Also, John D'Angelico died in 1964, so fuckit.

Wiki.

One of his masterworks… An over-the-top, nearly comedic assemblage of excellence. Click on the image and click it again to see the details.

Ohhh nooooo… Once again, for thousandth time, Amy's blog has sent me down an internet rabbit hole on a perfectly good Sunday morning....

Didn't it get bombed a lot during the Revolution? That was worse...

Didn't it get bombed a lot during the Revolution? That was worse...

NicoleK at August 16, 2020 5:58 AM

I’m not sure *bombed* is the correct term for 18th century cannons. But yea, some parts probably burned.

I visited NYC in the early 1990s. It was crowded and stank, everywhere. We went to central park and it stank like a toilet. There wasn't an inch of ground anywhere that wasn't totally trampled. Didn't understand why anyone would want to live that way back then, and still don't now.

Covid just did accomplished the environmental movement would have eventually. Remote working is much better for the environment. I'm no ecoterrorist, but less transportation emissions is, as far as I understand it, an unqualified good.

I would not want to work from home. I like the clear separation between work and home. My last 2 jobs, working upwards in management and not seeing patients, could have been done from home. I just don't want to, and hope my company takes a while to realize the $ they could save on office rent.

We'll always have cities. Humans are social creatures and want to be able to get together. However, we may be seeing the first signs of a fundamental shift where cities get smaller.

If, by working at home, I can get 90% of what I used to do at an office done, why would I need to be at the office every workday? Why would I need to deal with traffic or crowded trains in an hour-long commute? Why would I need to live in a cramped neighborhood in crowded city close to the office? Why wouldn't I opt for a less expensive dwelling in a smaller city; or out in the countryside?

On the other hand, I'm with Momof4, I like the interaction and collaboration I get in an office. I like the concentration of talent and socialization.

Don't forget that DiBlasio is driving the city to the ground by forcing cops to stand down and let the antifa thugs tear the city apart. And he's doing it because his Disney princess is part of that group of criminals.

Tour of Manhattan— The guy saying "Look! Look!" would be annoying if he weren't so obviously heartbroken.

Urbanization is great for the environment.

> I like the interaction and
> collaboration I get in
> an office.

Consider this maxim from Christakis.

Having worked in NYC since the mid-90s and enjoying the work and pay I can say with the current situation that I am so done with New York!

Even working in New York and dealing with events such as blackouts, and the WTC attack, I still continued to work in the city.

However, with the election of Obama black bigots came out of the woodwork. By that I mean, never before had strange black men (and women) ever approach me to say racist shit to my face. But, Obama's election (and re-election) brought those asshats out in full force.

Then there was the occupy Wall Street crowd and their crap; and along came the beginnings of BLM and their bigotry.

Now, with the shutdown and de Blasio's stupid shit - I mean, come on, painting a "mural" on city streets and having cops guard it instead of defending tax payers' property is just plain dumb.

With the shutdown I have demonstrated to my employer that I am more productive working from home. No interruptions - simply click ignore when a chat pops up that I don't need. Starting work earlier and finishing later because I don't have a train to catch makes me more available.

Saving several hundred dollars a month on commuting costs. Loving that!

Now, if I can convince my employer to officially move me out of New York I will save even more money by paying less in income taxes.

So, yea, I am so done with New York.

Ooh! Ooh! Do San Francisco next!

Because I really want my town back.

Because I really want my town back. ~ Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at August 16, 2020 1:05 PM

The City is done. With Mayor London Breed's incompetence, DA Chesa Boudin's hostility toward the law and order he's supposed to uphold, and a Board of Supervisors completely divorced from reality, San Francisco is doomed.

I'll just remember it the way it used to be, when I happily wandered its streets, sampled the bounty of flavors in its cafes and restaurants, and marveled at the almost-perfect weather.

I miss the city Herb Caen once called, "Baghdad by the Bay."

One day if I do go to heaven … I'll look around and say, "It ain't bad, but it ain't San Francisco." ~ Herb Caen

I miss the energy of San Francisco in the early '00s with dot-coms rising and falling every week; of people getting rich on stock options one week and broke the next as the company's lack of a sound business plan or seasoned management doomed it. Venture capitalists throwing money at any harebrained scheme, hoping to catch the next digital wave.

I love visiting Nigeria. The people are friendly and there are a lot of exciting fun things to do. Of course, nobody with a choice stays there long because it's a shithole. Fun for a moment but a shithole. That's how I see late 80's to early 90's NYC and it's why so many rejoiced in how Rudy helped transform it. They wanted a place to live. Not some exciting shithole for transient thrillseekers.

This is simply Detroit, 1967, writ large.

Which means not only NYC, but also Chicago, Seattle, Portland, ScatFran, Minneapolis and any other metropolitan areas the protesters were and are allowed to pillage and burn.

The people who can afford to flee have already fled, which is why rents are down in NYC and up in the spots people are fleeing.

The rule of law has value. One does not know how much value it has until it's gone.

Why wouldn't I opt for a less expensive dwelling in a smaller city; or out in the countryside?

Less expensive, more acreage, and likely more square footage. And no rolling blackouts.

Saw this thread from Big Mac today and thought of Amy, who, if photography is to be trusted, was a firesmoke 25-year-old in New York City.

Lessee if the picture's still out there. Google Google Google

Yep, Twitter. Somewhere between Wang Chunging Tonight and Hammertime, maybe as late as Spin Doctors:

This one said he wants
To buy you rockets
Ain't in his head now

And in case you were wondering just exactly how many layers of binding are on the D'Angelico teardrop, because the picture is a little fuzzy, the answer is SEVEN. Seven layers of binding on the rim: White-black-white-black-white-black-white.

One issue that still needs to be addressed is that all the successful remote working we've seen so far is based on a foundation of relationships and systems expertise already established. We've not yet seen how well establishing new working relationships and expertise will work without face-to-face contact.

It's the Pepsi Challenge all over again. One sip and we're applying the results to the long-term, ready to change everything because of that one sip test.

Other businesses have done that work Conan. Long story short it doesn't work long term. You can see some good improvements for a year or two but by the time you get to five years out they are all gone and still falling.

But to focus on the New York topic again, there is no reason today why most of the business historically done in New York needs to still be done there. It was just economic inertia.

Hey hey! I get to post again. No more timeouts.

"Other cities put on their best clothes in summer, but New York seems to sit in its shirtsleeves." ~ Edith Wharton (The House of Mirth)

========================================

You can see some good improvements for a year or two but by the time you get to five years out they are all gone and still falling. ~ Ben at August 17, 2020 7:27 AM

Yes, but are past results uniformly applicable to a period of greater bandwidth. We can do face-to-face meetings remotely now, whereas they were impractical or impossible before without a T-1 line. Software has also improved remote employee productivity tracking capabilities.

Yes they are still applicable. Many of those results are from only a year or two ago. The reality is only a few people are able to consistently work outside of an office or shop floor setting. When people get more control over their hours they slowly prioritize distractions and fun stuff over productive work. Having an internet connection doesn't change that.

Typically you see big productivity improvements the first year or so. People are doing fewer meetings and getting more work done. I.e. the bosses got out of everyone's way. Things flatten off the second and third year. By the fourth year people aren't starting work on time and are leaving early. They are mixing work and personal things. Like taking care of the kids. So productivity falls a lot. So by year five or six remote work gets cancelled and everyone has to return to the office.

Now are there some people who don't follow this trend, sure. But over 80% of workers do follow it.

There is a second topic about business centered locations. At one time you had silver street in New York where all the silver smiths worked. By being in the same location people got better access to both workers and customers so markets geographically self segregated. If you operate in a non-commodity business that is still significantly true today. But instead of having streets we have city based sorting. Houston is an oil town. If you want to sell oilfield tools you need to have a presence in Houston. You don't need to be in a specific part of Houston but you do need to be in the town. Cars have greatly widened the geographic flexibility. LA is a movie town. New York is a marketing/advertising town. Once again the internet hasn't really eliminated the geographic self sorting effect. But the key thing is while businesses still geo-sort the specific location is more inertia than anything else. All of the Manhattan stock or advertising companies can be located anywhere. Same with the Houston oil tools. There is nothing special about those towns that keep those businesses there. It is just inertia.

Our son, 27, realized his dream last November and moved to work and live in NYC. We pasted smiles on our faces and said we were happy for him--which we were; it's the classic paradox of parental love. You have to let them go because you want what's best for them. As it turned out, he moved just in time for everything to go into the shitter.
I don't want NYC to fail; I want it to go back to how it was a year ago when things were great. But if it's going to fail anyway, I hope he sees that and gets out in time.
How about Philadelphia? Just two years ago, we had an opportunity to move out of the geographic confines of the city to one of the more rural-ish areas about 25 miles out (Chester County for anyone who is familiar). We decided not to because we looked around and thought: Hey, this city and cities in general are doing great, all the younger people want to live and work here. Our neighborhood, twelve miles from town, is very safe and suburban-feel. We can stay here and still be within driving or public trans of all amenities while enjoying a quiet tree-lined neighborhood.
Now?? We are talking seriously about moving in a few years to get away from the crazy and decay. I pray the city survives but it's not looking good. As far as moving, though, the problem is that every decent-sounding spot is immersed in the crazy because those who identify with, or permit, Leftist-crazy also flock to every nice town or city and ruin it.

Many of those results are from only a year or two ago. ... By the fourth year people aren't starting work on time and are leaving early. ~ Ben at August 17, 2020 9:20 AM

These four-year results are "from only about a year or two ago?"

Much of what you're saying involves older technology and lesser supervision capabilities; different circumstances. We have much greater ability to monitor remote workers today than we've ever had before; and much better connectivity.

While workers do report more distractions in remote work, they also report extending the workday to make up for them. With no commute, they're able to do that. Business News Daily reported in March 2020 that remote workers spend 1.4 more days per month working than their office-bound counterparts.

The picture's not all rosy, however. Stanford reports that the COVID remote work is different than than past remote work in that people are home with their children and other family members, sharing common space, where past periods had them home alone.

Nicolas Bloom, an economist known for his advocacy of remote work fears that the conditions confronting remote workers with COVID will actually lead to lowered innovation and productivity. "Many people I have been interviewing are now working in their bedrooms or shared common rooms, with noise from their partners, family or roommates...." How much of that is applicable once the kids go back to school?

Or will they? Bloom worries that the volume of people working and studying from home will overwhelm our ability to isolate our work environment and be productive.

Technology has also changed. When I worked in San Francisco six years ago, the company allowed working from home if you had a pressing need, but only on that day. It involved logging into a VPN, slower connectivity, constant slow-downs as your night-shift neighbor streamed movies, no electronic face-to-face meetings, and no supervisory technology (no Zoom, no MS Teams, no FaceTime or Skype, and only MS Lynx to monitor whether an employee was logged in). I worked with large data sets, so working from home for me was a tedium of slow downloads. All of that has changed, but has it changed enough?.

So, my question remains, will remote work be viable in the long-term post-COVID? Before we totally write cities off, we'll need to answer that question.

Conan, efforts to do remote work didn't start with COVID. Various companies have been trying off and on for decades. Yes there are lots of companies that started remote work programs 6-7 years ago and are just recently hitting the 5 year window.

"Much of what you're saying involves older technology and lesser supervision capabilities; different circumstances. We have much greater ability to monitor remote workers today than we've ever had before; and much better connectivity."

Not really. Skype was up and running back in 2005. Zoom is a little under a decade old. Your experience with remote work is pretty common but lots of people have tried lots of different things.

You mention how connection speeds have gone up and ask if they've gone up enough. Well, on average I don't think so. Yes you can push more data but at the same time the amount of data people want to push has gone up to match. For most I think things are a wash. At least over the last decade or so.

So I'm on the side saying cities aren't going to vanish. I don't see people going all Green Acres and such. But specific cities with specific policies can drive all their business to other locations. As you said in another thread you can find an Arbys or a Macys more or less anywhere. There is nothing special about this or that city.

Conan, efforts to do remote work didn't start with COVID.

Never said they did, Ben.

The article talks all about that and the differences COVID has introduced to remote work. It's those changes that cause Bloom to think this type of remote work will be different than past efforts at remote work. He's of the opinion that productivity gains will be slight and short-lived through this - too many distractions at home.

It's the technology difference that cause me to think this time will be different. I think remote work will be different going forward than it was before and most data from remote work before is not apples-to-apples applicable to modern remote work.

I also think it will be different for the reasons Bloom gave in the article - in earlier remote work, there were fewer people doing it, the criteria for remote workers were more selective, kids were in school so there were fewer household distractions, etc.

Skype was up and running back in 2005. Zoom is a little under a decade old. Your experience with remote work is pretty common but lots of people have tried lots of different things.

Back then, Skype was popular for talking to family and friends overseas, but it was not as common in corporate usage. When we had video conferences with the overseas offices, we used dedicated video conference rooms with T-1 lines. We didn't use Skype or Zoom.

And no, I don't think cities will disappear. I think mega cities might find themselves less desirable than they were and suffer a significant population decline, a la Detroit. Who wants to commute 2 hours to the office when you can use those two hours at home?

In a single day working in San Francisco and living in the East Bay, I'd spend 3+ hours commuting - almost 20 hours a week on a train or walking. According to BART, the train ride should have been only 48 minutes, but it never arrived in less than 60 minutes. And it was another 30-minute walk to the office. The drive to the BART station was another 20-30 minutes.

My other option was to overpay for a shoebox-sized condo for my wife and me in SF and still have a long commute. Coworkers living in SF reported 45-minute or longer commutes on Muni.

A round-trip BART ticket from the East Bay to SF cost almost $12. My car was damaged twice in the station parking lot in hit and runs. I usually got home after 7:30 and had little-to-no time for a life beyond work during the week.

So yes, I think this extended period of mass remote work will change things. However, once people no longer have a ridiculous commute to which to compare the ease of remote work, the appeal of them may change. The isolation may get to people and office work may become desirable again.

Ben, you may be right about productivity declining as time goes on and companies will start calling everyone back into the office. Not everyone has dedicated home office space and a quiet house in which to work. And once we're allowed out again, running errands will become a tempting distraction from work.

We also have to keep in mind that the remote work going on now and the remote work done earlier was mostly resting upon a foundation of relationships established in-person. Establishing collaborative working relationships over distances with strangers will not be the same and may preclude remote work becoming the standard in many industries. So, while we celebrate the successes we've had with remote work today, we cannot assume that it will succeed on-site work as the standard going forward.

People made the same gloom & doom predictions back in the middle-70s
what with the city going bankrupt, heat waves and power blackouts,
and the terror wrought by David Berkowitz (aka, Son of Sam).
Then the city recovered. These things go in cycles. It may
be some years, but NYC will be back.

So... you think NYC is done because of a few months of viral partying?

Boy, Paris, Dresden, Berlin sure looked great before the Stuka, B-17 and B-24 arrived, huh? Too bad they're empty now!

As you said in another thread you can find an Arbys or a Macys more or less anywhere. There is nothing special about this or that city. ~ Ben at August 17, 2020 12:00 PM

I think I used a FootLocker and a Cheesecake Factory as my examples, but Macy's may be an even better example as it has managed to homogenize almost every regional department store in America, turning them all into a Macy's no different from any other Macy's in the country.

RIP:

• Emporium - San Francisco
• Marshall Fields - Chicago
• Bon Marché - Seattle
• Burdines - Miami
• Famous-Barr - St. Louis
• Foley's - Houston
• Hecht's - Baltimore
• Filene's - Boston
• I. Magnin - San Francisco
• Robinson-May - Los Angeles
• Rich's - Atlanta
• L.S. Ayres - Indianapolis
• and more

========================================

Boy, Paris, Dresden, Berlin sure looked great before the Stuka, B-17 and B-24 arrived, huh? Too bad they're empty now! ~ Radwaste at August 17, 2020 6:42 PM

Geographic concentration of industries, talent, and knowledge still served a purpose in the post-war world. Such an arrangement serves less purpose today.

Not to mention that a war has a (mostly) finite end date. A pandemic really doesn't.