I took advantage of the calm before the storm, to pay a visit on Saturday to my hometown, Trumpville, a.k.a. Manhattan. My college buddy had a son who was acting in an off-Broadway play (closing night, so don’t bother asking). The city I knew as a kid — which, frankly, I never liked very much — seemed as lost and far away as Peter Stuyvesant’s quaint Dutch colonial outpost did to me in 1962.
That lost city of my childhood was one in which a boy could breeze right into the Metropolitan Museum of Art on a weekday afternoon – my school was one block away from it – without the least hindrance.
The place was free. There was no “donation” shakedown at the entrance. And hardly anyone was there. Do you know why? Answer: because most of the adults on the island were at work. It was a mostly middle-class city back then.
I know. It’s hard to believe, given the more recent developments in American life – the salient one being the extreme and perverse financialization of the economy. That is actually what you see manifested on-the-ground (and up-in-the-air) when you visit New York these days. To be specific, what I saw sitting on a bench along the High Line – a walking trail built on an old railroad trestle through the former Meatpacking District into Chelsea – was all the wealth of the flyover states funneled into a few square miles of land on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean.
As I watched the endless stream of tourists and hipsters stride by in their selfie raptures, I pictured the various downtowns of the Midwest I’ve visited over the years – St Louis, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Detroit, Akron, Dayton, Cleveland, Louisville, Tulsa, and many more – and remembered the incredible desolation of their centers. There was no one there, certainly no tourists or hipsters, really no activity to speak of. They were ghost cities.
The net effect of financialization has been the asset-stripping of every other place in America for the benefit of a very few cities on the coasts, and especially the financial engineers within them.
Thus, the ironic rise of New Yorker Trump as the avatar and supposed savior of all those people “out there” in their dying hometowns and beyond. And their tremendously bitter enmity against the “blue” coastal elites, of which Trump is a nonpareil exemplar. History is a trickster.
What I also saw sitting on that bench facing west along the High Line, but also everywhere else I traipsed around the island that day, was the stupendous array of construction cranes against the sky, hoisting slender condominium towers into the clouds, many of them fifty stories and more. To me, it was a very ominous sight. Business cycles can be traced far back in history, but the cycles of these late techno-industrial times have been marked by the most extremes of extremity, and the current one is the dooziest of all.
And, of course, real estate development probably tends to greater extremes as a cycle within the greater economic cycle. Real estate booms and busts have come to characterize modern times, along with never-ending war and ecological carnage. The reason real estate rises and falls so dramatically is because it takes so much time to get these mega-projects permitted and to arrange the complex financing, and then built, then to market the units within. A project gets underway under one set of economic circumstances, and by the time it’s completed, things have changed. Say, a foreign country such as China or Russia puts capital controls on money fleeing its shores, and suddenly there are no foreign billionaires and oligarchs bidding on apartments in New York as a supposedly safe stash for their wealth. That dynamic is underway right now… as the cranes continue to hoist I-beams and glass claddings into the sky.
It’s easy to see that the skyscraper boom in Manhattan is going to end in a fantastic real estate bloodbath. It will accompany the general crash of the debt-fueled financialized economy, like the clanking, groaning, musical score of a horror movie. Unlike previous real estate debacles, these scores of skinny condo towers will not recover, even if they are sold in bankruptcy for dimes on the dollar. They may never even become slums. They will simply be uninhabitable cells in decrepitating buildings that can’t be maintained, because the capital won’t be there to enable it and the financing model based on the deconstruction of real estate rights — i.e. condo-ization — will be dead.
The skyscraper bust will also mark the end of the hypertrophy of New York and, eventually, of all mega-cities like it. They’ve exceeded a scale that will permit them to be maintained and repaired, and when financialization founders on its false foundations, there will be nothing left to support that way of life.
Cloggie on Mon, 9th Oct 2017 3:42 pm
“The city I knew as a kid — which, frankly, I never liked very much — seemed as lost and far away as Peter Stuyvesant’s quaint Dutch colonial outpost did to me in 1962.”
The first Durch governor of Nieuw Amsterdam Peter Stuyvesant was a prescient man when he wrote to this masters in the Staten in far away Holland, a political body that still exists as the oldest in the world:
“a deceitful race, — such hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ, — be not allowed to further infect and trouble our new colony… they are a “repugnant race” and “usurers””
They would take over NYC 250 years later and turned it and the fly-over hinterland into a fighting machine that was intended to conquer the world for them.
Today it is a dying city, unofficially presiding over a dying country and ditto empire, that will fail in its mission.
Today the parasites of NYC want to remove all traces of him from the city:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4824428/NYC-Peter-Stuyvesant-statue-latest-memorial-statue-war.html
But that’s OK, why would mr Stuyvesant want to remain in a 3rd world city. Time to come for ever.
http://gallivant.com/p/2013/05/old-dutch-church-1.jpg
Cloggie on Mon, 9th Oct 2017 3:53 pm
NYC today:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b1XGPvbWn0A
“In New York, concrete jungle where dreams are made up
There’s nothing you can’t do, now you’re in New York
These streets will make you feel brand new
Big lights will inspire you, let’s hear it for New York
New York, New York”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cQUoP8HVF9E
J. H. Wyoming on Mon, 9th Oct 2017 4:14 pm
I’ve been to Manhattan. What a lively place indeed. The Macy’s is a 4 story huge building and customers fill it like its a sporting event. I actually thought it was pretty cool. A cosmopolitan place where race was no big deal. People just treated people like people. It has an energy that never rests. Cooked chickens, sandwiches, deserts whatever are great even in the tiniest of stores. Get on the double decker tour bus and take a loop through – go early in the day so you can get off and go to Staten Island to see the Statue of Liberty. See the area of town Tesla and Edison worked on their ideas. See the financial district, SOHO, and there is this one block of Victorian homes converted into restaurants, each serving food from a different country foreign country. I think Kunstler is off in his assessment of the place.
onlooker on Mon, 9th Oct 2017 4:53 pm
I happen to also have grown up in NY city and know quite well what Kunstler is talking about. Middle class no longer exists in NY. Just the rich and the poor. But we may yet see the skyscrapers inhabited the the international jetset high class before it all goes BOOM. Even now living in upstate NY, I still every so often go to the city. I have seen with my own eyes those skyscrapers and have noted that they are right in the same neighborhood as Ghettos where mostly black and hispanics live. So, yes NY epitomizes so well modern Industrial civilization, appealing in its exterior in a gilded neon lighted way yet as you probe deeper you see the social costs of people living chained to pleasures and superficial satisfactions. You do not need to go to those dying Midwest cities to see extreme poverty, you see in NY just like you see extreme wealth. The problem even beyond great inequality of the few having so much and many so little, is how we threw away the future to have live in the splendor of a superficially shiny age that contained the seeds of its own destruction.
Apneaman on Mon, 9th Oct 2017 5:19 pm
Oh another Kuntsler post. Let’s get a pool going. $20 a head with the prize money going to whoever guesses closest to the number of times Davy will write the words “anti American” by the end of the thread. I’ll go first 16 times (I’m playing the average).
EVIL EMPIRE
US drone strike leaves five dead in central Yemen
http://www.yemenpress.org/ticker/us-drone-strike-leaves-five-dead-in-central-yemen.html
Bonus guess on the number of times Davy will ridiculously try and convince others that all countries are exactly the ‘same’ and thus equally ‘guilty’ because they all eat hamburgers or drive on the right or some such drivel.
The Urban Dictionary
“anti-american
disapproval of social system, politics and lifestyle in the usa.
to criticize specific aspects of american politics or society isn’t anti-americanism. if so, every politician would be anti-american… sounds logical, ehh?!
anti-American
1) Real anti-Americans are those that hate the United States to the point where they are willing to perform acts of treason and/or terrorism. (To state the blatantly obvious, see Osama bin Laden. I hate myself)
2) Those who have been labeled anti-American for disagreeing with the policies of the government and the President. (At the risk of sounding partisan, Michael Moore. I think he really does love the U.S.)
anti-American
In the UK, an anti-American is one whose outlook is generally opposed to US foreign policy, but who is not stupid enough to despise Americans as a consequence.
This stance is commonly mistaken (largely by the idiots in charge of US foreign policy) as being “anti-American”; however, just as it is quite reasonable to hate Justin Timberlake and still love music, it is easy to see how one may dissociate the US government and the American people – especially since the former was not even elected by the latter.
A minority here actually ARE anti-American as a result of US foreign policy, but they are ill-educated buffoons, and can be disregarded.
That Bush – what a total wanker. My mate Bill from Seattle agrees with me completely. Call me anti-American if you must…
by Mozzer September 12, 2004″
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=anti-american
Go Speed Racer on Mon, 9th Oct 2017 5:28 pm
Hmmmmmmmmmm
Remove the statue of Peter Stuyvesant
in NYC ?
See, this is why I think all the leftist
liberal schemes to take down statues is
dumb.
And I like that Redneck Prez Flyover Trump
said ‘statues are pretty’ and dont remove them.
I agree.
It opens a floodgate of ‘statue complaining’
and pulling down all statues and
soon the only acceptable statue that
nobody would complain about is a statue
of a minimum wage earner who works for
$11 an hour at McDonalds.
Its very obvious that the ‘anti statue’
crowd will not be satisfied until the
statues of Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson,
etc are also removed.
VERY OBVIOUS.
This is why I woudl say, dont remove
any statues at all.
Conveniently nobody listens to me, so I get
to just watch it all happen. Hope they get
a good price per pound, on all that bronze.
Go Speed Racer on Mon, 9th Oct 2017 5:34 pm
Hi Sleep Apnea,
I kinda agree with ya, I think
Michael Moore IS a Real American.
Is he right on everything? No.
Yet his never-ending criticisms and
analysis to focus on the greasy underbelly
of what’s wrong with America, this is good
and patriotic. He wants a quality, safe,
sustainable and enjoyable America,
which we really don’t have presently.
I really wish Michael Moore would be more
patriotic about his own Waistline. Obviously
at least 250 pounds overweight, he ought to
be able to afford enough shrinks, lifestyle
coaches, gym trainers and in-house organic
chefs, that I have no idea why he would
pack around an extra 250 pounds.
In that detail maybe MM is not so smart after all.
Even if he had himself 100% cleaned-up and
thin in 20 months, it would take major
cosmetic surgery after that to make him
easier on the eyes.
I’m just thinking.
Davy on Mon, 9th Oct 2017 5:37 pm
Ape, obviously it is working I got you to squeal. Lol, I guess you are worried about widdle. Understandable you pussies on the west coast of Canada need to support each other.
GregT on Mon, 9th Oct 2017 5:44 pm
More delusions.
Davy on Mon, 9th Oct 2017 5:54 pm
Grehg, you know your nickname. Lol
makati1 on Mon, 9th Oct 2017 6:14 pm
Been there. Seen that. Visited NYC in 62 and again in 2002. Times square in 62 was an interesting place to visit. Shops full of stuff from all over the world. In 2002 it was just a stressful sales gimmick for over priced name brand shit. Even Manila is more interesting and relaxing and the museums here are still free.
Go Speed Racer on Mon, 9th Oct 2017 6:33 pm
sounds like nowadays, NYC has
too many Gucci Bag stores.
Not enough chainsaw & lawnmower shops.
paulo1 on Mon, 9th Oct 2017 6:37 pm
Davy
Apnea is one of those west coast Canadians who actually work for a living rather than inherit and vacation in the Carribean by private jet. Watch your insults, boyo.
makati1 on Mon, 9th Oct 2017 6:59 pm
Coming to a neighborhood near you, Americans.
“30 BLOCKS OF BACK TO SCHOOL”
“As I inched my way down West Chester Pike in heavy traffic towards the 30 Blocks of Squalor I was seeking signs of the economic revival I keep hearing about from the mainstream media talking heads and our Make America Great Again president. Despite my efforts to see signs of an improving economic situation I witnessed a further deterioration of the suburban landscape.
More businesses have closed. More bars and restaurants are shuttered. More space available signs have sprung up on commercial properties. More unfilled potholes are proliferating on the highways. A once thriving Dairy Queen sits empty, slowly putrefying, just like the neighborhood surrounding it. The lights are mistimed at 69th Street, causing unnecessary traffic gridlock. Exasperated drivers trying to survive another commute to their soul crushing office jobs either fume silently or check the twitter feed on their iGadget. The people on the streets shuffling toward the ancient decrepit subway trains, smelling of urine and BO, look like they could be extras on The Walking Dead.”
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2017/10/08/30-blocks-of-back-to-school/#more-160079
I lived on the western end of the area described here, in Upper Darby, for several years before I moved to the Ps. It is exactly as described. This is America’s future as it spreads to the burbs and countryside. Be patient Americans.
Go Speed Racer on Mon, 9th Oct 2017 7:06 pm
I was at a Dairy Queen Friday.
I got one tiny little vanilla Sunday with sauce on it.
I got one teeny tiny little Dilly bar on a stick.
It not even enough food to keep a chipmunk happy.
Cashier said “gimme $5”
cause that was the total. I don’t think people
can afford pricing like that.
Bye bye middle class.
Theedrich on Mon, 9th Oct 2017 7:06 pm
Yankeedom wants to win the Darwin award. Its goal is to import as much subhumanity and dysgenics as possible while OD-ing on drugs to the max. Sob stories and glorification of financial celebs are used to justify it all. The bi-coastal cancers keep growing, because they have bought the country’s “democracy” while spurning its demos.
Trees, however, do not grow into the sky, as Tainter, among countless others, has pointed out. The myriads of unaccompanied stupidoes now invading the U.S., the ceaseless infiltration of narcotics into the country, the apotheosis of football gorillas as “role models” for the young — never mind what is happening outside planet USA — all this and much more portends a future of cultural and genetic devastation unprecedented in the history of homo sapiens.
But it’s what the people want.
makati1 on Mon, 9th Oct 2017 7:06 pm
“Freedom” in Amerika…
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2017/10/09/swat-teams-then-now/
The pic says it all.
JuanP on Mon, 9th Oct 2017 7:07 pm
I’ve been to NYC a handful of times. I haven’t been there
in more than 15 years and I am not likely to ever go
back. I liked the Met and Central Park. I hate the
concrete jungle.
Kunstler’s description of Manhattan’s cranes sounds just
like Miami, another city with no future.
Davy on Mon, 9th Oct 2017 7:50 pm
He doesn’t work Paulo. He lives with mom and waiting on her to die so he can money launder her property like grehg did. One of the filthy perks of Hongcouver.
Boat on Mon, 9th Oct 2017 8:04 pm
Did Harvey reflect Houston’s failure or a remarkable resiliency?
To be sure, the storm had tragic results, but it surely could have been far worse. There were 82 total
deaths from Harvey, of which 35 were in Harris County5
. In comparison, 1,836 died from Hurricane
Katrina. Seventy two thousand single-family homes were damaged or destroyed, about 5% of 1.5 million
homes in the region.
6 Two thousand two hundred apartments were damaged or destroyed, only 0.3% of
inventory7 according to the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS). Another survey by Apartment
Data Services of 80% of area apartment complexes found 9,882 damaged units, a rate less than 2%8
.
Forty of 1,200 (3.3%) office buildings suffered damage.
9 And, 300,000 vehicles were damaged.
http://opportunityurbanism.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/HurricaneHarvey_Whitepaper.pdf
fmr-paultard on Mon, 9th Oct 2017 8:12 pm
see this is why i like boat
GregT on Mon, 9th Oct 2017 8:17 pm
” so he can money launder her property like grehg did. One of the filthy perks of Hongcouver.”
Apnea doesn’t live in Vancouver, and neither did I.
More delusions.
Davy on Mon, 9th Oct 2017 8:27 pm
Hongcouver, grehg
makati1 on Mon, 9th Oct 2017 9:18 pm
The ‘deluded Missouri 12 year old’ is proving that description is spot on with every comment he makes.
GregT on Mon, 9th Oct 2017 9:52 pm
I’ve been calling it Hongcouver for much longer than most delusionalist.
Apnea doesn’t live in Hongcouver, and neither did I.
More delusions.
Cloggie on Tue, 10th Oct 2017 1:53 am
France announces it will not recognize Catalonia.
Barcelona mayor rejects Catalonian indepence.
Today is the big day. Will he or won’t he declare independence. If he does he could be in jail tonight. Spanish are tough cookies.
Cloggie on Tue, 10th Oct 2017 2:26 am
Weimerica 2017
The fashy guys on the march again in Charlottesville.
https://youtu.be/hCyZR2paGkE
Openly stated aim: break-up of the US and create a white ethno state.
makati1 on Tue, 10th Oct 2017 3:15 am
Cloggie, we are witnessing the beginning of the end of America. TPTB have engineered the chaos and it will be destroyed from within, like most of the other great empires. The Great Leveling is gaining speed.
Davy on Tue, 10th Oct 2017 6:02 am
Sure cloggie, these people represent such a tiny minority they are statistically unimportant. BTW, the Eurotard land is the one with a budding break up movement you are in denial of.
Mad cat, same old song and dance, what a waste of space on the board you flaming rabid extremist.
Davy on Tue, 10th Oct 2017 6:22 am
Look what Euroland has become and our board “Paris Berlin Moscow” still does not get it.
“Spain Readies Forces Able to Seize Catalan Leader Today”
http://tinyurl.com/y97wsbvp
“Spanish police are ready to arrest Catalan President Carles Puigdemont immediately if he declares independence in the regional parliament, according to two people familiar with the government’s plans. While a final decision on whether to act has not yet been taken, Spain’s National Police force has elite officers deployed in Catalonia who are prepared to join a raid if Catalan police try to shield Puigdemont, said one of the people. If Puigdemont makes a statement that falls short of immediate independence, the government in Madrid may stay its hand.”
TheNationalist on Tue, 10th Oct 2017 6:30 am
The best thing that could happen to North America is a split of the union. All the kikes and spics can go live in Reconquista shitholes aswell.
The gridiron will be more watchable.
deadlykillerbeaz on Tue, 10th Oct 2017 7:44 am
Hey, Jim, forget about Trump, he’s an idiot. Not that tough to figure out.
Kunstler must not be in a New York state of mind.
Kunstler gets boring, always complaining about something.
Get a life, Kunstler.
It ain’t that bad.
They told me, cheer up, things could get worse. So I cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse.
TheNationalist on Tue, 10th Oct 2017 9:10 am
Is the saying not “cheer up, things could BE worse”. Be greatful of where we are now I always say.
I saved the life of a bee today, exploring an old ruin in an area totally destroyed by Ash Wednesday (huge bushfires of’83 in our lovely Adelaide hills.). The vegetation was the thickest I’ve ever seen in 25 years but still green for now. My nephews and I could hear the killabeez buzzing and the noise filled the air and the heart.
Cloggie on Tue, 10th Oct 2017 9:21 am
Hard Brexit –> UK will join Nafta?
http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/brexit-grossbritannien-erwaegt-nafta-beitritt-a-1172253.html
Cloggie on Tue, 10th Oct 2017 9:24 am
In two hours time we will know if Puigdemont will be arrested or not.
“Look what Euroland has become and our board “Paris Berlin Moscow” still does not get it.”
Wtf has Catalonia to do with PBM?!
deadlykillerbeaz on Tue, 10th Oct 2017 9:45 am
TheNationalist, not that is a big deal if things could be worse or get worse, I’d ont much care.
Greatful is spelled grateful.
But I don’t care about spelling errers either.
Davy on Tue, 10th Oct 2017 10:40 am
“Wtf has Catalonia to do with PBM?!”
Swiss cheese unity does not make a PBM empire.
Cloggie on Tue, 10th Oct 2017 10:48 am
Rational geopolitical thinking does.
TheNationalist on Tue, 10th Oct 2017 11:25 am
Why do the the fascists in the EU always hate peoples referendums and the voices of free men?
The less power to central planning cunts the better I say. I dont even like the commie uphill gardeners in Catalonia but good on them for standing up for themselves.
Maybe they have just had enough of the muslim invasion sactioned by Brussels and that fat german woman?
Cloggie on Tue, 10th Oct 2017 11:26 am
#SignOfTheTimes
New center-right Dutch government even more strict on migration:
https://www.volkskrant.nl/politiek/live-immigratiebeleid-rutte-iii-nog-een-tandje-strenger-dan-rutte-ii~a4520978/
Preferable “refugees” should see adylum in their own region. Dutch money available for that.
Adylum for three instead of five years.
No money for adylumseekers, only housing and food.
Dredd on Tue, 10th Oct 2017 11:51 am
New York before the steroids (New White Trash: Doublewide Doublespeak).
Cloggie on Tue, 10th Oct 2017 12:24 pm
“Ally” Turkey no longer recognizes US ambassador. Threatens with breaking off diplomatic relations with the US.
The empire is shrinking, but you ain’t saw nothing yet.
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/tuerkei-recep-tayyip-erdogan-droht-mit-ende-der-beziehungen-zu-den-usa-a-1172306.html
Apneaman on Tue, 10th Oct 2017 12:43 pm
Displaced by the Storm: Texas Evacuees Without Options
The storm left hundreds of thousands of households without homes. Many are still looking.
“According to FEMA, as of October 6, 852,744 households have applied for assistance. Only 308,862 applications have been approved, but FEMA couldn’t provide numbers on how many are still pending and how many were denied. People are denied FEMA aid for a wide number of reasons, and in some cases, it might seem, for no reason at all.”
https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/displaced-by-the-storm-texas-evacuees-without-options/
Puerto Ricans fleeing their hurricane-ravaged island are pouring into the U.S. mainland
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-puerto-rico-orlando-20171010-story.html
In the end, AGW consequences will get everyone.
Cloggie on Tue, 10th Oct 2017 12:59 pm
Puigdemont chickens out, “delays” declaration of Catalonian independence:
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/katalonien-carles-puigdemont-verschiebt-abstimmung-ueber-unabhaengigkeit-a-1172312.html
Hello on Tue, 10th Oct 2017 1:46 pm
>>> Puigdemont chickens out
Sucker!
Cloggie on Tue, 10th Oct 2017 3:41 pm
European support underway in the fight against rifle addiction:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a-o9pwWUzz0
Go Speed Racer on Tue, 10th Oct 2017 4:18 pm
Clogster, come on over to the good ole
U S of A, enjoy getting fat on gigantic
hamburgers, driving gas-guzzling land-barges,
shooting guns into the air, all while
giving people you don’t even know
the middle finger.
It’s a special type of vacation extravaganza, for Europeans to come over and experience
the real U S of A. Act now the travel
package includes complimentary nights
at hooker-filled fly-over-state motels
complete with bed bugs.
makati1 on Tue, 10th Oct 2017 5:37 pm
GSR, maybe Davy will open his farm to EU ecotourists? They can enjoy the smell of all that bull shit. Oh, that’s right, he keeps goats. LOL
Davy on Tue, 10th Oct 2017 5:46 pm
dork
Go Speed Racer on Tue, 10th Oct 2017 7:02 pm
Careful Makita
He’s got a flame thrower.
Watch your back.
Hi Davy, come on over let’s drink beer
and burn couches. Your invited.