"Move. Go elsewhere. Find meaning and joy in your life outside of NYC. It exists. This is a big country."
"I must be the one confused …. it seems. Average student debt of $38k but move to the most expensive city without a job and complain about the affordability of hip-hop dance classes?"
Those are the top 3 highest-rated comments on the NYT article "In a City of Big Dreams, Many Young Adults See a Cloudy Future/A bleak job market. Rising rents. Huge debt. In New York and other cities, traditional milestones of adulthood feel further away for some 20- and 30-year-olds."
Right under the headline, there's a photograph of a 24-year-old man, lying flat on his back in bed and clutching a pillow. He looks despondent. We're told he "feels guilty telling friends he can’t join them for dinner. He wants to start a family one day, but worries. 'I can’t even afford myself, so how am I going to afford someone else?' he said. And he laments that he can’t pursue some of the hobbies that have always brought him joy, such as hip-hop dance. Classes are too expensive: about $25."
Those are the top 3 highest-rated comments on the NYT article "In a City of Big Dreams, Many Young Adults See a Cloudy Future/A bleak job market. Rising rents. Huge debt. In New York and other cities, traditional milestones of adulthood feel further away for some 20- and 30-year-olds."
Right under the headline, there's a photograph of a 24-year-old man, lying flat on his back in bed and clutching a pillow. He looks despondent. We're told he "feels guilty telling friends he can’t join them for dinner. He wants to start a family one day, but worries. 'I can’t even afford myself, so how am I going to afford someone else?' he said. And he laments that he can’t pursue some of the hobbies that have always brought him joy, such as hip-hop dance. Classes are too expensive: about $25."
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Buck up, kiddies. Maybe "talking" to my parents about how they did it - in The Depression - might help. They had to forgo a hell of a lot more than hip-hop class...whatever the hell that is.
I felt the same way when I arrived in NYC in my mid-20s in the 1970s.
Then, I learned some good job skills and everything changed.
'hip-hop' and 'class'. That must be the first time those 2 words have ever been associated with each other, and for a different reason.
New York City has long been the ultimate destination for a subset of suburban kids from east of the Mississippi. The shiny city that would let them escape the lilliputians in the hellhole they grew up in. Most of them get chewed up, the end up some tragic version of a hallmark movie character. There must be an equivalent for those in the West. I know Bend and/or Portland OR is heaven for kids from rural WA and ID…
Move to Omaha!
Some people just love the hustle and bustle of a big ant colony.
I've been reliably informed by all the smartest people that NYC's biggest attraction is its rich bodega culture. Nothing says sophisticated like limited selection and food stamps.
It's the ambition and literalism of youth. They see themselves as capable and competitive, and thereby wish to be at the center of action. They have a lingering memory of "Mommy says I'm her special little snowflake and that I can do anything."
Young adults leave 'boring' small towns and go to big cities worldwide, be it the USA, Italy or Japan.
Quoting Frank Sinatra:
"Start spreading the news
I'm leaving today
I want to be a part of it
New York, New York
These vagabond shoes
Are longing to stray
Right through the very heart of it
New York, New York
I wanna wake up in a city
That doesn't sleep
And find I'm king of the hill
Top of the heap
These little town blues
Are melting away
I'll make a brand new start of it
In old New York
If I can make it there
I'll make it anywhere
It's up to you
New York, New York
New York, New York
..."
These guys need to hook up with those people who live in NYC on 70K a year. Maybe they should stop eating at home and go vegan.
Life of Julia - part 7.
Excerpt: "I really need to wash these smelly flannel jammies"
Sounds nearly Horace Greeley like doesn't it? Except today it would be "Go south young person."
NYC is still the most attractive big city in the USA if you like the arts and night life. And its the center of the finance and some other industries. So, the "Youth of America" will always want to live there. And least at the start.
"And its the center of the finance and some other industries."
The communists running the place are attempting to fix that.
When I was in HS, all the girls wanted to move to LA or NYC. Or weirdly Denver. Colorado was "cool" back then in the early 80s. This attraction was primarly based on fashion and TV.
The NYC was a fantasy. What fun to live in a big city apartment with your clever friends, go shopping, and see Broadway shows.
NYC used to be a "Gay magnet". It was tolerant of Gays and had a Gay nightclub scene way before the rest of the USA. And its always been the sin capital of the USA. I have a book "NY by Gaslight" from the 1880s showing what a wide open town it was. you can imagine some Ohio businessman wanting a trip to NYC so he could party.
I cant imagine any 22 yo Ivy league college grad wanting to move to Atlanta or Dallas when they could live in NYC.
No. Don't come back to Ohio. We shipped our Oberlin grads there. No givsies backsies.
NYC is simply too preposterous to take seriously anymore, except as a kind of adult Disneyland with interesting exhibits of endless variety. Really, it's a tottering edifice that's been shored up by 200 years of collateral investment from its financial center, which is pretty steadily going anywhere else, as long as it's a Republican state. Mamdani has his foot on the gas.
I don't know if there is a word for it, but I think most of us have a desire for that metropolitan thing of walking down a street around varied people, with coffee shops and delis, bookstores and boutiques, with nothing to worry about but who to meet up with for lunch. It's a childlike experience with adult tastes and activities. Whatever it's called, I know it when I feel it, and I mostly felt it as a young adult in Los Angeles. I didn't have any money, but I still could experience and enjoy it on the cheap. It's a real, very attractive thing to just hang out and people-watch. I remember being broke in the big city as some of the best times of my life - often a state of absolute joy and contentment. Having enough money changes your choices of how to spend time, and often not for the better. Choices become designed, marketed things rather than spontaneous exploration.
People that signed outlandish loan agreements aren’t going to be anywhere near realistic on where they can live and what they can afford.
You can make a lot of money in NYC if you’re willing to work and you are adaptable about what work you will do. NYC loves worker bees. If you want to work 24/7/365, you can.
I like the part about the young man who wants to have a family. You know what women say? "I don't need a man, I have my own money," which makes you wonder what they really thought about men all along, what really was the purpose of "having a man."
This kid needs some consciousness raising about women. If he was attractive to women, he wouldn't need money. Men rate women on a scale of 1 - 10, women rate men on a scale of 1 - 0, and 85% of men are rated at zero.
I left rural western PA at 23 years old with $350, which was hard to save up. Got to L.A. with $40 left, no job, no apartment, no car, no degree, no skills, no network. It started out tough, but it soon blossomed into an incredible experience that was even better than the unrealistic dreams I had for it. Amazing things happened, incredible people came into my life, and a world of new experiences just flowed around and into me. That's how I remember it anyway, but I know there were also some very lonely, sad, and desperate times. They just seem to have faded much more than the good parts. My life would have been much less if I had never taken the plunge into the big city. Best decision of my life.
i feel SUPER SORRY for people making more money than i Ever did..
spending more money than i EVER did..
with more debt than i EVER had.
oh WAIT; no i don't. i DON'T feel sorry AT ALL.
my waitress, at the local diner, who just turned 18 bought her first car (a 2009 Impala). She's SO HAPPY not to have to walk to work (like she did all last winter).
I asked her how much her car payments were?
She looked at me as if i were a stupid old person, and said:
i paid Cash.. I'm NOT going to be wasting my money on Interest.
Not ALL young people are stupid..
It sounds like the ones that are are moving to NYC
New York City without Wall Street would be Cleveland.
" It's a real, very attractive thing to just hang out and people-watch."
Ugh.
My daughter interned in NYC. She hated it. She's in banking but is willing to limit her earning potential (possibly) by declaring that she'll never live there again.
I am meh on NYC - for years when we lived outside Philadelphia, we'd go there for "fun," but because my husband is... a man of a certain frugality, we wouldn't do anything that cost money. We'd make it a day trip, go to Central Park, eat from food trucks, wander around. He, as an oil and gas finance exec, would go there for work all the time, stay in nice hotels, eat at fine restaurants. I harbor a bit of resentment to this day. (And our daughter declares that if she never sees those rocks in Central Park that her dad was always encouraging them to scramble around on in lieu of, you know, something with a ticket price, it'll be too soon.)
There be lots of NGO money in NYC. We don't want nuffin that involves a shovel or a pair of pliers.
People need to understand that young people are looking for jobs they want to do.
These are not jobs the country and the economy need done.
Our economy is weighed down by a bunch of garbage education, dei, "marketng," counseling, and government paper shuffling jobs we created so lazy people could sit and do nothing in air conditioning.
We had to close the wage gap somehow.
"I left rural western PA at 23 years old with $350"
I am originally from the rust belt town of Sharon.
Ah, New York! Hypertension from attempting to use a car in the city. Microscopic living space. Purse-snatchings. A colleague who was raped and beaten and stuffed into a garbage can in that nice central playground.
(My wife's fond memories of the place in the 80s)
Bagoh -we have the same story!
Left Pa at 24 for Los Angeles for an unpaid internship with a producer working on Titanic at the time. Didn't know a soul in LA. There was a great energy and vibe at the time, but not sure if it was the city itself or just youth. Could not convince my better half (we got married 2 years later -- we were a long distance couple for awhile) to head west.
I was a grad student in the life sciences in Manhattan in the early 90s. I had what I considered to be a solid deal: a tuition waiver and a stipend of around $18k. I shared a good sized apartment in Washington Heights with four guys, each of us paying around $300/month in rent. All things considered, I felt like I had quite a decent lifestyle for a guy in his 20s living in the city. I was able to go out, have fun, see shows, eat pretty well, and take advantage of what NYC had to offer. Granted, it was during the transition from Mayor Dinkins to Giuliani, so that helped a lot, too. The last few times I was in NYC, I was struck by how much it felt like pre-Giuliani NYC, except that Jewish people are keeping a much lower profile.
Even though I really enjoyed my time in NYC and was happy to have experienced it, I definitely was ready to move on when I finished.
FWIW, I looked up my old graduate school program. For the 2025-2026 academic year, the stipend was a little less than $49,000, which roughly is in keeping with inflation. Maybe the trick is to study biochemistry instead of urban dance.
New York City was the only place I ever visited that made me happy to return to Los Angeles. If I can live the rest of my life without ever having to visit NYC again, I'll consider myself a success.
Suck it up buttercup
Players only love you when they're playing
"I am originally from the rust belt town of Sharon."
I know it well. I'm from Butler, and went to college at Slippery Rock. Beautiful area, but not a lot to do, work or pleasure. Like so many before, California called me: ocean, mountains, beaches, girls, and jobs, in that order. It really was all there when I arrived, and I drank it all in, chugged it, actually.
I've only been to NYC a couple times on vacation. I loved it, but I would never want to live there. I need space, ease of travel, and independence. NYC is confining, inward looking, and where the hell is the horizon?
According to Al Gore NYC should be underwater by now. Pity. It could use a bath.
"Maybe the trick is to study biochemistry instead of urban dance."
The two do intersect at a couple places.
Fear not youth of NYC. Once you have handed over your income to Mamdani; he will offer free "hip-hop dance classes".
I never understood this fascination with city life. I've visited NYC several times, and they can have it. There's more to life than "a pulsing miasma of glitter and froth, hiding a diamond hard surface of heartbreak and shame."
I'm confused, this post has a tag "these kids today" yet the "kid" is a 24 year old college grad. This would seemingly confirm the "conservative, white supremacist, MAGA" belief adolescence is no longer only experienced by adolescents.
"New York has a brand. Kansas doesn't have a brand" -- Former mayor of NYC.
The country's no longer as centralized as it once was. You can do the kind of work that once was concentrated in NYC anywhere. But everywhere is more and more like everywhere else. Thus, young people are looking for that one remaining sliver of distinctiveness and "placeness" that New York retains. They think that if they live in NYC they won't be bored. They're also looking for what distance work doesn't provide - human contact with people they can "relate to."
For me, it was London. I was young, poor, and had little in the way of marketable skills. I lived in squats and run down flat shares, and absolutely loved it! I also fell in with some really genius computer guys who hired me and gave me huge (and terrifying) autonomy while paying me next to nothing. After a few years working for them, I had massive experience and skills, but I was getting pretty exhausted by life in the Big Smoke, so I moved to Dublin and started making real money. Moving to London turned out to be the smartest thing I ever did, even though it didn't really pay off while I was there.
Living that "Charity Girl" life. Just like great-great grandma did. But urban corpse are not places for jobs, they are places for lots of random sex partners these days.
But who knows, maybe it will the "The Secret of My Success" (1987). Just need to sleep with the right people.
"With the job— or at least the sense that the job was a possibility— came a feeling of comparative economic independence. With the feeling of economic independence came a slackening of husbandly and parental authority. Maiden aunts and unmarried daughters were leaving the shelter of the family roof to install themselves in kitchenette apartments of their own. For city-dwellers the home was steadily becoming less of a shrine, more of a dormitory— a place of casual shelter where one stopped overnight on the way from the restaurant and the movie theater to the office. Yet even the job did not provide the American woman with that complete satisfaction which the management of a mechanized home no longer furnished. She still had energies and emotions to burn; she was ready for the revolution."
--‘Only Yesterday An Informal History Of The Nineteen Twenties’, Frederick Lewis Allen (1931)
"Each week, scores of working girls sashay into local dance halls to flirt with men whose money barely outweighs their boorishness. These are "charity girls," who trade a kiss and a cuddle for dinner or a necklace or a new hat. They walk the wide wobbly line between "good" girl and "bad" girl, at a time when being deemed a bad girl holds many hidden dangers."
"There must be an equivalent for those in the West. I know Bend and/or Portland OR is heaven for kids from rural WA and ID…"
In Eugene in 1980, it was either San Francisco or NYC. NYC for art and music, SF for the girls who wanted to be models. Bend? Bend was where we went to ski. A few people were interested in Seattle. Portland was where you moved when you decided to abandon your big ideas and get a job.
For as knowledgeable as the average NYC pretends to be; I think the reason most never leave NYC is because most never left NYC. They don't know what life is like outside NYC, because they could never afford to leave it in the first place.
Where there's a will, theres a way. Holly Golightly and Paul Varjak both came to New York young and broke and found away in 'Breakfast at Tiffany's'
NYC chewing up and spitting the young out is a very old story. Ginger Rogers is a woman giving up on the bright lights of NYC only to have to pretend to be a child to make train fare home in 'The Major and the Minor' (1942).
bagoh20 said...
"[Biochemistry and urban dance] do intersect at a couple places."
Well played, sir!
Its time to have a draft. That kid needs to be in the US Navy fast lining onto Iranian tankers to seize them.
"they think that if they live in NYC they won't be bored."
This is still true. So is the general idea that to be 'someone' in an industry you have to be in New York (or London or Paris or LA). Especially in fields like fashion, advertising, film. Proximity helps lead to fame. And you make those connections to people you would never be able to make in Topeka. Yes, we all like to shit on NYC as much as possible, but it is still true that you need to be there if you want a specific type of success or notoriety.
Also, there are hiphop classes everywhere if one has the eyes to see. And they're free!
"New York has a brand. Kansas doesn't have a brand" -- Former mayor of NYC.
True, but the brand is rapidly becoming "Violent, filthy , decaying Third World shithole, inexplicably still astronomically expensive, but with no viable jobs for young people who do not wish to live with five roommates in a fourth floor walkup in a dangerous part of the city."
Gene Autry sang this circa 1950, appropos for NYC still:
Here comes Peter Cottontail
Hoppin' down the bunny trail
Hippity hoppin', Easter's on its way
Bringin' every girl and boy
Baskets full of Easter joy
Things to make your Easter bright and gay
He's got jelly beans for Tommy
Colored eggs for sister Sue
There's an orchid for your mommy
And an Easter bonnet too
Oh, here comes Peter Cottontail
Hoppin' down the bunny trail
Hippity hoppity, happy Easter Day
I think it's self-reinforcing. Young people want to be in NYC because there are a lot of other young people in NYC. The ones who can't afford Manhattan are in Brooklyn, which has been booming. Mamdani is trying his best to kill it, but it will take a while.
The NYC was a fantasy. What fun to live in a big city apartment with your clever friends, go shopping, and see Broadway shows.
I have a bone to pick with that "Sex and the City" show that convinced a generation of young women to covet urban spinsterhood and the degradation of serving as a sperm receptacle for the gratification of a parade of shitty men.
Among the most corrosive products of the entertainment industry in my lifetime, it is second only to the movie "Pretty Woman", which persuaded perhaps hundreds of thousands of girls that working as a whore was the way to bag a millionaire and enjoy a life of Rodeo Drive shopping sprees.
If I could wave a magic wand in 1880 or so and prevent the invention of television or movies, I'd do it. Hollywood is a sewer, and the home of some of the most evil people who ever drew breath.
I hear the real music center is Nashville. And Hollywood is in Georgia? somewhere? And finance in Houston? It's all scattered out across those long lonely miles when it used to be all in one or two places.
There must be an equivalent for those in the West.
In the little town in Arizona where I grew up in the 70's and 80's, we routinely saw an exodus of practically all of the male contingent of the high school drama club to San Francisco. 100% of those I was acquainted with were dead of AIDS within ten or fifteen years of graduation.
@Hassayamper --
This was well under way by the 1970s per the post-sexual-revolution movies that reimagined history as fun Playboy playtime all the time. This included Animal House, Grease, Porky's, etc.
That era followed the 1920s Silver Screen silent era where young women fainted to the sight of Rudolph Valentino, and where (female) "Gold Diggers of 1933" was a real film. It followed the 1950s where young girls fainted for Elvis. The 1960s where young girls fainted for The Beatles.
Mass media = no evolved human defense mechanisms for utopian fantasy relationships.
West coast equivalent to NYC: Split between LA and SF.
The hippies and granola non-shavers and potheads and the Asian alternative religion crowd went to SF.
The wannabe movie stars, wannabe rock stars, wannabe Hugh Hefner proteges/p0rn stars/harem girls went to LA.
The cultists went everywhere. Synanon. Jim Jones Peoples Temple. Moonys. Scientologists. New Age. Etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
The lovely but sad young fellow with the pillow just moved into a 2B2B apartment for $4,400 monthly and is seeking a roommate.
He's a currently unemployed software engineer, a model, a dancer and an all around swell guy.
Feder, you can contact him here if you're in the market.
A $4400 mortgage payment would fund a $1 million dollar home. In Vegas, that could be a really nice 3,000 sq. ft. house on half an acre or more. In nearby Bolder City it could include a expansive view of Lake Mead and the surrounding mountains from your backyard jacuzzi.
wildswan said...
"I hear the real music center is Nashville. And Hollywood is in Georgia? somewhere? And finance in Houston?"
And banking is moving to Charlotte, now the 2nd largest banking center in the USA.
I, too, grew up in sort of rural WI, and then moved to Seattle for grad school in 1985 with no job, no one I knew, etc. I saw it go from small-feel NW city to gleaming tech metropolis before sinking into sh**hole status. I loved it for a while. Now I don't even want to visit. There or NYC.
I'd still like to go to the Sunset Strip and see the Whiskey A Go Go and the Rainbow B&G.
I was lured away from my home by the bright lights of Oshkosh.
I never looked back.
I have a bone to pick with that "Sex and the City" show that convinced a generation of young women to covet urban spinsterhood and the degradation of serving as a sperm receptacle for the gratification of a parade of shitty men.
Lena Dunham wrote and made Girls for this exact reason.
This is the generation that thinks 40 hours is too much work. How about actually going to work?! Oh, the horror!
It would free up a lot of cheap housing in NYC for people barely able to hold an entry-level job like this slacker if they shifted all public housing residents except the elderly and disabled to some cheap, remote rural place and made them actually work and have the men and women share the costs of the children they produce.
Hollywood is quietly exiting Georgia as the more-than 100% production value tax credits dwindle. They'll find new suckers.
"New York has a brand. Kansas doesn't have a brand"
No, it has a brand. Flat, arid, and full of tornadoes. Cf: Wizard of Oz.
he Original Sex and the city is "Pillow talk". Look at the glamous life that Rock Hudson and Doris Day live. Talk about fantasy NYC. you can throw in Woody Allen's Manhattan and Annie Hall. Or all those Romcoms in the 60s set in Manhattan. Its never the Bronx or Queens.
All those boomers who flooded into New York City burned the boats and the bridges behind them. Now they make fun of the children who try to survive in New York and can't make it. "You're just not tough like we were!". Yeah but you're old out of it weak. Pathetic talking about the good old days and how awesome you were back in the day when men were men and sheep were scared
Leland @11:57, the most provincial people I've ever met live on the urban or inner-suburban East Coast and in the LA area, for exactly the reason you mention, I think: they've never lived anywhere else, and they can't imagine doing so.
New Orleans people I know are right up there too.
Howard, you'll have to pry the Bright Lights Big City* from my cold, dead hands.
*- not a boomer and never lived in NYC.
Fancy a novel about Chicago or Buffalo, let us say, or Nashville, Tennessee! There are just three big cities in the United States that are “story cities”—New York, of course, New Orleans, and, best of the lot, San Francisco. — Frank Norris, quoted by O. Henry
Los Angeles also did pretty well storywise over the last century.
"All those boomers who flooded into New York City..."
"All those progressive boomers who flooded into New York City..."
38% of NYC are foreigners. "Migrants" legal and illegal. Send them back, and the Progessive Zoomers could afford to live there.
Good point about Girls, KU.
Flocking to NYC only if their parents underwrite the very costly cosmopolitan adventure-camp of "Big City Life Experience". We know several white-collar households where parents nearing retirement are nonetheless still funding adult children who insist upon the Big City lifestyle. Their foreboding financial crash-landing is discernible.
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