11.22.2019
Midtown Manhattan Coffee Reviews! Part 1
Since I last posted in August, my professional life has changed dramatically. I am no longer a full-time day school teacher. I now work half-time as an office manager in Midtown Manhattan, as well as part-time as a DSP (direct service provider) for kids on the autism spectrum (doing CommHab work, if you know the jargon) and part-time as a freelance editor of halakhic writings. It's a lot! Coffee helps me get through it all, or at least most of it!
Thus, my current life goal: find the best-tasting cup of coffee, at the best price, between Penn Station and W. 28th and Broadway
Some of the prices may include tax and others may not. I'm not sure I was consistent in my pre-coffee-consumption morning haze.
Stumptown (W. 29th St. between Broadway and 5th Ave.) ☕️☕️☕️
Thus, my current life goal: find the best-tasting cup of coffee, at the best price, between Penn Station and W. 28th and Broadway
Some of the prices may include tax and others may not. I'm not sure I was consistent in my pre-coffee-consumption morning haze.
Stumptown (W. 29th St. between Broadway and 5th Ave.) ☕️☕️☕️
- price: $3 for a small (8 oz.) drip coffee; delicious; accept cash or credit; have half-and-half
- pros: tastes delicious; has half-and-half; close to the office
- cons: pricey
- price: $3.27 for a large (12 oz.) drip coffee
- summary: delicious; accept credit only (cash-free establishment); NO half-and-half (whole, skim, oat, and soy milk only)
- pros: delicious; have a “get your tenth cup free” deal; looks like you could sit and work there
- cons: no half-and-half; I don’t like supporting cash-free establishments because they discriminate against poor people; pricey
- price: $3.00 for a small (12 oz.!) drip coffee; $3.75 for a small (12 oz.) iced cold brew coffee
- summary: delicious; has half-and-half; very nice sip top lid; have a buy ten get one free card
- pros: tastes delicious; looks like you could sit and work there
- cons: pricey; not on the path that’s quickest from Penn Station to 28th and Broadway
- price: $1.79 for a small coffee (12 oz.), but I got a deal and paid only $1.09
- summary: I selected the bold/dark roast option, but it tasted like brown water! Also, they had whole milk, skim milk, and a bunch of those flavored coffee creamer things that taste like chemicals.
- pro: cheap
- cons: tastes like brown water; no half-and-half
Labels: coffee, economics, life, New York
5.14.2015
financial realities and non-realities of life in Manhattan
I am trying to write this from not-my-computer, but rather a mobile device, so we'll see whether it works or not. I've actually been missing blogging a lot. It feels very 2005 to me, but I miss the longer form. I've been having great conversations on Facebook and Twitter, but I am really more of a long-form person, which longtime readers probably know without my explicating it. I have 147 drafts in my drafts folder, stretching from May 2006 to October 2013, so you may seem some of those backlogged posts soon. Maybe. I thought I would start blogging again before, and that didn't happen, so it may not work this time, either.
I recently saw this posted on Facebook:
I recently saw this posted on Facebook:
The outrage is expressed in the tagline, "If you make less than $180,000 a year, you don't exist," because the Wall Street Journal infographic only includes examples of units earning at least $180,000/year. It seems quite...out of touch with actual reality for many people in Manhattan. (See: "Manhattan’s median annual household income is $66,739...where the median monthly rent is $3,100," here.)
It's not just the Wall Street Journal that is guilty of this type of oddly-skewed-to-the-wealthy-while-pretending-that-they-are-middle-class-or-poorer journalism. The New York Times is full of it. In this article ("What Is Middle Class in Manhattan?" 1/18/2013), for example, someone says that "making $250,000 a year is...maybe the upper edge of middle class." Claims like this one, that earning $500,000/year in Manhattan makes you middle class, abound.
I have a hard time with such claims. I think it's really hard for a single person to live on $35,000/year or less in Manhattan, unless (maybe) you manage to find a really cheap rent stabilized apartment in Harlem or Washington Heights or Hamilton Heights and your job comes with excellent medical, vision, and dental benefits. Maybe even $40,000, if you don't have health insurance through your job and don't want to live in a converted apartment (wherein part of the living room becomes a bedroom), in Washington Heights, or in a tiny studio, or if you don't have dental insurance or bad teeth. I am sure that it costs a lot more once you have kids. I don't know if it costs more or less if you're married. (Some people claim that it costs more and some people claim that it costs less. I think it depends on where you're coming from. Two single people sharing a converted one bedroom vs. a married couple sharing a one bedroom seems about the same to me.) But I cannot imagine that a family of four earning $200,000/year is barely squeaking by, or a family of six earning $650,000 is struggling in any way. If they are, move to the 'burbs!
Labels: economics, New York, real estate
