The Financial Godzilla

I moved to New York City right before it started to implode, apparently. It’s at the top of the job loss list, with 165,000 jobs predicted to be lost in 2009. But never mind that. You know there is something going on in the world when Washington, D.C., is in vogue, and even said to be on its way to overtake New York as the American mecca (The Daily Beast). People in New York are so distraught about the economy that bankers’ girlfriends have joined a support group to protest the hardship of less glamorous lives (tear). “It’s not fair,” I imagine them saying. “If I had known I was going to be dating someone jobless, I would have dated an artist from Williamsburg.”

I am worried that the world as New York knows it is going to change—picture all the stars deserting the West Village to live near Pennsylvania Avenue, investment bankers begging from homeless guys, people speaking to each other on the subways (if they can afford to ride it) … OK, nothing that drastic. But I do think the Great Recession is changing the Big Apple culture. Maybe in some masochistic way, I also find it to be a healthy, humbling dose for a city that has been basking in overindulgence and extravagance all through what I will call the Sex and the City Era. I feel less ashamed lately about shopping at Target and H&M. Recession fashion is totally hip (and, conveniently, has always been my fashion of choice).

Despite everything, I’m glad I got here when I did. Those other Millennials that said they’d leave Ohio in a couple years have found that the economical Ferris wheel has temporarily stopped and they are still living with their parents. I’m sure it will work out for all of us someday, but I’m glad that if I’m going to be “stuck,” I’m going to be stuck here. It’s only taken me 10 months living here to realize that New York is a resilient and irresistible place. People put on their riding boots and go to work as if it’s just another day, no matter what $50 billion Ponzi scheme was just unearthed. I have heard that after 9/11 New Yorkers bonded together in “I <3 href="http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/16/podcast-finishing-the-end/#more-4303">Max Page writes, Americans continue to embrace fantasies of the city’s destruction as a reaffirmation of New York’s greatness.


Photo by Matthew Padgett