Copyright berkshireeagle
Maybe for the same reason I bought Robin Leach’s “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” unapologetically for the Travel Channel back in the day, a guilty pleasure is reading the Mansion section in The Wall Street Journal every Friday. I keep wondering how many readers could actually make on offer on those $25 million homes. I suppose that isn’t the point. Like our country, the pursuit of happiness is woven into our fabric. So I shouldn’t have been surprised when a full-page display ad for some pretentious new build in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., promised that buying into it “ensures that life is truly exquisite.” OK, Mr. Copywriter, and Ms. Chief Marketing Officer, I know marijuana is legal in a lot of states and you can’t hardly walk down the street in Manhattan or D.C. at lunchtime anymore without getting a whiff like pungent huckleberry, but let’s ratchet it down a notch. Are they for real? Let’s consider the proposition. Firstly, I’ve got to move to Florida — nix nix. It might be moot when the federal government is now a kleptocracy of which Russia’s chief thief Vladimir Putin should be envious, but I just can’t bring myself to put money into a state run by Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has demonstrated the empathy of a stone and the self-righteousness of a party punch-drunk with power. Shaken not stirred, with lots of ICE. Next, I need to buy into a high-rise whose ground floor will likely be underwater by the end of the century. Remember the 12-story condominium collapse in nearby Surfside in 2021? Do I want to wrestle an alligator to get to the elevator? I think not. Do I want to count on concrete when it corrodes like castles in the sand? Mama didn’t raise a fool. Do I want to listen every day — or any day, for that matter — to pickleball, listed as one of the features of this exquisite lifestyle? How many floors up do I need to be to get away from the evil plastic thwack that has invaded tennis courts like an acoustic plague? Finally, let’s take it up a flight to the existential floor. These jokers are thinking they can con me — or one of the more well-heeled Journal readers, more likely — into thinking that chi-chi surroundings will give me a supercool life. The moment I read that, I thought: What, none of the faulty plumbing that comes with old human pipes, no tennis elbow, no kids out of work, nobody in the White House or the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee who raises my blood pressure every time they open their mouth, no friends and family dead or dying? Basically, the trappings of a life worthy of the advertisement. Can anyone have this? Let’s not even talk about how most of these luxe high-rises are depopulated by absentee owners from Moscow to Riyadh to Beijing and other haunts of the newly rich. With whom are you going to play pickleball? The doorman making minimum wage? The Uber Eats guy? It’s become farcical: cable channels full of over-styled real estate brokers placing tacky couples in apartments in countries in which you know they won’t really last the year; McMansions with oversized furniture that still can’t fill a room, littering neighborhoods that once had reasonably sized homes. It seems like we just can’t spend money fast enough. That’s what it comes down to, really. We don’t want socialism or even a social safety net with holes you could drive a truck through. We gut our aid to countries that have relied on us. We cut Medicaid. We let our inner cities rot. And yet we need dwellings to match our insecurity. Size matters. I guess it’s coming of age in the 1960s, but I can’t help feeling that waste and flaunting of money is just wrong when there is so much need out there. The older I get, the less I require. You can’t take it with you. My dad grew up in a cold-water railroad flat in Red Hook, Brooklyn. If he had three squares and a working radiator, he was happy. When he died, he left a few well-worn LP’s, out-of-fashion suits he wore on Wall Street and a pin for his service in the U.S. Army Air Corps. My brother got his watch — sentimental value only. We got the most precious possession of all: time we spent, our memories and dreams. What more is there? Wife, family, friends and a job worth doing have graced me with a great life. I’m lucky. When all is said and done, what you give away is always better than what you take. I don’t begrudge you your bespoke Florida penthouse if you like the air up there. I’ll do my flying on the ground.
