How was it that New York City was "cheap" back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s?

[TMSteele]

Cities are not as frightening, no dock-workers, no hookers.
Fran Liebowitz explains how cleaning up Manhattan quadrupled the level of tourism in her neighborhood whereby:
1.New hotels and remodeled existing residential buildings into hotels displaced old residents with misfitting tourists filling the sidewalks. They are callous to the culture.
2. The super towers are filled with "foreign land-bankers", people who invest in the residential real estate offshore but actually live there only fractionally.
They are excellerants, fueling the emergence of the desiner retail segment.
Fran calls the transformation the suburbanization of Manhattan. It is true. There are many more chain stores for tourist, MacDonalds, Starbucks than in the past. Unique businesses in the Meatpacking, Garment, Jewelry and several ethnic neighborhoods are veritable relics now.
(see Katz's Deli on 205 E Houston St. as an example)

However, in the past forty years, actual skyscrapers built for branded American Corporations have been far and few between compared to Asian cities.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I would wager that more than half of the people I grew up with in the area (less than a day's drive from NYC) had never even been to that city by the time they turned 30. Which is amazing when you consider that your late teens and 20s are supposed to be your prime years for visiting exciting cities like NYC. Though at this point most of them I surmise have caught up and gone at least once.

Whereas for my kids and their friends who are teens, NYC today is a highly desirable destination. I fully expect that when they're old enough that trips down there with friends will be a fairly regular thing - based on what I see on Facebook our local young people 5-10 years older go there all the time. (We're only about an hour further away from NYC that I was in my youth.)

Most kids from my high school usually headed up your way; either to Toronto, Thousand Islands (to drink) or MTL rather than NYC.

[James Bond Agent 007]

Check out the lyrics at 1:22.

• Video Link

[Jonesy55]

25 dollars and some loose change probably wasn't that much even back then, a bit dumb of Paul Simon to risk his burgeoning career as a songwriter for that.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I would wager that more than half of the people I grew up with in the area (less than a day's drive from NYC) had never even been to that city by the time they turned 30. Which is amazing when you consider that your late teens and 20s are supposed to be your prime years for visiting exciting cities like NYC. Though at this point most of them I surmise have caught up and gone at least once.

Whereas for my kids and their friends who are teens, NYC today is a highly desirable destination. I fully expect that when they're old enough that trips down there with friends will be a fairly regular thing - based on what I see on Facebook our local young people 5-10 years older go there all the time. (We're only about an hour further away from NYC that I was in my youth.)

Interesting because growing up in a suburb of Washington DC and then going to school in Baltimore, my family, friends and I made fairly frequent trips to NYC. Among other things my Dad was a boating fan and we used to regularly go to the annual NY Boat Show at the armory near Columbus Circle. Then, in school, my roommate was from Brooklyn and we would make trips to his old haunts. NYC wasn't that long a trip, either by car or train, from anywhere in the Washington to Boston megaplex.

[James Bond Agent 007]

Originally Posted by Jonesy55

25 dollars and some loose change probably wasn't that much even back then, a bit dumb of Paul Simon to risk his burgeoning career as a songwriter for that.

I hope you're not dissing the song, it's a beautiful little tune!

Somewhere else I read that that "$30 pays your rent" on Bleeker Street wasn't that far off in the early 60's, and even by the standards of the day it was pretty cheap.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

I hope you're not dissing the song, it's a beautiful little tune!

Somewhere else I read that that "$30 pays your rent" on Bleeker Street wasn't that far off in the early 60's, and even by the standards of the day it was pretty cheap.

Like I posted earlier, I stayed there for $1.50 a night--literally on Bleeker St. So that would be $45/month. Probably could have got a monthly discount, though.

[YSL]

San Francisco also made a dramatic comaround. San Francisco was just as grim as New York was in the 70s.

[YSL]

Originally Posted by bobdreamz

Interesting stories by all. My dad had a close friend who was single & worked for American Express back in the early 1970's and bought a single family 2 story home with a nice backyard in the Richmond Hill section of Queens for $28,000.
He sold his house in 1988 for about $250,000 and moved to Miami where he bought another home and had enough money left over to buy a vacation condo on Sunny Isles Beach which he would rent out for extra income.
By the way he made out like a bandit when the vacation motel condo was sold to a developer building a new highrise on the same property a few years ago.
The amount of wealth transfer from NYC to the Miami / South Florida area is staggering.

Then FL grandma and grandpa dies (FL is "God's Waiting Room"), and the money goes back to children who are in the North. Repeat. Kinda. Really, it's too small to make a noticeable difference. S. FL is overwhelmingly Latin American influence. Even with all of the alleged wealth transfer, Miami/South Florida is quite poor and the real per capita income is even lower today than it was 20 years ago. The exact opposite in NYC. Just 30 years ago, NYC used to be no richer than Saint Louis:

Despite all the attention focused these days on the fortunes of the “1 percent,” debates over inequality still tend to ignore one of its most politically destabilizing and economically destructive forms. This is the growing, and historically unprecedented, economic divide that has emerged in recent decades among the different regions of the United States.

Until the early 1980s, a long-running feature of American history was the gradual convergence of income across regions. The trend goes back to at least the 1840s, but grew particularly strong during the middle decades of the 20th century. This was, in part, a result of the South catching up with the North in its economic development. As late as 1940, per-capita income in Mississippi, for example, was still less than one-quarter that of Connecticut. Over the next 40 years, Mississippians saw their incomes rise much faster than did residents of Connecticut, until by 1980 the gap in income had shrunk to 58 percent.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business...iverge/417372/

^^ Also an interesting article re: the rise of NYC. NYC has had a very dramatic consolidation of wealth in the last few decades.

In addition to the massive drop in crime, NYC is super expensive because it's much richer today due to the removal of antitrust laws which regulated regional concentrations of wealth and power.

NYC was always technically the most "important" city, but power used to be more evenly spread across the country.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by JManc

Most kids from my high school usually headed up your way; either to Toronto, Thousand Islands (to drink) or MTL rather than NYC.

When I was younger I worked in tourism in Ontario and the number of American visitors (of all ages) in the late 80s and early 90s was just insane. At least compared to what they get today. It's rebounded a bit in recent years but it's nothing like what it used to be.

As for NYC, just thinking how as a teenaged boy we used to lap up movies like Warriors and Fort Apache The Bronx. It wasn't very sociological but boy did it shape our view of that city.

I did end up going to NYC - for the first time, it was around 1988, and while it wasn't like Fort Apache (at least not where we were in Manhattan) it was definitely rough around the edges. Even Times Square was pretty sketchy back then.

[pizzaguy]

Originally Posted by YSL

San Francisco also made a dramatic comaround. San Francisco was just as grim as New York was in the 70s.

Was? SF makes NYC look like a boarding school.

[Jonesy55]

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

I hope you're not dissing the song, it's a beautiful little tune!

Definitely not, I love a bit of S&G! When I want to think of 1960s America I'll go to them rather than the Beach Boys any day!

• Video Link

I happened to find myself a few weeks ago at the train station where Paul Simon wrote Homeward Bound, I can see why it made him a bit homesick. There is a plaque there commerating the song...

[chris08876]

The city itself is cheap relative to its global competition. Cities like Tokyo, Zurich, London, Hong Kong, and Moscow are far more pricier.

In terms of cost of living index, places like NY and SF are cheap when we paint a global picture on the index.

AND ... the city is relatively affordable believe it or not. Many just think Manhattan or the hipster portions of Brooklyn, but there is much more to the city. Its all about location and priorities. We just can't base 23 sq miles of the city as the standard for the whole place (302 sq miles).

[YSL]

Originally Posted by chris08876

The city itself is cheap relative to its global competition. Cities like Tokyo, Zurich, London, Hong Kong, and Moscow are far more pricier.

In terms of cost of living index, places like NY and SF are cheap when we paint a global picture on the index.

AND ... the city is relatively affordable believe it or not. Many just think Manhattan or the hipster portions of Brooklyn, but there is much more to the city. Its all about location and priorities. We just can't base 23 sq miles of the city as the standard for the whole place (302 sq miles).

London is no longer more expensive than NY or SF.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by chris08876

The city itself is cheap relative to its global competition. Cities like Tokyo, Zurich, London, Hong Kong, and Moscow are far more pricier.

In terms of cost of living index, places like NY and SF are cheap when we paint a global picture on the index.

No, not so, at least when it comes to rent:

A new report shows how much it costs to rent a one-bedroom apartment in the world's 30 leading financial centers.

30. Casablanca, Morocco
Average cost of rent: $820/month

29. Montreal, Canada
Average cost of rent: $850/month

28. Taipei, Taiwan
Average cost of rent: $910/month

27. Munich, Germany
Average cost of rent: $1,110/month

26. Toronto, Canada
Average cost of rent: $1,200/month

25. Frankfurt, Germany
Average cost of rent: $1,350/month

24. Vancouver, Canada
Average cost of rent: $1,400/month

23. Osaka, Japan
Average cost of rent: $1,440/month

22. Shenzhen, China
Average cost of rent: $1,520/month

21. Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Average cost of rent: $1,530/month

20. London, UK
Average cost of rent: $1,650/month

19. Cayman Islands
Average cost of rent: $1,680/month

18. Melbourne, Australia
Average cost of rent: $1,690/month

17. Chicago, IL
Average cost of rent: $1,720/month

16. Paris, France
Average cost of rent: $1,730/month

15. Beijing, China
Average cost of rent: $1,900/month

14. Shanghai, China
Average cost of rent: $1,910/month

13. Washington D.C.
Average cost of rent: $1,940/month

12. Seoul, South Korea
Average cost of rent: $1,990/month

11. Los Angeles, CA
Average cost of rent: $2,030/month

10. Dubai, United Arab Emirates (TIE)
Average cost of rent: $2,040/month

10. Sydney, Australia (TIE)
Average cost of rent: $2,040/month

8. Tokyo, Japan (TIE)
Average cost of rent: $2,050/month

8. Singapore, Singapore (TIE)
Average cost of rent: $2,050/month

6. Zurich, Switzerland
Average cost of rent: $2,200/month

5. Geneva, Switzerland
Average cost of rent: $2,320/month

4. Hong Kong
Average cost of rent: $2,740/month

3. Boston, MA
Average cost of rent: $2,930/month

2. San Francisco, CA
Average cost of rent: $3,360/month

1. New York City, NY
Average cost of rent: $3,680/month

http://www.thisisinsider.com/one-bed...rancisco-ca-29

[jd3189]

^^^ Is that study taking into account all of the Five Boroughs or just Manhattan and the nearby parts of Brooklyn?

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I would wager that more than half of the people I grew up with in the area (less than a day's drive from NYC) had never even been to that city by the time they turned 30. Which is amazing when you consider that your late teens and 20s are supposed to be your prime years for visiting exciting cities like NYC. Though at this point most of them I surmise have caught up and gone at least once.

Whereas for my kids and their friends who are teens, NYC today is a highly desirable destination. I fully expect that when they're old enough that trips down there with friends will be a fairly regular thing - based on what I see on Facebook our local young people 5-10 years older go there all the time. (We're only about an hour further away from NYC that I was in my youth.)

Like JMac, the kids in my high school (metro Boston) would go up to Montreal for the weekend instead of staying in Boston or going to NYC. This was in the mid 90s, and the drinking age in Quebec was 18 (edit: just checked, looks like it's still 18). Greyhounds could get you there in about 7 hours, so you'd leave Friday night and wake up in Montreal Saturday morning.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by Acajack

When I was younger I worked in tourism in Ontario and the number of American visitors (of all ages) in the late 80s and early 90s was just insane. At least compared to what they get today. It's rebounded a bit in recent years but it's nothing like what it used to be.

Why did the American visitor numbers drop? The passport requirement didn't happen until the 2000s, so it shouldn't have been the reason. Plus, the American dollar was strong relative to the Canadian through the 2000s.

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

No, not so, at least when it comes to rent:


http://www.thisisinsider.com/one-bed...rancisco-ca-29

I'd take this list with a grain of salt. I read the methodology and they're just ranking on monthly rents for a single bedroom, 600-900 sq foot apartment. They don't take into account ancillary costs; for example, in Tokyo, you will have to pay 2 months' rent upfront for a deposit, plus 2 month's rent worth of "key money" which goes to the unit owner as a thanks for giving you the privilege of renting the unit and is nonrefundable, and then you have to pay one month's rent in advance. You often have to pay the key money again to re-lease the unit once your standard 2-year contract is up, too. You'll never see the deposit back, either; the unit owner will always find something which needs repair and which is very much your fault for needing repairs.

If the average monthly rent in Tokyo is according to the article $2050 . . . the actual monthly for that first year is ((2050 x 12 monthly rent) + (2050 x 2 key money) + (2050 x 2 deposit)) / 12 = $2733 a month, or a full 33% above the article's quoted number.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Shawn

Like JMac, the kids in my high school (metro Boston) would go up to Montreal for the weekend instead of staying in Boston or going to NYC. This was in the mid 90s, and the drinking age in Quebec was 18 (edit: just checked, looks like it's still 18). Greyhounds could get you there in about 7 hours, so you'd leave Friday night and wake up in Montreal Saturday morning.

It's always been 18 for as long as I can remember (probably decades, we could just google it...)

I later realized we are one of the few jurisdictions on this continent that "does things right" in my opinion i.e. we have one single threshold for adulthood (18) and that's that. Seems crazy to me to think there are places where you can vote the next government into power (or buy an assault rifle) yet aren't considered mature enough to choose to buy a beer or cigarettes