New York City: Too Old for this S*&#!?

  |  September 23, 2013
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Another weekend frolicking among the changing leaves, encountering rolling hills and horse farms and sparkling creeks, as well as driveways and dishwashers, has made us wonder once again why the heck nine million of us have chosen to make our home in a place so deficient in both nature and dishwashers. Answer one: jobs. Answer two: walkability. Yeah, a lot of us live here because we don’t like to drive.

But we also might live here because it was fun fun fun when we first got here (and, for those of us who got here early enough, it was cheap). It’s a swell place for people in their 20s, all full of ambition and unbothered by a deficit of appliances. It’s great for lots of folks in their 30s, too. Heck, there’s more and more evidence that it’s a terrific place to grow old.

But in those in between years, we’re starting to feel, New York can be hard on a soul, especially a soul trying to raise children on a normal American salary. Hard on a rent stabilized soul surrounded more and more every day by one-percenters (who make really nice neighbors but cause the apartment prices to be out of reach for everyone who’s not a personal friend of Bloomberg). Man, sometimes it’s just hard. But we always come to the same stopping point: where are the jobs and the walkable communities — where do those things overlap in the Hudson Valley and Catskills? Which of you has the magic key? Please do let us know.

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