Yes We Can!

Believe it or not, the difference between 480 and 460 may have caused the poll workers to not be able to find me on the rolls, since one polling place is sliced into about a dozen smaller areas by address. But that’s assuming my name wound up on someone’s rolls by election day and that the delay was just in mailing the cards out.

Either way, it’s still pretty crappy that my voter registration confirmation was sent to me 3 weeks after election day with the incorrect address. God help our democracy.

“Miso soup, solamente! Rapido, he don’t want to wait!”

If Tom Friedman were here, he’d be putting together a 1,000 word essay
about the incident and how it demonstrates globalization. But he’s
not, so you’ll have to settle for this short blog post about how this
represents globalization. Which it does quite well.

I ran into one of these ladies in the stairwell as I was carrying garbage down. As we chatted, I learned that the landlord has been negligent in repairs recently in an effort to coax out this stubborn tenant to make room for more spoiled yuppies. I could sense the struggle in her voice; she was hanging on desperately to her home, but felt increasingly lost and threatened in a changing city. “It’s too hard to live in the city these days,” she said to me.

Her story came as no surprise, as this scenario is played out time and time again in buildings throughout the city. But as we spoke, I couldn’t help but think: does she consider me to be one of these spoiled yuppies pricing her out of her home? Does she consider me an agent of gentrification?

She wished me best of luck as she moved slowly up the stairs (bad knee), and I have no doubt she holds no ill will towards me personally, but to a certain extent, I did feel like I was at least a small part of the tidal wave of change sweeping across the city and drowning people like my old neighbor.

How far will this go? Will Manhattan eventually become an exclusive playground for the rich? When will I be priced off of the island?

I do know how far landlords will go. Earlier in the day, a coworker sent me a link to this company which specializes in helping landords “relocate sub-market tenants so they can optimize their full potential of their investments.”

The tidal wave sweeps on.

Long story short, as part of my move, I had to do a lot of dry cleaning, and at 6:45 PM on a Tuesday night, I was walking down the street with my 3 suits wrapped in their obvious dry-cleaning wrappings (plastic and coat hangers).

A passer buy asks me, “Are you an investment banker?” At first, I didn’t think he was talking to me, so I just ignored him as I fumbled with my keys. But he asks again, “Are you an investment banker?”

“No,” I replied, sheepishly, “Just got a lot of laundry to do…”

“Right…It’s too early in the evening!” He replies as I enter my building.

For those of you who didn’t get it, the point of this little interaction is to highlight two nearly universal truths of New York City.

1. Investment bankers wear suits to work and do a lot of dry cleaning.
2. Investment bankers are almost never out on the street picking up their dry cleaning at 6:45 PM on a weekday due to long hours.

This obviously is not earth shattering news, but I thought it was funny that this guy called me out on the street for being so out of place.

And for those of you wondering, no, I am not an investment banker.

For the uninitiated, “opa” in Korean literaly translate’s to a female’s older brother, but can also denote other relationships between an older male and a younger female, both platonic and otherwise.

Now, can someone tell me what “opa” means in Greek?