Back in the post-WWII era, being middle class meant something clear and attainable- a steady job, a home you could afford on one income, being able to buy a new car, and the ability to raise a family without constant money stress. Pew Research defines the middle class as households earning about two-thirds to double the national median income, with the exact dollar figure depending on where you live.
When you grow up in a place where everyone's known you since you were in nappies, you carry around hundreds of versions of yourself. Each person you meet has frozen you at a particular moment - the time you threw up at the school dance, your awkward phase when your voice was breaking, that summer you tried to reinvent yourself and failed spectacularly.
On a trip to see my folks last July, I noticed how much their health was declining and realized that my time with my parents was running out. It was now or never if I wanted to live close to them. The Gold Coast's property and rental prices have skyrocketed in recent years.
We photograph people obsessively, but we rarely capture the everyday spaces where life actually happens. And when those spaces disappear, something profound goes with them. The furniture was never just furniture—it was the stage where decades of family life played out. Every scratch, stain, and worn patch told a story.
Under the name "Wall Management Services Inc.," the group--which includes the President's longtime associates Holmes Tuttle and Earl Jorgenson--bought the 7,192-square-foot house with three bedrooms and six baths on 1 acres for $2.5 million. The dirt alone on a 1-acre lot in that neighborhood is worth an estimated $3 million!
First subdivided in 1873 as East Los Angeles, it was carved out of the 17,000-plus acres of the old Spanish pueblo by developers seeking to create a middle-class residential neighborhood. To overcome the perception of most Angelenos that the region east of the river was a rusticated wilderness, lacking the amenities to which the burghers of Bunker Hill had grown accustomed, the developers installed water pipes to serve the new subdivision.
"All in the Family" was filmed in California, but Archie Bunker's house was located at 704 Hauser Street in Astoria, Queens. Unfortunately, neither the street nor the interior of that house is real. That said, some of the exterior shots were done using an actual (and still standing) house in Queens. That house is located to the southeast at 89-70 Cooper Avenue in the Glendale neighborhood. It's currently a 1,312-square-foot tourist attraction. As for what it's worth today, ballpark estimates put it at $820,000.
In stark contrast to the much larger McDonald's menu of today, there were only nine items back then - no combo meals or anything, just à la carte options. The only food was a hamburger, cheeseburger, and fries, while for drinks you could get a Coke, root beer, "orangeade," coffee, milkshake, or just plain milk. The most expensive item on the menu was the milkshake, at 20 cents, while all the other drinks cost 10 cents, as did the fries.
Yes, that's right - the cabinetry with the warm, golden hue "with amber undertones," as Victoria Fioravanti, partner and creative director at Showcase Kitchens/Showcase Tile & Stone, describes it, has come back after spending many years as a dated kitchen feature that was painted over or completely replaced. These cabinets were a '90s phenomenon to the point that they made it into the kitchens of Full House and Home Improvement - and people (and homebuyers) are loving them again today. Here's why.
If you woke up too early on a Saturday, you'd turn on the TV to find... nothing. Just a test pattern or static. Television stations actually signed off at night and didn't start broadcasting again until morning. Can you imagine explaining this to kids today? That there was literally nothing to watch? No Netflix library, no YouTube, no endless content.
Growing up, I remember my father coming home from the factory, his hands stained with machine oil that never quite washed off. He'd sit at our kitchen table, carefully counting out bills for the week ahead. Years later, when I asked him about those days, he just smiled and said, "You kids had everything you needed."
There was a time I thought I'd spend the rest of my life in New York. After more than a decade in Manhattan, the streets felt like my own, and my identity felt entwined with the city. Even after having two babies on the Upper West Side, I was constantly plotting and planning on how we could make this lifestyle work long-term. And then, my husband and I stumbled upon our dream home in a distant Connecticut suburb.
My father kept manuals for products we hadn't owned in years, filed alphabetically in a cabinet. When I asked why, he looked at me like I'd suggested burning money. "What if we need to look something up?" The concept of finding any manual online in seconds just doesn't compute for a generation that had to rely on these paper lifelines.
Regional Concentration: Most relocations now occur within the same region rather than across the country. Households are increasingly "trading one nearby city for another" to find better housing affordability without leaving their home state or region. Proximity to Home: Over 50% of moves stay within the same county, and approximately 80% remain within the same state. Long-distance interstate moves accounted for only about 19.3% of all relocations in 2024-2025.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday brought the issue front-and-center when he pledged in a social media post to stop institutional investors from buying more homes. Some major owners of single-family rental homes were blindsided by the news, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Traders immediately dumped shares thought to be exposed. Blackstone's stock fell as much as 9.3% and Invitation Homes Inc., the biggest owner of rental homes in the US, as much as 10%.
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