¶ Podcast Intro and Listener Review
Hey everyone. So Melody and I have an important favor to ask. Melody, what's going on?
Okay, you know how on late night shows the hosts will ask celebrities to read mean tweets about themselves? This is kind of like that. Uh I was I was looking at our reviews on Apple Podcasts and this one made me laugh but also kind of cringe, so I'm gonna read it to you. The subject line is what? Question mark five?
It says, I just subscribed to this pod and was looking through the episodes and they sounded good, but a couple days later, the first episode of my feed from them is about queer romance. That's not what I subscribed for. And from what I can tell, it doesn't seem relative, I think they mean relevant, to the rest of the podcast. Question mark question.
Question mark, question mark.
It's just random. So I unsubscribed because that's not what I want to listen to. What in the world is this podcast even about? Question mark, question mark.
Ha ha ha.
This podcast is about many things, including queer romance. So we have a huge favor to ask of you as listeners. Whatever app you're listening in now, could you leave a nice review and maybe include what you like about the pod and what you think it's about? Or you can take it in any direction that you'd like.
We always say that it helps people find the podcast, but I think in this instance you can help people from unsubscribing because they don't get what they signed up for.
Yeah.
Okay, so this should only take two minutes. It's actually super easy on whatever platform you use. And it's an easy way to support the show without spending any money. So thank you. Enjoy today's show.
🎵 Music
This is the Culture Study Podcast and I'm Ann Helen Peterson.
And I'm Swil Gonzalez, the author of Last Night in Brooklyn.
¶ Life in 2007 Brooklyn: Abundance
Alright, we're gonna start very basic. What was your life like in two thousand and seven?
Oh my god, my life is the best. It was It was the best. I had like alligator arms. I didn't pay for anything. I had all these guy friends and they paid for everything. Like it was amazing. So all my money was able to go to grooming and wardrobe and rent.
And you lived in Brooklyn during this time,
I lived right off of Fort Green Park. I'm a native Brooklynite. Um, so I'm originally from a much less chic part of Brooklyn. And then I went away to college, and then I literally, much as is written in my book. I was literally seduced by a shopping cart race and a night out in Fort Green and was like, you know what? This is double my rent and I don't care. I'm moving here because this is the greatest thing. And
It was just fantastic. And I had a job that just wouldn't even exist now because it was so like Almost easy. And you could semi phone it in, but it came with an expense account and the chance to travel and everybody was really nice. It was great.
No, there used to be w we're gonna talk about so much of this, but like there used to be so much more robust layering in corporations where there were just more jobs.
Yes.
Doing work but not like robust work and now like every single corporation has become so lean that five jobs are combined into one. And w like to think though back to two thousand and seven or to like I nineteen eighty seven. Yeah. How many people were doing this work for sustainable salaries? Like it was just a different reality.
Just a different reality. I mean we had like two Secretaries at my like first kind of real job, you know, like and and then you left it mainly a normal time and like you know, unless you had something to do. Like it was just you really could have a life. And I think that that was the best part. And, you know, it's one of these very weird times because then there was a before and an after. Yes. And it felt really seismic.
¶ Book Inspiration: Rethinking Gatsby
So you say you call this book your new book, which we're gonna I'm gonna ask you to talk about it in just a second, but you you call the new book the third at your kind of informal Brooklyn trilogy. Yes. Um and so can you tell us First of all, what is the vague plot of this new book? Because to me, like there are absolutely is a plot and there is a narrative and I was telling you before we got on started recording that like it is so propulsive. I read it s I'm reading so quickly.
But it's also so vibey. So like
Yeah.
Like the advertising you've done on Instagram is like look at my photos from two thousand and seven
I mean, it's so funny because it is very plotty. It's essentially I went to see a gender-swapped um production of company. Yeah. And it was really bad. Like I love Company the Suntime musical about like a bachelor having like, you know, his a milestone birthday. But they didn't change anything. And I was like, actually that kind of hinged on that character being a man. Right. Like I had it thought about I was at that
He needed to be a man for that to work or you need to change this. And I started thinking about other Books that you don't think about the maleness of it, but like they do hinge on that. And I was thinking about the Great Gatsby. Yep. And how Nick is so cagey but he gets away with it'cause he just
tells you a story like a man. Like it's like like there's a little errant detail that later you're like, wait a second, Nick, that doesn't add up. What were you doing with that man all night? Like right? Like it's like a night and then Gatsby like just the very idea that you're gonna be like, you know how I'm gonna win that woman back is bragging about how successful I am and I was like a woman would never be able to do that. Like it doesn't matter how successful she was, that would do nothing.
Like and so I sort of got really into this idea of What would that be like if those two if you really rethought it based on their gender? And then I was like, what was the last time that the economy just felt so hopeful and the country felt so hopeful and everything felt abundant? And I landed on this time that also was kind of a vibe. Yeah.
No, for sure. And especially for like uh let's say like the audience of people who are like the the most likely to be reading books right now like literary fiction is like women our age who
Yes.
also experienced this time as like young twenty something, right?
Yes, yes. Like oh my god. I just it's so funny because I just was rereading or I was reading for the first time, like Lena Dunham's memoir this morning. Yeah. And she talks about that first couple of years out of school.
And I was like, you know, it's probably a couple of years after this, but I was like, oh, it was a time. And you just had this sense of opportunity that still hovered over things that I I I think it makes me the I I said to somebody, the weird part about this book is that the hovering villain was the present.
Yeah.
Because the way in which people engage and are able to engage and like all of these things, you just the civility of which people debate politics because there's like a looming election going on. Like like it the hovering villain that you didn't have to write a word about is the president.
¶ Obama Era Optimism Amidst Crisis
And I think that that's partly why we are all kind of feeling these feelings about this moment in time, because we didn't know. We didn't know what we had, and we didn't realize all that we were trading in when we were like, Yay, Facebook.
You can check my email from anywhere. ¡Sí, sí!
Yeah, exactly. Oh my god, this is so cool. And then you're just like like two elections later and like a slave to your job, right? Like it's
Right. Well and that we're gonna talk about some of those like larger like macro shifts, but also there's this feeling in the book of like when you know you're like, oh, it's spring two thousand and seven. Like The financial crisis is d just about to fuck shit up. And like but it's not there yet. You can like feel the crescendo, right? Yeah. Um
Yeah.
So interesting. But then how like optimism even prevailed during that moment because of Obama, I would say.
Oh my gosh, we were j I I just was thinking about this this morning and how, you know, especially In that community, like it was like a very kind of black and Latino community. Like, I think that we've forgotten what a top-down role model the presidency is, like in terms of you know, like when you think about the Kennedys, like we had like a youth quake in this country because like we had this like
handsome president and this like elegant first lady and they were into the arts and like and suddenly like American young Americans what was hotter in the world than being a young American, right? Like because but everybody also wanted to be this great version and It's super subconscious because
You know, Obama basically walked into this giant financial crisis, couldn't really get it turned around as fast as like, you know, anybody would want, and yet people still felt great, especially that first term because there was something about like anything can happen. Like we went from a country that was founded on slavery to now electing a black president and I it really I think made us feel that we had cracked open possibilities.
And and that is what I actually think we were riding off of, like less than even, you know, the money.
Yeah, and I w and I would say like we're talking uh specifically about I think like
Huh.
Upwardly mobile, yeah. College educated.
Totally.
younger people felt this way because I think if you had this conversation about 2007, 2008 with our parents.
Yeah.
They would have been like everything is far Like my mortgage is underwater. Um, what is the future? This is my inheritance. Um, also, like w if we're looking too about like The Tea Party and like the beginning of Trumpism, like it's right there, right? It is all in that reaction to Obama.
Ten million people lost their homes in that in the Great Recession. And we kind of also never talk about it. You know, like I mean I think
It's
And I you know, whatever, I could rail about kind of class elitism in the media and how it's like kind of hilarious because'cause I I I have a nonfiction book coming out next year sort of about this. And like Really? Yeah. And one of the things that I was like obsessed with was I was like, wait, ten million people were displaced because of this
thing. What did you think was gonna happen? Those people were gonna be happy? Like suddenly you were on a downwardly mobile trajectory. You have this identity which we lionized as American homeowner and now suddenly you don't have that. And you thought that that everybody was gonna be happy and then somehow the media seemed shocked when like Occupy Wall Street came up three years later and then they were like, What are these crazy kids doing? And then
They were somehow then shocked again when all these people were either Bernie people or the people that lost their homes put on red hats. And it's like wow, where did this come from? And I'm like ten million people lost their house
¶ Millennial Nostalgia & Privilege of Time
Right. Absolutely. No About this, like part of the reason that we are able to look back at our age with nostalgia is we were not those homeowners.
That's right. You're so right though. No, you are so right. Like, and it and honestly, and probably the generation, like the millennials that were a little Like I'm at the end of X, but like the millennials that then had to start college or were in college and that was all happening, I think they then started to feel that sense of drowning in these guests. Yeah. Like
Or that they were still at home when their families were displaced.
Yes.
When I when I interviewed people for my book about millennial burnout and like the reaction to precarity, so many of the younger millennials had really internalized this work ethic because they had seen their parents lose their home.
Yes. Oh my gosh. I like I don't know that I had connected the girl boss thing to the to the
We have to wait, wait, wait, wait.
No, no, but like it all spawned things. Like it's so wild. But like I always feel like I'm gonna be 49 this year, and so I always feel like I was just ahead of an avalanche is how my whole life has felt. Like I got I started a business in two thousand and three when you could literally get HTML for dummies and like have five thousand dollars in a bank account and like have a robust business four years later. You know, like and and now like it's like like what do you do you have like
even to run the kind of service business I had, it's like, well do you have a hundred and fifty thousand dollars and a line of credit and like s you know, like the barriers to entry just kept getting harder and harder and harder for people and I am aware of the weird privilege of time that I have, but I think that sometimes I don't always think about how millennials of the age that they were, what developmental ages those are, right? Like when yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh my god.
We'll talk about this later, but I like I am technically at the very, very beginning of the millennial generation, born in nineteen eighty one. But I become solidly millennial because I was in graduate school. And it delayed my it like for seven years'cause I was getting my PhD, it delayed my maturity, right? It delayed my my p my like placement in the larger uh economic
Sphere. Um, okay. So we did an episode that was about millennial nostalgia a few years ago and but this one we wanna be much more specific. And like even before I saw your book, I and I'm sure you've noticed this too, like so many reels and Instagrams that are like Oh my gosh, like look at what the high schoolers looked like in two thousand and five. Just like a real nostalgia for this period in time.
And we just wanna work through it. So we got some great questions from our listeners and we're gonna start with this message from Sarah, which is really a a classic more of a comment than a question, but it captures a lot of these feelings.
I graduated from college in 2008, worked on a US Senate campaign in New Mexico, and moved to Brooklyn in early 2009. So wow, all the fear. I also left New York City in 2016, but was back visiting an old roommate in Brooklyn this weekend, so very fresh in my mind. Thoughts I had. How do we used to be able to afford to live here on under 30k a year? How did we think that racism was over with a black president? How are we so fucking optimistic?
The feeling at the time was that we were going to take over the world. I don't even know what I mean by we other liberal arts college graduates? Sure there was a recession and it took a few months to get a job, but that is not what I remember.
Member.
Buying business casual dresses at HM, which honestly held up for over a decade, going out for drinks what felt like every day, again, how did we afford that? Feeling cool and sophisticated even though I definitely wasn't. It felt like Brooklyn was the center of the
¶ Optimism, Social Fabric, and Spending
Okay. We'll we'll get to the Brooklyn part in just a minute, but I wanna start with the optimism. And we've talked about this a little bit already. But even, you know, this person is like I graduated college in two thousand eight. I moved to Brooklyn in two thousand nine. So it's very much the wake of the recession. Yeah. Where do you think that that feeling like how did it stick around?
I really feel it was That idea of possibility. And I think that youth thing is a big part of it because we also kind of don't We forget about that, which is like that, he had this youth-powered election. Yeah. You know, everybody always talks about his ground game and then what's kind of gotten lost because all these people have g aged now, right? So we forget how young like David Pluff was. Like all these people around him were really young.
Yes.
But then the people going door to door and canvassing Yeah. We're college students. Yeah. So that idea that like we were gonna change the world, I think that we felt like we could. And we just forget like he was just really cool. Like, you know, like I was like thinking this like about like
You know, politicians just they're so not cool. Like, you know, like now they're like literally whatever the opposite of cool is, like they are. Like and He just had swag, you know, it's like it felt like like there was something very he was relatively young, but there was also something youthful about him because he just had this like
confidence that came, I think because he had earned a lot of it. Like you know, he it was so untypical of like, you know, the kind of person that usually gets to this thing. And I think that also made people just feel like I could kind of do anything and I made this happen. I helped make this happen. Right. Right? Like and I think it makes you feel like you could do anything.
What a feeling to have in one of the first political elections that you participate in. Yes.
Wait, can I just say one thing also? Like that God bless Michelle Obama for wearing J. Crew,'cause it made me always feel a lot better about my H M work dresses. Right. I mean she's Justin J. Crew and she's the first lady. Yes. So and uh
Oh, I I love the moment, like this point about casual business casual addresses at H and M because I definitely did that. Like I was a grad student. I couldn't afford anything else. But I wanted to look cute when I was TAing or something like that, you know? And I did like that, it gave me access.
Oh well at that phase of my career, I was running a luxury wedding planning business. And so I literally had to dress like a weather woman. And so I would just go to HM and I would buy a mono-colored Sheath dress with like the scoop neck I mean they still make it. It still makes.
Classy. It's so classy.
It's so classy. You were ready for anything, right? Like you could kind of go and do anything and like Things just felt accessible, like the thirty thousand dollars a year and being able to go out for drinks every night. Like there was also like I think right now the vibe that I always get when I'm watching young people like on reels and stuff, like is they are operating in restrictions.
Right. Like and we were even on limited like budgets living in abundance. Like I would leave the house with no wallet. Like I'll be like, I'll run it. Like you know, like I like I was like because we weren't getting paid a lot but my male friends were and we like we also had this very it was funny because it was kind of before
we talked about feminism the way that we then started talking about it into like girl bossing and Hillary and all this other stuff. And so we had a very open acknowledgement and like I took up talk about this in the book a little bit like of
Like you are making money that I'll I'm not seeing. So yes, this feels to completely equitable to me that you should pay for us to go out. Like and there is like an ownership and an acknowledgement that went both ways that didn't feel like that I think sometimes can be perceived now as like a sexist system, but that to us felt quite just.
Right. No. And it just like I think now we talk about like, oh, people who are making more money should fit more of the bill and like the gender kind of disappears from it. It's just that back then because of these enduring like splits and like it was almost entirely men who were that I knew who were already making that money as well.
Right.
Whether it was as consultants or like as investment bankers or whatever.
Yes.
Like also in grad school though no one had that money. So we just like no one it just was it was always like house parties, which is a different sort of special, you know.
different kind of fun. It's a different kind of fun. But that optimism I really think It is really interesting to see like when you have participatory democracy, not to be like corny about it, but like people felt like they were invested.
¶ Political Rallies, Reforms, Friendship
in our country because of how many people that volunteered for that campaign. And I think it cascaded.
I was also gonna say just that the rallies which now a political rally feels like so cringe and corny in some ways, right? But then, you know, like George W. Bush hadn't had rallies. Like he was so like there was not so true. You know, like I was in Austin at the time and I went to this enormous rally on the banks of the river and it was like a profound political moment. And that had not occurred.
Cảm ơn các bạn đã theo dõi.
Yeah. Many, many years. Like even like people talk about Clinton on the stump, not Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton on the stump and like how charismatic he was. But he wasn't having like rallies attracting tens of thousands of people.
No, no, no, no. And the energy also like it's interesting because Obama also served this like symbolic purpose that was like you felt that in publicly supporting him, yeah, you were. like saying the this is the America that I'm voting for like that we truly see the arc of justice bending in a particular way. And so there was kind of a camaraderie of shared values that made people relax. Like and I think that that also is what made those rallies have a different energy.
You're like, oh well I'm here with you and we both chose to spend our time here and like right. And so like like we clearly have this kind of shared vision for what America could be, which is bigger than tax policy. Like right. Like it's like like like it was uh it was but and that was through no fault or credit of his, it was just his existence, like right? Like and what that meant.
And I'm describing this and I'm realizing what we're talking about was a religious revival. Yeah. No not just the rallies themselves, but there was the energy of a religious revival. that allowed the very stark precarity that was like in the background, like allowed us to be like, okay, yeah, but also things are gonna get better.
Yes, yes. That's right. Oh, absolutely the belief was that things were gonna get better. Like one hundred percent the belief is that things were gonna get better. And that it was temporary. Like and I think that that is actually the heartbreak of the mo like
Exactly.
You know what it's like? It's like in a family. You don't know when grandma gets sick at Christmas one year. that this is the end of the family structure as you know it until like five years, ten years later and you're like, it kind of is never the same after grandma got sick that Christmas. Like, we didn't know that it wasn't just a bump. It was like a new a new m uncoupling version, right? Like and that is A bummer.
Well and that's also the difficulty with looking at what happened during the Obama presidency is that like You know, when grandma gets sick at Christmas, sometimes you have to be like, Okay, what's the new family structure gonna look like? Where are we going to have Christmas now? How are we gonna stay together even though it's just like cousins kind of
And what we didn't do, and I I actually I don't blame Obama for this. I blame like the larger the larger uh voting public, Congress, and also maybe some Obama, but like we didn't fundamentally reform. our economic system. We didn't punish the banks. Like we didn't regulate the banks thoroughly. Like
And we then kind of seated. Everything over to big tech. Right. Right. Like I think that
No, and I say that
But I say that because when I was working on this book, like it's funny because I would always like if I before I started it, I'd be like, Oh, it all the optimism came from Obama. It came from well and and that phase'cause I s I think most of the that book is in oh seven. So actually both he and Hillary were still in the race, like right? Like and it was just the idea of like we could do this or that and they're both insane and amazing.
But like when I was done with the book, what I really realized was a special song. And actually this is kind of in the Lita Dedham memoir is the power of being around people in a physical way, like on a continual basis.
that tell you you're gonna finish this PhD and like you're gonna like and it's gonna be amazing and when you're on the other side of it, don't like don't you even worry. And not they're not just saying it'cause they're like, go girl. They're saying it'cause you're hanging out with them two or three times a week.
And you're like, I feel like what's the point? And they're like, No, don't forget that like you have real relationships and I think we don't realize how much I think that that been the economy, yes, like capitalism, all these things, but I think that seeding over our fundamentals of friendship to digitized versions, I think has not helped us restore that at all.
¶ Serendipity, Embodiment, Digital Distraction
No. And this gets to the Brooklyn part of the question, right? And part of the reason there was this energy there. I mean, part of it is just like, okay, so Brooklyn was the place that was now affordable in in and around New York City, right? But also proximity. Yeah. You walk down the street and you're like, Of course I'm gonna run into someone.
Yes. Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like y you can take the train and be somewhere very quickly without like worrying about okay, where am I gonna park? Like it is such a place that is conducive to friendship, but also and you put this this is so it's all over the book. Serendipity. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
running into people like ending up in like some weird party. I didn't live in New York, but my brother lived in New York during this time and I would come visit him. He was living with like three roommates on the first in um on the edge of
Uh
uh really on the edge of Clinton Hill. And um like we would just walk around and he's like, Oh, I know this guy, like, we'll go over to his house and it was Fourth of July and like someone like did an art project of unfurling a giant like flag the size of a building, right? Like and I was like, Oh, here we are, just doing this. Like and I took a couple photos with a digital camera that I then later uploaded to Facebook, but for an album on Facebook. But but there was no like I wasn't like
I need to document where I am. I need to see where everyone else is. I need to like my brother wasn't texting anyone to see where people were. It was just like Let's go.
You were in the moment and you weren't thinking about being captured, like doing anything. So like you had
Perceived.
Yeah, you weren't being perceived. You were like you kind of got to live with abandon. But I also think. Because we weren't like this, like, you know, staring down and like involved in things happening in these other places, like, you know, one one of the things that I had a lot of fun writing about was like you noticed when people were noticing you and when those people were hot.
Like and so like there was just a lot more actual manifestations of sex like when you were just out and about in the world because you weren't distracted and your energy wasn't going down to a device. It was kind of present. And I think that we sort of engineered that out of our body.
Like and like and you just felt I think that actually we might be able to say that we were all just a little more embodied, right? Because we weren't getting so pulled. And so like when you went to places, it was not just that. It was that like you were like, oh
Like you're not down here, so you're like I see that person making eyes at me by that bar. Like, uh might as well talk to them. Like, you know, like it's like like you just we strangers didn't feel as strange'cause you were actually absorbing the Yeah. In a very present way.
I hope this comes off the right way. The book is very like fleshy. Like as in like there like I feel I have a real sensation of like people's bodies in the book.
Good.
And I think that that that's a sign that like you were trying to communicate that feeling of like people like being in proximity to one another and noticing one another in a way that's super interesting.
Oh, thank you. And like I just actually missed it. A lot of my my readers are younger and I kind of was like, I promise if you go out it'll be
Ha ha ha.
Like I was like like I wanna seduce them into getting out and doing something at night and like with with nobody and leaving their phone.
Yeah, well and that's the thing is I will say, like now when you go out, like if you're out at the bar, like everyone who's like feeling kind of awkward, they just look at their phones. Yeah. He kinda looks around.
Ha ha ha.
You flirted, right? You flirted.
Yeah. You talk to the bartender so that that could give you an excuse to talk to the person next to you. Like you're like, I'll go in a three way in a triangle if I can get the bartender and then I can get that person in like
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Okay, so this next question is gonna give us a way to talk too about like inflation, affordability, all these sorts of things. And Brooklyn still. So this comes from
¶ Brooklyn's Commodification and Decline
Why does it feel like Brooklyn in two thousand and eight was the epicenter of everything? What year did hipsters go away? Do you remember the stories about kids out of college working at bare sterns or wherever and having nothing to do because everyone was getting fired, so they had long lunches and slept in empty offices? two thousand and eight to twenty twelve great years or the greatest years.
Ha ha ha.
Okay. So what do you like when you hear this?'Cause oh my gosh, the hipster discourse, like I love that the book isn't set in Williamsburg because Williamsburg seemed to be like the beginning of like the commodification of this Brooklyn ethos. Yes. And like Clinton Hill, Fort Green was like resisting that still, but also There's the like the spectre of the of Barclay Center that's coming.
Yes.
Change everything. So tell I will just let you hear what you think about it.
My take on this,'cause I thought a lot about it'cause of this class book. I think that what happened was Williamsburg was like in a developer's like wet dream, basically, right? And like they built it and then they came. And so then they were like, Oh, we're on to something here. And then you started getting Brooklyn the brand. Like they're like, there's this vibe going on in Brooklyn and now we're gonna turn Brooklyn the vibe into Brooklyn the brand.
And I think it actually started out innocuously enough, but uh for anyone that remembers the Brooklyn Flea.
Oh yeah.
kind of sparked because of the the recession and they were like well everybody needs to make extra money selling their garbage and then people can spend a little bit of money buying other people's garbage and so like it was like and some of it was kind of
Schlocky and then it sort of led to what will now be called the Hudson Valley aesthetic. You know, like but like it was like a real response to and then like, you know, and then it was I I mean there's a friend of mine, she had the Brooklyn Bride blog and like and then it was like and then Brooklyn was a bowling alley and then Brooklyn was like and it became all of these things like that
I think we're built off of a vibe but then ultimately ruin the vibe. And I also feel like it started I think it started with the developers of Williamsburg and they were like, we could really make something out of this.
Right.
it just kind of overdid itself. Like right? Like and then you had like that whole like subway tile and Edison Bold moment. Like it was really like a whole and like handlebar mustache. Like it was like a whole aesthetic guy.
Ha ha.
Yes. I I just oh so I lived in Carroll Gardens and that area so that whole area used to be called South Brooklyn, which was
So yeah, interesting that's where I'm originally from, is from South Brooklyn. Like yeah.
And what I saw, like because I'm a person who like when I moved to a place, I'm always like, What did that used to be? What did that used to be? Trying to figure out like all of this history. Yeah. And one of the things that is super interesting about the area of Carol Gardens where I would certainly not be able to afford to live now, is that like the um or at least like I would never be able to own something. But the two streets that go down there, there's um
Smith and Court. Yeah. And they're really like lovely walkable streets like you walk down it like I would go from where my house to the Trader Joe's to get some groceries. It was like an a mile and a half walk and you would see so many people. One time I saw Bjork in like a filthy
Ha ha ha.
Furcoat. Just walking down the street. You'd see people but there like there's so many like shoppy shops, like there's old Italian social clubs, like shopping shops.
Yes, yes.
Everything. There's kids, there's everything. Um and But gradually, as it became more and more expensive, like the rents on those storefronts started to go up because they realized they could charge more. So when the leases expired, what happened is that like the rents went up so much that the only places that could afford to be there were chains. Yes. Right. So bank
Yeah. Um places that have like pretty high yields like nail salons, this is what people always joke about, is it's a bank or a nail salon or a drugstore. Yeah. Or
A Starbucks. Or now Blank Street Blank Street Coffee. Yes. Yeah.
Or and but also things like American Apparel talk about like that era
that era.
And like no one wanted really to go to an American apparel. So then those places would leave and then they would st the rents would still be at that Get to that price point. And then you would just have these empty places. So it's like the neighborhood hollows itself out by becoming successful.
¶ Affordability Crisis and Urban Decay
Yeah, and and the other thing that you started to see in Carroll Gardens, certainly in Fort Green, was then as people were Rezoning and they're like, Oh, there's a market for luxury condos. Like this was just a walk up building, but now we can make it a luxury condo and they tear it down. There is Like there is so many
You know, I can't think of anything less sexy than thinking about taxes. And yet at the same time, taxation is the root of so many of our problems because they value a building based on the estimated commercial rent. And so then you don't want to undervalue the building by charging less than that.
Yep. And so essentially they then will just let it stay empty because that's better for the tax abatement or whatever the thing is. And so you also just have this like Ghost town of new developments with empty storefronts, and there's no At some point and I say this as somebody that owned a small business in this period, you know, so like we ended up
splitting the business and so I had like a month of wedding planning business that came out of the recession'cause nobody could afford like the big thing anymore. And I had like fifteen women that worked for us part time and they all like were like teachers or like executive assistants. And they did this on Saturdays.
And
I had such a point of pride. Like if somebody like saved their extra money for the down payment on their condo, you know, like, and like they took a big vacation, like whatever it was. Yeah. And we were like, oh my gosh, our business let them do this. And What I think I get so upset about that I do feel like
Scooped up in that post-recession era was any notion of community or socially minded finance. And for all of the like For all the talk about social impact that then like became so buzzy, like in the late, you know, six like the fifteen, sixteens, whatever.
y you just don't see anybody that actually cares about the impact that something makes in a neighborhood or like like in that same it's like, well whatever, we'll just let it stay and like in your li to that point, like they're hollowing out these awesome Places and these places with third spaces and third spaces are what really give people the place to have like friendships.
Like you know, like that is like what gives you the ability to have new friendships. Bars. Yes, bars, bars, bars. Like all like all of it, yes. Like and it just kind of I don't know how you get people to go back to caring about that. And some weird ways I'm feeling like Maybe things are getting so crazy as I'm watching people fight against like data centers and like really caring. I'm like maybe it's getting taken so far that it's gonna snap us into caring about.
¶ Young Adults' Financial Struggles
What percentage would you say of your take home pay were you paying on rent?
Oh that's interesting.
Yeah.
I'd say probably it's New York, probably like thirty or thirty five percent. Like it is like I'd try you know, just to estimate that, like yeah, like I'd say that, but like I wouldn't
Nothing compared to now. Like I know people who pay forty to fifty percent of their
Honestly, I don't know any young people that are in the city that aren't subject.
Yeah.
Like I know one young woman at the Atlantic who has a second job, but other than that person, everybody else I know is pretty much subsidized. Like they are receiving financial help from parents. Like and you know, like the average amount of help like it I think it used to be like you've like oh somebody's on their parents friends and family plan like oh great you can have a cell phone bill but now I think the national average for parental output is almost fifteen hundred dollars a month.
Um support like yeah.
What I would have done with fifteen hundred dollars.
Yeah, like s like that like and that's kind of just across the board. So like, you know, you see people And I it's it really has become a a a city of the very wealthy, but partly it's because to your point, like the salaries actually haven't gotten that much No like for a lot of these jobs.
Yeah. Like so Melody Melody did some inflation math and like
Ooh, ooh.
Thirty thousand if you were earning thirty thousand in March two thousand and eight. has the same buying power now that's forty six thousand. So
Yeah.
The median annual income for workers in the US in two thousand eight was around fifty thousand and now it's sixty two thousand. So like the f it like our you know, we haven't kept pace and also pace. Housing prices, particularly in New York, have not kept pace. And the other thing that I would note here is because The young people now, like we just it's all over in the studies, like they're just
less comfortable with other people, with hanging out, with like having friends. I see a real reticence to have roommates.
So do I
And that was how we survived is we had roommates.
Yes. I and the other I think the other thing that ends up happening is also because you have this idea because it then is a attracting kind of a a h higher class, like a higher fiscal class, like um family. Like there's also like you would kind of go to New York and you're like, I don't know, I'm gonna grret whatever crap hole I can afford and like and make it work. Like is it clean? Are there no bugs? Like right and now it's like you don't have a doorman?
So then what do people build? They build more dormant apartments. Like like if there's a market for it, then if you build it then they will if they they will come when you build it. Like so I think that you're also seeing people building luxury and not building just like you need a place to live, great. Like and so I think that that is a big part of it. And I wish more people had roommates because I think it's such a force
way to have an intimate relationship in like a really good way. Like and it's like you you can't just blow it up either because you've gotta make it work for
Yeah, you have to be you have to communicate. You have to do these things that are hard. And the other thing I would say that I see is like this. impulse towards like becoming an adult very young, which in some ways is very regressive, right? In that it used to be like you if you're a woman you graduated from college or even you didn't graduate from college, you went straight into like
Adulthood and motherhood and wifedom, right? Yeah. So in a different way, but now it's like Not only does your dorm room have to look like The condo of a forty seven year old that like When you graduate, like your parents like put together your single room and like I see parents bemoaning.
That like their kids have to have a roommate when they're an undergrad or like have to deal with ugly, quote unquote ugly dorm dorm furniture. They take the dorm furniture out and they put it in storage and they put the like fancy furniture in so that
Oh my gosh.
There's this real like push to consume in that capacity. But there's also
push to like now that I have nice things, yeah. Oh my gosh. I rewatched The Devil Wears Prada and I stopped Because at one point she's putting on her underwear in the very beginning, Anne Hathaway, and I was like, I used to have that IKEA lingerie chest.
Like I was like I had that for like fifteen years. Like I like it was like hidden in a closet at one point, like you know like And I can now I'm like I remember looking around my apartment like a maybe a year or so ago and being like, There's not a single thing for my Kia here and I felt like I had triumphed but I was like like there is
Something weird that gets lost when you never know resistance. Like like talk about like friction de frictioning everything. I don't know. Like live in a cinder block room for a few years. That's what band in college is. I guess is it is it Gen X now? Like who are these who are the the parents of this age? Is it l older Gen X? And I I think it's because we're like they're traumatized from us being latchkey kids, but I'm like, you don't have to do everything. Like I know
I know we had to make our own breakfast and I know that we came home and nobody was there and you like I know. It's so sad that we had to do that. But like like it doesn't mean that they're gonna die if the dorm room doesn't look like Martha Stewart herself did it. Ha ha ha.
The other thing that I think about when I think about two thousand seven, two thousand eight.
¶ Student Debt and Elite Hiring Bias
is that the percentage of people with student loans was significantly lower. Yes. So we a lot of us were taking out student loans. So at that time I was taking out more loans. But the people who were like twenty six in Brooklyn did not have that tremendous student loan debt on them yet because the the tremendous cuts in
Statewide funding that would force people going to state schools to take on s significant debt, and then also the like luxury lifestyle inflation of private schools that would cause the increase in tuition there. Like that was just that was not an extra cost that people were dealing with as well.
No, that's right. And also I'd actually say that there's like unfortunately, particularly in cities like New York and I'm certain this is true somewhat in San Francisco and like a few other like There's also a certain elitism that's come up into hiring in the last twenty years that
You used to go to work and I'd work with people that had gone to like Hunter or went to SUNY Purchase or like in fact there were b industries where it's like, Oh yeah, we mainly hire a forward like there were feeder schools from local schools, you know, like tier two to three schools and like and now There is such a preference given to like 40 schools in this country that like that are private elite institutions.
And and I went to one of them and I still get upset about it. And again I go back to tax policy'cause it was like, what are we incentivizing these companies that live in these states if not to hire state school graduates? Like make these degrees more valuable'cause I think part of why people also had less debt is that they were able to go and get a great job and come out and go from a SUNY and get a you know, maybe not a white shoe finance firm, but someplace and
I think that you started to see the recruiting practices kind of get more elitist over time. And I think that that has also made everything kind of scale up.
Yeah, and the idea too and this isn't like entirely new, but the idea that like in college everyone at a state school, a elite school, whatever, everyone should look for national intern. Oh, yeah. And then like when you start applying for jobs, it's not like in state, it's I will move anywhere at any time at any pay. Right.
Yes. And then you have so many more job applicants for so many more jobs. And then you have things like AI sorting through the applications and the way that they sort is by looking for things like where'd you get your job?
So true. Right. It's so true. Oh my gosh. And then I think this this is like probably a topic for another day, but I'm like, and then after all these generations of being conditioned to go through this and then to have
somebody like the CEO of Palantir be like, unless you're neurodivergent, don't bother with school. Like like what does this do to it? I feel like we're on the brink of ten million people being unhoused again, but like it's like a different version of it. And I just don't know what we do with all those
hopes and dreams and preparation that so many families have engaged in over this next generation. Like you get a whole country kind of at a precipice and then pull a rug out from under them and I just don't know what that does to our psyche.
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¶ Hustle Culture and Broken Systems
This is actually a great tee up to thinking about hustle culture, which is gonna be our last question. So this one comes from Rachel.
What is the relationship between 2008 optimism and millennial hustle culture? In 2008, I had just finished my first year of law school and it was my first summer living in DC.
We received a few.
receive so many messages. Work hard, play hard, get involved in politics, network. Side note, is this why we all were wearing business casual to bars and clubs? The other message was no way are we paying interns, and you must look an at professional at all times and be careful what you post on Facebook. It was a wild time. It all seemed so quaint now.
I've I've just I've thought so much about this because I think the way that most millennials and I think some young Gen X, and I would love to hear your perspective on this, is like we reacted to the lack of jobs. Some people were like, This is fucked up, let's do Occupy Wall Street. But then the vast majority, and I think this is in part because we were raised by boomers, said, Oh, I'm just gonna work harder.
A hundred percent like a hundred percent. Like I literally had one of my very good friends from high school was like in Occupy. Like you know, like she was like living down there and yeah I and I remember meeting her for coffee. Like she left like the thing and like, you know, and we met up for coffee and she was like, You of all people should really be down there with us. Like you have like this small business and like
You were so like and I was like, But then how will I make money if I'm sitting down in the park with you? Like like you know, like I mean and that was like a very direct example because like if we weren't making the money there was no money. But like it was only when we're thinking back and doing the research for the nonfiction book that I was like, oh my god, this was really messed up.
But I do think the problem is, and part of why this moment is so traumatizing for so many of us, is we fully believed in fact the poor poor Barack Obama meaning so many things to so many people like that he's just a man to his
An over determined an overdetermined symbol.
Like like but he in a lot of ways He was the symbol that the system worked. Mm-hmm. You know, he wrote a book and this made them prosperous and you know, like and now they have like they're winning at capitalism, they're winning at all these things, like they're winning America, and we were like the system worked. And literally we've now then we doubled down on that for like another decade almost, right? Like into COVID.
And then the wheels have just fallen off the whole thing. Like it's like like and so now we're like, what are you talking about? Like, and I think So many people have like um ostrich syndrome and their head is like they're like I don't like how can this whole thing that I've wrapped everything up and not mean anything or function like
Right, so like it and all are like confused'cause they're like, What do you mean I did all the things I was supposed to do to be like a successful bourgeois person and now AI is taking away College educated jobs?
Yes. How dare it, right?
¶ AI, Work's Future, and Embodiment
And this is the thing about the recession, the two thousand eight recession, is that it was like so many of the jobs that were lost were working class jobs.
That's right.
And now it's like, how dare they take away these jobs?
Well, even honestly, like I I did a profile on Andrew Yang recently for The Atlantic and part of why I wanted to talk to him is I was like It's so weird that way back in twenty nineteen he was like, AI's gonna take all these car drivers jobs, these truck driving jobs and like what are you gonna do in UBI? And I'm like now nobody talks about UBI at all or anything. Nobody talks about any solutions. Like there is no discussion of solution. No
just like, who's right? Is it gonna do it?
Is it gonna do it? No, we're all just like you know what it feels like the scene in Austin Powers when the steamroller is coming at him and he's like, No it's moving so slowly. Like it's like no like I said to Andrew, I was like, Well, you know, even you didn't think it was gonna come for the white collar jobs and you know
Andrew's so charming but he doesn't like to be wrong. So he's like, Well, I mean, I just thought it was gonna come for the blue collar jobs first. And I was like'cause you never nobody you were conditioned your whole life. that if you do these things, the problems are gonna come for you because now you've not just become an earner in society, but you did so in this respectable, highbrow way. Right. And so therefore you are insulated from this. And like
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's like and I think that it is traumatizing to feel like suddenly also be told that that whole thing is meaningless and like and you know, and I I don't know what ends up happening with college'cause I'm like, does this just become a thing? Like In the days of our founding fathers where it's just like a place for the very elite to kinda go and pop Yeah Life of the Mod. Exactly.
I the some of the dots that I've been trying to connect in my head too are like I wrote this piece a couple of weeks ago about all of these women who've been doing their husband's job searching for them and why like the men like the men do no longer have the robust social networks to like reach out or a professional network. And I'm thinking about how also the sort of work that we threw ourselves into was the all consuming
sort that like
I'm thinking of even like investment bankers who didn't necessarily want to live like, you know, in Murray Hill or down on Wall Street. And so they then became the people who could afford to live in Brooklyn, but they're working eighteen hour days, they're never home. Yep. They don't have any social lives. They're not part of the community or invested it or even know who their neighbors are, but they are the ones who can pay that rent.
And then now we wake up against this backdrop of upper middle class precarity and are like
Who am I?
Who are my friends?
The biggest the biggest challenge in it The psychology of social class is like like I was raised very blue collar, right? And so like I always joke, I'm like, wedding planner, author, I don't know. Like I'm like dog groomer tomorrow. I don't know. Like a job's a job. Like I'm like the heck it's like because
We weren't conditioned to talk about work, like nobody cared. Like, you know, if you came back home for Christmas break, be like, I got this internship. They're like, is it paying? And they're like, well then who cares? Like, you know, like it was like like this was just not something that was valued in my family but in an upper and m middle and upper class context.
you are trained to find your parachute and the color of it specifically and like sew it and design it and make sure that it's couture and then this is your identity. And I think it is It's a break in the social contract that's gonna feel very, very traumatizing and I I think it's because we have for generations now, you know, and the worst part is is that in doing that, weirdly then we've also managed to kind of stigmatize sort of blue collar work.
So it's not like we're trying to like when somebody's like like Dina Powell was like at the Axios conference and she's like, There's gotta be great careers in welding.
And I was like, Dina, are your kids gonna weld? Like I'm like, Your kids aren't gonna go well. But like unless you grew up in a large family with like lots of people that did lots of things, like most upper middle class people can't imagine their kid having a career in welding. And like They don't know a well d like they don't can't even literally fathom that life.
And that has to do with like uh so many things too, right? Like we no longer have any sort of social organizations where we Hang out with people of other people.
Of other classes. Like we've become so segregated, but like and we've also in popular culture, you have no more working class people. I think one of the reasons why the bear actually was so unusual was because it was the dignity of people that work really hard. And even then and that's partly why they everybody loved that episode with Liza Cole and Zyas,'cause you actually saw her go home. Like people are love it because like you're actually seeing a breath of experience and I think we've erased
a whole swath of Americans and that's also partly why they're pissed off and spending all their time like and s on social media and not engaging with so much of this stuff. Like I it's a real I we're really at a moment and I don't know, that hustle thing is so interesting'cause like you it's like you're watching the defl the balloon deflate. Some of it I think is gonna be really good and some of it I'm like, oh no. Well and
¶ Gen Z's Vision for Work & Life
What is where?
Well too.
This is where I look at like not just Gen Z but now Gen Alpha, like how they are reacting to this moment. And Especially like five years ago, I saw this reaction to like millennials complaining about being burnt out. Gen Z was like some Gen Z were like, Yeah, those fuckers like stop talking about your job. Like Get over yourself. Like just don't work as much, right? So some of them were like very much children of Gen X, like this is your problem. But then some of them were like
Why do millennials complain all the time? Which was how I thought about Gen Xers being like
You know.
Anti sellout, like all these things. I was like, they just don't understand how to play the game.
Yeah, yeah.
So that idea that like, well, if millennials won't take that job or w are gonna complain about it, like I'm just gonna work harder. So essentially like not an another generation like millennials not learning the lessons and instead like rebuilding in a way that uh just is like settling for less, that's what I'm scared of. And I don't know how to like protect against that without being patronizing.
I I I think and it's the hardest thing to do because people can't know what they don't know except Ex like once you tend to get burned by the stove. But I do feel like I don't know, like it's like like you get to a tip like I I always say like by the time I got over the hill of the recession, like and we finally like paid off that chase loan above but like I had such a divorce between
worth and money and career title, like like it it all kind of got divorced in a really healthy way. And like I'm almost that maybe this gives us a weird chance for a realignment, but I am worried about what people wake up and do every day because like you need to have something to wake up and want to do every day. Like that's like
I know like the and this is where like I look at the people with the best like work life balance, the best like social lives and community.
Thank you.
And it's people who do have like J O B jobs. Like
Yeah.
I'm not kidding, like people are gonna think this is sounds weird, but like The exterminator who comes to my house and like uh sets the mouse traps is like one of the happiest people that I encounter on a bi weekly basis. And he is done at five PM, right?
Thank you.
But at the same time, like you have to want to do that work. And I think sometimes we're like, Oh well everyone wants to be a welder and you like the work still has to be dignified and whatever.
York still has to feel dignified to you, but I to you to you and I you know, I do think like there's been a massive investment across the country in um trade educations.
Yep.
And I do think that what I am seeing in Gen Z is it's not actually just a revolt against Maybe this like hustle thing as much as it's like a maybe we shouldn't spend all of our time just sitting at a desk. Like and like there is actually a desire to like like that is what doesn't appeal to them. Like that feels like crazy and weird and like like I don't wanna and I do think that what we allowed corporate America to do to us
Yeah.
Yeah. Divorce our bodies from our hands and our minds. Like and I think one of the reasons why people were kind of quasi happy in the beginning of COVID. With so many people were like, I'm gonna bake bread. I'm gonna have a good time making a very elaborate meal. Right. Like it was like a physical thing that then their brain also was engaged in and like and we didn't realize how like
I don't know, like we'd let ourselves become like really good AIs in a really weird way. Like we're just kind of disembodied, right? Like and like
Disembody people just responding to emails till the end of time.
Yes, yes. And it's like I think that what I find interesting are the young people that had already been on this thing, like before this panic, but like where it's like a I don't wanna be my parents taking out the laptop after dinner and like this doesn't appeal to me. Well
And this isn't this like such a great like r return to like uh Lloyd Dobler's speech and Say Anything where he's like I don't wanna Everything made, everything sold. Processed your made. Sell anything. We'll have Melody do the actual clip.
I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed or buy anything sold or processed.
Or
process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that.
This is a great place for us to come full circle just in terms of like Some of the hope is like maybe there's a new way forward that isn't what our parents what has made our parents miserable.
That's right. I think that that's right. And I I I am trying to think about this moment in time Less focusing on the end of something and more like how do we learn the lessons of the past fifteen to twenty years and build in a better build build back better like Yeah. But make it interesting. Yeah. Like I I I I really feel like we have a moment of opportunity and I've never seen
people in mass seem so cognitive about where we've gone wrong. Which is very exciting actually. It's like a very exciting thing.
¶ Episode Conclusion and Future Topics
Okay, so we have the small bonus segment. It's called the Ask and Anything. And we have a question about lifestyle creep. And I think because of the intersection of your current fiction book and your new nonfiction book. I think you're gonna be the perfect person for this one. Can you stick around and answer?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay. So listeners, if you're not a paid subscriber and you want to hear this, go to patreon.com slash culture study to sign up. And so Jill, this has been such a delight. Everything I wanted or expected and more. Thank you so much for joining us.
This was so fun. I can't thank you enough.
Where can people find you on the internet if they wanna hear more from
I am mainly on Instagram and it is Sochill the G, X O C H I T L the G. And I am, according to Allison Stewart, opinionated. Ha ha ha.
We love it.
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