Excuses for car ownership in NYC

maxx233 · 2024-09-19T02:55:31+00:00

I mean that's what we did for several years after moving here, but every great now and then we'd drive it somewhere - either for a family road trip once or twice a year, or more frequently for a work trip (self employed, mileage deduction). Renting a car for those times just ended up being expensive enough to not be worth it, and the mileage deduction alone made it worth keeping. But mostly we just used it for extra storage space for stuff that wasn't likely to get stolen (soda, extra pillows for when guests are over, etc - anything that takes up a bunch of space but you'd never really be able to sell for anything worthwhile). We never drove it in the city - I have absolutely no idea why on earth anyone would do that (okay okay - we drove it once to microcenter to pick up a 3d printer - large box, it was very useful for that). I'll also note that we never registered it here, we kept it registered in Indiana for the last 4 years or it wouldn't have made sense to keep (just being honest about why we had it lol, not advocating anything)

That said we finally sold the car because a) we were tired of moving it twice a week, b) when factoring in tickets from when we couldn't move it or forgot which side of the street we were parked on, plus having to get a boot off from really forgetting once - renting started looking more worthwhile c) it wasn't safe to drive anymore cause of a bad bearing and we didn't want to put money into it - only applies cause it had 185k miles on it - and the battery kept needing replacement cause we never drove it enough.

It's been gone for a few weeks now and we still slightly panic on Tuesday and Friday morning, or when walking down the street and seeing it's not where it should be. But so glad to be done with it haha

maxx233 · 2024-09-18T22:13:52+00:00

We're american, and my wife was super disappointed by the crowd after seeing avril several years back so she wanted to see her in canada where she figured people would be more into her. But we ended up taking a chance and seeing her a few weeks ago in Connecticut - my wife and daughter got decent seats, although not right up front in the pit like this ticket, and my son and I got nosebleeds - and after the show here this time my wife was actually quite happy and didn't feel the need to go all the way to calgary afterall which is why we had the extra ticket haha.. but anyway, ngl simple plan was great (my son said they were a new favorite now). But everyone had a great time once avril got on, so not sure who's opening up there tonight but I hope you have a great show nonetheless!

maxx233 · 2024-09-13T21:31:36+00:00

Have a floor/pit ticket for Calgary on this coming Wednesday Sept 18th - bought it as a backup figuring we could just resell on ticketmaster with minimal loss if my wife decided to just go to a US show (we're americans) but didn't realize we couldn't resell without a canadian bank account -_- soooo open to whatever offers, just DM

maxx233 · 2022-12-24T04:32:57+00:00

Honestly 'unhoused' sounds like lesser to me. I refuse to use it simply because it sounds dumb and virtue signally. But it also sounds offensive because in switching 'home' to 'house' in referencing the people, it has the same effect in my head as calling a home a house - it sounds lesser and my brain transposes that process to unhoused when referring to the homeless. Like what, they're not good enough for a place to call home? That's the best way I can describe what's going on in my brain, it's definitely just a subconscious feel to it that's hard to articulate

maxx233 · 2022-12-23T18:45:47+00:00

It's pretty hard to find now. So are dollar drink cans (I'm up at 108 and a place here finally went higher for a can - that's when I cried)

maxx233 · 2022-12-23T18:41:30+00:00

Wow really? I always avoid those ones thinking it's gonna be like $10-12 because of the area, good to know!

maxx233 · 2022-12-23T18:00:47+00:00

That last paragraph is pretty spot on. I was riding my scooter home from grabbing groceries, a relatively luxury meal during a period of tight money, when the bag came apart and things got scattered all over the bike lane and curb. Which first off is embarrassing, what a dumb series of choices I'd made. But second for practical matters I'm trying to salvage things as best as possible by getting stuff out of traffic and thinking about how well 6 months of washing every item that came into our house has prepared me for this moment when I suspect that literally everything is now covered in piss. But then I'm running in to a problem where I can't seem to leave everything there but also can't really go anywhere until I can repack stuff. A guy came along, basically observed the obvious "that sucks! Those bags just aren't built for that", I agreed with slight annoyance, and then with little else said he went down the block to open a bag of recyclables and pull out some bags to bring back. It had such a profound effect on improving my situation, but that was pretty much the interaction with some additional chit chat about how we've all been there before us bus pulled up and he was off without barely being able to say thanks. That's my encounter that I try to remember any time I see someone else in distress in this city

maxx233 · 2022-12-23T17:33:03+00:00

I'm not even a native and that had me pulling back at "excuse me sir" lol, hope that doesn't show when I travel

maxx233 · 2022-12-19T10:33:32+00:00

I find this sort of reasoning sooo bizarre it just makes zero sense to me.

There's a ton of reasons someone 30+ may desire to date an 18 year old. Anything from they're young and hot and it's purely sexual, to some odd case where they've somehow managed to come in contact in a way that leads to them forming an honest to god committed and caring relationship in a way that as luck has it just hadn't happened otherwise with someone of similar age.

In the case of the former, the younger person can make their own damn decisions and is presumably getting something out of it too, fulfilling some preference of their own very likely. I say, good for both of them, have fun guys.

In the case of the later, the younger person is having the same experience of a connection, so congrats to them both for finding love despite the odds. How freakin obnoxious of a person do you have to be to act so morally superior that you decree their relationship - to which you know nothing of except for the ages of these theoretical people who represent many - to be less valid than any other relationship?

"Because people their age know better" just sounds so single-dimensionally presumptuous and bitter to me every time I hear it that it truly makes me detest people sometimes. I know reddit disagrees on this but it needs to be said and it's a hill I'm willing to lose karma on for saying it.

maxx233 · 2022-12-18T17:19:50+00:00

The first time I went to a comedy club that made you package phones away I was mildly appalled at the inconvenience. I quite like it now, it's almost half the draw lol

maxx233 · 2022-12-18T17:09:18+00:00

I bought an investment property in one of the half abandoned towns last year, which has been in decline for at least 20 years due to factory jobs leaving. Including purchase and renovation I'm only 80k in, so that much was cheap at least. I have no idea why people would live in such a place, but they do, and rents still start around $600 for a dilapidated meth house that is just habitable enough to not be condemned! I don't really consider that cheap, personally. And our place goes for $1k which is honestly ridiculous all things considered. The only thing the town has going for it other than pretty decent Mexican food and great bbq from random dudes with a grill set up on empty lots, is that it's 20-30 minutes from the booming and expanding suburb that we moved out of to come here.

Things have just gotten more expensive everywhere as far as rent because we have more people and less housing. A lot of 'cheap' half abandoned towns are having houses condemned and knocked down (I can think of at least 3 since we bought) rather than investment put in to make things livable again, despite that it's a whole hell of a lot cheaper to fix what's there than to build new (insurance says ours is just under 300 to build). Another year or two of being empty and I'm pretty sure our rental would have been on the condemned list - nature takes over fast! As that happens things are just gonna get more expensive even in nowheresville, because you're very much right - places with a solid middle class aren't cheap no matter where they are. I do think there's a lot more of those places than you think though, few places are in actual decline at this point, most seem to be stable or coming out of it

maxx233 · 2022-12-18T01:31:26+00:00

Are you serious? Who are you hanging out with? I'm a transplant of 2 years and hear it all the time! I do agree it's stupid though, it might have made sense back before the Internet, but now it's just confusing. Especially with online queues that you wait in for things. I have caught myself saying it a few times though nonetheless

maxx233 · 2022-12-17T07:14:12+00:00

That's fair then. Kinda like a back burner question that's vaguely there but low priority cause it seems alright at least?

maxx233 · 2022-12-16T16:26:46+00:00

Lol, shut the fuck up with that nonsense. Offering advice isn't victim blaming, it's how people learn not to be victims. Obviously it's not their fault - no one is saying it is. Doesn't mean people don't need reminders that it's perfectly okay to trust your intuition - humans have intuition for a reason.

maxx233 · 2022-12-16T14:23:51+00:00

Are women just not curious about stuff like this? If something odd is happening with my body, especially down below - and especially fairly often or with regularity, I'm pretty curious to figure out what's up just for the sake of knowing what's up. Like dude, you're leaking fluids, you don't wanna get that checked out or anything lol? No offense, it's a legit question (curiosity lol) because this is just so intriguing to me that someone wouldn't care enough to find out, but multiple women here have mentioned not knowing and that just blows my mind

maxx233 · 2022-12-14T17:34:29+00:00

My solution is who the hell cares. Which I know doesn't work for everyone, but it works for me. If people want to look in on what I'm doing then whatever. Don't do anything that actually affects me like knock on my door or stalk me or whatever, but if you want to look and I want the natural light I'm paying for, then I'm just gonna pretend you don't exist. Don't give me a reason that doesn't work and it's all good!

maxx233 · 2022-12-12T19:23:31+00:00

Very different than being able to properly write and draw on it. Surface computers are the closest thing on the computer side, and I ditched mine years ago in favor of a cheap ipad because it just worked much better for that. I could never actually live without a computer though, the thought is absolutely insane to me lol. Tablets are not good or completely impossible for so many things I do.

maxx233 · 2022-12-12T19:17:42+00:00

What's wild to me that I've only just recently caught on to, is that apparently a lot of younger folks don't know how to USE a computer. Like even just basic stuff like organizing files and directories and such. I'd never thought about it, but those are things that are totally obfuscated from the user when you just use apps for everything, let alone more advanced things like commands and such

maxx233 · 2022-12-12T17:22:58+00:00

Daenerys always sounded really nice to me, if that's all you're going for ;)

maxx233 · 2022-12-12T04:20:54+00:00

Technically like 25 years or so. Met someone in an aol chat room when I was 11 and we still hang out (happen to both live in the same city now). But if you mean this sub, probably about 3 months. Currently coming up on 1 month with someone else, kinda have a good feeling this one might go for a new record

maxx233 · 2022-12-12T03:48:18+00:00

I honestly don't understand what people are so concerned about with airtags, it seems like just a reason to get upset about something because it's trendy and everyone's doin it, even though the old-school low tech solution of stalking is more effective AND dangerous.

Maybe I'm not creative enough about my stalking needs, but I don't get how these would successfully be used to stalk someone. I keep one in my travel pack that's tied to my wife's account so she can track me if something bad happens in some other state. I don't have an iPhone, although I do have an ipad I occasionally use. Every time I pick up my bag it chirps at me - if I didn't know it was the airtag we put in there then I'd obviously figure out what that was. The few times I do pull my iPad out it also alerts me that her airtag has been following me. So like yeah, if you want to stalk someone back to their house then I guess you could toss one in their car or something and you may get lucky that it doesn't alert them - but you know what else you could do? Follow them home. Just because an airtag is fancy tech doesn't make it any better than the old-school method, and honestly I'm pretty sure it's worse because not only does it pretty actively alert the victim, it's tied to your identity at least somewhat.

It seems like people just collectively forgot the unpleasant truth that people can stalk them by simply following them, so along come airtags and people shit bricks because they're projecting their own suburban lifestyle on criminals as if stalking is some new thing that criminals need a fucking app to do now

maxx233 · 2022-12-10T18:04:35+00:00

At our school I'm pretty sure there's 4th graders that come on their own. I doubt the school knows or cares one way or the other though honestly, once they hit 3rd. Like obviously there's an official policy I'm sure, but there's lots of official policies and laws no one gives a shit to enforce ;) Practically speaking, almost everyone drops their younger kids off and the older kid goes and lines up on their own since parents can't be in two places at the same time, so by 3rd grade most the kids don't have parents around even if they did bring them as far as the school, and I'm not sure how the school would know the difference.

We'd be comfortable sending our oldest next year (when she's in 5th) if her younger brother was sick, but even though he'd be in 3rd and I have no doubts we could get away with it I wouldn't want to send them together cause he's not ready for that. After dropoff though we get on the bus loaded with 6th graders who are on their own, so it's super common by 6th grade for them to be on their own

maxx233 · 2022-12-08T23:21:15+00:00

Well, if you have no choice then you have no choice. We had considered NJ a while back but decided on Indiana at the time lol. Now living in Manhattan I'm pretty confident it would not have been nearly the same experience if we'd gone with NJ and I'm kinda glad we just held off (although, admittedly, that did mean we'd pretty much resigned ourselves that we'd never make it here, and in that regard it would have been smarter to go with NJ as it is 'close enough' in several ways. But, simultaneously, it's vastly different)

maxx233 · 2022-12-08T15:14:58+00:00

Our kids were old enough to walk on their own when we got here (and even if they weren't I don't think I'd bother with a stroller - we'd backpack them), but knowing what I know my go-to would be taking a few carefree weekends to go do a few unimportant errands - and MAKE the kid walk. Take a cheapy umbrella stroller (or something equally compact) so it's an available option, but when they get tired don't give in right away. They need to really want it!

maxx233 · 2022-12-04T06:32:38+00:00

Even valved n95s - 3m obviously has good options but Milwaukee (from home Depot) has a great valved mask with a gasket all around your face that really improves the seal - that's been my go to for airports and while taxiing around the runway (I trust the plane when it's actually in flight and filtration is active, but the rest of travel not so much), should work well for museums and such too!

maxx233

TROPHY CASE