What it is about 20-somethings

August 19, 2010

This upcoming Sunday Times’ Magazine article called “What is it about 20-somethings?” is sure to be a must-read among people my age, if the number of my friends who have it on their gchat status is any indication. The article looks at the trend among people in their 20s of putting off the milestones that characterize adulthood, like starting a career, a family or buying a house. Author Robin Marantz Henig profiles a psychologist who believes the 20s is a distinct stage of life for the brain, one which he calls “emerging adulthood,” because it falls between adolescence and adulthood. Unfortunately, because Henig focuses so singularly on his work, and doesn’t actually feature any 20-somethings prominently in the article, she offers little insight into why my generation isn’t getting married or starting careers as quickly as we used to. My own opinion, based on my own life and the lives of people I know, is that there are a few pretty simple reasons, and that the trend is class-based. While members of various classes may all be starting their adulthood later, it is for different reasons.

One reason is student loans. A lot of people have a lot of student loans from expensive colleges and grad programs. It is scary to start a family on loans. A second reason is that there are fewer stable careers available and more turnover. People do not generally work their way up company ladders anymore, in part because they reach ceilings above which stand people with masters degrees (which help one advance, even if not actually worthwhile) or because their jobs lack the sort of benefits that jobs used to have, like pensions, accrued vacation time and good health care plans. Also, people work so hard that they get burned out and feel the best thing to do is leave for greener pastures. And there is no way in heck it’s a good idea to buy a house in one’s 20s right now unless you’re one of the wealthy few, want to live in a cheap subdivision that has been battered by the housing crisis, or have somehow saved up a lot of money.

As the article suggests, delayed adulthood is also inspired by the numerous choices many twenty-somethings have, or feel they have, after college, whether to travel abroad, volunteer at home or Teach for America. But this is limited to a pretty small group who tend to have gone to the elite universities.

For me, the present uncertainty above all is why I’m delaying certain adulthood milestones, particularly, getting married, having children and buying a house. But at this point, I’m not even certain that it would be worth going after them, after reading so much about the instability that resulted from people’s efforts to buy themselves stability, in the form of homes, expensive higher educations and the like. At this uncertain point in history, it may make more sense to take a different path, one that eschews the false markers of adulthood and embraces the real ones, like self-reliance and shrewd risk-taking. It is a direction at least I’m willing to move toward.

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Posted by elainemeyer

Mad Men is less different from today than we think

August 16, 2010

Warning for “Mad Men” fans. This post contains an immediate spoiler about Episode 4, Season 4.

The most recent episode of “Mad Men” leaves us with a stunning image of a coming generation gap: As Peggy Olson bounds out the glass doors of her ad firm to join for lunch a group of 20-somethings wearing bright coats, her bosses at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce are standing on the other side of the glass in dark suits, preparing for a client lunch. Immediately, this image gave me chills, capped off as it was by Peggy and Pete Campbell, on opposite sides of the glass doors, meeting eyes for a second, as if to acknowledge their distance. Pete’s about to start a family, Peggy is moving ever farther from the possibility, at least at this time in her life.

And yet, I was struck that, as much as I think the show’s creatives want me to believe it is Peggy’s youth side that wins the race to the future, I think it is the men in suits that still dominate today. That doesn’t mean a youth culture doesn’t exist, but what struck me about Peggy’s young lunch group is their evocation of that fleeting period immediately post-college and pre- rest of our lives when you can still kind of be a teenager, when you don’t feel you need to make immediate decisions about a career or family or graduate school.

And let’s not kid ourselves about who is in charge today: it’s not the young people, it’s the ad people. Maybe they can’t drink at work like they used to and their jobs are less glamorous, but they still reign. Meanwhile, the guy at the West Village party who tells Peggy he would never sell himself to those forces of evil is nowhere to be seen. His spirit is a laughable hippie cliche now, why wouldn’t you sell yourself if you had the opportunity? For me, what’s been sad about watching Mad Men Season 4 is not marveling at how bad things used to be in the workplace, but how bad things still are. Not much has changed in the sense that the vapid advertising of the kind we see on the show, with the once new-fangled concept of focus groups now the awful norm, is what rules.

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Posted by elainemeyer

Would we hear such boldness this today from leaders?

August 5, 2010

As I read a book about Franklin D. Roosevelt and how he dealt with his political enemies, I wonder again and again whether any of our political leaders today would say anything nearly as bold as what he said in response to the “economic royalists” of the 1930s. Such as this analogy he made between them and a once-sick patients on the campaign trail in 1936:

Some of these people really forget how sick they were. But I know how sick they were. I have their fever charts. I know how the knees of all our rugged individualists were trembling four years ago and how their hearts fluttered. They came to Washington in great numbers. Washington did not look like a dangerous bureaucracy to them. Oh no! It looked like an emergency hospital. All of the distinguished patients wanted two things — a quick hypodermic to end the pain and a course of treatment to cure the disease. They wanted them in a hurry; we gave them both. And now most of the patients seem to be doing very nicely. Some of them are even well enough to throw their crutches at the doctor.

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Posted by elainemeyer

NYC summer dessert survey

July 27, 2010

Poll for New Yorkers, what is your favorite summer time dessert:

  • Marino’s Italian Ice
  • Mister Softee
  • Something yuppie, like Van Leeuwen

The answer you give will reveal something about you.

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Posted by elainemeyer

My neighborhood’s weird gentrification issues and our lazy police precinct

June 28, 2010

There are a lot of things I like about where I live, Crown Heights, recently profiled in the New York Times real estate section. But one thing I hate about the hood, and one thing I can assure you almost anyone who was attracted to it from reading that article would hate, is the noise. It isn’t constant–most of the time, I can get a decent night’s sleep or enjoy a quiet early evening’s dinner. But when it’s loud, it is loud. For instance, tonight, J.S. Studio, a hair salon on Franklin Ave. is having a banging party. I know. I went over there. They have a turntable in the back, on the patio. I kindly asked them to turn it down. I was really nice. I told them I had to work tomorrow. A guy who works there was really nice too. He even invited me to the party. I came in to have a water, but it’s Sunday night, and it actually didn’t look that banging. (Not many people were there). Plus, come on, I just want to chill out before I go back to work. He also promised me he’d turn it down, though not after telling me I was the only one to complain.

Anyway, I came back to my apartment and the noise has since gotten louder than before. I called the usual suspects: 311 (took about 25 minutes of holding), Police Precinct 77 (I told the officer who picked up that he could ask one of the officers who is stationed on Franklin Ave. to just walk a couple blocks and ask these guys to turn it down. He gave the typical lazy, CYA answer they give over there, which is call 311. If calling 311 did anything, Officer, I would have just kept it at that. But it doesn’t. NYPD basically tells you every chance they get that noise is not their priority, even though that is the top complaint that 311 gets and noise from businesses is a violation of the city’s code. Sometimes I wonder what we pay these people for?).

So here I sit, at 11:35 on a Sunday night, with a fan and an anti-noise machine on, a window closed, and ear plugs in, and I can still hear the drum beat of whatever awful music my neighbors are playing.

I’m not alone in my neighborhood, but one disturbing thing is the way people try to make noise complaints into issues about gentrification. When I was talking to the guy at JS Studio tonight, he mentioned that he had lived here all his life and this was typical. On that Brooklynian chat board, one commenter said this:

Outdoor parties using a pa system are normal for crown heights. didn’t u know that before moving there? why are you imposing your values and background on people who have lived there for a long time.

And the fat female friend of the guy (sorry to be mean, but she was not friendly), retorted to me that it was early. Which I really hate — when noisy people start trying to turn the tables on you about what time it is, when it isn’t their business about what time you need things quiet. (What if I worked at 4 a.m., and had to go to sleep by 9 p.m. or something. Ugh).

It’s funny, because every store owner I have talked to about the neighborhood — save maybe the owner of JS Studio if I had asked them — says it has changed a lot for the better, and I’m guessing it has something to do with more quiet, more businesses and less drug dealing. And yes, I’m sure prices have gone up, too, but that is a fact of New York that I don’t really blame on people who move in and try to make a neighborhood better. I blame it on the city government, which initiated rent deregulation in the ’90s, at the urging of landlords, most of them big landlords. I don’t see why the choice has to be affordable/noisy or unaffordable/quiet. That’s absurd. And making it into a race issue, or class issue or gentrification issue is absurd. It’s a city. You have to respect your neighbor, or love your neighbor, as the bible says.

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Posted by elainemeyer

As subway becomes a cesspool, it’s time to instate a food ban

June 22, 2010

I hate to be the guy that ruins the party, but news that most New York subway cars have become dirtier in the last year has led me to renew my call for a no-food rule similar to Washington D.C.’s metro. This is an even more practical solution in light of cuts New York has made and is continuing to make to subway cleaners, cuts that the Straphangers Campaign says is responsible for the last year’s dirtying:

The campaign blamed budget cuts at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for the decline. There were 43 fewer car-cleaners in 2009 than in 2008, and 108 more are slated to be cut in the 2010 budget.

Yeah, a no food rule in New York has been considered and rejected in the past. It would change the way a lot of people — including me — ride the train. I’ll admit to being the person eating organic sea salt and cracked pepper chips on the N today. (Yes, I succumbed in a moment of weakness to the purchase of a snack food that tries to pass itself off as being healthy, but that’s another blog post). But, like most people, I would stop my eating if I was faced with a $100 fine like what District of Columbians face. I probably wouldn’t like it, but frankly, I’d rather have clean train cars and fewer rats, of which New York’s MTA has no shortage. Maybe the MTA could enlist this guy, who came up with a pretty brilliant subway etiquette campaign a few months ago telling people not to be jerks on the subway by eating smelly food and listening to loud music.

2 Comments | New York, Quotidian, Urban and Regional Issues | Permalink
Posted by elainemeyer

There’s a new sheriff in town at the Prospect Park Y pool

June 22, 2010

Today I paid a long overdue visit to my gym, the Prospect Park YMCA, to go swimming, because it was too damn hot out to run or bike. And lo and behold, there was a new sheriff — er, lifeguard — in town, and he was laying down the law. In contrast to the practices of the average Prospect Y lifeguard, this one ordered me to go back and shower immediately. I’ve never been told to do this before, and I don’t really get the reason. After all, what they call showering really means running some water quickly through one’s hair to make oneself look damp enough to go in the pool, even though we are about to submerge ourselves in a pool. How does it clean us off to take a perfunctory “shower” before swimming? But whatever, rules are rules.

When I returned to the pool, the lifeguard would not let me sign in on the pool clipboard, something all swimmers are supposed to do to indicate which lane you plan to swim in and the color of our suits and swim caps in case the guards need to get our attention while we’re swimming. Instead, he insisted on taking my name and information. I guessed my new, officious friend was doing this because the sign-up sheet usually looks like a page of hieroglyphic scribbles, rending it almost useless.

Having made it through the red tape, I hopped in and started swimming in the fast lane. This is not my favorite lane, because I’m not fast, but the medium lane was of course full. (It always is). After swimming a few laps, I grabbed a kickboard and kicked across the pool. As soon as I got to the other side, I was approached by the lifeguard, who told me using the kickboard wasn’t allowed — only freestyle. I didn’t catch if this is only a rule that applied to the fast lane.

I didn’t totally mind this lifeguard’s fastidiousness. After all, I can get behind keeping the pool clean and efficient. But when time came for him to evict people from the lanes, i.e. when it was clear some people had been in for more than 30 minutes, he stood idly by. So I wondered, why enforce a “busy work” rule, like requiring someone to take a shower, and not enforce a rule that would allow more people to use the pool?

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Posted by elainemeyer

Hulk Hogan’s Insurance Lawsuit

May 12, 2010

It’s not everyday that an insurance case is interesting, but today, I was able to cover one that was: Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against his insurer Wells Fargo Insurance Services Southeast, which the wrestler says should have told him to get better insurance, considering his kids had recently become of driving age.

Unfortunately, Hogan’s son Nick Bollea got into a disastrous car accident in 2007 that left his friend in the passenger seat, John Graziano, in a severe coma. Hogan recently paid a settlement toward Graziano’s medical expenses, which are expected to include 24-hour a day medical care for the rest of his life. (Graziano is currently in his early 20s). The wrestler said he would have owed a lot less if he had an insurance package that covered such incidents. (I assure you, Hulk, your insurer would have fought your claim first).

In my research for the story, I was struck by the recriminations coming from all sides. Hogan’s toward his insurance company, which he said breached its fiduciary duty by not recommending more insurance to cover the wrestler’s $30 million net worth; Graziano’s family toward Hogan and their absolute defense of their son (who wasn’t wearing a seatbelt). They also tried to say he wasn’t good friends with Nick Bollea.

(Added: In fairness to Hulk Hogan, one insurance lawyer says it is Florida law to advise someone to get an umbrella policy. What I wonder is whether Wells Fargo did this and Hulk turned them down. Gotta find that sort of thing out in discovery…)

I don’t claim to know who is right in this particular case, but it just struck me how much blame-seeking goes on in our society. Some of it is deserved and necessary, especially when a lot of money is on the line, as with issues surrounding the 2008 bailouts. But some of it seems like futile efforts to divine a villain when an event is simply tragic.

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Old movies: Salesman

May 12, 2010

This 1968 documentary about four Bible salesmen from the Boston area explores the lonely and often uncomfortable world of the door-to-door salesman. We don’t see them much anymore, but in the 1960s, the nice man in shirtsleeves selling Bibles apparently was a welcome enough guest in the homes of Americans. The Maysles brothers, who made this movie and comprised its entire film crew, found the four salesmen near their Boston-area hometown.

Photo credit: DVD Times

The movie is entirely devoid of commentary or any kind of judgment or way of putting what’s onscreen into perspective. But the message is clear. These salesmen live a lonely life. When they come home at the end of a day of trying — usually unsuccessfully — to sell their expensive Bibles to Catholic families without much money, they go through the painful exercise of comparing sales with each other. Toward the end of the movie, when one of the salesmen, Paul, has had a very dry run, he is told by one of the other guys that he just needs to change his attitude.

When the salesmen are at a conference, one ambitious (or perhaps just boastful) guy stands up and says he’ll sell $35,000 worth of bibles a year because he has kids and his wife wants a bigger house. Another guy gets up and says he’ll sell $50,000 worth. You can feel our four characters’ guts wrench. Mine did, at least.

As one of the Maysles brothers say in their interview, the pursuit of money is a lonely process. “I think it’s depressing too anytime that you view people in a social situation, in a convention, where they’re really not that much together. Any kind of selling activity does not really bring people together..The film is about alienation. The salesman goes on his own lonely way from one little igloo to another, from one household to another–it’s as lonely and as difficult an existence as it is for an eskimo in the cold North. And it is the cold North because, unless he sells, he’s got no bread and butter.”

The other brother: “It’s always depressing…if your motivation in life is making money.”

The interview itself is worth watching, because the Maysles brothers answer questions like whether they render moral judgments on the four characters in the film. It is clear at least that the salesmen are nice enough guys trying to make money by selling people who don’t have money for something they don’t need. They’re not so unlike sales people today, except that it is seldom any of them knock on doors.

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Posted by elainemeyer

What we should have been talking about 30 years ago…

May 12, 2010

…Before I was born. I really like David Leonhardt and the perspective he has provided in his economics reporting at the New York Times. Today, he has an article about why the U.S. isn’t much different from Greece, in which he says:

[P]oliticians, spendthrift as some may be, are not the main source of the problem.

We, the people, are.

We have not figured out the kind of government we want. We’re in favor of Medicare,Social Security, good schools, wide highways, a strong military — and low taxes. Dealing with this disconnect will be the central economic issue of the next decade, in Europe, Japan and this country.

How right Mr. Leonhardt is. Americans expect everything to run smoothly, without delays or breakdowns, and yet we don’t want to pay for anything. People complain all the time that we’re paying too much even to ride the subway and wondering in what way money is being mis-spent by the government. Lost in this is the scary possibility that maybe we’re getting what we pay for. (We spend way too much on defense — but that’s another story).

What I wish is that politicians and regular Americans alike had been saying what Leonhardt is getting at here about twenty or thirty years ago, when the anti-tax movement was crowing away. It is that movement, after all, that has called on citizens to be skeptical of all taxes, rather than to put into perspective what we get from paying them. It is also this movement that would have us believe that all taxes are created equal and are bad, though they usually focus their energy on eliminating taxes that affect the very well-off.

But it is not usually human nature to anticipate and prepare for disaster, especially in an environment that encourages short term profit. (Such allegations have recently been foisted on BP). So it is encouraging at the same time it is unfortunate that we are just now looking at this discrepancy between what we expect of government services and what we are willing to pay. I can only believe we’re looking at it now (and not yet doing much about it) because it is forced on us by increasingly dire circumstances. So it goes…

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Posted by elainemeyer

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