On Friday, on a short road trip, I drove through Freehold, NJ which is a nice small suburban town. There were at least 200 illegal immigrants lined up on the street looking for work. The housing boom is over and so they come to the streets of this small suburban town looking for whatever they can get... On the way I drove up the turnpike and there were very few trucks. In years past, there were seemingly convoys of trucks on the turnpike at any given time. Wow! No traffic as I zoomed up at 70 mph which was the fastest I dare go knowing about the State Troopers pension for giving tickets. Past the airport where usually you could see airplanes stacked up waiting to land, but this was not the case today. Not too many planes landing. Then passing the ports and the refineries. The ports had no ships and large empty containers were stacked everywhere. The refineries did not seem to be working. No huge flame or smell coming from it. Over the bridge I went and I looked down to see acres and acres of cars at a storage lot the size of at least 10 football fields. It looked like every spot was taken and it could not squeeze not one more car into it. I thought to myself of a story I read from the Great Depression of a famous singer who found work as a security guard guarding cars in a warehouse that were never delivered. I guess this time around there is no warehouse that can fit all these cars. Finally, I approach the tolls to the Holland Tunnel. I look around me and I see yesteryears cars. I dont see anything new, just second-hand cars. There is a tap on my window as the street vendors try to sell me something. Wait a second, I thought, Im lined up at the booths to get into the Holland Tunnel not at the Mexican border waiting to get to America. A man with a cane seems to go from car to car seemingly not caring about the danger this obviously presents. A Port Authority cop sits parked in the distance oblivious to the street vendors and old guy with a cane. His job is to defend the tunnel just in case there is a Red Dawn style terrorist attack with his pistol versus protecting the old guy with a cane who is wallowing around in the lanes. Hopefully, this overweight man with a Glock will fare well against a small team of terrorists equipped with explosives and automatic weapons. I go through the tunnels with just a 20 minute wait (in the past that was sometimes a 1-2 hour wait). Then I head into the city, park my car and get out. In the distance there seems to be a new set of homeless. This new set wears better clothes and seems to speak more intelligently. In the past, the homeless seemed to be characters with obvious issues. This new set could probably work at Lehman or Bear Stearns I surmised. A better dressed set. I had a few drinks at Ulysses. Where is the after-work crowd I thought? Where is everyone???
Thanks for the update. Ground breaking stuff. I had no idea the economy had slowed. It sounds like even new cars aren't selling. Simply shocking. How about writing something quantifiable? (btw you're writing skills themselves are decent) Or at least find something early-one way or the other. For example someone who used to post here with ties to the L.A. immigrant community told me 18 months ago that Mexicans were leaving because work was hard to come by. That was good info at the time. Hearing about Freehold Mexicana in April of 2009 is useless anecdotal data. Were parking rates cheaper than a few months ago? Did you ask the car hike how much business is down? Did you tip your bartender generously enough that he'd confide to you his earnings history? I'm certain they're lower than a year ago but are they bouncing? Did he say "it's worse every week" or "things have picked up the past month."? DIG DEEPER and then report on your next foray from the swamps of Jersey.
"penchant".... Not pension moron - you may want to stick to using more elementary words in your observations
Freehold nice??? Last I checked, the place was a lower middle class, blue collar town that was close to being a slum. Of course that was 20 years ago. It also happens to be where Bruce grew up.
Thats the old north. You sucks in nyc caused the whole usa debacle with your greed. the south and south west doing great and very crowded
i have another view. i spent last week in florida. on the way down the planes were full. we get there on saturday night and enterprize car rental is out of cars even though i had reserved a full size. i asked the manager how they could be out of cars during a recession and he said there is no recession here. finally someone brings in a pos kia and i get it. sunday and monday we go to daytona beach. its packed on sunday afternoon. wendsday we go to sea world. i thought it was very busy for a mid week. what a ripoff that was. after parking it cost almost $200 for two of us to just get in the place. i4 traffic was very busy. thursday we tour a golf themed retirement community north of orlando called "the villages". the place has 34 golf courses and all we saw were busy. very nice place btw. friday we fly out about 6 pm and the line at tsa inspection was a 20 min wait. seemed very busy at the airport. all the planes we flew on were full. i guess the tourists still have money to spend. the weather was great but i would hate to live in a place with that much traffic.
Thanks Vhehn. Tourist season in South Florida was noticeably slower but Miami and environs are way more dependent on foreign tourists than further north. The stronger dollar certainly took it's toll on those who'd viewed the States as a cheap place to visit the past few years. You hit the nail on the head though with retirees. Especially those who'd worked in government. Florida is littered with ex-teachers, policemen and retired NYC municipal workers. Not only are those folks making more on pensions than many who're still working but they get their annual COLA raise based on higher CPI to boot. For every 2006 "flipper" puking a house in Satellite Beach there's a retired garbageman from Boston who bought his in 1999 and is still partying like he's Prince.....
Here are my comments: The airplanes will always be full. The airlines will eliminate routes and planes when they are not doing much business. The airplanes are then placed into storage. http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/gene...=Aircraft Storage Forecasts Near-Term Economy The enterprise is the same way. As their customer base goes down, they eliminate cars. If you waited in line 20 minutes at TSA, then thats a short wait. A busy airport to me is when you can barely move through it and there are 30-60 minute lines at each stop in the process. Florida will always be a busy vacation spot. The reason is that its a cheap place to vacation when compared to other locations. If you live in the southern states, you can just drive there. An airline ticket is cheap to get there. Hotels and other things are cheap when compared to other destinations. Florida is a poor mans vacation.
What troubles me even more is he went through Freehold without stopping at Freehold Raceway for some afternoon simulcasting. He could have at least caught the late double at Aqueduct.