NEW YORK CITY-

Some things in life make no sense at all. This is another one of those stories that really leaves you scratching your head. You would think that someone had put some thought behind it, which would therefore make you think there is some logic behind it too.

Millions of Americans have been caught up in the ugly mortgage situation that has caused so many to lose their homes to foreclosure. Although, this story is not about someone losing their home to foreclosure, it does have some similarities.

Pasang Sherpa of Queens, New York was just your everyday immigrant trying to live the American Dream and make an honest living. Pasang just wanted to make his mark and provide for his family like every other hard working American. Pasang must have thought he won the New York State lottery when the city’s parks department auctioned off the rights to the most sought after vendor location at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He must have thought he had died and gone to heaven landing that sort of prime real estate. But in America, some say, nothing is that easy. There was a catch to this beautiful winning story. The annual rent for the spot Pasang occupied was a whopping $643,000 a year, nearly $54,000 a month to sell frickin’ hot dogs.

Okay, so I know the cost of living in New York is a lot higher than in other parts of the country, but let me do a little quick math. So $54,000 a month, is $1,800 a day, and say he works from dusk till dawn 7-7, seven days a week, that means poor Pasang would have to sell 150 hot dogs every hour for 12 straight hours. Let me switch the math a little. How much could a hot dog cost in New York? $3, $4, $5? Let’s be real generous and say a hot dog vendor standing in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art can sell his scrumptious dogs for $8 a pop (I’ve never been to NY, but I doubt it). At $8 a pop that would mean he has to sell 225 dogs a day or 28 an hour over 8 hours, or 19 an hour over 12 hours (quite possible)….but that’s just to pay his stinking rent. Again, I’m thinking $8 a dog is quite high and that does not even cover the cost of his supplies or any profit he may want to make as a business man trying to make a living and support his family in the great state of New York. No matter which way you look at it, no place in the world is worth $1,800 dollars a day to sell hot dogs, much less anything else.

As a small rebuttal against Pasang Sherpa, he had to have had some idea going in what the rent would be for that prime piece of hot dog real estate, and if so why on Earth would he get himself into something like that? He was finally evicted when he became $310,000 behind on his payments.

The moral of the story: When that cost of occupying a 10×10 piece of land is the same as the mortgage on a mansion it’s definitely time to move.

© 2010 StrangeRush.com

 Print This Strange Story

No tags