Have you seen them? The Europeans? They’re everywhere! In our fancy bistros, on line at the Apple store, spending their fancy-pantzy valuable Euros while we suffer through this intolerable non-recession. The patriots at the New York Times finally sounded the warning call over this European “invasion” that’s transforming New York into the “Walmart of hip.”

Their party is raging just as the hangover has started to set in for Americans. Frictions do arise — especially in a summer of looming recession, where many locals do not feel rich enough or secure enough to travel abroad themselves. (And let’s not even get into their weeks of summer vacation).

The Times goes on to tell the pitiful stories of average Americans jealous of newly-wealthy Europeans: Steven, a 45-year-old investment manager who worries native New Yorkers are becoming an “endangered species” (quick, call the EPA!); Randi, a 30-year-old Upper West Side ad gal who can’t afford Prada bags; and Polly, a magazine editor turned blogger who hates the chic-bistro “turf war” that pits us against our cultural brethren.

Get this: Polly went to Bergman to buy her fiance shoes to match his wedding tux, and she had to wait for FIVE MINUTES behind Europeans who were wearing sneakers and bike shorts. The horror!

These aren’t the landed aristocratic Europeans whose visits we can deign to accept. Ugh, no, these are those disgustingly common commoners who shouldn’t be able to afford our enviable lifestyle.

These are “people with more modest incomes, who wouldn’t just walk up and say, ‘Hey, let me get a table’ if they’re back home in London, where it’s too expensive to go to Boujis,” Mr. Thomas said, referring to a popular club in that city’s Kensington district. “But in New York, they can get away with it.”

So this is what the British felt like for the past sixty years. Please Ben Bernanke, put our financial house in order so we can reclaim the mantle of shameless consumerism for ourselves.

They’ll Take Manhattan, in Cash [The New York Times]
(Photo: Getty)

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