I read the news. I hear the cries for help. \u201cNew York has a housing crisis.\u201d \u201cThe cost of food is too high in New York.\u201d \u201cCrime is too high in New York.\u201d \u201cCrime is too low in New York.\u201d \u201cZohran will save us.\u201d \u201cZohran will kill us all.\u201d And to this I say: \u201cYou have no fucking idea.\u201d I recently saw a place wracked with so much pain, destruction, corruption, and unease that it makes our home here look like a shining city on a hill. It\u2019s not too far either\u2014so close in fact that traveling there feels as simple as traveling to one\u2019s own living room. The citizens of this town have something real to fear. Their issues aren\u2019t mired in political discourse, but live on the surface of their streets every waking moment.<\/p>\n
That is because they live in Roku City.<\/p>\n
Some of you are familiar. You have seen the woes of their not-so-sleepy town from the idle revolutions of your TV screens. And yet others remain skeptical that their plight is far less than the average New Yorker\u2019s. You see their still-working movie theater and their two caf\u00e9s and think all is well. I\u2019m here to tell you: Roku City is on the brink of ruin, and it\u2019s up to you to help curb this chaos with a low membership fee of just $25\/month to support their cause.<\/p>\n
Look past their recreation of the Golden Gate Bridge. Do you not see the kraken emerging from behind it? What about the giant robot stomping around, crushing things? Even if the people were to ignore the ever-erupting volcano, the nearby city of Oz\u2014yes, that Oz\u2014is still drawing all the tourism revenue away from the small-business owners in the town. And yes, rampant political spending continues to cripple their economy. Rather than fight any of these issues, the mayor\u2019s office invested in a Ferris wheel to provide a view of the alien attacks.<\/p>\n
And look, I get it, of course we have a housing crisis in New York. There are 8.5 million New Yorkers and only 3.7 million apartments. But guess what? There are 50 million Roku users and only three apartment buildings. Four, if you count the former warehouse that looks like they\u2019re converting into lofts. It\u2019s supply and demand. A one-bedroom apartment is currently listed at $45,000\/month.<\/p>\n
The city is on the verge of bankruptcy. Not from natural disasters or economic depression (though those factors aren\u2019t good), but because they love re-creating supertall office buildings that look exactly like other famous office buildings. If it were just a few, I\u2019d understand. Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco, the Freedom Tower in New York, and even Big Ben in London. Fine. Everyone loves an icon. But the AT&T Building in Nashville isn\u2019t famous enough to re-create. Also, did they need to build an Empire State Building when they knew another King Kong lived just behind those mountains? These are the basic city-planning fuckups that could have been avoided with the right kind of leadership.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not that I think we need to step in and tell the Roku City council how to run their town. But I think a few sound-minded points from people who care will go a long way here. For instance, if they were to cut funding to get rid of the nuclear power plant and land the Hindenburg-sized airships floating around, they probably wouldn\u2019t need to spend money on all that explosion security. They could use that extra money to give people health care, build a school, or offer universal pre-K.<\/p>\n
Riverboat gambling is apparently still legal in Roku City, too, and for what? So residents can have a better view of the island prison? If we can help elect a new government, these gambling vessels and pirate ships will be transformed into free ferries to get across the bay fast enough that the sea kraken cannot catch them.<\/p>\n
Where there is darkness, there must also be light. While Roku City is calling out for our help, they still have something that even New York has let fall by the wayside, something we can learn from them: a classic diner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I read the news. I hear the cries for help. \u201cNew York has a housing crisis.\u201d \u201cThe cost…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146100,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":{"0":"post-146099","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","11":"tag-new-york-city-news","12":"tag-ny"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}