OK, we get it. There’s a recession going on. Many of our friends have been laid off. It sucks not to have a job. It sucks even more when that happens during a downturn and those doing any hiring at all or making the big decisions freaking out and making it harder for anyone to dig out of the hole.
That said, shouldn’t this passage from Crain’s New York Business be filed under “Fancy Problems”? Perhaps more to the point, shouldn’t you have been embarrassed before the recession about $2K kids parties and $500 exercise classes for toddlers.
Crain’s New York Business: Stress and the City: That gloom has resulted in shifts in behavior, both sharp and subtle. The city, long high on the boom times when two-bedroom apartments went for $2 million and preschool birthday parties cost $2,000, is rapidly becoming a different place. Natalia Gedanke, a mother of two in Brooklyn Heights, now sees a lot more moms than nannies at pickup at P.S. 8, because the moms have been laid off. When dads appear at the school, everyone wonders if they, too, have been fired, but no one dares to ask.
A new toddlers’ gym, where semester-long programs cost more than $500, recently opened in the neighborhood. But it had to drop its prices because classes weren’t filling up. “A year ago, there would have been lines trying to get their kids into these classes,” Ms. Gedanke says. “Now, even the moms who were the most upscale in the neighborhood are saying, ‘It’s too expensive.’ ”
