{"id":103881,"date":"2020-08-18T11:30:12","date_gmt":"2020-08-18T15:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=103881"},"modified":"2020-08-18T09:58:28","modified_gmt":"2020-08-18T13:58:28","slug":"new-york-is-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=103881","title":{"rendered":"New York Is Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"

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New York City has shut down, and for the author at the link below, who works in the entertainment industry and has lived there most of his life, it may never come back. The last photo in the article, which he posted at the end of it, says it all.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/pulse\/nyc-dead-forever-heres-why-james-altucher<\/a><\/p>\n

I know what he\u2019s reacting to and why. Chicago was my home town for decades. It still kind of draws me in.\u00a0 I can type WGN NEWS LIVE into my search block, pull up the link and click on it, and get the news from that station (or one of the other four).\u00a0 But I can also go to the town where I grew up,\u00a0 down in the center of the state, and do the same thing for their main TV station, and any other TV station in this country. That’s the advantage to the internet: I can get news live from London or from Rome or Vienna or Mannheim, and I can watch live webcams from places that are my ancestral origins.\u00a0 I can watch boats speeding around in the waters of the Florida Keys, and become aware how deserted it all looks these days.<\/p>\n

No, I would not return to Chicago now, even if I were paid to. It wasn\u2019t perfect when I was there, but it had a hometown feel to it, no matter what. I love Chicago, always did. Saw the Beatles there in 1965. Saw David Bowie at the Rosemont in August 1983. Had a wonderful time, both times and came out of both concerts nearly stone deaf from overkill on the sound systems. Worked at Star Trek cons every time there was one. Went to plays and movies and occasionally, the Lyric Opera, and took classes on weekends at a local art school. \u00a0Had many lunch episodes at local delis. There is nothing like a Chicago-style hot dog, and the corned beef after the St. Patrick\u2019s Day parade was amazing.<\/p>\n

But now? The Sox and the Cubbies, who finally won the World Series after 108 years of not winning, now play to empty stadium seats. The Blackhawks play to a nonexistent rink audience. Basketball? Practice has only been mentioned once.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not the only one who feels that way. I think the current mayor is trying to stop the crapweasels from taking over, but they are out of control.\u00a0 They will go on trashing the city and the Loop until it\u2019s too wrecked to fix it, or they find they can’t sell that stolen crap to anyone. But people who live there are planning to move both home and job to some place safer. As Altucher says in his article at the link, when you can work online from a distance and still get the job done, why would you return to a city that is rapidly turning into a crime-ridden slum?<\/p>\n

Maybe I could take a couple of days off and go visit the Art Institute one last time, just to see Monet\u2019s \u201cMorning on the Seine\u201d, or the Shedd Aquarium, or the Field Museum, where I spent several months on weekends in 1990 working in the collections as a volunteer, just to really learn about fossils and how that process of turning things to stone really happens. It\u2019s a major chore to get there these days, whether you take Amtrak or drive.<\/p>\n

Live there again? Now? I wouldn\u2019t go back there if I were paid the equivalent of a major Lotto win.<\/p>\n

I will never go back there. Not even for a visit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York City has shut down, and for the author at the link below, who works … New York Is Dead<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":653,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[220,224],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-floggings-will-continue-until-morale-improves","category-darwin-awards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/653"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=103881"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103882,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103881\/revisions\/103882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=103881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=103881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=103881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}