Christmas Trees Are Selling For $1,000 In Manhattan
NY Post – Yuletide capitalism is running rampant this year — with the cost of a Christmas tree topping $1,000 in one Manhattan neighborhood. Longtime Greenwich Village tree-seller Heather Neville said Sunday that her tallest — and priciest — offering will command an astonishing $77 per foot from any buyer who can’t haul it home. “This 13-foot tree — a beautiful fir — is $750, and with delivery, installation with a stand and tip would be $1,000,” said Neville, who bills herself as the NYC Tree Lady. Neville, 40, broke down the add-ons as $200 for the stand, $25 for delivery and setup and $20 each to the three or four men needed for the job. She also justified the sky-high price tag — which could pay for 600-plus meals for the homeless at the Bowery Mission — by pointing to the exotic nature of the white fir on display at Seventh Avenue and 11th Street. “They are not a traditional Christmas tree so they are harder to get,” she said. “Not many farmers grow them. To find a good one is difficult.”
God I don’t want this story to be true. Praying it’s some good old fashioned gotcha journalism by the people at The Post. But I know it’s true. You know why? Because New York City is the fucking worrrrrst during Christmastime. The streets are packed to the gills with tourists that stop in the middle of the block to look at all of those “big, fancy tall buildings” while these street urchin motherfuckers sling shitty trees down our throats while crowding up the sidewalk. Nothing breaks a New Yorker down more than having to pay $100+ for some needledick tree that requires rearranging their entire shoebox apartment so they can fit it inside. Oh yeah and you have to lug that shitty, overpriced tree through the streets while getting covered in sap and then all you have to do is face the final boss of this experience, the invincible net that the tree is wrapped in. What a way to get into the Christmas spirit!
The first year I bought a tree in the city that was about the size of Charlie Brown’s sapling for like $75, I told myself to remember this feeling. It would be one of the things that would spur me to out of the God foresaken city. Ten years and two moves later and I am buying gigantic, full trees at Stew Leonard’s for reasonable prices before gorging on free samples and having a delightful time shopping. All thanks to that memory (and the fear of raising kids in a city full on loony tunes and garbage). But the fact of the matter remains that rich assholes in the city still pay these prices so Heather Neville can call herself the NYC Tree Lady. If you are one of these people, then fuck you. Same for Heather Neville and her beautiful fir tree. My one Christmas wish this year is for all her trees to get tree herpes and she becomes the leper of tree sellers.
However, despite all this being said, I’d rather pay $10,000 for a real tree that lives for 24 hours than have a free, spectacular looking fake tree. If you want to honor the birthday of our Lord and savior with a fake tree, that’s on you. But just know that fake trees make baby Jesus cry. If God wanted us to use fake Christmas trees, real Christmas trees wouldn’t be the greatest smelling things on planet Earth.