn't have anything like a pantry, and the idea that you could shop once for the week was laughable. If you had a car, you had to leave time to get it out of the garage, or heaven forbid, find a place to park it. If you didn't have a car, you sacrificed uncountable hours on public transportation, or paid through the nose to ride in the back of a creaky, often stinky, taxi.

New Yorkers (at least Manhattanites) do not experience every day life like most Americans do. It must be quite a shock when they leave.

Milwaukie guy said...

I had to help out with the chickens (4,000) any time I visited the farm as a kid. I worked two summers there in high school and it took about 3 weeks to clean the chicken house and bring in new year's pullets.

I had about 30-40 chickens in Milwaukie because Portland could only have three and Milwaukie could have 50. After you get to about 15 hens they get more hilarious. Also, in the city you get to trap predators. I trapped and drowned three raccoons In the eight years I had a chicken ranch. I had to give it up last year when the bitches gave me Parrott Fever.

I'm building goat fence around the property so I can have livestock again. Nothing wrong with urban "livestock" as entertainment. I won't be milking the goats for cheese, fer chrissake.

Michael K said...

Expat(ish) said...
@MichaelK - @MrWibble was referring to Doc Hollywood (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101745/) from 1991.


Heard about it. Never saw it. I didn't get the "driving through" reference.

That reminds me of a couple of stories about semi rural surgery practice.

A friend of mine finished his cardiac surgery training at U of Oregon. Al Starr was the chief. He was the guy who developed the first good artificial valve. Good program.

Anyway, my friend, Cordell, was looking for a place to settle. He interviewed with a group of cardiac surgeons in Spokane. Big group. Lots of Canadian patients. The first question he was asked in the interview was "Do you like to hunt and fish?" Odd question for cardiac surgery but, what the hell. He said, "Yes, I love to hunt and fish."

The reply was "Well, I'm sorry but we all hunt and fish," "We want someone who doesn't hunt and fish."

Cordell replied, "How do you expect to find someone for Spokane who doesn't hunt and fish ?"

Anyway, he settled in Tacoma.

I had a little bit similar experience in Alaska. I have an Alaska license and like Alaska. I was up there on vacation and got an inquiry about a surgery group in Palmer. I like Palmer but was suspicious. It turned out they wanted somebody to work summers. They then would all take off all summer which is the busy time with road accidents.

I once knew a guy who was the only neurosurgeon in Bakersfield. All he did was road accident head injuries.

Robert Cook said...

I Love NY.

Mike said...

"The value of living here is the way of life. And if the sexiness has worn off, then why pay the expensive price tag?"

The price tag will go down as the sexiness wears off, no?

Robert Cook said...

I will add to my previous comment:

I'm not wealthy and I do not own a vacation home or a weekend home or any kind of property. I live in a rental apartment. More New Yorkers than not are like me in the above respects, and so are more Manhattanites, to narrow it down to the part of the city most people think of when they imagine NYC, (and it's the borough where I live).

Michael said...

I'm in an REIT. One property is a 28 unit complex near downtown Portland. Between 2013-2019 median rent went from $1300 to $1900, yet average tennant turnover is just 4 units/yr. Now I get an investor alert that we may need to discount leases up to 20% to remain 100% occupied.

Michael said...

I'm in an REIT. One property is a 28 unit complex near downtown Portland. Between 2013-2019 median rent went from $1300 to $1900, yet average tennant turnover is just 4 units/yr. Now I get an investor alert that we may need to discount leases up to 20% to remain 100% occupied. Vvvvvvvvvvvv ching c.f. Vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv .gm