Rob

@burby_geek I understand, but for every suburban town with a great HS there’s 1 with a shitty HS. So kids that live in those towns are traveling just as far if not farther to get to a good HS… and it’ll be a private school too.

@robperara Too bad most of the kids who live by Bronx science don’t go there

NYC kids spend 90 minutes commuting to the good high schools each way. Used to see the Stuyvesant kids coming from eastern queens on the E train Takes me 5 minutes to drive kids to my local high school. On par with the specialized high schools. At 17 the kids can drive themselves All the free time not spent commuting my kids did organized sports and a business competition and some days they just go and hang out after school instead of wasting time on the subway going to their corner of the city

Early returns on Ruvalcaba have looked really great for #RBNY. Only took a handful of games to adjust, 7g in 10 matches since then. Finally a real DP player signed to the club. Just coming into his prime years & has tons more topside. Def can be a star

@A_XENOP The 24 hour spots were on their way out before covid though. I honestly think it goes all the way back to the indoor smoking ban. No one sits and chain smokes and chugs black coffee at 3am anymore. Now it’s all smoking weed at home while doomscrolling and sports betting.

This is part of the issue facing traditional diners as these early morning hours would be lucrative with a small staff. But the other meal periods are also a challenge for different reasons.

@BrandyLJensen Sending a version of this every time I’m invited to a wedding from now on

one of the funniest things he’s ever done

@DBfromAP @theinvestdesk @handslaps @staysaasy I’m just saying there’s some really interesting dining going on in AC at the moment, mostly outside the casinos too.

@robperara @theinvestdesk @handslaps @staysaasy Ok.

The vibes in NJ feel pretty great right now. The convergence in outcomes is the best I've ever seen. Over the last 5yrs, a group of ~10k people - guys who own paving companies, guys who own marinas, ShopRite deli managers, Wawa shift leads, and a guy named Sal - have quietly become millionaires and nobody knows because they still drive a Silverado from 2008. Back of the envelope Taylor ham estimation. Everyone outside that group feels like they can work their well-paying (but <$500k) job their whole life and easily get there. My cousin works at PSE&G. He has a boat. Better yet, hiring is in full swing. Many tradesmen feel like their life's skill is more useful than ever. The day to day role of most jobs has stayed exactly the same for 40 years. As a result, 1) Everyone's settled into a tried and true set of career paths: take over my uncle's HVAC, get my CDL, get into landscaping, marry into a pizza place. People are switching diners less and less. You can't betray your home diner. 2) There's a deep contentment about work (and its future). Why chase "tech" when you can own three rentals in Hoboken and complain about your tenants at a barbecue. Will my job exist in a few years? This is Jersey. The job is paving things. You hear the "I'm never leaving" conversation a lot, especially from people who tried Brooklyn for a year. They come back saying the energy was off. The energy was fine. They missed their mom. 3) The mid to late middle managers feel energized. Many have families and plenty of energy to open a pizzeria with their cousin Anthony. Not that Anthony. The other one. They don't particularly have any AI skills and they don't need any. Middle management is alive and well at PSE&G and you get a pension. My uncle retired at 58. He's been on a boat since 2019. 4) The rich aren't particularly humble either. They're at the shore house. They've been at the shore house since 1987. Some have gone from <$150k to >$5M slowly, through a paving company, or by buying a duplex in Jersey City in 2003 and just kinda holding it. For some, they escape to LBI to live life, which means sitting on a deck. For others, they buy a boat just cuz, use it four times, and describe it as the best decision they ever made at every party for the rest of their life. I asked a contractor friend why he didn't retire. He said "and do what, Donna does NOT want me home all day." I understand many reading this scoff at the simple pleasures of the Garden State. They live in places where the bagels are bad and they've made peace with it. But the truth is, you can surf Belmar in the morning, skate the Asbury bowls in the afternoon, hike the Delaware Water Gap, and camp the Pine Barrens by nightfall. You can drive an hour and be anywhere. You can see Bruce at the Stone Pony for what feels like the 400th time and cry about it. The slice somehow tastes better than every slice in every other state. It's the water. It's always the water. Unlike many other places, knowing a guy, having a guy, and being a guy is tightly correlated with outcomes in NJ. Need a permit? Tony's brother. Need a kidney? Probably still Tony's brother. Call him. Ironically, a frequent side effect of this clarity is to spin up the very pork roll egg and cheese making everyone happy in hopes that you too can SPK your way to economic enlightenment. Salt pepper ketchup. Hard roll. Don't ask for it on a bagel. That's how civilizations fall.

@DBfromAP @theinvestdesk @handslaps @staysaasy Angeloni’s Club Madrid, cafe 2825, Girasole, ocean steak, park place prime all made NJ monthly’s top 40 list this year

@theinvestdesk @handslaps @staysaasy Atlantic City doesn’t even have some of the best restaurants in the state. It’s a shithole and most of the casinos are closed.

@shagbark_hick Prices in Tucson are starting to come down from the pandemic induced highs but they are still higher than they were. Gonna need to rely on a car though. Still Tucson is a great weird place

I'd be curious to know what people would do in my position. If I leave NYS, where should I go? Keep in mind I: - Hate humid heat - Am and will always be a low-earner (low prop. tax more important than low income tax) - Do not fit into "normie" HVAC drywall strip-mall world - Am very Catholic and wish to go to Mass every single day if possible - Am very much a "Yankee" but alternately I do mesh well with Latinos and speak some basic Spanish - Want to be around friendly, well-read, thoughtful eccentrics (esp 'Catholic hippies') - Could do rural or urban, cold-wet or desert climate - Prefer to avoid total reliance on automobiles - Need a place where I can buy a house CHEAPLY (as in, under $100k -- $200k at the absolute most) There are compromises anywhere, to be sure. Thus far I figure I could, in no particular order: 1. Get over my hatred of hot-humid heat and move back to Chalmette, LA 2. Get over my aversion to cars and live in rural NM on the fringes of Silver City or maybe T or C 3. Try out El Paso 4. Pony up big money and try out Coos County NH 5. Try out normiedom in or near Wichita (?) 6. Live in the hood in Steubenville OH 7. Move to Tucson or maybe ABQ 8. Forget all this and just be full-blown nomadic in a boat or a bus Or, of course, I could stay in NYS, though all my friends here are leaving and I'm starting to think the writing is on the wall for me here. What would you do? I get a lot of scattershot advice on this so I figured it'd be interesting to make a thread for it.

@BarstoolBigCat Or a late check out.

@BarstoolBigCat An hour. Once it’s an hour you need to be getting drink/ food credits in the range of 1/20 of the cost of the room per hour.

At what point when checking in do you start to complain your room isn’t ready? Not a complainer but they’re telling me 5:15

@Empty_America @A_XENOP I love Northern Europe. I also love Tucson. You can love very different places.

I'm never too aggressive on the USA -Euro debate. I like the USA but I like the atypical parts, the Mexican border, S. Florida, the N. Woods, even the big Cities. If it was a choice between the "Vast Suburb" most Americans inhabit and Europe, I would take Europe at once.

@kerwin65230 @mllichti @Birdyword It’s modern feudalism. Every municipality/ agency/ school district/ PD has people at the top fighting to keep power of their little slice. It’s inefficient. Every 1 of these little cities right up against SF, Boston etc is paying a chief of police 200k to be in charge of 30 ppl

@mllichti @robperara @Birdyword The clipper thing is the least of the issues with this Having so many jurisdictions means we build terrible projects like BART subway in SJ and routing HSR through San Jose for political reasons LA has one huge transit agency and seem to make more objective investments

The fact that there are only 12 cities with a population of more than a million people in a country the size of the US is endlessly fascinating

@SeanCMcCarthy @mllichti @Birdyword Ehhh, I don’t know that there’s been a major annexation by a large city since 1900. And SF in particular I don’t has ever successfully annexed a neighboring city

@robperara @mllichti @Birdyword They used to, then the politics, education and crime of the cities became intolerably bad around 1960. The proposition today is “want higher taxes and worse services with less representation?” which no one will agree to

@mllichti @Birdyword I don’t get why cities don’t get into annexing their neighbors anymore. There’s no reason why San Francisco shouldn’t extend down to SFO. Absorb those neighboring municipalities and the city is well over 1 million inhabitants

@Birdyword It's ridiculous that San Francisco, and Washington DC, and Boston are all well under 1 million people.

@joshuasharf @iowahawkblog Jesus. Newark has a better skyline than Denver or Dallas.

@iowahawkblog Denver has the same problem. With a couple of exceptions, a downtown of soul-killed glass and steel boxes.

I love Texas, but my god the Dallas skyline is an aesthetic abomination. Worldwide skyline rankings: 1. Chicago 2. 4000-way tie of also-rans

@mbateman Ehhh, ate at a Michelin starred in Berlin, everyone was German except my party and one American dude that rolled in by himself in an old navy 1/4 zip fleece and jeans, crushed the larger Prix fixe Menu with the wine pairings and peaced out

Was in Paris a couple months ago for wife’s 40th. We splurged and did a handful of Michelin stars and similar and kept noticing that it was mainly Americans, along with a smattering of other foreigners, eating at them.

@DrewSav Berlin, Istanbul off the top of my head

Are new airports ever built or is that a not a thing?

@A_XENOP The savings from consolidating school/ police/ public works/ town business administration alone would run into the 10s of millions of dollars alone in north Jersey

@A_XENOP We need a massive move of municipal consolidation in NJ. There are school districts w/ 750 students that have Sup. Int and district admins that are costing $1 million a year. In my county alone there are 5 towns with under 12k residents running full school districts.

Up and down the northeast you are seeing yowns and states really struggle with these costs. It’s a huge issue.

@A_XENOP Most naturally talented baseball player I’ve ever witnessed.

Man watching Griffey play back then was unreal. So smooth.