Submit News News
The Decline and Fall of the Bachelor Pad
- November 07, 2009 00:11:41
- Read all 16 comments
- +5 raves
- BACHELORS always seemed to have it made. With only themselves to support, they could flash their cash and trick out their apartments in such a way that James Bond himself would feel at home shaking himself a martini in their ultra-cool, chick-magnet pads.
Then the recession thundered in, and suddenly young men found themselves one of the hardest hit demographic segments.
In 2008, the unemployment rate for men ages 20 to 34 in New York State was 7.4 percent. The countrywide average was 7.7 percent, while the state average for women in the same age range was 6.1 percent, according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. (Numbers for 2009 are not yet available.)
Bachelors have been walloped, but many are taking their lumps and moving on.
Until a year ago, Jason Brooks, 36, a host of the short-lived MTV show “Trailer Fabulous,” a solo artist and the singer in a band called Rehab, paid $5,000 a month for a 2,000-square-foot TriBeCa loft that he shared with his wife. Before that, he paid $3,500 a month for an apartment in a doorman building in the Financial District.
Now, says Mr. Brooks, whose stage name is Brooks Buford, he pays $1,600 a month for a tiny studio in SoHo.
“It’s such a bizarre shift from where I was to where I am now,” said Mr. Brooks, who is now divorced. “I catch myself trying to make excuses for this place. Like before anyone comes up, I’m like, ‘Yeah, it’s like an airplane cabin.’ ”... Read full article »
Then the recession thundered in, and suddenly young men found themselves one of the hardest hit demographic segments.
In 2008, the unemployment rate for men ages 20 to 34 in New York State was 7.4 percent. The countrywide average was 7.7 percent, while the state average for women in the same age range was 6.1 percent, according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. (Numbers for 2009 are not yet available.)
Bachelors have been walloped, but many are taking their lumps and moving on.
Until a year ago, Jason Brooks, 36, a host of the short-lived MTV show “Trailer Fabulous,” a solo artist and the singer in a band called Rehab, paid $5,000 a month for a 2,000-square-foot TriBeCa loft that he shared with his wife. Before that, he paid $3,500 a month for an apartment in a doorman building in the Financial District.
Now, says Mr. Brooks, whose stage name is Brooks Buford, he pays $1,600 a month for a tiny studio in SoHo.
“It’s such a bizarre shift from where I was to where I am now,” said Mr. Brooks, who is now divorced. “I catch myself trying to make excuses for this place. Like before anyone comes up, I’m like, ‘Yeah, it’s like an airplane cabin.’ ”... Read full article »
Top Comment
-
awww poor boys! losing their ridiculously expensive homes and interior design :( shameView thread
I have to pull a few quotes out of this article which I think truly are the best -
“It’s the fall that hurts. Once you adjust to it, it’s a delusion that you think you need all this stuff. You don’t know that you don’t need it until you don’t have it.”
- Jason Brookes
(I think that says it very well. Brookes is a smart man. :)
“You sort of get inundated with this American consumerism dream, and that’s what I pushed for, and I worked for,” he said. “This beautiful place in the hip area and the hipster friends or whatever. And then, I guess, I realized that was not really what I wanted.”
- Joe Tandle
(Another smart man! By God, I think they're getting it!)
Mr. Tandle said he had found alternative ways to live the party-filled lifestyle. In place of costly leather sofas, he fills kiddie pools with piles of pillows for guests to snu...
I have to pull a few quotes out of this article which I think truly are the best -
“It’s the fall that hurts. Once you adjust to it, it’s a delusion that you think you need all this stuff. You don’t know that you don’t need it until you don’t have it.”
- Jason Brookes
(I think that says it very well. Brookes is a smart man. :)
“You sort of get inundated with this American consumerism dream, and that’s what I pushed for, and I worked for,” he said. “This beautiful place in the hip area and the hipster friends or whatever. And then, I guess, I realized that was not really what I wanted.”
- Joe Tandle
(Another smart man! By God, I think they're getting it!)
Mr. Tandle said he had found alternative ways to live the party-filled lifestyle. In place of costly leather sofas, he fills kiddie pools with piles of pillows for guests to snuggle in on his monthly movie nights.
(LOL... movie nights? Ok, sure, I'll believe you... :)
"I was buying into an idea of how I should be in my early 30s, sort of a mode of living that one is supposed to inhabit,” he said. Now, “I place a higher premium on living a rich life, rich with experience.”
- David Friedlander
For Mr. Friedlander, his surroundings are an exercise in mastering a sort of Zen, “and not identifying with my apartment,” he explained, “being able to find peaceful existence no matter what kind of living situation.”
Personally, I love what is happening here. For too long we as a people have chased the carrot of the American dream, never to be satisfied. It truly is the little things that will make us happy... not the extravagant pleasures of luxury. If you don't know how to live without those things, you need to re-examine what it means to be alive! And maybe this recession will be just what we need to recognize this again - a blessing in disguise!
One more quote from the article, because it's just too good (a bit grammatically re-formatted though to condense the info) -
Urtzi Grau and a former roommate originally built (what they call) pods, two 8-by-6-foot boxes made of particle board, topped with Plexiglas and on wheels, to create private bedrooms in the wide-open 900-square-foot loft space. Part of a series called “Foreclosure Fantasy”, the boxes represent “opportunities we have found under such conditions: alternative forms of domesticity emerged from foreclosures,” according to a descriptive leaflet.
This is very inventive and awesome! I hope the recession brings us all a little closer to what we REALLY want - our roots, our desires, AND our own creative abilities, to build what we want in our lives! Making do with what you have can be a very enriching experience. As my wise father once said, "Everything in moderation, including moderation." ;) And furthering that, moderation leads to VARIETY in life, so live it up a little! :D lol, living it up after living it "down", haha... I'm so done here, anyway everyone have a great day no matter what!
Theres no touch like a womens touch
Such is the life of the recently married. “I catch myself trying to make excuses for this place. Like before anyone comes up, I’m like, ‘Yeah, it’s like an airplane cabin.’ ”
obviously not.