The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal’s “Best of the Web” at WSJ written by the editor, James Taranto.
Question and Answer—IV
- “M*A*S*H: Where Are They Now?”—headline, ABCNews, Feb. 28, 2013
- “The Last Issue of Hawkeye Has Been Delayed . . . Again”—headline, io9 .com, April 20, 2015
- “Trapper-Killed Wolf Found Inside Denali National Park”—headline, Fairbanks (Alaska) Daily News-Miner, April 21, 2015
- “Blake Lively Dons Six Dresses in One Day”—headline, Houston Chronicle website, April 21, 2015
- “Spring Summer 2015: Hot Lips”—headline, Vogue, April 20, 2015
- “National Park Service to Conduct Prescribed Burns”—headline, StCroix360 .com (U.S. Virgin Islands), April 21, 2015
- “Radar Withdraws From Brazil Iron Project”—headline, Mining Weekly, April 21, 2015
High Maintenance Kids
“In New York, teens and preteens are becoming savvy connoisseurs of real estate,” reports the New York Times, which opens with this disturbing anecdote:
A year and a half ago, Skye van Merkensteijn was shooting hoops with a friend who lives at the Aldyn, a condominium-rental hybrid on Riverside Boulevard with its own indoor basketball court, climbing wall and bowling alley.
Thirteen-year-old Skye was impressed – and envious. Well, his worldly pal told him, he just happened to know of an apartment for sale on the 21st floor.
Skye went home, jumped online and called up a video of the property in question – a 12-room spread with a hot tub and private 37-by-15-foot outdoor pool.
“When my husband, John, came home,” said Skye’s mother, Elizabeth van Merkensteijn, “Skye announced: ‘We’re moving and this is the place we’re moving to.'”
Mr. van Merkensteijn, an investor, told his son he couldn’t afford a $14 million apartment. As for Mrs. van Merkensteijn, if you wanted her to leave the family’s eight-room apartment at the Beresford on Central Park West, she said, you were going to have to carry her out. In a box.
Still, for a lark the couple strolled over to check out their son’s find, which, in addition to the pool and an expansive terrace, had bedazzling views of the Hudson and the Palisades. “We looked at each other and said, ‘This is unbelievable,'” Mrs. van Merkensteijn recalled. “The idea that you could own a place like this in New York City was amazing.”
Skye came along to the closing a few months later.
Compare and contrast with this report from ABC News:
The Brooklyn-based Preschool Mastermind, as it’s called, is a preschool-type experience for adults. No, really. And according to its founder, there’s show-and-tell, arts-and-crafts such as finger paint, games (think musical chairs) and even naps.
“I realized all the implications of what we learn in preschool,” said founder Michelle Joni, who said she went to school for childhood education and always wanted to be a preschool teacher. “People come here and get in touch with their inner child. It’s magical.” . . .
Adult preschool – not unlike New York City’s preschool’s for children, doesn’t come cheap. Payment for the class is on a sliding scale ranging from $333 to $999. Joni said that “preschool is all about choice. I want them [the students] to feel good about the choice they’re making.”
In New York, the city your humble columnist calls home, children are making multimillion-dollar real estate deals, while adults are going to nursery school. It’s enough to make a grown man cry.
(Note: “High Maintainance Kids” from a Mrach 20 BOTW post.) For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”
