Pretty wild that this house was built in the 1930’s.
Definitely looks a lot newer than that.
Well of course they live there; that’s one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s worst designs. They’re not going to live in one of his masterpieces, are they?
70’s architecture and water damage, name a more iconic duo.
But does it come with asbestos fireproofing?
Is that really a Frank Lloyd?
Yes, that’s Falling Water.
To be honest, i don’t know specifically, but that’s very much in his prairie school of architecture.
If you ever get a chance, try walking around in Oak Park (a nice suburb of Chicago on the far west side); a lot of Wright’s earlier architectural work is there. One of his earliest buildings is there, from before he developed his prairie school, and it’s… A real change of pace.
Can you imagine taking a dump there
Sean William Scott in Role Models - his job is to dress up as an energy drink mascot, but he lives on the canals at Venice Beach and has ordinary neighbours who he sees and talks to.
When I was a kid growing up in the Middle East in the 80s and 90s I idolized the hollywood/US TV western lifestyle. They all seemed so effortlessly lavish and nice. All sitcom/domcom families had large homes and all the kids had their own rooms and those kids didn’t need an allowance. They could get jobs like waitresses or paperboys that earned a half decent pay that allowed them to afford whatever the hell they wanted. I lived in Dubai they forbade all child labor. Even if those laws were ignored in some circumstances, they were generally quite strictly enforced. So unless you were a debt-slave camel jockey kid, you were not going to work at any job.
I legit thought that that was the reality of many people. Even young adult slackers with chronic unemployment issues still somehow had small houses bigger than any apartment I knew. Of course this was myth, and ever since the 2000s rolled along with nearly 40+ years of stagnant wages AND rising costs of everything else meant that that idea is dead.
Grew up in the ghetto of the US.
Would watch Fresh Prince and Family Matters and like “WOW look at that. Their house is so pristine. Everything looks new. Everyone has their own room. People sit at a dining table.”
My house was dark, smelled funny, full of random junk and we’d have mattresses on the floor to fit a large family.
All my hood friends had the same experience. I had friends whose bedroom also their living rooms.
Now I have friends who have a lot of money. 6 figure incomes and everything. Their house is slightly better looking, but that’s about it. Still full of stuff. Messy if you surprise them on a off day.
Average American is no longer the standard for quality living.
This is one of the reasons nobody likes movies anymore. Hollywood is so disconnected from the struggle of the working class it’s just sad. The Oscar’s have become a joke
You got me thinking over here.
Perhaps it’s a two way street, and both sides have changed.
It used to be that people wanted to suspend their beliefs for an hour and a half and live in a fantasy. I feel like most people look more for reality and relatability in cinema these days, but Hollywood is still trying to provide the escape.
It’s just not lining up.
My theory is Instagram and “insta-type-influencers” stole that market. It’s glamour fantasy, distilled. Less attention required, no complicated movie stuff in the way. And it gets a lot of eyeballs.
Glamour movie celebs are relics coasting on inertia, hence the constant stories of a $10 million paycheck for one movie being, uh, unsustainable.
Hence, I’m hoping Hollywood has a “medium sized” indie renaissance kinda like gaming is having now. Animation and filming is still pretty expensive, but it feels like tech has to be eroding the mega studio cost advantage.
Malcom in the middle had a realistic home.
Which they only had because multiple people were murdered in the house, and Lois didn’t tell the family.
Lois didn’t tell the family
that she did it during the negotiation.
Having a home in general isn’t exactly realistic anymore
Things really have changed.
Rosanne was about a poor, blue-collar family struggling to get by that had a house with a detached garage and 4 bedrooms.
Or grandma, the widowed, retired elementary school teacher, whose deceased husband owned a neighborhood flower shop.
That grandma probably bought the house in 1975 for $50,000.
My house was £52k in 1997. Increased 350% when I bought it in 2023 and we got quite a lot taken off as it needs quite a bit of work. Heating didn’t work properly, didn’t have cooking facilities, a lot of the plaster isn’t actually attached to the walls very well - that one I only fixed the worst patches myself but think I did a reasonable job of it.
deleted by creator
That’s not unreasonable. Starting a small business is manageable with business loans which you can get from a bank with nothing more than a well written business plan. If the flower shop makes more than the business spends on rent, labor and supplies any normal schmoe can have a neighborhood flower shop.
This is one of the reasons I hate and ignore all advertising. Commercials have NO IDEA who they are marketing to anymore. All I can think about when any commercial or advert plays is how fucking out of touch the company is to be showing the product getting used in a 26000 sq foot house EVERY TIME. I don’t have a garage, I don’t have a lawn, I don’t have a basement, I dont have a house, I don’t have a dog, I don’t have kids because none of this shit is sustainable or affordable. What world are you marketing to you board rooms upon board rooms of assholes?
If a vacuum cleaner company wants to correctly advertise a vacuum to the masses, they would now have to have the commercial show a lonely man getting off of the night shift of his 3rd job, taking a bus back to his squalor closet of an apartment, and then passing out gazing at the vacuum which has been sitting unused in the corner of the bedroom for 8 months, because the only world where he has the time and energy to use it is in his fucking dreams.
And then he starts masturbating…
I don’t think Hollywood and advertising are out of touch, they know what they’re doing. They’re not just selling products, they’re selling an ideal. It’s about shaping how people see the world. For working-class viewers, it feels fake because it’s their reality being distorted. But for middle and upper-class audiences, it subtly shifts their perception, makes working-class life look manageable, maybe even confortable. They know it’s not 100% accurate, but they don’t realize how far off it is. That’s the real effect: it makes things look better than they are, and pushes people further out of touch without them realizing it.
And funnily enough ads are way way more targeted now than any other time in history.
Apart from the obvious privacy concerns i actually prefer non targeted ads, because they are less effective.
But of course, you’re auto-opted into personalized ads and the majority of users couldn’t be bothered to figure out how to opt out
How many Mercedes and Audis are actually sold vs the ridiculous amount of commercials they run? It really feels like people in this country are living in two different realities
You’re talking about them right now
To be fair, the important part about buying a Mercedes isn’t that you know what a Mercedes is, it’s that others know what a Mercedes is before you drive past them.
They’re not for people looking to bought a car but for people that already bought one. To reinforce that they took the correct decision and that the next one they bought should be another of the same brand
I’m not sure about elsewhere in the world, but daytime TV in the UK is full of programmes where people want to move house to somewhere a little nicer or chilled - whether it’s to escape the rat race, bring up kids outside of a city, to retire, whatever. They have the strangest “contestants” though, like (and I’m pulling these from my arse but I doubt they’re far from the truth) meeting Tarquin, 44, a part time artist; and Helena, 49, who volunteers at the local farmers market.
“Their budget is 1.2 million pounds”
what the actual fuck
You picked quite suitable names
Yeah, same thing with House Hunters in the US. Those made really good memes. “Stacy, 23, who is a professional whistler, and her husband, Joe, 25, a part time stick weigher, are looking for a more relaxed pace and a smaller, cozier home. Their budget is 7 million, and they’re looking for no less than 3,000 sq meters”
Those are good shows to hate watch in a hotel when you don’t have anything else to do.
Except for this one time. It was an African American family where a single working mom had to use the dinner table to get work done after hours, her mom lived with them and had to sleep in the same bed as the younger daughter, and the teenage boy had outgrown the length of his bed.
I can’t make fun of that. This family needs a new house.
Next episode had a white family. Their biggest problems were that the kids didn’t each have their own bathroom, and they didn’t live close enough to the golf course. Now that’s more like it.
My (half serious) conclusion is the contestants like you describe are either the no-I’m-not-wealthy class of idiots that have simply come from money and don’t realise that’s not the norm, or they’re drug dealers that found a skilled accountant.
I’m under the impression that these shows are designed to make regular people think one or more of the follwiing:
-
if you stay in the race long enough and work hard enough, you can attain the same thing
-
if you can’t, you’re a failure = go drown your sorrows by being a good consumer.
-
be unhappy with their situation and persuaded to blame minorities or the government.
-
The fake jobs are euphemisms for having a trust fund.
That, or having bought their first property long enough ago, and in the right place, that it’s appreciated massively more than the place in the country that they’ve got their eye on. The property ladder is, possibly was, a thing.
Still is, at least to an extent. Bought a house 10 years ago for $110k, and while I’ve paid down about $30k of that between my modest down payment and 10 years of mortgage payments, the house has appreciated ~2x, meaning that I could potentially bring a $100k down payment to a new property. Even with everything else appreciating in the meantime, that makes viable many more options than I would have had if those mortgage payments had been rent checks.
Same. I bought my house a year before the housing market went up. Paid 110,000, now my bank says it’s worth 250,000.
Honestly, as cool as it is for me, that’s just not fair to everyone else. We barely made enough for the 110k loan, and this house is barely big enough for everyone. No fucking way could we have gotten 250k in any sort of loan.
Also when I say barely I mean barely, the seller actually went down to 110 from 120 because that was the max we could get, and we knew him personally. So on top of the price spike, we actually couldn’t afford our house, if I hadn’t made friends with the guy previously.
Yeap, same thing with “find my dream house” shows in America. I think the major difference is that instead of the people being in their 40s, it’s usually people in their 20’s. The source of the funding is ultimately the same, rich parents. The likely difference is between trust fund kids in the US and just people whose parents have finally taken their much awaited dirt naps in the UK.
I think rich parents are basically a prerequisite to owning a home for anyone under 40 nowadays. I’m one of the only people in my friend group of people in their late 30s who owns a home, and that was due to what I consider a minor miracle.
I was lucky and bought an abandoned house from the bank for 30k after the last recession, and that was only possible because I got a loan I probably shouldn’t have qualified for through USAA. So, still a bit of nepotism, but because my dad was in the service, not because he was wealthy.
My first house appraised for less than what we were paying for it. Not a lot, but more than we really had access to. My grandfather spotted the difference. So whole it’s true I worked hard, it’s little moments of privilege like that that really helped put me where I am today. I think folks in my position tend to over look it often. I’m 33 now. I think I’d still own a house, but all of this stuff compounds into each other. I would’ve had to pay exorbitant rent longer at an apartment complex. When I ended up selling that house I wouldn’t have gotten that extra year’s worth (or however long) back. It would’ve been less money to invest. It would probably mean we couldn’t have bought as nice of a new house when we moved. All these little extra things from a family member being able to help spot the difference between the first appraisal and loan.
Yeah that’s the House Hunters trope. It’s in the US too on HGTV.
Lisa is a 25 year old retired yoga instructor and Drew is a 28 year old brick layer who does crack in the alley behind his apartment. They are looking to upgrade into a home in the suburbs because Lisa is expecting any day now! Their budget is 3.5 million. Can they find a home?
oh no, they have a bunch of requirements and accidentally spent double their budget on the house but are still just fine somehow
Every single episode of those shows features a couple that has already purchased a house, and they pretend to give them two other choices to “pick” between.
Especially noticeable when they find a fake option that’s a better fit for their wants/needs than the one they actually chose and the same price or cheaper.
Yeah the one episode I watched beginning to end you could see the lady dying inside while touring her actual dream home that cost significantly less than the one they “ended up going with.” I didn’t know that was how the shows were set up so her reactions puzzled me until I learned that fact.
After that I figured that episode was the peak of the genre and never bothered again.
It’s absurd, but then again; The post above this one in my feed was how the “starter home” price in 200 different us cities is now $1 million.
I’m not even sure who can afford just the Lego Set of Fallingwater.
What about the Atom Brick set? (3/4-Lego-scale bricks).
seriously. or they’ll have some 25yo running the CIA or something.
Is that a Frank Lloyd Wright?
Yup, thats Fallingwater in Pennsylvania. Its a museum now and you can take tours of it
Despite subsequent repairs to the parapet, the cracks there periodically reappeared. Fallingwater’s problems were so numerous that Edgar Sr. referred to it as “Rising Mildew”.
This part never fails to amuse me.
lmao yeah thats great. Cantilever structures are interesting to look at, but boy would I not want to be in charge of maintenance on that
I think his general style was really good, how his buildings could look futuristic and naturalistic at the same time, but FLW kinda didn’t give a shit about structural integrity or insulation.
Rising Mildew
This was my first thought upon processing wtf was happening in the pic. I mean, sure, that’s neat. But also a nightmare.
The interior is also very cramped for such a large structure. The surrounding land is gorgeous though.
The designer was fond of liminal space. He likes narrow hallways and sudden openings to big rooms. Personally, I was surprised by how low the ceiling is in most of the rooms. From the pictures, it looks taller and more imposing than it is IRL.
Kentuck Knob is nearby, which is another FLW house you can get a tour of. Less busy, very pretty, and the owners have an obsession with cast-iron French public urinals. I’d recommend checking it out too if you are in the area.
…
Yup, I believe it’s Fallingwater
LPT from a local: Skip this tourist trap and just go to Ohiopyle down the road for natural rock slides. It is, perhaps, my favourite park.
It’s all that tip money.
