Reality Distortion Field

With no iPhone here in Europe (rumors are T-Mobile will be the carrier, and it'll be here Octoberish), I have to live my geeky fantasies vicariously through others via the internet. I was just reading an article by Farhad Manjoo, a techy writer living in the Bay Area who's written some great stuff for Wired and Salon, among others, and this one thing really jumped out at me...

And one more thing: It's $600! I'm not used to treating my cellphone with much respect. I throw it in my bag, I flash it around in public, I don't think twice about slipping it in the security tray when I'm going through the airport. The iPhone alters that calculus of risk. When the thing in your pocket is worth half a month's rent, you feel yourself constantly on alert.

Holy crap is SF expensive! When six hundred bones only gets you about two weeks of living, you know you're living in the whacky reality distortion field that is the Bay Area That and the live show at Trannyshack. Rim job on stage? Why wouldn't you?

Hamburg is one of the richest cities in Germany, and generally considered quite expensive. For a room in a two bedroom apartment, I pay €355 (about $500) per month, and that includes all utilities. When I lived in San Francicso, a similar sized room (granted, it had a big closet with mirror doors - fancy!) was $700 plus utilities. Poor Farhad is paying $1200. It's a fabulous city, but that's a lot of rent. To think that you could buy two iPhones per month... well, it's the rent that makes me queasy, not the iPhone.