

I think our anger and squeeing is slightly misdirected. So it’s nice to have the schadenfreude moment. Let me tell you, if I somehow come into millions of dollars, it's the chateau all the way. if you need to repair a pricey high-rise apartment, you have to hire rip-off contractors.
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If you need to repair a French chateau you get to hire cool specialized artisans who know how to repair things from 1750. Also a French chateau isn't going to lose value, whereas any number of chaotic world events could mess up New York real estate as the climate crisis deepens. I don't want to live anywhere where I can't get up and down the stairs under my own power relatively quickly, I don't want to live anywhere where emergency services might be delayed by elevator problems and god knows I don't want to live anywhere which might be badly constructed enough that something would break off a hundred stories up.

Yes, but if you buy a French chateau then you have a French chateau, not a buggy apartment building where you're isolated high above the city, alone and far from help, should anything go wrong with the lifts or the building in general. When you buy a french chateau it's going to be expensive as hell to maintain and come with all sorts of hassles. I mean, if you buy a Bugatti, it's going to be awesome but it's also going to spend a ton of time at the mechanic. Posted by SoberHighland at 7:46 PM on Febru

I feel a little schadenfreude from this story, but these kinds of folks own multiple homes, and all this is minor crap for them. I cannot imagine living in a building where I can't open a window even a crack. It's kind of gross when you think about it, even though it wasn't necessarily a BAD experience. All that outgassing from new paint and carpeting. Breathing air out of ducts that were last cleaned who-knows-when. Sure, the HVAC was always circulating, but it felt like being in some artificial climate the entire time you were there. Regulating air pressure is critical in super tall buildings. In our building at least, there wasn't even a vent you could open to get some tiny bit of fresh air. But the absolute worst part about it? You cannot open a god damned window. The water in the toilets would surge up and down during storms, and you could sometimes hear the building creak, all of which was mildly amusing.
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There was a lovely plaza outside at ground level full of trees, benches and such. Our lobby was jaw-droppingly beautiful, and we were connected to an ant-farm kind of tunnel system with all kinds of restaurants, coffee shops and stores. Overall, the building was nice, and the office was adequate but aging. My view was phenomenal, and we never had elevator issues when I was there. I was only on the 37th floor, but the building was 70-something stories. I worked for a few years in a genuine early '70s sky scraper (Aon Center-formerly Standard Oil Building-in Chicago).
