So, I've been to Bungalow 8 before.
Paris Hilton couldn't get in.
What the hell is the world coming to?!
Personally, I was a fan of the late, lamented Lot 61, as opposed to Sacco's new creation. And I'm not even a nightlife person.
Being somewhat of a yuppie, I begin my day with a venti soy chai latte from Starbucks. (If you don't know what that is, well, get thee to the twenty-first century! It is the nectar of commerce.)
Anyway.
A wee bit hung over from last night's exertions, I stood on line, and heard a conversation which I can't quite believe:
Son: Dad, what's 3.5 over 7?
Dad: You learned fractions in school. Why don't you do the math yourself?
Son: Yeah Dad but 3.5 isn't a fraction!
Dad: It isn't? Then what is it?
Son: My teacher says it's a decimal.
Dad: Well, what's a decimal?
Son: It's a part of a whole number.
Dad: So that's a fraction right?
Son: No, my teacher said decimals aren't fractions.
No doubt this innumerate kid is a proud product of New York City's public schools.
To adopt a slightly different mantra: Kill puiblic education. Elevate man.
The New York Times, never known for its intelligence, claims that Staten Island is like Alaska:
There is a place in this city where teenagers go crabbing from the old railroad bridge, where people consider themselves residents of a town of half a dozen rather than of a metropolis of eight million, where the waterfront still harbors ancient secrets along with the inevitable clash of development interests.It’s called Staten Island. It is the fastest growing county in New York State, yet it remains, in pockets, and in its peculiar way, the Alaska of New York City.
That is, a place where nature, however debased, still plays a role in daily life and where there is room to pursue a dream, whether that means amassing a mansion-full of musty antiques or a yard full of cars up on blocks patrolled by roosters, or building an artwork along a quarter mile of beachfront, or simply drinking a beer outside the corner store without having to hide it in a paper bag.
This Staten Island, somehow urban, rural and suburban at once, is hard to spot from the typical perspective of the nonislander taking a sight-seeing round-trip ferry from Manhattan or driving through to New Jersey and points west. But on a leisurely journey by foot, the island blossoms.
This is, to be sure, rather stupid and ignorant. Alaska is many things, but it is neither urban nor suburban. Alaska is twice the size of Texas, with fewer than 600,000 people. Which implies a population density of less than one person per square mile. Further, Alaska is a place where nature is not "debased" (despite all the prattling from the enviros about the Valdez and the ANWR).
Having actually been to both Alaska and Staten Island, I can tell you that Alaska has as much to do with Staten Island as Al Gore has to do with cogency. Which is to say noe.
New York City's residential real estate industry is as insular and incestuous as the industry to which it is often properly compared, namely, porn, and it is therefore appropriate to refer to the industry as a sort of microcosm.
But it doesn't follow from that the appropriate word to use to describe the vacancy rate of rental apartments in Manhattan is "microcosmic":
Vacancy rates stand at a microcosmic 0.56 percent, and the number of apartments for which the owner pays the broker’s fee has dwindled.
Friedman Theorem Number 2884382, or, My Application of Orwell's Politicis and the English Language: Journalists ought to avoid using words of Latin or Greek derivation, as such words often imply a complexity and precision at odds with the limitations of journalistic prose.
I have come up with a new phrase, "drinking the stupid water," in an attempt to make sense of the complete and utter thoughtlessness and foolishness with which tourists navigate our subway system.
To wit: during rush hour, some corn-fed moron from Iowa started snapping pictures of her family buying tickets at the vending machine. She was standing in front of one of the turnstiles. During rush hour.
To wit: during rush hour, another corn-fed moron from Iowa started snapping pictures of her family sitting on the subway car. She was standing in the middle of the doorway, and it was open. And it was rush hour.
Not for nothing does Iowa stand for idiots out walking about.
Blacks for the KKK, er, Jews for Jesus, descend upon New York City.
Up next: Marxists for Wall Street.
Michael Pollan, author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma," calls industrial organic food a "contradiction in terms." Of Wal-Mart's promise to sell organics at a relatively small markup he has written: "To say you can sell organic food for 10 percent more than you sell irresponsibly priced food suggests that you don't really get it."As the ethical-eating movement falls apart, old allies are fast becoming new enemies. They're competing for customers, market share and legitimacy. Small farmers, their marketers and food gurus have started exhorting ethical eaters to "eat local," "eat seasonal" or to get "beyond organic."
Ground zero for the struggle to decide who owns ethical eating in Manhattan is the shiny new 50,000 square-foot Whole Foods staring across 14th street at the Union Square Greenmarket Farmers Market. The food fight is just starting, with trash talk by both sides recently reported, and it's only a matter of time before the Greenmarket farmers start lobbing locally grown vine-ripened tomatoes and balls of fresh Hudson Valley mozzarella across the street at the new megastore. Hundreds of Whole Foods employees (perhaps with support from nearby Trader Joe's) will retaliate by tossing frozen organic pizzas like ninja death stars and smashing bottles of organic Chilean wine to use the fragments as shivs. Their battle cries will ring out in the early morning air: "Eat Local!" vs. "Eat Organic!"
How did we get here? Early in the organic movement, participants wanted to opt out of the modern capitalist food supply and try something more, well, groovy. But as the movement grew, more justifications were added. Some eaters got onboard because they were concerned about health -- they feared that pesticides, hormones and mercury were taking a toll on our physical well-being. Others liked the idea of supporting family farms and the picturesque landscape they create. Still others decided that food tasted better and fresher when it wasn't part of the culinary-industrial complex.
But as justifications for eating ethically proliferated, so did the modes of ethical consumption, creating all sorts of new allegiances, not to mention more chances for sanctimony from certain elitist ethical eaters. For those worried about the effect of chemical pesticides and hormones on their children's development, organic TV dinners are a quick, easy way to do the right thing for their kids. But for consumers who fret about over-reliance on fossil fuels, those same meals -- assembled from ingredients grown in a dozen countries, heavily packaged and shipped in freezer trucks -- miss the point entirely. Free-range cows don't appease vegetarians concerned about the sustainability of our food supply. And people who campaign for humane treatment of farm animals don't care much about the vast amounts of energy required to import grapes from Chile.
A prep school kid speaks out on wearing pants at Spence:
A group of seniors at Spence, the Upper East Side girls’ school, is aiming to disrupt the June 14 commencement by refusing to wear the required graduation garb: a below-the-knee white dress (and no visible bra straps). Instead, the girls will wear white pantsuits in protest. “It’s not a finishing school anymore, it’s a college-prep school that has strong academics, so do we really need to wear dresses?” asks Cordelia Chansler, Spence ’05 (other alumnae include Gwyneth Paltrow, Jade Jagger, and Mike Bloomberg’s girls). But most alums are less than incensed by the dress policy. “I think it’s nice to have everyone look uniform,” says one recent graduate. “Sorry, but nowadays, left to their own devices, the girls would look like sluts.” And even Chansler doesn’t regret going along in the end. “I’m glad that I went through with it and wore a dress. I think these girls will be sad they wore pants afterward, but, whatever, they’re 18,” says the 19-year-old. Spence had no comment on the looming controversy.
So some jackasses are setting off firecrackers in the park across the street from my apartment.
One of them just yelled "Oh shit! My hand! Help."
Hopefully this moron learned his lesson. Though it is doubtful.
Stupidity knows no bounds.
Fifth Avenue, which previously had been reserved for Eurotrash and Donald Trump wannabes (to say nothing of corn-fed tourists from the Midwest) finally gives me a reason to walk along its gold-plated sidewalks: the Apple Store is coming!
How cool is that?
Now I have even less reason to breathe the rarified air of SoHo.
So you know that lady Marg Helgenberger from CSI?
Apparently she's trying to set my neighbor up with one of her gay friends.
How do I know this? Because I can hear the whole fucking conversation through my wall. The dude is talking on the phone with someone about the party he just came from.
Oh, and apparently, Jerry Bruckheimer was at the party as well.
The so-called Freedom Tower, which is due to be built on Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan has garnered little interest from the private sector. This means that some people think its primary tenants will be government agencies:
An estimated 25% of the commercial office space at Ground Zero -- and at least 38% of the Freedom Tower -- will be filled by government tenants, echoing the government bailout of the first trade center. But persuading government employees to work there may prove challenging. Some 750 customs and immigration workers fled from 6 World Trade before it was destroyed when the north Twin Tower collapsed.
The problem here is that the tower, along with the other rebuilding, is alleged to be a symbol of Downtown Manhattan's post-9/11 resurgence. There's only one problem:
While the government tenants would create something of a critical mass, urban planners warn they also could drive away private businesses that for cultural and prestige reasons don't like to cohabit with government agencies."The FBI isn't who a big law firm wants to be next to," says John K. McIlwain, senior resident fellow at the Urban Land Institute, an industry research group. For one thing, he explains, the type of "bottom-end" lobby and other economies that budget-conscious government tenants demand differ from the more luxurious touches preferred by the private sector. FBI spokeswoman Christine Monaco declined to comment.
More broadly, Mr. McIlwain says there is "no perceptible office demand" for the planned 8.8 million square feet of office space, most of which will hit the market at about the same time in 2012. When government is being counted on for a quarter of that space, he says, "you know you have a problem. That's not the kind of tenants you want" to attract private businesses.
Conversely, some government agencies don't like to mix with the private sector. "There are federal agencies that won't go in with certain kinds of tenants," says Eileen Long-Chelales, regional director of the General Services Administration, the agency that procures space on behalf of the federal government. "There are some operations that are very private in nature, and they don't want the world knowing where they there."
One doesn't need to be a central planner to realize that this plan is doomed to failure, and that Downtown Manhattan's "resurgence" has been going on since the late '90s in the form of conversions of outdated office buildings into luxury condos and rentals. The high-end commercial and retail firms that define the dense urban core of Manhattan renown will not come to be either in the presence of government diktate or government employees.
Government would do well to realize that the business of Manhattan is business, and that any properly reconstituted downtown sight should be a testament to capitalism, avaricious, emancipatory, and efficient as it is. Government agencies, constrained by their own bureaucratic weight can be neither avaricious, emancipatory, nor efficient, and, therefore, a downtown populated by government agencies can not be "resurgenet" in any commonly accepted definition of the word.
Says the New York Times about the Roosevelet Island Tramway:
[Tramway officials] said the electric backup system had always been something of an extra, since the tramway also has a diesel-powered hydraulic backup system that they consider more than adequate. The diesel system is normally meant to bring stalled tram cars back to the platform, but it also failed on Tuesday night.
So let's get this straight: a backup system, which failed to work, is "more than adequate"?
Some avaricious lawyer is licking his chops right now at the prospect of wasting my tax money on a lawsauit.
I say: kill public education and fix all the public transportation problems this city seems to have. Certainly, public transportation is a better use of my tax dollars than is educating poor kids.
Interesting article in the New York Times about doormen and whether they are useful. Some people would rather live in hell than live without a doorman; other would rather live in the suburbs than have a doorman.
Here's a sentiment with which I agree wholeheartedly:
Holiday tipping is an exacerbated exercise in misery for those already ambivalent about their doorman. And for others, the need to make conversation is so annoying that it alone is enough to drive them into nondoormen buildings."I had one young guy who moved from a fancy condo doorman building in California where he had a very cheery doorman," said Hy Rosen, a senior vice president at Bellmarc Realty. "He wanted a building without a doorman, and his biggest reason seemed to be he didn't want to have to say hello to someone twice a day."
Michele Golden, another broker for Bellmarc, lived in two luxury buildings before buying a Chelsea loft that came with just a full-time superintendent. She doesn't miss the constant socializing, which she found cloying. "It's like a really good restaurant — the lower key the service, the more I like it," she said. "When they're fawning all over me, I'm not enjoying that. I don't want service to be intrusive in my life."
I've never understood the principle that one should be tipped for doing his job, even if it is a poorly paid job such as being a doorman. No doorman I have ever dealt with has received a holiday tip from me. Was my service compromised? Not that I can really tell. But then, I'm rather independent, and don't have a need for doormen to rush to hail me a cab, walk a dog (who the hell has a dog in NYC?!), etc., etc. So there was no incentive for me to get the doormen in my good graces.
The beauty of free markets, of course, is that those people who want to pay for the privilege of having a doorman have every right to do so, and those who don't care for one, have other options.
Of one thing I am certain: landlords in New York City are the most unjustly vilified group of people in the City. The City, espousing the moroninc liberal creed that every person is entitled to subsidized shelter, saw fit to legislate rates at which many apartments could be rented, and, now, we have doddering grandparents renting penthouse apartments for a tenth of what they could be rented for on the open market.
One of the consequence of this execise in economic stupidity is that other tenants, who do not rent under such favorable terms, get screwed.
The solution: boot the bastards onto the street* and let landlords rent their apartments for market rates. Your need for subsidized housing should not trump my need for market rate housing. Here's more:
A recent seminar, sponsored by a landlord group cutely called Community Housing Improvement Program, brought together Manhattan moguls and mom-and-pops who may own a building or two in the outer-outer-boroughs to get a primer on putting their problem tenants out on the street. After paying $50 and making small talk over muffins and coffee one morning in the chandeliered conference room of the New York County Lawyers’ Association on Vesey Street, the sold-out crowd of 225 settled in to listen to the lawyers.First up was nuisance-law expert Niles Welikson, who warned that these kinds of cases take a good deal of tenacity to win. He cited a litany of jaw-droppers, including a case in which an 86-year-old tenant charged his neighbors with a deer head, scampered through the halls with a bow and arrow, and still won his eviction case because his behavior was not sufficiently bizarre. (Audience members shook their heads and tut-tutted.) Next, chip chairman Andrew Hoffman, a building owner (“It just sounds nicer”) himself, introduced the talk on non-primary-residence cases with a heartbreaker of his own: a couple who retired to Florida but managed to retain the 45-year lease to their rent-controlled Upper West Side apartment so their grown kids can visit their childhood home on occasion. Next came a primer on succession or, as Hoffman explained in his introduction, “what to do when some grandchild appears out of the blue . . . in a penthouse that rents for $1,300 instead of $12,000, clearly hoping that the grandparent leaves feet first soon.” These are difficult, says attorney Sherwin Belkin, who further horrified the audience with a tale of a woman who’d been caught signing her grandmother’s lease renewals years after her death—and still emerged from court with the legal right to the apartment.
Apparently, getting them out is all about the evidence. Attorney William Neville recommended getting friendly with the postman to see whose name is on the mail and subpoenaing ATM records to see where the tenant banks. His biggest thrill? “Showing that [tenants] are lying.” Lawyer Lauren Popper said that it’s sometimes worth hiring a P.I.: Her favorite gumshoe once posed as a patient to catch a psychiatrist using his rent-stabilized apartment as an office while living elsewhere. Ultimately, they were steeled by the possibility of a jackpot—the flip side of the no-account-tenant horror stories. Belkin bragged that he might be able to get $10,000 a month for an apartment he recently wrestled out of rent control. The previous rent? Three hundred dollars. A ripple of excitement went through the audience.
*Why I could never work in politics: who the hell would ever get elected on a "boot Grandma out of her rent stabilized penthouse" campaign?
Man, the rest of the country is going to love this one. Apparently, there is a breed of urban parents called "yuppie hipster":
Let’s start with a question. A few questions, actually: When did it become normal for your average 35-year-old New Yorker to (a) walk around with an iPod plugged into his ears at all times, listening to the latest from Bloc Party; (b) regularly buy his clothes at Urban Outfitters; (c) take her toddler to a Mommy’s Happy Hour at a Brooklyn bar; (d) stay out till 4 A.M. because he just can’t miss the latest New Pornographers show, because who knows when Neko Case will decide to stop touring with them, and everyone knows she’s the heart of the band; (e) spend $250 on a pair of jeans that are artfully shredded to look like they just fell through a wheat thresher and are designed, eventually, to artfully fall totally apart; (f) decide that Sufjan Stevens is the perfect music to play for her 2-year-old, because, let’s face it, 2-year-olds have lousy taste in music, and we will not listen to the Wiggles in this house; (g) wear sneakers as a fashion statement; (h) wear the same vintage New Balance sneakers that he wore on his first day of school in the seventh grade as a fashion statement; (i) wear said sneakers to the office; (j) quit the office job because—you know what?—screw the office and screw jockeying for that promotion to VP, because isn’t promotion just another word for “slavery”?; (k) and besides, now that she’s a freelancer, working on her own projects, on her own terms, it’s that much easier to kick off in the middle of the week for a quick snowboarding trip to Sugarbush, because she’s got to have some balance, right? And she can write it off, too, because who knows? She might bump into Spike Jonze on the slopes; (l) wear a Misfits T-shirt; (m) make his 2-year-old wear a Misfits T-shirt; (n) never shave; (o) take pride in never shaving; (p) take pride in never shaving while spending $200 on a bedhead haircut and $600 on a messenger bag, because, seriously, only his grandfather or some frat-boy Wall Street flunky still carries a briefcase; or (q) all of the above?
I don't really understand much of what's being contemplated in this paragraph of urbane sophistication, and I'm a native New Yorker. But then I'm only 30, too wise to have kids, and, plainly, too much of a simpleton to chill with the hip kids. Me? I'm just interested in having a job and living in the greatest city in the world.
Staying out till 4AM and listening to obscure bands? Well, that seems a tad cliche, no?
Moron at the New Yorker, bitching about the Bank of America building going up next to the Conde Nast building:
"I'm on the 21st floor, and I have a beautiful view of Bryant Park and the library and a little corner of the Chrysler Building and the Pan Am Building, now the MetLife, and I get tons of sun," said Jeffrey Toobin, a staff writer for The New Yorker. "Soon it's going to be a view of some law firm associate doing his work. My view will be entirely swallowed."
Flighty fucking liberals. You don't own that view any more than you own the view of the Grand Canyon.
Even better: this moron, who thinks "his" view is being eliminated, has a J.D. from Hahvahd. Certainly a lawyer should be able to discern fact from fiction, no?
So says one hack.
Well, no shit. Cabbies don't speak English, are rude, are terrible drivers, are always yapping into their cell phones, etc., etc.
You want respect? Act less like Travis Bickle and more like someone who provides a service, and see if New Yorkers' attitudes toward you change. Until then, shut up, do your damn job and quit bitching.
A friend emailed me, saying his family was coming into town from London and he wanted to give them info about NYC.
Did I know of any good sites?
Wikipedia has so-called wikitravel pages, which aim to give visitors to various cities pertinent info. Their page for New York has this very relevant, and accurate, info:
Jaywalking is common. If you do not wish to jaywalk, be considerate of New Yorkers by not blocking them from crossing at an intersection while you are waiting for your signal. If you do jaywalk, driving is on the right-hand side of the road on two-way streets so remember to look left to check for on-coming traffic on your side of the road. Be aware that most streets are one way, so you may have to look right. Most New Yorkers who know which streets go which way will only look in the direction traffic is coming from rather than looking in both directions. Be aware of any bicyclists unlawfully going against the proper flow of vehicular traffic. [Emphasis mine.]
In Texas, friends shoot each other with shotguns.
In New York we have...pillow fights.
I don't understand it. I especially don't understand the dude in the gas mask.
But it happened in my fair city.
Via A VC.
At least one co-op in New York City has voted to ban smoking from its premises--in the common areas and individual apartments, as well:
“It’s absolutely enforceable,” confirms co-op attorney Adam Leitman Bailey. “By signing on to a co-op, you’re giving up some of your personal rights, and in this case, that would be smoking.” Co-ops, after all, have long dictated “house rules,” requiring owners to carpet floors, turn off music late at night, and forgo pets. “[They’re] small democracies, and if the appropriate majority of shareholders agree on a policy, as long as it doesn’t discriminate against protected categories—and smokers are not—then they can institute and enforce it,” says Mary Ann Rothman, from the Council of New York Cooperatives and Condominiums. Sotheby’s International Realty’s Elizabeth LaGrua, who represents the seller at the West 15th building, says the board put the rule in place because people griped about wafting fumes. “They know from past residents that smoke does travel through the building,” she explains.
Personally, I think this is a rather asinine decision, but it's also a good one. Co-ops are a group of private individuals, and, as such, they should be permitted to prohibit what they want or exclude who they want.
I would be curious to know, though, how easy it would be to evict someone for lighting up in violation of the ban. As I understand it, it is rather hard to evict one from an apartment in New York City, under the mistake assumption that shelter is a civil right.
Interesting blog I stumbled across, The Box Tank which purports to explore the phenomenon of big box retailers moving into major urban areas.
So far as I can tell, the proprietors of this blog are not opposed to the presence of big box retailers per se, but rather are interested in contemplating the effects of big box retailers on the urban neighborhood and economy.
I have no problem with this line of inquiry: it's an interesting one, and a relevant one.
Their description of their blog's purpose:
Welcome to theboxtank, a weblog about big-box urbanism, what we consider to be one of the major forces driving the development of the American city and how we live. The focus of this blog is Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, and it’s role in shaping American cities and culture.Though today marks our official launch, we have been posting for a while now. Material in the archives will give you a hint of what this site is about and where it may lead. In short, we are working from the belief that the essence of the American city isn’t Manhattan, or Boston, or Chicago [a dense urban core that supports industry, work, pleasure, housing and retail]; but rather the sprawl of Knoxville, Houston, or Omaha, generic cities that look the same and feel the same. In the sprawl of these cities are where most Americans live, where you can find the same Ruby Tuesdays, TGIFs, and Jiffy Lubes. Most architects and urban planners don’t spend enough time dealing with this part of the landscape; instead they are fixated with museums, high end residential houses, or downtown revitalization schemes. And it is here that you will find Wal-Mart.
Kip Esquire has a great post about the problem some have with the spread of McMansions:
Since when is jealously considered a legitimate emotion (legitimate enough to craft public policy based on it), while it is simultaneously an illegitimate and "unhealthy" desire (illegitimate enough to proscribe legislatively) to satisfy one's own needs and wants, literally in the privacy of one's own home?This is not flawed economics, this is anti-economics. And its leading advocate is, of course, an economics professor. Go figure.
These would-be central planners and petty brat neighbors are collectively becoming the Boy Who Cried "Externality!" It's one thing to say you shouldn't have to live next to a factory, or a pig farm, or a brothel. But to claim that your own infantile insecurities should give you veto power over your neighbor's building plans, because his proposed house is so big that it "hurts your feelings," is to reject the American Dream itself. That such a twisted illogic is gaining traction in America's suburbs is both disturbed and disturbing.
Apparently, New York City has the same kinds of people claiming the same thing: they can tell property owners what to do with their property. The New York Times reports:
With hisses and boos, more than 75 Chelsea residents expressed their contempt at a recent neighborhood meeting over plans by the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church to knock down a four-story building on its campus and replace it with a 17-story one. The new building would have 80 luxury apartments in a glass structure that one resident called "a Tower of Babel."
Why is it anyone's business other than the private property owner what eh does with his property? If you don't like how your neighbors spend their hard-earned money, then, well, move.
Only in New York. And every fleabag hotel and thirdworld country.
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