
Moving a piano in New York city - danso
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/06/arts/music/ny-piano-moving.html
======
adrianmonk
Since we're on piano moving war stories, there is a messy ongoing case in
Dallas.

[http://dallas.culturemap.com/news/city-
life/11-26-19-preston...](http://dallas.culturemap.com/news/city-
life/11-26-19-preston-tower-grand-piano-lawsuit/)

Decades ago, a man had a large grand piano moved into his condo. It had to
ride _on top of_ the elevator. Recently, he moved out of that unit and found
that the city building codes no longer allow this.

Then a bunch of complicated drama happened with the former condo owner, the
condo management, and a piano moving company, and it all turned into a
lawsuit.

~~~
quickthrowman
It’s even worse than that, there’s a freight elevator in the building, but the
other moving companies were either not told about it or not allowed to use it.
The company that ended up moving the piano used the freight elevator. All of
this could’ve been solved long before by just using the freight elevator,
perhaps there’s more to this story?

~~~
mkhpalm
> perhaps there’s more to this story

I think so. Consider that Marcus was one of the owners of the building for
many years. Why didn't _he_ tell them about a freight elevator if that was an
option?

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rgovostes
The scrolling is like going down stairs. Get it?

~~~
lainga
I think my forehead caught every step along the way.

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NikolaeVarius
I wish the NYT would cut it out with this super interactive article format. It
might make sense for some (very limited) set of things, but a photo album is
not one of them

~~~
reaperducer
_I wish the NYT would cut it out with this super interactive article format.
It might make sense for some (very limited) set of things, but a photo album
is not one of them_

It's probably tailored for the NYT app.

The Times is one of the few real journalism sources willing to try new things.
When they do, the HN crowd says The Times crap. When they don't, the HN crowd
says The Times a relic and should die.

I'm a subscriber, and happy that it's at least trying. Some of the
visualizations and AR stories are remarkable.

~~~
jessriedel
I've seen the NYT praised in the HN top-level comment for neat digital article
features multiple times. This might just not be one of those times.

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programd
Compare and contrast the NYT article to the sublime beauty of a classic in the
genre:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s4nVg_W_6Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s4nVg_W_6Y)

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ehsankia
How much of this is really specific to NYC? Not sure if it's just the NYT an
their NY centric view, but most of the stuff shown and talked about seem to be
about moving pianos in general, and not about NYC.

~~~
reaperducer
It's a New York-based publication with most of its circulation and staff in
New York, founded in New York by New Yorkers, headquartered in the NEW YORK
Times building, and has "New York" in its title, and you complain about it
having a New York-centric view?

It's a feature, not a bug.

~~~
ehsankia
The HN headline seems to have been modified, away from the actual headline:
"The Miracle of Moving a Piano in New York City".

If I wrote an article with the headline "The Miracle of building a chair in
Hawaii", and then described the normal process of building a chair which is
location agnostic, wouldn't you bewildered as to why I included "Hawaii" in
the headline?

I understand that they are based in NYC, I just don't understand why that's
relevant enough to be in the headline. "The miracle of moving a piano"
would've done just fine.

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mlazos
Was the reason this article was posted because of the horrible ux? I found
that way more interesting than the article tbh.

~~~
nprz
How is this going over so many peoples heads? It's intentionally clunky and
confusing, much like moving a grand piano up several flights of stairs would
be.

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Waterluvian
At what point does a grand piano become a fixture rather than a chattel?

I unboxed a foam king mattress at my new house once it was in the bedroom. It
is literally impossible to get it out of that room without destroying it or I
guess putting a hole in the outer wall.

~~~
Yetanfou
A large bag and a vacuum cleaner might help in getting it back to a more
manageable size, especially if you roll it up before applying the vacuum.

------
rozab
While I admire the vision of that webpage, it was really a pain on mobile
(Firefox android).

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gist
Articles says that moves are 'rarely less than $350'. The question is really
what did this 5 man move cost? What, if any, were the other bids? Realize NYT
is not a business angle but would be nice to know.

~~~
jdavis703
The article contains the number of moves they do per day. It includes the
number of movers needed. It includes the typical wage of these movers. From
some back of the napkin calculations wages were probably at least $400. The
moving company is also going to charge for the truck, gas and “overhead.” Then
there are fees for stairs. Then you have to tip the 6 men. And lastly don’t
forget the moving company needs to make some profit. I could imagine this is
easily $1000.

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iso947
Did they take off all the handles? And the thing that holds the candles?

[https://youtu.be/Ge_4SlJWfl0](https://youtu.be/Ge_4SlJWfl0)

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jedberg
> "The movers are here to protect the piano, not the hallway.”

I don't know about you, but I like it when my movers protect my stuff _and_
the walls.

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joncp
That site is a hot mess on mobile

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itsangaris
Great, now I feel nauseous.

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spectramax
To all designers: Present your website as if its a piece of paper on your
desk. It is rectangular, it has a specific size and it can be manipulated by
the standard means that the browser provides (scroll). You can have different
sized papers for different screens.

What if every book you buy is one of those origami popup castles that explode
upon opening a book? That would get pretty frustrating to read and understand
the book. What if some pages move and shuffle unpreditably? What if it
autoplays music without user invoking anything? That's essentially what you're
doing with websites.

What are they teaching in Design universities these days?

~~~
azinman2
As mentioned above, it’s supposed to mimic stairs.

~~~
spectramax
Why?

~~~
danso
Because a core theme in this story is the difficulty of moving heavy objects
up and down stairs. I agree the web implementation is clunky (in a way that
doesn't aid the overall reading experience) but I do see what they were trying
for.

