This is the country we live in...and I am ashamed of a story like this.

Jersey City costs $2K (and more in some areas that look out at the Statue of Liberty) per month to live in. That $2K gets you a 1,000SqFt; two bedrooms, two full bathrooms, a living room and small kitchen.

You can find places that are cheaper, even in NYC. As Jack points out, you just need to look a bit.

 

I bought a brand new 3,400 square foot house in a nice neighborhood in an excellent suburb of NYC. I really didn't want to move or have the 70-90 minute commute. But if I wanted to stay in my old 'hood in Manhattan in a doorman building with decent amenities, maybe I could have gotten lucky and found a two bedroom apartment. Maybe. And that would be before the monthly nut to the condo board, which could be as much as $2,000. And the $425 a month for the car. Which would mean that I'd need to keep leaving half of my stuff in storage (another few hundred a month) and that my wife and I couldn't have a second kid (unless we rolled the dice and hope that we had another girl). And sending my kid to a crappy public school unless I wanted to pay 30k a year.

 

Jersey City.

Isn't that a dump?

 

Only in some areas. Not in the area I'm talking. I'm referencing the Newport section near the Holland Tunnel, right on the Hudson River.

 

This also explains why no one in that part of the country seems to give a shit about the price of gas. If you don't have a car.....hell with mainstream America.

 

Pastor, our friend Yawn says you don't give a shit about the price of gas.

Since you come from "that part of the country", maybe you can address it.

 

The VAST majority. Watch a cable news report on the price of gas and consumers.

 

In the media capital of the world, you sure don't see your message in the middle.

 

I would, but it's Yawn... so I did just that.

You were late last week. Do you plan on showing up on time tonight? Nobody was happy when the tea became cold.

 

Then this must be what Pastor does. From the New York Press.com blog site....

This summer, there are a number of ways to get your literature on, and today offered the chance to do it in a shady park, or the sanctified splendor of a Chelsea Church. Bryant Park presents the Word for Word Lunchtime Reading Series, which opened earlier this month and occurs every Wednesday through August 22, at 12:30pm. The series gives you a chance to hear noted authors read in the Bryant Park Reading room, an outdoor library of sorts that was originally conceived in 1935 as a way for jobless Depression-era professionals to spend the daytime hours, no questions asked. The lunchtime series doesn’t require you to be unemployed, but I’m sure no one would care if you were. Today featured Bill Geist reading from his book Way Off the Road: Discovering the Peculiar Charms of Small Town America. Next week at the same time, memoirists Josh Kilmer-Purcell, Carole Radziwell, Kevin Sessums, and Danielle Trussoni read. Stephanie Klein hosts (42nd street between 5th and 6th Avenues).

And tonight, for one night only, finds New Yorker humorist Ian Frazier and Sue Shapiro (Only as Good as Your Word, Secrets of a Fix-Up Fanatic) hosting the 13th annual Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen reading, from 7 to 9 pm. The members of the soup kitchen’s writer’s workshop wrote essays, poems and stories that are immortalized in Food For The Soul: Selections From The Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen Writers Workshop. This event and the Word for Word series are both absolutely free. Fortunately, times have changed since the Great Depression, but it's good to know the city's literary elite are still looking out for the cash-strapped among us.

 

I took photos of it when I was vacationing there.