That calls to mind this NYT article about the small time grifts that Eric Adams and associates were up to, including a small acting role in Godfather of Harlem in exchange for canceling a planned bike lane.
There is a common phenomenon where people claim proverbial quotes were originally longer. One I often hear is “Jack of all trades master of none” originally including the follow up “often better than a master of none.”
If you research this, as well as the customer as always right as you claim, you will find no evidence of their longer ‘original’ forms [1].
Moving read, what it does not touch on is having a moment of hype young and never reaching that level of success again. Plenty of people have one visible successful moment young in their career and never have a notable follow up.
"You always want to be warm, never want to be hot" as the film director Roger Avary (who directed the film adaption of Bret Easton Ellis' Rules of Attraction) said about a career in the arts. He himself winning his only Oscar at 29 for working on the story for Pulp Fiction.
On another note, I just watched Frances Ha and for the first time watching a mid-to-late-20s coming of age story about a young artist trying to make it I found myself just barely on the other side of being older and more stable than the characters in the film. So it goes.
The first image that came to my mind was the $1 bill. There is what looks like a pyramid which has an eye in a pyramid for a cusp
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I stupidly googled the topic. The quotation wasnt found, but the concept exists.
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https://www.worldhistory.org/ziggurat/
<<In the Uruk Period, the high priest was also the ruler of the city whose authority came directly from the patron god that watched over it. Scholar Marc van de Mieroop writes:
At the top of the Uruk society stood a man whose powers derived from his role in the temple. Hence, scholars often call him a "priest-king." At the bottom of the social ladder of the temple dependents were the people involved in production, both agricultural and otherwise.>>
I once hit one star by accident so I called back and navigated multiple transfers back to the same call center's manager to let them know it was intended to be five stars. Everyone I spoke to seemed quite charmed as it had never happened before.
I know you are asking genuinely but to a New Yorker it sounds like you’re making a joke. A few from facts from Wikipedia [1].
“It has long been the most affluent neighborhood in New York City.”
“The Upper East Side maintains the highest pricing per square foot in the United States.”
“Four of the top five ZIP Codes in the nation for political contributions are in Manhattan. The top ZIP Code, 10021, is on the Upper East Side and generated the most money for the 2004 presidential campaigns of both George W. Bush and John Kerry.”
I figured, but my perception of Manhattan is that neighborhoods can change drastically from one street block to the next, so while I know the upper east side is generally, well, upper, I wasn't confident in the exact location. Also, I was just flat out lazy and didn't bother looking up the street numbers on a map, where I would have realized the proximity to Central Park.
Aside from a few historically sleazy streets/areas in the past, I don't really associate those sorts of sharp boundaries with Manhattan nearly as much as I do some other cities, especially in the South. (Though, for obvious reasons, apartment buildings/condos across from Central Park tend to be higher-end than those east of there.)
I hacked a running magazine’s online poll for “best high school runner of all time in $homeState” to have my friend (who was extremely talented and went on to run at Stanford) as #1. I don’t remember exactly what I did but there was a nonce related to epoch time and I had to rate limit it. Everyone’s friends and family were obviously voting multiple times but I was the only one to automate it
Sad to hear. I did CS at UNC and will always cherish those late nights coding in the Brooks building. I have my dad’s first edition of MMM as well. RIP.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/22/nyregion/new-york-city-co...