The Gilded Age

The Gilded Age. Bring It Back.

The Gilded Age, can you imagine? Lol.

Weirdly, I like it. Please don’t come for me. It’s more the architecture and wonder versus the personality and classism it creates.

Also note, most of what I know is nothing beyond one book, two PBS documentaries, my road trips through Newport, The Frick, and reading the remaining plaques around New York City.

Let’s talk the Gilded Age.

So let me get this straight: the Industrial Revolution in America produced millionaires, at that time equivalent to billionaires today adjusted for inflation, across banking, manufacturing, oil, transportation, furs, real estate, paper, pencils, retail?

I keep coming back to the idea of when a friend, or even you, would say, “Whoever invented the bread clip is rich.”

In reality, anything that was getting made and distributed yielded another millionaire.

Americans, all immigrants, of the nouveau riche within two generations made and had more money than the royalty of London, France, Russia, etc. This new aristocracy wanted a royal system, essentially copying it from Europe, in America, only to be ridiculed, with many eventually setting up and spending the money abroad.

Within three generations, most of the money got diluted, properties sold, converted to museums, and quietly faded into the depths of society’s culture.

Personally, I’d rather have the rich build in front of me than on a faraway island, so at least we can see the disparity, at minimum know there is a human behind this all.

The two fascinating aspects of the Gilded Age are communication and transportation.

You have to remember we are talking about buggies, yachts, and trains. The car is still out a few years. The telegram is short, coded.

Yet they would trek to Rhode Island from NYC, Europe for the summer, Astoria, Oregon, from Manhattan, trade routes from China to Europe back to the USA, equally building companies that generated the equivalent wealth of our tech class today?

No email, no phone, no FaceTime.

Wild to think.

Meanwhile, I’m over here waiting for a return message from a colleague on Slack or an answer posted to Asana.

Last night I wanted to touch the Gilded Age.

So I visited my friend John Jacob Astor IV at Nat King Cole Bar.

The birth of the Waldorf Astoria or St. Regis, brands that ring luxury from the Gilded Age, are very small nods to this past.

While there I met a poker player, a national security director, a New Yorker, a jeweler, an architect, a TV producer, a showing artist, a Broadway producer, and a tech executive, all humans in a hotel lobby bar.

Magic, imho.

A few nights before, Ashley and I went out. I opted not to bring my phone. While not having my phone was freeing, that did not prevent me from asking to use or asking Ashley to look something up.

I had cash, and cabs are still prevalent in NYC.

There was a freeing feeling paying the cab driver in cash, alongside paying for drinks, walking into a crowded restaurant and bar to find a spot and meet patrons in the wild.

That serendipity, or what my generation calls vibe, is alive in NYC.

“You can catch a vibe almost anywhere in NYC on any night of the week,” is how we’d say vibe in a sentence to our friends.

AI is real. It’s more scary than optimistic at this moment, as of this writing.

To hedge AI, even for another year, hopefully longer, NYC is the place to be.

The white-hot center of humanity in this AI age.

The ability to go out without a phone, get around, and get in feels pioneering, nostalgic, analog.

Choose your word.

P.S. No I do not think he farted.