- James Altucher has left New York City for Miami and may never return
- In a blog post on Monday, he said business opportunities, culture and the food scene in NYC had all gone
- They were wiped out by COVID-19, then a week of riots and looting sent other residents running for other cities
- Now, crime and homelessness is on the rise which is stopping people from coming back
- It means that the city is not likely to recover as it has from every other crisis
- After 9/11, people were forced back to their office jobs because internet speed was too slow for people to work from home, he said
- Now, businesses can function entirely through Zoom
- Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, said recently there was still a need to bring people back into offices
- Facebook is also investing in New York City to try to ensure it will remain a global business center Altucher
—————-
"The food scene…" Yes there were a lot of very fine restos in the Big Crummy. They were not worth a prolonged stay in Manhattan, although I must admit that the view from a hotel room on the 20th floor across Central Park was splendid.
But, the people more than made up for the menus with their curt pushiness and frantic activity.
I never liked the place, still don't. If I live to see it in a much shrunken condition, a shadow of its former self, that will be just fine by me. pl
I don’t know if anyone has noticed but it seems that Florida is becoming the ‘new’ New York lately. Many CEOs, hedge-funds, and top-tier businesses are flocking to Florida, real estate sales are sky-rocketing, the RNC was supposed to be held in Jacksonville, Donald Trump changed his residency from NY to Florida lat year, Mar-a-Lago which is like Trump’s own private White House has seen numerous bouts of diplomacy and deal-making with foreign leaders, heck he even ordered cruise missile strikes while he was dining with China’s Xi from Mar-a-Lago…
My question is that what will happen to NYC after the apostles of Saul Alinsky et.al fully take over the City and everything? I remember AOC’s very dumb move of forcing Amazon’s new planned HQ out of the city that costed thousands of jobs and much-needed investment. Is NYC seeing a change in operation from global finance to global progressive activism?
The only thing wrong with New York was New Yorkers.
Always enjoyed a short visit but enjoyed leaving as well.
Going to visit Charleston Savana and wander along the gulf coast avoiding New Orleans this fall.
sbin
3 days was always about my level of tolerance.
I think NY was in its prime in the 20’s and 30’s.
Damon Runyon and the sportsmen and the gangsters at Billy La Hiff’s tavern, far superior to the self-adulation of the Alongquin – tho that did have Groucho and Harpo.
Its music halls – test beds for later Hollywood stars.
Harlem. The Duke.
The great journalists and writers who went out to Hollywood and wrote the timeless gangster and screwball films (though many of them came from Chicago, not NY). The Gershwins. The stunning musicals. Busby Berkeley. Fred and Ginger. Frank Sinatra.
By the 50’s it was past it, a shadow, far too self-concious and up itself. The musicals were mechanical rather than graceful. The literature – even Mailer – far too self-regarding. But there was Guys and Dolls (based on Runyon) and Rothko.
Its been downhill ever since. (Though I do like Al Pacino).
When we got back from Thailand in 77, went with the demo guy from the team (unlikely nickname: Baby-crusher) to visit his family who lived in Bed-Stuy. Damned interesting place back then. Felt a little bit safer than Udon Thani, but not much
Polish Janitor,
New Yorkers (and others from the NE coast) have been relocating to Florida for decades. Jacksonville has been run by democrats for years and the locals were happy to grind the axe against Trump and thus cancel out tens of millions in spending all those visitors would have spent. But promotion within the state and national party hierarchy would have been damaged should they have done so.
“what will happen to NYC after the apostles of Saul Alinsky et.al fully take over the City”
The same thing that happened to Detroit under Coleman Young all the way to Kwame Kilpatrick.
turcopolier
That was about as long as I could tolerate.
Going to visit small to medium sized cities and avoid the large ones for awhile.
Have a feeling things will become more contentious as election season draws nearer.
Florida relatives dislike travel to Florida’s southeast coast because people are “aggressive, surly, and talk with an unpleasant accent.”
It’s only getting worse, and it’s spreading to the Gulf Coast.
Is this a temporary phenomenon, to ensure that Florida votes Democratic?
Tom Luongo, who writes the Gold, Goats n Guns blog https://tomluongo.me observed not long ago that Florida was a prime state for secession: it had everything it needed to prosper on its own — agriculture sufficient to sustain its population; water; ports; undeveloped land; even a large Air Force!
Is the plan to shift the capital of USA, or the stronghold of US-based globalists (dogwhistle for Jewish people) to Florida?
In December 2019 or Jan. 2020, Pew conducted a poll of Jewish people, soliciting the extent of their commitment to Judaism; to Israel; their experiences of ‘antisemitism;’ and similar questions.
The poll was conducted by mail invitation to access a website, using the passcode in the mailer, that also contained $1 “for your time.” I participated. (I should have copied the questions but I didn’t.). My responses ‘qualified’ me for a follow-up poll, for which I was promised, and received, $10.
Results of the poll were to be released “by end of 2020 or early 2021.”
Poll questions were prepared by representatives across the spectrum of Jewish life.
Is some grand rearrangement of the Jewish people and their power bases taking place in USA?
Is Florida to be the new center of Jewish life, Weimar on the Atlantic? For at least 20 years even popular novelists have been aware of the extensive presence of Russian Jews in southeast Florida cities.
nb. Although the fact is rarely emphasized, the people of Westchester County, NY are keenly aware that Covid came to their towns, and thence to NYC, by means of a Jewish man who had had contact with someone who had attended an AIPAC gathering in Washington, DC.
Facts.
Putting them together does not make a “conspiracy theory,” just identifying pieces of the puzzle.
“My question is that what will happen to NYC after the apostles of Saul Alinsky et.al fully take over the City and everything?”
Street food stalls ala Bangkok with lots of barbecued mystery meats and insects.
I had my very first date after graduating 8th grade, it was a Catholic school in Bay Ridge Brooklyn (segregated by sex) and it was a tradition that one just did. My date’s father was a garbage collector and she proudly told me he made 80K a year (this was in 1964). I took her to Manhattan, she had never been there (about a 20-30 minute subway ride). We didn’t stay long as she was convinced the sky scrapers would come crashing down on us and also dumped me, “I already have a boyfriend and he’ll beat you up”.
My second date in NYC happened about 50 years later and I did wind up in the same hotel Col Lang mentioned. The rooms are on the small side but the furnishings are top notch and the view is as the Col stated.
After being stationed in 6 different countries and probably at least 50 different addresses over the years I received a letter about 4 years ago from Our Lady of the Angels church/school in Brooklyn asking me for money.
There have been in my lifetime two entirely distinct New Yorks. The first New York was characterized as a New York of neighborhoods consisting of families that could lay reasonable claim to being native New Yorkers. This quality gave ballast to everything else, including the excesses that would at times give the appearance that the city was in danger of capsizing. The second New York came into being in the early to mid 70’s, around the time of the decision of the marketing geniuses to recast the city in the ridiculous image of The Big Apple and promote it using the equally ridiculous ditty I Love NY. Then came the excess of tourists, then came the people from everywhere else because they were bored with their lives to displace the families who lived in the many neighborhoods who were entirely happy living their boring lives. Up went the Bauhaus monstrosities on the upper East Side and the rest is, alas, history. The NY Court of Appeals dispensing with the residency requirement for receiving welfare went a long way to finishing off neighborhoods from the other end, especially in the Bronx which a person falling asleep in the 1950’s and awakening today would interpret as a nightmare.
Altucher is probably right – only partially for the reasons he gives, and the reasons he gives are not the critical reasons. The combination of covid, blm madness, and an utterly disfunctional political class has put the City over on its side. Why it is unlikely to right itself is that there is no ballast; and it has been emptying itself of ballast for decades.
I think it is premature to write off NYC. Yes, there are a lot of problems. Rents are ridiculously high and getting close to unaffordable for both commercial space as well as apartments.But as vacancies rise, prices will be adjusted. I can see people moving out of NYC to the suburbs but it will remain a destination for both jobs and culture. I live in a NYC suburb and commuted into the city every day for years. Broadway shows are good enough to pull me into the city more often than I like. Yes, the NYC residents are pushy and arrogant but I don’t need them as friends I just put my head down and push along with everyone else. NYC will make adjustments and still be a megatropolis.
I think we should be cautious in wishing bad luck to New York.
The idea of talented people congregating in cities and producing things that otherwise would not be produced still seems very compelling to me. As housing costs in the Tri-State area have gone up I have wondered myself if talented people who don’t have parents to help them out will keep going there. But that is separate from hoping the New York will stop being New York.
Certainly Florida cities with all their foreign property owners and high Latino populations are not going to be the new New York for Americans. If we cannot identify the new New York we had better fight for the old New York as long as we can.
San Francisco sadly reporting the same thing – huge out-flight, increase in vacancies and police are also resigning in record numbers. Only bright spot is rents are finally dropping. But who is left to rent them? Housing vagrants in first class hotels was a social justice fail in SF too.
Same reasons people are leaving SF – loss of former attractions that come with living in this city – restaurants, entertainment, cultural life. City life does depend more on external amenities. Small town and rural life asks one to be far more self-contained.
Grew up in the Bay Area in the1950’s. The City (SF) was magical. Even downtown Oakland was a place you dressed up a bit more to visit, but hat, gloves, high heels and stockings were always required when visiting the City.
In my current smallish coastal Calif burg, we are seeing a sudden increase of fairly ordinary ranch style homes (refurbished) going for up to $4 million now. SF Bay Area prices are moving south along with Bay Area residents. Fixer upper ranch homes are now starting at $2.4 million. Huh? You couldn’t unload anything for more than $1.5 million last year. That might be worth $350K anywhere else
A belwether? Signs of the post-covid and Democrat hysteria times.
There is a BIG problem looming with all those NYawkers leaving.
There’s a very good chance that they’ll pollute their new homes with the same left-wing garbage that they voted for that has brought the city to it’s current suicidal condition.
Texans are rightly worried about the Kalifornians moving in for the same reason.
Jan 2017 – Trump’s Inaugural Address – remember the Democrat reaction? And after the Democrats won the House in 2018, the forward momentum was lost. But in 2017, DJT called them like he saw them.
Donald J. Trump – Inaugural Address – Jan 2017
………”You came by the tens of millions to become part of a historic movement the likes of which the world has never seen before.
At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction: that a nation exists to serve its citizens.
Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families, and good jobs for themselves.
These are the just and reasonable demands of a righteous public.
But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.
This American carnage stops right here and stops right now. ……..”
That was 2017
Crash landing 2018 – Democrats take back the House
2020 – nothing but two years of more Democrat carnage
Recipe for Third World Status: raid the treasury and hire the relatives.
Flavious
Likewise in Brooklyn.
Fred,
A popular bumper sticker around Detroit reads “Kwame killed my city.” What will the NYC version be? Will there by one at all? I have my doubts as the remaining population will likely be the sort of leftist dregs who lamented how Giuliani cleaned up the town in the first place. And those who’ve left can’t seem to put 2 and 2 together and realize it was their own electoral choices that failed them and compelled them to uproot from their homes. They’ll blame “the system” and move on to destroy another place. My wife and I were just considering a move to Florida to be close to her ailing father. Now we’re seriously re-thinking that move, sad as it is.
Fred,
I agree that the trend has been in effect and there is nothing essentially’new’ about it, however my point was to indicate the rapid intensification of this trend in past two or three years and even more so when you take BLM/Antifa riots and covid-19 -as strong push effects- into account too. Although Florida too has been hit hard by covid-19 in the past few weeks. And for Florida, there are many pull effects (as I mentioned several of them in my previous post) that could have the potential to turn Miami and adjacent wealthy suburbs for example to a tropical NYC minus all the hassle and progressive nonsense. With all being said, I don’t think all Democrats (especially those at the top) are extremely receptive to the progressives’ utopian agenda of turning major democrat-run cities into a socialist Timbuktu and everyday 24/7 protests flooding the street. In fact there is this clip of a townhall meeting where Pelosi is doing a Q&A with students and this very ‘softie’ college kid asks a dumb Marxist question about the prospect of abolishing capitalism nationwide, to which Pelosi promptly responds that, “look, we are capitalists, that’s just the way it is!”. In another example Dianne Fienstein is confronted in her office by a bunch of kids on the Green New Deal and she seems quite irritated by them and is trying to explain ‘certain things’ to them. The reality is that the Democrats’s shtick is based on Rawl’s “theory of justice”, i.e. using capitalism and free-markets to solve social problems, but the progressives are just out of their minds and only care about ‘power’ and ‘control’, be in terms of race, color, gender, etc.
So far they have managed to lays the ground for making Portland, Seattle, Oakland, and Chicago a socialist warzone. Will NYC be next? we’ll see
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR65ZhO6LGA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb4ddeF91-I
***
Artemesia
To some extent I agree with your observation and maybe one could propose that there is a leftwing jewish vs rightwing jewish aspect to this trend as well, with NYC increasingly becoming a leftivist bastion. Will we see the kibbutzim popping up left and right in all NYC’s five boroughs if we assume that this is the dominant trend? or a North American tel-Aviv with startups, AI and cyber security firms in high rises?
https://www.officespacesny.com/israeli-tech-companies-nyc/
https://money.cnn.com/2014/07/10/smallbusiness/israeli-startups-new-york-city/
AK
Whites and Blacks together killed Detroit.
TEEHEE
Hopefully, he will be lucky if a Chinese or a Middle Easterner buys his apt !
https://therealdeal.com/2020/08/19/steven-mnuchin-relists-park-avenue-pad-for-20-less/
AK,
“Kwame killed my city” In all the years I lived in Michigan since his arrest I’ve never seen that once nor heard of it ’til now. The leadership problems started long before him. Coleman Young gets a big share of the blame, much of it appropriately so. The current police chief seems to be a consumate professional and I hope whoever finally tries to clean up Seattle or Minneapolis doesn’t try to hire him away. Mayor Dugan and his team have done far better leading the city than I thought they would.
Polish Janitor,
As I recall your last piece didn’t mention “hispanics” which is a rather loose fitting catchall. In Miami the most powerful group are Cuban Americans, many of whom still have personal experience with a communist government, and there are many others. The influence goes North from there, with immigrants from a whole lot of South American countries and Eastern Europe thrown in the mix. Florida isn’t hard hit by Covid19, there are simply more reports and it is exactly the same at risk groups, elederly, obese and those with severe respiratory issues. It’s a severe flu season, made worse by China’s actions, a density of elderly in nursing homes (minus Cuomo’s incompetence) and media propagandizing. Local politicians are happy to jump on the power grabbing bandwagon, which is why mandatory masks on the beach and other such idiocies vary by locality. Compliance is dropping significantly too, people are fed up with them, especially with the “protest” exemptions and even the Fauci baseball game visibly showing the double standards.
Cities grow to the size that they become unliveable. New York reached that stage decades ago, as did Moscow, London Shanghai and many others.
I lived in Sydney, Australia. I moved to Brisbane, actually the satellite city of Logan. Brisbane is surrounded by several satellite cities. That is why it is still mostly liveable.
Hobart, Perth and Adelaide are still liveable because they are not big enough to become unliveable. Sydney is now becoming unliveable, and only at 5 million. Melbourne, stayed liveable longer because of satellite cities, but it is facing unliveability.
Cities have a finite limit. We ignore that at our peril.
There is an answer to James Altucher over at the Daily Mail. A venture capitalist is optimistic about New York’s future:
“In a post published on his blog AVC on Tuesday, Wilson said he believes the current state of affairs will allow the city to undergo the transformation it needs, noting that it ‘has sucked for the last decade or more.’
He says the people leaving will open up space for people committed to necessary change in New York.
“The 58-year-old said the grim circumstances will give rise to an opportunity to create a ‘better NYC’; one that is more affordable and ‘environmentally sustainable.’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8640199/Venture-capitalist-says-pandemic-allow-NYC-undergo-transformation-needs.html
https://youtu.be/-KA70hoDL7k
Food bank in Queens overwhelmed
Hope de Blasio is happy with his screwups.
J et al
These people are broke and going hungry because the Democrat politicians want to keep the economy shut down in the belief that simple minded people will blame Trump who has been trying to get the economy opened. The Democrat strategy will probably work. How many of the people in this video would EVER vote Repubican? Enjoy! Trump’s big mistake was to ever shut down the economy on the advice of deep state Democrats like Fauci.
J,
Yes, he’s re-enslaved those who had been marginally independent in one of the most over-taxed and over-regulated cities in America. His wife’s staff hasn’t missed a paycheck or a meal. Socialism in action, just like everywhere else it has been implemented.