Showing posts with label New York. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 14, 2023

A Boost Mobile Store In Newburgh, NY: A Profile



Mary Lebron (picture above) has been working at this store on 457 Broadway in Newburgh, NY, for 12 years now. The other two stores also on Broadway (at 226 Broadway and 364 Broadway) and a fourth at Newburgh Mall are all owned by the same person and has the same manager. Although she started working for minimum wage, her wage has since climbed up for how long she has worked. Stability pays dividends.

Boost Mobile phones are pre-paid. You don't need an ID. You just need to pay. Works great for immigrants. It also targets the low-end of the market. You can get a phone plan for $15 per month but it will not have data, only voice and text. For $25 you can also get data.

Boost Mobile does not have its own nationwide network. It runs on the AT&T network.

Weekends and the first of the month are relatively busy. People drop by after they get paid for the month.

On an average day she might have five to 10 people enter the store. Some days that number is zero.

"So what do you do all day?"

"I spend time on my phone."

She also cleans the store when there are no customers. But that does not take a whole lot of time.

On a busy day, though, that number might as well be 30.

Boost Mobile was also around in the Blackberry era. Today it offers iPhones and Galaxy phones.

The store is open from 10 AM to 6:30 PM. It takes payments in cash. Because credit card companies charge too much money. In her 12 years she has never been robbed. Neither have been any of the other three stores that she knows of. Even though Newburgh, and this part of Newburgh in particular, has a bad reputation.

There are security cameras in the store.

The store is open all seven days. She works five days. She switches from store to store as necessary.

She says her onboarding was easy and simple. The training was not hard at all. You just scan the phone the customer picks and the computer does all the bookkeeping.

The manager is always only about five minutes away and drops by about once a day.

The hardest part of the job is when a difficult customer returns a phone. Most don't. And most that do are fine. But some start arguing. And she opts to call in the manager when that happens. There is a return policy but that does not allow for damanged phones.

Photo Album: Boost Mobile, Broadway, Newburgh, NY

Customers can also shop directly at the Boost Mobile store online. But the appeal of the physical store is enduring.

Saturday, October 26, 2019

The Megacities

The World’s 33 Megacities
Megacity A megacity is a very large city metropolitan area, typically with a population of more than 10 million people.
Ed Rendell Backing 300mph Bullet Train: DC to Philly in 40 minutes?

Tokyo, Delhi, Shanghai, Jakarta, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Cairo, Mumbai, Beijing, Seoul, Guangzhou, Manila, New York, Shenzhen, Lagos, Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe, Wuhan, Los Angeles, Dhaka, Chengdu, Moscow, Chongqing, Karachi, Bangkok, Tianjin, Istanbul, Kolkata, Tehran, London, Buenos Aires, Hangzhou, Rio De Janeiro, Xian, Paris, Changzhou, Kinshasa, Lahore, Rhine-Ruhr, Shantou, Nanjing, Bengaluru, Jinan, Chennai, Harbin, Bogota, Nagoya, Lima.


Elon Musk's boring company's top contribution to humanity could be that now every megacity, city and town on earth can hope to have cutting edge sewage systems. They don't have to dig up roads. Machines create tiny tunnels underground at rapid clips.

These cities should all look into vertical farming where Singapore seems to be in the lead.

Ultracity is 100 million or more. You deliberately create. A prime target would be the DC to Boston corridor. The component cities continue to function as independent jurisdictions. But ultracity is an infrastructure play. Transporation is hyperloop. Food is vertical farming. Crime control is biometric ID and the Blockchain. If every transaction is on the Blockchain, how do you steal money? You can't.




















Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Silicon Valley And Dubai



First of all, what is technically Silicon Valley (it is an actual geography ... it's a valley, I have been) is no longer where innovation is happening. The innovation is happening north of that in San Francisco, a big city where young engineers like to live. And, by now, New York is neck and neck. Because, guess what, San Fran has nothing on New York when it comes to big city living. And Dubai makes New York look like a Third World city.

But look at this Founding Father of Silicon Valley. This guy, the first Prime Minister of India, is the primary pusher behind the establishment of IITs across India. No IITs, no Silicon Valley, pure and simple. Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella look visible now, but Indians have always been the majority of the workhorses in the valley tech companies.


You also need capital. Every VC in California gets their money from the pension funds in New York. It is not like the dollar bill in California is a different color from green. Capital is capital. And Dubai has a ton of it.

Culture is big. In San Fran they have a culture where they celebrate failure. They say, fail fast. Fail better next time. But that culture can be cultivated. In other words, be tolerant.

But the truest form of tolerance is cultural diversity, the number one quality I look for in any city. And there Dubai is number one by a wide margin.

The IITs are still producing super smart graduates. But the visa regime in the US has become very unfriendly. Dubai does great there. And if there is room for improvement, it can be fixed by royal decree. I am sure.

Dubai has capital. Dubai can access the same IITs, and only better. Because Dubai is so much closer to home. People like home. Dubai's cultural diversity is the greatest symbol of tolerance there can be.

What is needed is a city inside a city. And I am going to build that. The world is big. The San Francisco Bay Area, or the Hong Kong Bay Area are not big enough for all the innovation the world needs.

And Dubai has excellent location. You have Africa and you have South Asia nearby, the next two Chinas.

To: The Crown Prince Of Dubai
No Techies In Dubai
Elon Musk's Giant Blind Spot: Human Beings
Dubai's Remarkable Economic Transformation





















Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Food And Housing Are 10 Times More Expensive Than They Need To Be



At least 10 times. More like 100 times.

The world has to move towards abundance. First through technological breakthroughs. Then through policy innovation. Imagine an America where just like 5% of the people get to be on unemployment benefits, there is free food and housing for that 5%. Nothing fancy, but enough basic food and housing. Part of it might be faith-based. I don't mind.

The thing about rent in New York City is, it is misguided. The message is, it is demand and supply. Too many people want to live here, that is why rent is so high. Hogwash. Big cities are good for the environment. You want NYC to get two times as big, 10 times as big.

Come in bullet trains and satellite cities.

NYC should build a city just for the homeless. About 30 miles away.

Cheap housing also has to be about moving retired lower middle class people to far away countries where they can live like kings and queens on the same retirement income.

You make basic food and housing guaranteed, and the world will see a new era for art and culture.

I think strong, cheap material will be nanotechnology. So housing prices come down like a house of cards.

Monday, May 18, 2015

Green New York


buildings could be repurposed to include vertical farms, with internal greenhouses, exterior scaffolding for hardier plants, and terraces for free-range animals. Rooftops could be covered with growing space, and solar panels could help offset the costs of keeping greenhouses warm year-round. If all of New York’s food were grown within its political limits, the city’s traffic would flow through an ocean of green. ....... discovered, unfortunately, that it would take some thirty nuclear power plants to provide enough heat and light for all those urban farms. (You need a lot of agriculture to feed eight and a half million people.) ...... how thirty per cent of New York’s consumables might be produced within a hundred-mile radius of the city ...... “Trees sequester carbon, they provide ventilation, they give shade,” he said. “We could easily lower the summer temperatures here by five degrees with more trees.”......... people fare much better, emotionally and cognitively, in greener environments than in purely urban landscapes. ....... In New York City, developments such as the High Line, the greening of Broadway, and Citi Bike are extensions of Mumford’s vision. ........ green-roofed buildings connected by tree-lined walkways.
A better idea than 30 nuclear power plants would be a city that is in tune with the Caribbean islands. Let them grow the food. It is only hours away. They do solar. Not solar heaters. Simply solar: direct Sun. More trees in the city, on the other hand, are a great idea.

Saturday, February 07, 2015

The Ultimate Megacity: 100 Million People



  • 100 million people: the biggest Megacity in the world. 
  • A mini earth in terms of cultural diversity. 
  • Everyone who lives in the city boundaries votes in the city boundaries. 
  • DC to Boston.
  • The backbone: a bullet train. You could live in downtown Baltimore and work in Manhattan and not even think about the commute. 


  • JFK to Penn Station and Newark to Penn Station: short distance bullet trains. To get you there in minutes. 
  • Dedicated Caribbean organic farming to feed the Megacity. I don't know about you but I like mangoes. 
  • 100% electric vehicles in the territory. By law. 
  • A next generation industrialization in the entire Eastern half of the US that is 100% feeding on Clean Energy. 
  • WiFi in every inch of the territory through the TV spectrum. Free. Telecommuting should be the norm in the workplace, partially or fully. 
  • The NYC Subway will have to be reimagined. Levitate it. Extend it. WiFi 100% everywhere. People will be having business meetings in there. No coffee though.