Mean street, mean city?_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Mean street, mean city?

However, as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, even the average income earners now look very poor. Look at the biggest cities in the world today, where commercialism and profit making are at their fiercest and worst. If you have an average income, i.e. that you actually work for your money in the ordinary way, holding a 9 to 5 job, do you feel very rich or very poor?

More likely very poor. That’s right. That’s not right, that’s actually wrong but that’s it. There may be a lot of people like yourself, but, all of you feel very poor because of the comparison with the small number of people who are extremely rich.

Mean street means poor-people’s street. Suddenly, it all seems to make sense, doesn’t it?

Alright, here are media examples:

1. The club’s original incarnation in Manhattan is disguised as a derelict Jewish tailor’s shop and located on a mean street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Entrance is by referral and appointment only, and the place is so publicity-shy that, if they have heard of it at all, most New Yorkers assume it’s an urban myth, or just flatly deny its existence.

“A place with rules? No, I’d have been there.” But then genuine customers - who have made it past the referral system, telephoned in advance to book a seat, found the unmarked door and negotiated the double set of velvet curtains into the railway carriage size, Jazz Age speakeasy-style interior - will deny its existence anyway. Because that is one of the first rules of admission. And while the rules are strictly enforced, the customers are, anyway, self-regulating.