The process of purchasing an apartment in New York City was the single most invasive and (in my opinion) unnecessary process that I have been subjected to.

The application entailed submission of our past two tax filings. It required an interview with members of the building’s board. We were asked to provide four (4!) letters of recommendation (one of which remains one of the single most hilarious pieces of prose I’ve ever read).

And after all that, the board that runs the building had the ability to simply say “Yes” or “No” with absolutely no requirement to explain, rationalize or justify this decision.

So I should feel a little bit of sympathy for Livvy Dunne.

She is a former LSU gymnast who has made quite a bit of money from being popular on the Internet. She sought to buy an apartment that once belonged to Babe Ruth (in cash no less) only to be turned down by one of those finicky co-op boards here in New York.

• Livvy Dunne strikes out in bid to buy Babe’s old digs

  The New York Post

This strikes me as slightly un-American. She wants to buy an item that is available for purchase. The person she’s seeking to buy it from has agreed to her offer and then some supervisory board comes in to snuff it out. This strikes me as exactly the type of old-money snobbery I hate.

Yet I will admit to being amused as opposed to outraged. I’m going to explain why in a little bit, but first we’ve got to circle the metaphorical bases with a proverbial 2-minute drill.

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Results of preseason games do not matter. At all. So I’m hesitant to even tell you that Seattle and Las Vegas tied 23-23 when the Seahawks blocked a last-minute field-goal attempt by the Raiders.

I’m going to provide you with three talking points, which you should feel free to recite should anyone ask you about the game.

1. Offensive linemen Grey Zabel, Anthony Bradford and Abe Lucas were the only projected starters the Seahawks played in the preseason game. That’s interesting especially with Bradford and Lucas. Seattle must feel there’s some work to do on the right side of the line.

2. The Seahawks really REALLY want the 49ers to spend time preparing for rookie quarterback Jalen Milroe as a zone-read option threat. He did it several times, including his first snap of the game. He can run the ball against NFL defenses right now, but even though he was 6-for-10 passing, I’m not sure he’s consistently accurate enough to throw it.

3. Rookie safety Nick Emmanwori is sure fun to watch. Then again, it’s always fun when DBs are dispatched to charge upfield like Emmanwori was, blitzing on the first series of the game and collecting a tackle for loss later in the first quarter.

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The good: The Mariners beat the White Sox 4-3 in 11 innings, completing a sweep. They’ve won six of the seven games this homestand.

The bad: Josh Naylor grimaced after swinging at a pitch in the third inning. Taken by itself, that’s not necessarily ominous. Naylor won’t ever be accused of looking habitually upbeat. Naylor appeared to be uncomfortable on the swing, however, and while he finished the at-bat, he was then removed from the game, replaced by Donovan Solano.

The (potentially) ugly: Manager Dan Wilson said afterward that Naylor had “a little bit of shoulder soreness” and the first baseman was “day to day.” This was welcomed as good news. However, I slowed my exhale of relief after I read this:

When Naylor was with Arizona earlier this year, he left a game back in June because of a sore shoulder. He missed the next seven games, though he didn’t go on the injured list.

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All right, let’s get back to Livvy Dunne, who according to the New York Post, is “no Babe.”

Earlier this summer she sought to buy a New York apartment. Well, not just any New York apartment. The one where Babe Ruth had once lived. This may or may not be related to the fact that Dunne’s boyfriend is reportedly Paul Skenes, the stud pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

She certainly could afford it. Dunne is a former LSU gymnast who makes a great deal of money because of her popularity on Instagram. For all the talk of how NIL is affecting college basketball and football, it’s possible she’s the one who has benefited most from the fact that college athletes can now sign marketing deals.

Now, if you’re looking to buy an apartment in New York, there are two flavors to choose from.

The first is a condo. Most people are familiar with this arrangement. You’re buying a unit in a larger building.

Most apartments for sale in New York, however, are co-ops. In this case, the building itself is owned by the co-op. As it was explained to me, you’re not purchasing a unit so much as you’re buying a share in the building that comes with a lease to a specific apartment.

I don’t work in real-estate so I can’t get all granular with the differences between the two, but the biggest one is that co-op boards have much, much more power when it comes to authorizing a sale. Basically, a co-op board can turn down anyone so long as it’s not discriminatory an and doesn’t have to do with self-dealing with others on the co-op board. If you want a more studious look at the situation, the newspaper my wife works for also covered the story.

The fact that Dunne was denied is an example of the kind of institutional snobbery that I usually find to be the most annoying aspect of New York. I hate the idea that you can turn someone down because you don’t like the cut of their jib or the smell of their money.

Yet I find myself kind of amused that a bunch of New Yorkers decided they didn’t want Livvy Dunne buying a unit in their building.

Best I can tell, there are three reasons for this:

1. I am now 50 and view streamers, TikTokers and influencers with the same strain of disdain that my grandparents must have felt toward MTV, the musicians whose videos aired there and saps such as myself who watched it.

2. I’m becoming prone to the very New York snobbery I claim to dislike.

Here’s what I mean by that: When I was jumping through all the hoops necessary to buy into a co-op in New York, I found it to be (like many things in New York) a thoroughly annoying, unnecessary and utterly ridiculous process.

Now that I’ve found my way to the other side, I tend to shrug and say, “Well, that’s just the way it is here.”

It’s similar to the feelings I have about hazing and paying your dues. Yeah, I don’t think either of those practices are good. I also went through both of them, most notably when I was forced to push a penny with my nose down the length of a hallway at Mazama High School). While I have consciously tried to avoid perpetuating either of those things, I will admit that I find it hard to summon a ton of outrage when someone complains about something that I, too, had to endure.

In this case, it has led me to chuckle at the fact that a very wealthy and popular Internet personality was unable to buy the apartment that she wanted in the city where I live.

This feeling runs entirely counter to pretty much everything I believe when it comes to class in this country. I dislike snobs. Intensely. The whole idea that anyone would ever look down on so-called new money strikes me as the sort of WASP-y crap that revolutions were fought over.

And yet I find myself lacking anything approaching sympathy. Do I contradict myself? Sure. Perhaps it’s because—like Walt Whitman—I contain multitudes though none of my multitudes seem to be as poetic as he was.