Some years before the term "yuppie" had been coined, childless working professionals on "The Bob Newhart Show" seemed rather proud of a modest and minimal Chicago apartment.
In a handsomely minimal haute-bourgeois apartment (designed by Mark Thompson), a turf war takes place over a blood-red carpet, a coffee table chockablock with art books, and two elegant glass vases overflowing with white tulips.
Based in part on budgets and living costs from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, it in fact requires about $40,000 for a family of two adults and two children to be able to rent a minimal two-bedroom apartment and to afford $1.50 per person per meal each day, given the cost of other necessities.
It felt similar to the reaction I got when leaving my Williamsburg apartment in minimal makeup and comfortable shoes.
But with its pristine white walls, neutral color palette and minimal furnishings, the Brooklyn apartment has the spare, stripped-down look of a cottage by the shore.
"The work that I did on the apartment was minimal because I didn't want to waste money doing structural things, even repainting," said Mr. McLane, who originally signed a two-year lease, then a two-year extension.
Over the course of about two hours, the press asked only two questions, carefully couched and respectful, about the President's personal troubles: one about the First Lady's health, the other about whether he was putting his personal safety at risk by visiting a private apartment with minimal security.
Throughout the apartment, furnishings are minimal and mostly white, which provides a backdrop for the Sandbergs' art collection.
They are burdened by unprecedented levels of student debt, and as the publishing industry mutates, it's far from clear that when the music stops, most will be able to have the New York life with the job and the apartment and some minimal level of health insurance that, 30 years ago, they would have assumed was their right.
