Monocles across America dropped last week as word broke that actress Sarah Jessica Parker had violated the sanctity of a rich person’s home by taking unauthorized pictures of some shoes on their steps. The home in question is 66 Perry Street in New York City, which served as the exterior for the home of Carrie Bradshaw, Parker’s character on HBO’s Sex And The City. Parker violated Rich Person Law by laying out shoes from her new footwear brand in a line leading up to the building’s stoop and taking pictures, in clear contravention of the social contract that keeps the nation’s wealthy focused on exploiting the poor instead of each other.
Apparently, the residents of the neighborhood have long been inconvenienced by pilgrims paying homage to their constantly-narrating goddess. In an interview with Page Six’s Emily Smith, Perry Street Association president Gerald Banu reported on the daily hell that is their lives: “The situation with SATC visitors is still very intense. People who live here get upset that the sidewalks are constantly jammed.” Banu is correct—riff-raff dispersal is full of hidden costs. Butler replacement, for example, after the old one gets an appletini poured on him by a drunk Midwestern housewife and has to be thrown away. Cane repair, to keep up with all the peasant-thrashing the homeowners are forced to do. Care and maintenance for The Hounds. It all adds up.
Presumably, Parker’s transgression is only the first volley in the bloody class war that’s been brewing in this country between the 1 percent and the 2 percent. Escalation is inevitable, and it only remains to be seen what form it will take: Gossip? Drive-by snubbings? Looting of kitchen design ideas, resulting in a violent designer-tile riot? The rest of us can only watch the violence unfold, and pray for peace and sanity.