East side bowery was very cheap back then (it was also a pretty rough part of town, which is easy to forget). You just need to convince a hoard of like minded f

East side bowery was very cheap back then (it was also a pretty rough part of town, which is easy to forget). You just need to convince a hoard of like minded folks to congregate somewhere cheap and you can live like this. There's plenty of cheap places to live in the US. I kind of feel like we need to learn how to build new cities, we have the land, it's mostly cheap, we just continue to choose to reside in expensive places chasing jobs that help us cover the rent while working us to death.