New York Had It Coming

September 2, 2020 By Jon N. Hall

I used to love New York City. There was so much to do and see, but if one were from the heartland like me, one could be perfectly content to just walk the streets and look at architecture and people. One might seek out venues one had seen in the movies, such as in Woody Allen’s Manhattan; perhaps Elaine’s. And when one got weary from walking, one could sit down at one of two, count ‘em, two major opera houses. And after a performance one might grab a beer at that joint across the street from the Met and muse about what a wonderful city one was visiting, where the Bronx is up and the Battery’s down. It really was a helluva town.

I used to love New York City, but there’s not much left to love. In the wake of the riots and vandalism things aren’t so wonderful in the Big Apple anymore. Some have said the city is dead and isn’t coming back. Indeed, on August 13, former hedge-fund manager, author, and bon vivant James Altucher self-published NYC Is Dead Forever. Here’s Why” at LinkedIn. The article is blocked into several segments, including business, culture, food, commercial real estate, and colleges. It’s a longish article with three charts, but it’s worth your time, as it has insights that might be transferable to other cities:

NYC has never been locked down for five months. Not in any pandemic, war, financial crisis, never. In the middle of the polio epidemic, when little kids (including my mother) were going paralyzed or dying (my mother ended up with a bad leg), NYC didn't go through this.

Thousands of productive New Yorkers have left the City, and Altucher thinks they won’t be coming back. Even so, many are taking their jobs with them. They don’t need to commute to work, as they can telecommunicate to work. That’s because of the huge increases in bandwidth, Altucher tells us. Why ride the subway to work when one can fire up one’s computer and Zoom to work?........To Read More.......