David Crane and Marta Kaufman’s “Friends” are one of the greatest hangout comedies of all time. With around six highly attractive and talented young actors, the series provided a lively portrait of Twentysomething/Thrtysomething Generation X Ennui. The characters weren’t necessarily aimless, but they definitely didn’t have one together. All they had was each other. This was a weekly must-see TV balm for the souls of many Gen X-er who experienced similar twills in the 1990s and 2000s.
Viewers around the world may be related to the struggles of Monica (Courtney Cox), Rachel (Jennifer Aniston), Chandler (Matthew Perry), Ross (David Schwimmer), Joey (Matt Le Blanc), and Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow), but aspects of these characters were in Tad high from the hard from thid. Certainly, many of us knew what it was like to struggle to spend time in a bustling metropolitan city like New York City (I lived there during the peak of the series’ popularity), but we couldn’t hope to stop it while living in an incredibly large apartment in West Village. As someone who did a fair amount of apartment hopping during that period, I say that if the broker (who couldn’t afford it in the first place) showed me a flat similar to Monica and Rachel’s location, he would have punched his face to try and humiliate me. It’s a rich apartment.
How rich? It’s a question that many people have been asking for over the years, and although you can’t give accurate numbers for fictional accommodations, you can blow it up. Get ready to be amazed.
Monica and Rachel did not pay the market value for the apartment.
According to Architectural DigestMonica’s “shattered chic” and “country core” apartments would have sparked a bid war at the second market. So how did Monica land such a major Manhattan property? Her grandmother illegally sublimates it into her!
According to Canon of Show, the apartments are rent controlled. This means that the increase in the rent for the unit was reasonably progressive to not drive a manannae tenant (in this case Monica’s grandmother) from her residence and potentially to the street. This means that Nana, who retired to Florida, has taken over the apartment for quite some time and as an elderly person gathering social security in the sunshine state (as well as her rights as a hardworking American before), probably didn’t have to claim the unit’s granddaughter market value.
Taking this into consideration, he, like Adam Sandler’s famous protagonist, is in the far-good territory of Hollywood entertainment, as he, who lives in Manhattan Loft in Paul Thomas Anderson’s beloved “Big Daddy,” took a massive settlement from a minor accident. At this point, you should probably shrug and enjoy the fantasy. This is easy to do as “Friends” was a consistently hilarious show with very few episodes. But you still need to know, right? Spoiler: Monica and Rachel never sniff out a Manhattan apartment of that caliber.
Monica and Rachel have reduced their ability to afford their apartment by $200,000
Quote by Architectural Digest in 2024 The smartest real estate concierge companyUsing the current Bureau of Labor Statistics, Rachel and Monica, who worked as the first chef and waitress in the series, respectively, were making a combined $120,000 a year. They then decided that as a unit’s stand-in (estimated to be between 1,125 and 1,500 square feet) would be zero at apartment 12A at 136 Waverly Place in West Village, where Monica and Rachel would need to combine at least $321,429 to straighten the rent. If they want to buy a unit, they will need to make $782,379 to cover the $2.65 million that will be made in the market today. Obviously, members of the cast of “Friends” can afford to buy the entire building recently.
Had Crane and Kaufmann had taken a realistic approach to “friends,” they would have placed Monica and Rachel in their railway apartments somewhere in the city of Alphabet. Considering the circle, there was also more job sales and abundant cocaine use, given that the “friends” gang travelled. Again, I was living in New York City at the time, so I would have loved this. It’s my guess, and it’s just speculation, and that NBC might have frowned upon such portrayals.
