I’m not that up on NYC politics and I hadn’t realize that all three major dailies endorsed Quinn, or that Quinn (who finished third) was backed, tacitly, by Bloomberg. But it seems likely that New York voters have ended Bloomberg’s period of total control:
Michael Bloomberg is not enjoying de Blasio’s campaign — and there’s a pretty good reason why: The Democrat’s campaign represents one of the first sustained, publicly damaging attacks on his mayoralty that the billionaire has not been able to silence using an arsenal of personal relationships, political leverage and lots of money. For Bloomberg’s political and policy legacies, de Blasio’s impassioned critique (and its dramatic political success) pose a formidable threat he has not faced before.
First, some context. When Bloomberg entered office in 2001, the default setting for running City Hall was that at any given moment, you were likely to be hated by a sizable portion of the city, no matter what you did. It simply wasn’t possible to run New York in a way that would avoid vocal criticism from editorial pages, unions, business elites, leaders of numerous ethnic and cultural communities, nonprofits, good government groups, other politicians, the city council, and the organization of the opposition party (let alone your own) all at the same time.
To some extent, Michael Bloomberg managed to change that — partly through laudable ways, partly through less laudable ones. But either way, the result was he was able — until now — to prevent a climate of noisy pushback that most New York mayors do not.
I’m not a Bloomberg hater. Unlike most centrist cult love objects, he takes on genuinely controversial projects, like gun control and his soda ban. But it’s nice to see him get taken down a peg.
Yatsuno
You have your empire, Mr Bloomberg. Now you have to keep it.
He shot himself in the foot by weaseling around the term limit mishegas. I can’t have too much sympathy for him based on that. Not to mention stop & frisk is institutionalised racism in extremis.
Punchy
Isn’t de Blasio almost twice the height of Bloomberg?
Villago Delenda Est
This is schadenfreude. Bloomberg writhing in political pain as his designated successor gets her ass kicked from the Battery to the Bronx.
Yatsuno
@Villago Delenda Est: NYD will give me an earful on this next time we talk I’m sure. Of course then I’ll remind him he only has to go back to The City for holidays. Should be fun.
MattF
Have to mention also Bloomberg’s support of the Islamic Center in lower Manhattan. That said, he’s gotten accustomed to getting his way, and it’s probably time for a change.
Shakezula
Shot himself in the foot.
Stop-And-Violate-4th-Amendment-Rights was too hard for all but hard core racists to excuse and the comment about di Blasio’s racist act of failing to deny his wife and son are black – WTF? I thought he had to be running and scared to lash out like that.
Quinn (and anyone else who has Bloomberg’s approval) should have taken a big step away from him after that one.
Amir Khalid
Did Quinn get the support and endorsements she did only because she was Bloomberg’s chosen successor? How good a candidate was she on her own?
schrodinger's cat
But can DeBlasio defeat the wanna be kitten killer?
EconWatcher
As I understand it, de Blasio intends to pursue some serious, tax-and-spend wealth redistribution. I wish him well in his goal, but–and maybe I’ll get pegged as a concern troll–I really don’t know if you can pull this off successfully in one city. People and businesses can just move outside the city border.
Doug Milhous J
@EconWatcher:
I’m curious about that too. If Hoboken and Jersey City weren’t nice places, I’d be less worried. But we’ll see.
Robert
Quinn was another Bloomberg in disguise. She was his biggest supporter for years and endorsed things like the large soda ban. The one thing she had going for her was a good record on LGBT rights, but boycotting the St. Patrick’s Day Parade doesn’t exactly win votes. She was simultaneously too different and not different enough to win the primary.
Belafon
@EconWatcher: I think NYC is a bit interesting in this case. I wanna see Wall Street leave Wall Street.
Punchy
They forced Bloomberg’s wife into menopause?
EconWatcher
@Belafon:
The mere threat of it might be enough to thwart his plans.
PhoenixRising
The contrast between that powerful ad leading with the candidate’s mixed-race family and the campaigns of certain other politicians (McCain, Huntsman) who used ‘family privacy’ as the true, convenient reason to hide their children of color…it’s delicious. That ad made me sing inside.
‘Hey, I’m not for my dad ’cause he’s a white liberal, I’m for my dad ’cause whoever gets elected, I’m going to be a black youth in a hoodie’ was a brilliant script. de Blasio beat Thompson, who is black and won’t speak out against stop & violate, with black voters! So that worked.
srv
Soon NYC will return to the chaos that led to Guliani, as even a reasonable conservative like Bloomberg cannot survive in the liberal enclaves. Harlequinn Reynolds shall rejoice.
You will celebrate bridge openings by naming it after the fellow whose palms didn’t get greased enough and whose pals lost the contract, and then monkey-wrench the construction for 5 or 6 years by dragging the Feds into it when he didn’t get his way.
SG
I am a Bloomberg hater. He is the apotheosis of the Republican-New Dem notion of the businessman politician and he governed with all the arrogance and contempt for the democratic process you could expect from a billionaire CEO.
Whether it was his insistence that kids couldn’t have cellphones in school despite parents’ post 9/11 fears, his transparent attempt to take total control of the school system through hand-picked lackeys, or his persistence in trying to foist a taxpayer-subsidized West Side stadium on an unwilling public, his corruption in buying an illegal third term, his contempt for civil liberties from his police dept’s roundups during the Republican Convention to his undying support for a racist stop and frisk policy, to his dictatorial demands that “You vill be healthy, dammit!” — well, he is a fucking CEO putz.
His political epitaph should read, “Make it so!” He resides at the intersection of money and corrupt power in American politics and the sooner he’s gone, the better.
schrodinger's cat
Will this make Tom Friedman has a sad?
Gin & Tonic
@EconWatcher: Some businesses can, some can’t. Almost all of the financial “back-office” operations that moved to Jersey a decade and a half ago are back, because distance actually matters (it reduces the time it takes to transmit information.) There are enormous, world-class data centers, and large numbers of them, in the area below Canal St. They’re not going anywhere any time soon.
Villago Delenda Est
@Shakezula:
Which explains why Rand Paul is OUTRAGED at NSA overreach, but can’t find the time to even comment on stop and frisk.
Yatsuno
@schrodinger’s cat:
We may need to do some research with cabbies in Mumbai to be sure. Or we could just tell the MOU to suck it.
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat:
We can hope for that, sure! Bobo and chunky Bobo, too, I’d hope.
Gin & Tonic
@Robert: From what I read from exit polling, Quinn didn’t carry either the women’s or the LGBT vote. That’s significant, IMO.
gene108
Bloomberg should’ve hung it up after two terms. The third term has brought out all the downside of his agenda, whereas the first term and second term saw declining crime rates and improved economic growth, which made him relatively popular.
scav
NYC is also a place where it is more likely to see the actual 1%ers live and on your streets, getting in your way, rather than rarely sighted abstractions. Visible comparative poverty / disparity can be rather motivating in the end, especially when the promise of rising is revealed as pious vaporware. Might also be a dash of damn the dynasty / designated heir in there too. Will be interesting to watch the next stage.
carbon dated
Check out . Quinn got smoked everywhere except the richest bits on the east side.
gene108
@srv:
I wish the folks NYC followed Gov. Brown’s fucking example quit renaming shit. You get used to shit like the Triboro Bridge, then one day it becomes the RFK bridge, and you have to really pay attention heading north on the FDR/Harlem River Drive because the sign you are looking for no longer fucking exists.
Forget what bridge got renamed after Ed Koch, but since I’ll be looking for the old name, I’ll get screwed when the Ed Koch bridge signs start appearing, since I don’t live in NYC or close enough to pay attention to all the little things that get done there, but travel there often enough that it’s annoying as shit.
eric
@scav: plus you have so many black towncar/limos all over the place reminding everyone that can afford taxis over the subway, that they are still middle class.
eric
@gene108: I suspect the Ed Koch Bridge wont be hard to find cause it wont shut up.
Tone in DC
A mayor that makes Vincent Gray look good. I’m thankful for this small favor.
maximiliano furtive, formerly known as dr. bloor
@EconWatcher: When it comes to tax policy, The Mayor of New York can’t take a piss without Albany’s approval. I wouldn’t be expecting an exodus anytime soon.
scav
@eric: Not shutting up can be a real problem in a drawbridge.
? Martin
@EconWatcher:
Won’t happen. Plenty were moved 12 years ago today. They came back.
Everyone worries about taxes and overlooks talent. These guys aren’t serving coffee, they’re running businesses that you need specific skill sets to do, and the cost of acquiring talent is huge – way more than the cost of taxes. Tech companies stay in high rent California because that’s where all the talent is, and there are tremendous benefits of being able to poach off of your competitors without asking them to move their kids to new schools, and any medium/big prospective hire can be vetted through your network.
Manhattan businesses aren’t going to leave. The rent is unbelievably high. The cost of talent is unbelievably high. And they are there regardless – even after being blown up and flooded out and being accosted by riff-raff on blue bikes. High taxes aren’t going to dissuade them. They want to be in the most important city. They want their guests coming up to the 92nd floor, not to some tilt-up in Hoboken.
scav
@eric: The disparity has been there for a while, the perception that a) your invitation to that table is literally in the mail and b) they’re subject to the same economic environment as you that is dropping away. Those suckers are pulling away as everyone else is mired if not falling back. Paris pulls up its cobblestones more often than St Martin la Garenne for a reason.
Joel
@EconWatcher: I doubt that the rich can threaten an exodus from New York City, for several reasons: 1) Geography. I don’t care how nice life can be across the Hudson. There’s still an extra 1/2 hour on your commute even in the most optimistic scenario. 2) Culture. New York City is the cultural capital of the United States and arguably the world. “Hoboken” doesn’t have the same ring to it. 3) Amenities. Pedestrian life has a lot of benefits, and that’s not really possible to the same degree elsewhere.
This isn’t like Washington State, where there’s no income tax established. NYC has an ~3% income tax already. DeBlasio could move things around the edges without ruffling too many feathers.
vheidi
@maximiliano furtive, formerly known as dr. bloor: although I voted for di B, you are quite correct, he isn’t going to have a hope in hell of enacting this proposal
PurpleGirl
The big CEOs aren’t going to be moving away from NYC. They already have homes outside the city and the city apartment or two. When Jaime Dimon took control of the bank in Chicago, do you think he gave up the Manhattan apartment; nope, nada, he was looking for a way to get back into a NYC based position.
The companies that have been able to move divisions out of the city have already done so. Hokoken and Jersey City have improved housing stock and the environment but Robert Fuld and Jaime Dimon or Sandford Weil aren’t going to live there. Hoboken and Jersey City are for the junior vice presidents and brokers, not the highest levels of management.
David in NY
@Punchy: “Isn’t de Blasio almost twice the height of Bloomberg?”
Yes, and I said that first (some weeks ago). But, yes.
Anya
@schrodinger’s cat: Not sure, but it will definitely make MoDo sad. I am sure she’s debating whether to writer her “Barry the wuss” column or one about how de Blasio is controlled by his harridan of a wife (it’s Dowd we know she’ll attack the wife with a vengeance.)
srv
Boy, the way Glenn Miller played. Songs that made the Hit Parade.
Guys like us, we had it made. Those were the days.
Didn’t need no welfare state. Everybody pulled his weight.
Gee, our old LaSalle ran great. Those were the days.
And you know who you were then. Girls were girls and men were men.
Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.
People seemed to be content. Fifty dollars paid the rent.
Freaks were in a circus tent. Those were the days.
Take a little Sunday spin, go to watch the Dodgers win.
Have yourself a dandy day that cost you under a fin.
Hair was short and skirts were long. Kate Smith really sold a song.
I don’t know just what went wrong. Those Were The Days.
Betsy
OT: Halp! I am so depressed about all the bad news.
Could some kind FrontPager pleeeeezze do a post, open-thread, for collecting political (and semi-political) good news? To hearten our spirits?
I have stared too long into the abyss … and it is beginning to stare back into me.
David in NY
@srv: Hi, paranoid nutcase! Welcome! Just try to pick up the quality of your commentary in the future, OK?
Belafon
@Betsy: As long as you don’t hear “tap-tap-tap-tap” you’ll be OK, and if you do, hopefully time travel will be involved.
PurpleGirl
@gene108:
The renaming of the Triboro Bridge and the Queensborough Bridge were the idea of Bloomberg. I was not happy with either new name. These were things Bloomberg basically rammed through the City Council, because why not it makes Bloomberg happy and it didn’t mean much to most councilmembers… Sorry but It’s the Triboro Bridge and The Queensborough Bridge and neither man really did have a great connection to the borough. (Rant over)
scav
@Betsy: Stare at some NASA abyss for a bit. That can sometimes help with perspective.
Tyro
@Gin & Tonic: Almost all of the financial “back-office” operations that moved to Jersey a decade and a half ago are back
Goldman Sachs is a notable exception. But then, look at the location of their back office: directly across the Hudson River from the main office with a direct ferry connection between the two buildings. There aren’t a lot of companies that can afford a setup like that. They tried to bring some of the traders over to the Jersey City side and they refused to go.
The market for moving offices out to Jersey and Connecticut is a lot smaller than people think.
rikyrah
@PhoenixRising:
Black folks don’t ask enough of their Black politicians, but there MUST BE bare minimum standards.
And a choice between a Black man who was mealy-mouthed and ‘ evolved’ about Stop and Frisk
vs.
A White man, before it was popular, before there was a court case declaring it unconstitutional, said it was racial profiling and had to end…
wasn’t a hard choice.
Contrary to popular belief, Black people do vote ‘ issues’, and every one of those Black men stopped during Stop-And-Frisk has a mother, sisters, grandmother, girlfriends, daughters, nieces.
Stop-And-Frisk was always there.
ranchandsyrup
@schrodinger’s cat: The next 6 months will go a long way to determining whether Friedman has a sad.
Suffern ACE
@Amir Khalid: I believe she got “grudging” endorsements. The Times is quite funny actually. It was their paper that ran the articles questioning her fitness for leadership (you know, there’s rumors that she’s a tempramental woman!) and then ran the PR article that helped launch Anthony Weiner’s campaign (they created that monster). I sensed that someone at the Times wanted to take her down a notch. They did. In the course of launching Antony Weiner’s campaign, they got a lot of Democrats questioning who could be the leader after being told for two years that it was Quinn in a walk. And once they had the opportunity to think it over, they considered first Weiner (until he went boom) then de Blasio and Thompson. I think their endorsement was kind of cute considering.
Epicurus
Nice as it was to see the Mayor get a little slap in the face, it was with unalloyed pleasure that I heard of Quinn’s defeat. Couldn’t happen to a nastier woman…so much for sucking up to MB in hopes that you might succeed him. I’m sure there is a “think tank” somewhere waiting to offer her a six-figure salary. I for one, look forward to four years without her caterwauling. Also, too, thanks for tying my phone up last night; must have been 15-20 robocalls for her. I really appreciated that, considering 1) I never would have voted for her and 2) I’m not a registered Democrat. Hope those phone calls cost her campaign a lot of money.
burnspbesq
@Shakezula:
Not to put too fine a point on it, but how many of those illegal-until-the-Second-Circuit-says-otherwise stops did Bloomberg personally make?
Blaming Bloomberg for the institutionalized racism of the NYPD is absurd. The NYPD has been like that since before any of us were born. If you want to blame Bloomberg for something, blame him for not doing enough to try to change the culture of the NYPD, but even if you’re going to do that, acknowledge the Sisyphean nature of that task.
Richard Shindledecker
And it’s still 6th Avenue to us who live here. Too bad we lost Idlewild!
burnspbesq
Queensborough Bridge? Mais non. It’s the 59th Street Bridge.
gbear
@Joel:
Unless you’re talking about 80’s power pop bands, where Hoboken ruled for a while.
PhoenixRising
@rikyrah: Never said otherwise.
White men with family members of color have not done well with black voters compared to black men, period.
That was my point, not whether black voters can tell who’s pissing down your leg and saying it’s raining. In this instance, the strength of the policy preference against stop & frisk was powerful enough that the campaign strategy of leading with something that has been costly/controversial in other races was a winning one.
For those of us living in multiracial families, this is a dramatic shift in what’s possible, electorally. One of my friends is now considering a campaign in NJ that on Monday was not remotely possible, in terms of getting the money she will need.
Mike G
@srv:
Not that this will top the teanuts screaming about Obama being a “Marxist”.
Villago Delenda Est
@burnspbesq:
The leader who not only ignores, but encourages the institutionalized racism is responsible for it.
Cripes, you can be such a blockhead at times.
Amir Khalid
@burnspbesq:
Bloomberg renamed the 59th Street Bridge? The subject of my favourite song about New York City? The sonofabitch!
NotMax
@Richard Shindledecker
Bedloe’s Island, too?
Totally trivia: Idlewild as a designation for the airport came from the Idlewild Golf Course, which had been on the land prior to construction of the airport.
Gin & Tonic
@NotMax: Other naming trivia: I like the fact that the Holland Tunnel has nothing to do with the Netherlands.
Ahh says fywp
@Gin & Tonic: That shitty attempt by her camp to smear de Blasio’s wife didn’t help any.
Bisexual women were watching, and they vote. (actually they are a plurality, if not majority, of the glbt vote nationally, of course nyc has 3x gay male population concentration v avg so cant say for certain that supplies here)
Suffern ACE
@NotMax: The famous JFK South album that many consider to be the Allman Brother’s best album is named for the expressway, not the airport. Who knew?
Villago Delenda Est
@NotMax:
A scout troop’s short a child
Khrushchev’s due at Idlewild
Car 54 where are you?
scav
@Gin & Tonic: Lord Holland then or ??? And, it’s the Sears Tower (to expand the geographic scope).
Mike E
Speaking of trolling, this one’s a beaut: Orson Scott Card appointed to UNC-TV’s board of trustees.
gbear
@NotMax: Another trivia question:
Who was due at Idlewild in the theme song from ‘Car 54 Where Are You?’
shelly
“Who was due at Idlewild in the theme song from ‘Car 54 Where Are You?’”
*********
Kruschev.
Ridnik Chrome
@burnspbesq: Don’t ever say that to a person from Queens. And in point of fact, until they renamed it after Ed Koch, the official name was the Queensborough Bridge.
Re Bloomberg, I voted against him all three times, but I didn’t really develop a serious dislike of him until his third term. Some of that had to do with the simple fact that he bent the rules in order to obtain a third term, and some of it has to do with the way he’s handled the city’s economic crisis (i.e. the poor and the working class have had to do all the suffering, the rich, virtually none) and the thoroughly shitty way he’s treated public employees (I am one).
Voted for Di Blasio in the primary, and intend to do so again in the runoff (if there is one) and in the general election. ETA: And I really enjoyed watching Christine Quinn fall on her face, not least because she was Bloomberg’s heir apparent. As William Burroughs might have said, kid, it was tasty…
David in NY
@Amir Khalid: And for ED KOCH!!! Ugh.
David in NY
@burnspbesq: Oh, come on. Bloomberg was totally behind this (after, if not before, the fact). The police were obviously told to go out and stop anybody in a “high crime” (you know what that means) neighborhood that they didn’t like the looks of. 90+% of the time they were stopping innocent people, who were not so incidentally black, and if they were not innocent, over half the time they just had some marijuana. Very few guns even. Not a single terrorist. And Bloomberg did not bat an eye at any of this. Outraged that anyone would think it might have been wrong.
The hell with him.
David in NY
@burnspbesq: Why did the signs direct you to the Queensborough bridge, then (coming down the FDR at, maybe, 70th St.).
David in NY
@srv: A step up — to irrelevance.
Richard Shindledecker
And it’s not called the Outerbridge Crossing because it’s the outerbridge. Let Bloomie rename that one on his way out the door…
Jay C
@scav:
The Holland Tunnel was actually named after its first chief engineer Clifford Holland – though, sadly, he never lived to see it.
Ridnik Chrome
Adding: the best thing I can say about Bloomberg is that he’s been a better mayor and generally less of a shit than Giuliani was. And at this point, that’s setting the bar too damn low…
Richard Shindledecker
You want to drive the wingers nuts? remind them that the crime stats actually started falling under the rein of the Devil incarnate, David Dinkins.
Ben Cisco
@Mike E: Yuk.
Ben Cisco
OT, but it looks like Zimmerman grifted the gun nuts: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/09/11/george-zimmerman-scam/
shortstop
I can’t get over Lorraine Bracco thinking she was paying Quinn a compliment by comparing her management style to Tony Soprano’s.
scav
@Jay C: Naming it after someone actually physically involved its construction! What wonderful unexpected heresy! Thanks.
shortstop
@David in NY: He had plenty of on-air hissyfits defending the practice, in fact. “Trying to change the culture” my ass.
shortstop
@scav: You damn right. Willis, schmillis.
Jebediah
@Richard Shindledecker:
It’s because you can use it to get outer the city.
MattR
@shortstop: I felt the same way watching ads from one of the Republicans slamming a different one for being “no Giuliani”, though at least it kinda makes sens that that appeal might work for GOP primary voters,
Diamond Joe Quimby
Do we really think that Bloomberg is losing sleep over what de Blasio might do to “his legacy?” More likely he’s licking his chops for that “I told you so” moment down the road. That seems more like billionaire CEO behavior to me.
rikyrah
@PhoenixRising:
I know that this might be politically incorrect, but it’s not just that he has a multi-racial family, but, their appearance mattered, IMO.
It was the combination of the candidate, and his track record, as well as the family.
His wife is a longtime activist.
His wife is ‘ Black from a distance’ with not only natural hair, but their son and daughter have natural hair.
Yeah yeah..hair just just hair, except for when it’s not.
The visual of his family spoke to the Black community in ways that policy papers could not.
Roger Moore
@Ben Cisco:
Now there’s a shocker: somebody grifting the wingnuts.
Warren
@schrodinger’s cat: Anthony Weiner got more votes yesterday than Lhota. Next question?
Villago Delenda Est
@Richard Shindledecker:
Reign. You use a rein to control a horse. It never rains in California. Monarchs reign.
Villago Delenda Est
@Warren:
Well, Weiner was only showing his dick to the kittens, he wasn’t proposing to run them over with a subway train.
Sly
@Yatsuno:
Stop and Frisk played a bigger role than anything else. When Bloomberg ran for a third term, he went all out in trying to get black votes to protect his falling numbers. And, in keeping with being perhaps the most honest and clear-sighted electoral constituency in American history, they turned their back on him as soon as he turned his back on them.
If the third term run hurt anyone, it was Christine Quinn,
Frankensteinbeck
@Villago Delenda Est:
Rand Paul is a libertarian. He clearly and honestly supports the maximum amount of liberty for himself and everyone else can go take a flying fuck. Stop and Frisk might slightly increase his personal liberty to enjoy brown people’s suffering, so it’s perfectly in line with his principles.
David in NY
@Diamond Joe Quimby: Well, except for getting all exercised about de Blasio’s “racism” and going ballistic about the stop and frisk decision and a whole raft of petty, petty stuff that you’d think he’d be above but he’s not because … well because he’s rich and therefore knows everything and is always right and don’t you dare say different.
David in NY
Pareen had the best comment on the campaign I’ve read so far. If Quinn had, in 2009, opposed extension of term limits (which he’d have got), then run against Bloomberg in the general, she’d have been reelected mayor yesterday. Thompson darn near beat Bloomberg, and his campaign barely existed.
Felonius Monk
@SG: AMEN!
Rafer Janders
@EconWatcher:
Where are you going to go to? Businesses and people move to New York City for a reason — because they want to live in New York City, the white-hot cultural, business and creative center of the country. They didn’t move here so they could live in Stamford, CT, Fort Lee, New Jersey, or Newark New Jersey. You want to tell the financiers that they have to move away from the museum galas and the benefits and the fancy private schools and the hot restaurants and the celebrities? They won’t do it. They’ll pay to live here.
Rafer Janders
@EconWatcher:
I worked at a hedge fund in CT for a spell. The four to five principals and partners in their 40s and 50s, the guys with wives and kids, all lived in Greenwich or Westport. But the young analysts and traders (and that was 90% of the firm) all lived in Manhattan and commuted 2 to 3 hours a day.
Why? Because they loved to commute? Because they loved to pay NYC tax? Nope, because there was nothing for them if they lived in the suburbs. They wanted the clubs and the VIP rooms and the galleries and the bars and the nightlife of NYC, and they wanted to meet the models and other hot girls who went to those places. It cost them money and time to live in the city, but that’s a cost they were willing to pay.
People move to New York because they want to be players. You can’t be a player and live in Nassau County.
Rafer Janders
@EconWatcher:
I worked at a hedge fund in CT for a spell. The four to five principals and partners in their 40s and 50s, the guys with wives and kids, all lived in Greenwich or Westport. But the young analysts and traders (and that was 90% of the firm) all lived in Manhattan and commuted 2 to 3 hours a day.
Why? Because they loved to commute? Because they loved to pay NYC tax? Nope, because there was nothing for them if they lived in the suburbs. They wanted the clubs and the VIP rooms and the galleries and the bars and the nightlife of NYC, and they wanted to meet the models and other hot girls who went to those places. It cost them money and time to live in the city, but that’s a cost they were willing to pay.
People move to New York because they want to be players. You can’t be a player and live in Nassau County.