Not sure if this picture is real, but it is fantastic.

https://twitter.com/mordkhetzvi/status/1107336714736074753

Ab Haram to all y'all.

Isn't Manhattan an artificially constructed bubble of wealth, though not a provincial one.

1: Amazingly, they got the Chinese and I think Japanese right. Had to look at it for a while before I caught on to the Arabic not being sufficiently connected and hence probably backwards, too. Needed to go into the comments for the Hebrew. I'm sort of wondering on the process of how this happened: Google Translate wouldn't produce that error. You'd have to look up the translation in transliteration, then transliterate that back into the target language.

4: The Hebrew is backwards.

Most of us in New York City will never have the opportunity to live, work, shop and play within this provincial, hermetic, artificially constructed bubble of wealth that is now grafted on to the side of Manhattan.

Counterpoint: yes you will, you silly man. It's not like there are going to be security guards at the gates checking your credit balance or equipped with special NAIAD detectors that go off when they detect trace quantities of poor. Your article opens with the fact that one of the shops there is an H&M for god's sake. H&M's business model does not rely on excluding all but the gilded rich from its doors. This is not a Forbidden City because it isn't bloody forbidden. IT IS A MALL.

And, seriously, you are complaining about an outbreak of retail and residential property development aimed mainly at the very rich, in Manhattan. This is a little like arriving in Las Vegas and announcing that you are shocked, shocked, to see gambling going on here.

5: Or rather, isn't backwards but should be.

6.last: I was kind of shocked by the number of nude statues in the areas where people were talking science.

They do not want to participate in the world at all; they want to build their own simulacrum of it and float away forever, secure in the knowledge that none of the lesser people or things that populate the earth will ever be allowed to intrude. This is the promise of Hudson Yards - the same as the promise of the Titanic.

The promise of the Titanic was "we will get you across the Atlantic quickly". (It was not fulfilled.) Rich people in 1912 did not need to get on board a big ship to lead a life into which the poor were not allowed to intrude.

Yeah, ajay! Speak truth to power!

Well, honestly. You can't portray something as the exclusive bubble of billionaire oligarchs if the lead of your story is that it's got an H&M.

But I suppose it's a Guardian Comment Is Free piece and therefore its only purpose is to be annoying and wrong and provoke people into clicking on it.

I have been to Manhattan a total of three times in my life, most recently in 2005. I'm obviously the expert here.

I'm sure it's terribly, terribly tacky (and did he really use the word "provincial" as an insult with a straight face? That's impressive) but it isn't going to make Manhattan any worse than it already was.

Maybe 2003 or 2004. Definitely once this millennium.

Once in the 80s, once in the 90s, once in the 00s. I guess I have the rest of the year if I want to keep up the streak.

5: Yeah, I just thought it was interesting that you actually have to know Hebrew (or at least a few words in it) to know it's backwards; it doesn't give orthographic indicators to its backwardsness, but Arabic and derived alphabets do.

9: They sound more like they're describing the settings of the Bioshock games.

I thought of sending in this, which sounds more coherent than the OP.

Kaplan called the application process "healthy" when I asked how intensive it was. Still, that brands had even small hurdles to jump was the sort of detail that floored the brands I spoke with. In most malls these days, the only question those managing the space want to know is when they can expect a check. Nitzberg won't explicitly say that brands were turned away, but notes that the space was heavily curated--and that I'm free to read into that how I like.
[...]
The brand imagines itself integrating into the lives of its future customers. Say a clumsy office worker spills on his shirt before a meeting with the board: he can simply rush over to Brooks Brothers for a replacement. A resident in the towers who needs a new power tie can have one delivered via concierge.

As a local, it's kind of weird and gross -- Manhattan's a dumb place to put literal malls, and I don't think they usually do well (there's the thing across the street from Macy's on 34th that started out kind of luxury and then slid downhill), and there are a bunch in the new WTC area. And that big dumb thing at Columbus Circle. And Trump Tower, I suppose.

But it's not as if it's replacing anything that had any civic value, it was space over rail yards. So, meh.

Brooks Brothers makes a nice shirt, but they cost too much when they don't run a sale.

I'm in my third week of wearing the same Brooks Brothers trousers to work everyday. They don't smell yet and I haven't spilled lunch on them yet.

Comparison. Very hermetic, down to direct airport connection.

Someday we'll find it, the airport connection.

This piece does remind me of some of the luxury buildings that have appeared in downtown Baltimore. A big part of the advertising pitch seems to be that everything you need - restaurants, retail, pool, gym, bars & etc. - is contained within the compound so you never need to leave.

Also, who pays $4,000 a month in rent (and that's not the most expensive units, apparently those are around $8,000/month)? It's Baltimore for crying out loud.

24.1 is of course standard for third world countries with spectacular Gini coefficients. Hence 22.

But it's not as if it's replacing anything that had any civic value, it was space over rail yards. So, meh.

Under market socialism, using public land to counteract the deleterious effects of unbridled accumulation is pretty vital. So I think it definitely says something that when they had a big chunk of they could have put to a lot of use, this is what they came up with.

Also, most or all of it appears to be "privately owned public space", so it's a zoning amendment or two removed from credit-check RFID trackers if they wanted. What a vision!

(Of course there is a decent argument that where land value is super high, it's more efficient to let public land out to the highest bidder and use that to cross-subsidize affordable housing in cheaper areas. I have no idea if that's happening in practice here. Skeptical. Also better to lease.)

Longer and more detailed NY Mag article.

Arrogation of all conceivable IP resulting from their privately-owned public art installation.

IP remains with the creator in that case, as far as I can tell. If I take a photo of the ludicrous staircase, I own it. I can sell it to a third party like a newspaper or Getty Images or whatever. The agreement just says that Hudson Yards can use the photo as well for their own ends (marketing etc). Hudson Yards doesn't own the IP, though, because it can't sell it to a third party.

That's quite an important distinction to draw.

That's the outdoor observation deck, which juts out 65 feet and comes to a point 1,100 feet above the street. From here -- or better yet, from the set of bleachers that allows you to peer over the glass railing -- I can look down on the Empire State Building.

Height of the observation deck: 1,100 feet.
Height of the Empire State Building: 1,250 feet to roof; 1,454 feet to antenna.

Fair enough. I'd lie about easily checked facts if it made a better story too. That's just journalism.

You can look down on the majority of the Empire State Building.

Maybe he meant "sneer at and despise" rather than literally "observe from a higher position".

I am taller than the majority of NBA players.

31: I can look down on every single player in the NBA!

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Honestly, that's way more effort than I need to get to despair.

I guess that's why it only applies to the Mighty.

I think the construction of Hudson Yards frames the opening scene of Mr. Robot.