181 points

The sizes of apartments on TV were also a blatant lie.

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78 points

On the plus side, my apartment has four walls and they meet the ceiling.

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16 points

What about the floor? Do the walls reach the floor? Do you even have a floor?

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41 points

The size of Monica’s apartment was mentioned in the show. It was her grandma’s apartment and under rent control; the apartment building didn’t know that it wasn’t the Grandma anymore. With that, it wasn’t unreasonable for her to be able to afford it during the 90s

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92 points

Wow even in a 90’s TV show they had to commit fraud to have affordable housing

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37 points

man it sounds like rent control might be kinda nice? maybe we shou- BANG BANG BANG BANG oh how unfortunate, this commenter seems to have suddenly decided to kill themselves…

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2 points
*

I’ve now gotten into two ‘comment fights’ about this, related to Seattle.

Seattle recently passed a new tax that will translate into… 200 units of housing a year, not newly built ( yay insane zoning laws preventing dense construction! yay NIMBYism! )…

…but existing properties purchased ( at market value of course, they could be emminent domained but thats icky and unfair to slumlord landlords)…

… and then managed bu the city to be priced for those making between 80% and 120% of Area Median Income.

Than translates to a rent of about $2500 to about $3100, for a one bedroom apartment, with two people in it.

Meanwhile, 20% of the population can’t afford a rent over $1900, and the 20% below them can’t afford rent over $600.

Those 2 20% chunks equate to about 160,000 people each, or 320,000 people altogether.

200 units a year.

320,000 people that can barely afford rent.

-.-

I point out that 200 units a year at that price point won’t do anything meaningful to the overall situation, and people downvote me saying I am impeding progress, while celebrating that this will solve the housing crisis.

I point out that there would be much more actual good than harm from something much closer to rent control… because almost all of the downsides from enacting rent control are already currently in existence because the housing ‘free’ market has failed, and everyone acts like I am economically illiterate, citing 15 year old articles at me.

I have a degree in Economics, but what do I know?

I swear to god, perma online Seattle people are the smuggest assholes in existence.

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4 points

Tho the houses seem to be relatively realistic for white families living in gated communities on the east coast

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3 points

Jerry Seinfeld’s apartment seemed close to right although we never saw the bedroom.

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109 points

Also that a group of underemployed 20-somethings can afford huge, well-furnished apartments in Manhattan.

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66 points

I believe in Friends, it’s justified as Monika pretending that her grandmother is living there so she still gets her rent controlled tenancy agreement. I thought I remembered that there was an episode where she and the custodian were having a fight so he threatened to reveal the grandma isn’t alive anymore so that Monika would have renegotiate the agreement (and it was resolved so he didn’t do that.)

As for Joey and Chandler’s apartment, no clue how that one happened lol

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61 points
*

You’re recalling correctly. Joey has to agree to be the building manager’s dance partner in order to keep him from snitching. My wife watches Friends on repeat so it’s burned into my memory from proximity.

As for Joey and Chandler, Chandler has a well paying job that nobody can quite explain as a running gag. He’s not a “transpondster”, at a minimum.

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4 points

He works in data management.

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39 points

IIRC Chandler was the only one with a substantial job. He worked in IT and then as a data scientist. There was a running joke that he couldn’t explain his job in a way that his dense friends could understand.

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5 points

The show is set in the 90s and IT wasn’t something mainstream back then. The plot is not that they’re too dense to understand, it’s that it is too obscure to care

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9 points

Well theirs is a rather small apartment, but I also think there as in implication that one of them has been there for quite a few years.

And you are right it’s both mentioned and an explicit plot point that Rachel and Monica are in a rent controlled apartment after Monicas Nana, not sure what OC is on about

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2 points

I think Joey got some kind of windfall from an acting gig and then kept it rent controlled or something

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10 points

I always notice all the useless junk people own in sitcoms. Like look at all that shit in the background of the screenshot.

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13 points

You DON’T own useless junk? Only thing that’s stopping me somewhat is that I don’t really have anywhere to put it.

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7 points

I mean, it looks mostly like kitchen implements, cutlery, cooking stuff. Not really useless junk. I have 8 cupboards of similar stuff in my kitchen.

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10 points

And Monica was a chef.

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3 points

Take a photo of any room in your house. Not to post on the Internet, just to look at with fresh eyes. You will almost certainly see a bunch of useless clutter.

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2 points

I have one room. Can fit everything i own into three rubbermaid bins. Most of what I own is clothes or food. And I don’t even have enough pants to last a week.

In terms of stuff other than clothes and food. A laptop and an air fryer.

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-2 points

White people can do this.

Source: My friend worked around the clock in banking while living a room in a rowhouse in Manhattan. His roommates were random white people who were like aspiring artists.

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You guys have breakfast?

I’ll rather get my full 4 hours of sleep instead.

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36 points
*

4 full hours of sleep and you only skip one meal?! Look at this guy living the life over there.

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14 points
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You guys are sleeping every day?

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84 points

How about the notion that one can afford to live in NYC while working at a coffee shop with only one roommate

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73 points

The apartment was rent controlled, and legally leased by Monica’s dead grandmother. Monica was committing fraud.

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11 points

Hey - I don’t like the tone I used to read that comment young man. Fuck them landlords.

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11 points

Fuck it. I’m getting radicalized. It should only be legal to own one property at a time!

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10 points

But Joey and Chandler could afford to live across the hall from them which was never explained.

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24 points
*

sigh

Chandler had a good job, working in data science, which was still mysterious and paid well in the 90s. And Joey likely got unemployment between acting jobs.

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7 points
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Admirable hustle

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21 points

That’s not an absurdity, and if it looks like one then it’s the world that’s wrong.

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10 points

That’s part of the point.

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79 points

They lived across the hall from each other. It actually made sense in this case.

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36 points
*

Good point. But, I don’t even have breakfast with people in my own house. Just don’t have time and different schedules.

Would have to be “perfectly” aligned with one another to pull this off in different apartments.

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6 points

These were supposed to be young people with very laid back schedules. That’s what the vibe of the show was about. I’m pretty sure there isn’t a shortage of groups of young adults with moderately wealthy parents living in this sort of bohemian setting now and there certainly wasn’t one in the 90s.

But yeah, it isn’t universal and it can come across badly in sine cases

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3 points

I eat breakfast at my desk at work because the milk is free then.

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1 point

Do you work at a dairy farm?

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1 point

I wish. We had a weird schedule at work the other day and I left the house after sunrise… Golly, I know it’s February but I swear I could hear the birds and see godly sunshine the whole drive. “Is this what empowerment feels like?” I thought.

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9 points

Ross lived elsewhere

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11 points

Only across the street, they can see into the window

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2 points

Did we ever see where Phoebe lived? Can’t remember it.

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196

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