Very Interesting..

Awesome article in NY Mag:

A recent poll found that even in these times, almost half of young America wants to move to New York. On the following pages we spoke to 160 people who recently followed that dream—and 30 who achieved it.

Glad to see the youth of America are so optimistic..its just that there are not jobs and apartments for 1/2 the young people in the country in the already packed NYC. I lived in Manhattan for a few months and loved it - still love it, but know for a fact it is not an easy place to live. And this was in 1996 when the economy was booming, I lived with my fabulous aunt and cousin on the Upper West Side for free and got paid ridiculous amounts of money to nanny cute kids and take them to Central Park. It was still really hard. So the best of luck to anyone attempting it with the current conditions. It's an amazing place to live - and I would probably already be living there if I were filthy rich. But since I'm not, I'll stick to the smaller cities where the luxe life is much more manageable and I can live in more than 350/sf.

There are some great stories from people who have moved to NYC about their experiences here - my favorite from my aunt's step-grandson, the genius musician/artist Rufus Wainwright who goes over and plays the same piano I used to at my aunt's on the Upper West Side and now owns a small apt near Gramercy Park because you have to make about $1000000000000 a year to afford anything not small:

"I would also perform here and there, mostly at an old jazz club called Deanna’s, in the East Village, but I couldn’t make enough money or any friends. Nobody was interested in my point of view. I tried to perform at the Lower East Side club Sin-é, but they refused my tape three times. I’d go to the old Crowbar to see Misstress Formika, during the East Village Renaissance that I had absolutely nothing to do with. So I moved back to Montreal and started doing a lot of shows there. I was signed to DreamWorks Records and made my first album while living in L.A." Read the whole thing here.