What an embarassment. This article made us so glad that we no longer live in Manhattan and that our children will not have to grow up around the kind of shallow, materialistic people epitomized by Gary Rabin. Hey, we’ve got nothing against double-wide townhouses, believe us, we just wish you didn’t have to be a one-dimensional, status-hungry jerk to own one:

WHEN Gary Rabin closed on a 38-foot-wide New York City town house this month, he happily acknowledged that his new home’s girth would make him the envy of the tony town-house set. He had started off in 2003 with a 19.6-foot-wide brownstone on a quiet Greenwich Village block – wide enough by any conventional brownstone standards. There was no need to hang his head in shame the way he might have had he bought, say, a 13-foot-wide property. But being slightly below the coveted 20-foot mark, it wasn’t the sort of statistic he was likely to brag about among his real estate-savvy friends at dinner parties. In the fall of 2004, he found what he was looking for: a 38-foot-wide town house a few blocks away, a massive piece of real estate for New York. Sure, it was a lot more expensive, but he’s a lot happier, too…”There’s an element of pride when you walk out the door in the morning,” Mr. Rabin says.

Gag.
Quest for a Wide Town House [NY Times]