![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiywUjp4kMplMOuzGUoffcy1B9mQxA9MF_ZSXruFtuRQmk0IGQzItF92lIhN0pbf1iSiVMHBbsHJlsZsZ1efBu-guE3YoDw9DDGPtFbyBRzps4YHN2kbgEwOo29xmciMYhrH3gwQixC9F_W/s200/walmart.jpg)
Maybe! Patrick Hedlund has the story in his Mixed Use column this week in The Villager. Best Buy's name has also been floated, he reports.
Your observation that you ran into about 50 people taking photos is telling. As someone who works in Coney, I worry that the proliferation of pix showing a disaster zone will reinforce the mistaken idea people have from media reports that ALL of Coney Island is closed.
Despite the devastating loss of Astroland and the threatening Store for Lease banners on Ruby's and other Thor owned properties, CONEY ISLAND WILL BE OPEN FOR BUSINESS IN 2009! Not only the landmark Cyclone and Wonder Wheel, and Nathan's, but Deno's Wonder Wheel Park (20 rides), Eldorado Bumper Cars and Arcade, 12th Street Amusements including Polar Express, McCullough's Kiddie Park, The Coney Island Sideshow & Museum, the Coney Island History Project (under the Cyclone coaster), fireworks, Mermaid Parade and much, much more! Please visit and help us keep Coney's businesses alive and thriving! The 2009 season begins on Palm Sunday, April 5th.
List of what will *definitely be open & happenin' in 2009
Flickr group "Coney Island is Alive & Kicking" with 250+ photos of attractions you can enjoy in 2009
Sarah Jessica Parker says it's a challenge making the Sex and the City sequel recession-friendly.
"How do we do that well? And how do we do that in a not lazy way? How do we address these economic times in a franchise that has a lot to do with luxury and labels?" Parker tells Billy Bush for Access Hollywood.
"There is a lot that we have to think about because times are very different. So these are nice challenges, these are good challenges," adds Parker -- who once said her character Carrie Bradshaw would end up "in a hospital" if she couldn't afford her trademark $600 Manolo Blahnik shoes.
"I think we want this one to be a romp," she says. "The last one, we got to tell a really mature sophisticated story that had real heartbreak in it, and this time, I think we want a romp. We want our audience to have a massive romp."
2008 -- Lease ended in May and was not renewed by NYCHA. No negotiation or explanation was offered by NYCHA. In legal proceedings from May to September, up to four offers were made by ReBoot to renew the lease. NYCHA refused, even after instruction from a New York district judge to move forward with the lease renewal. New York City statutes state that a judge cannot force the renewal, but can strongly advise. Considerable amounts of money and time were squandered by NYCHA, although they constantly complain about being broke. With no willing communication from NYCHA, the restaurant is currently closed with all its equipment inside.
For the city's movers and shakers, it's suddenly cool to be frugal in the new economy. But for young employed New Yorkers, Manhattan is suddenly a sky's-the-limit playground. Meet the city's recessionistas, who are living large while everyone else is down for the count.
Architectural Digest bedrooms aren't as classy as the players' locker room. Stainless steel rods just to hang their socks. Individual wooden closets. And let it be known my behind sat in Derek Jeter's space even before his.
Their can is blue granite. Four urinals, five commodes, enough shower space for 16 naked Yankees with their bats and balls.
Alongside's a hydrotherapy blue- and white-tiled area with whirlpools and a Swimex thing wherein the current moves but you don't and it's as if you've swum 15 laps. Plus a trainers room for massages, rubdowns, X-rays, specialists, first aid and God knows. Plus a doctor's office. Signs signifying each room are in Yankee pinstripes. Plus, to duck the dreaded press, a hidden super-private dressing room with giant wall mirror and 12 luxury closets. Plus a wall-to-wall mirrored gym (no equipment in it yet) so elegant it looks like a dance studio. Thoughts of Hideki Matsui at a ballet barre ran through my head.
The players' 30,000 square feet just for themselves includes a dining suite. Two rooms. One with the handmade Yankee logo rug has couches for lounging, sipping, noshing and TVing. The other, with chafing dishes plus wherewithal to prep individual menus, is a catering hall. I mean, talk of catering!
Now, for the fans. Honoring The Bronx's Grand Concourse grandeur, a giant, wide, 31,000-square-foot Great Hall. Said Valerie Peltier, managing director of the project and daughter of developer Tishman-Speyer's Jerry Speyer: "It's where you'll meet and greet, buy your programs and peanuts and goodies." Wheelchair accessible, there are 1,300 doors, 10 ticket kiosks, 16 elevators, 30 stairways, escalators, ramps, concession stands, 1,100 flat high-def TVs everywhere, including in the ladies' gorgeous johns. I tell you the truth - it was a real pleasure to go.
Regulars and tourists raise mugs of ale to toast a century of good food and grog and no women at McSorley's Old Ale House, a landmark bar in the Lower East Side section of Manhattan, New York, Feb. 17, 1954. Although the present owner is a woman, she cannot cross the threshold because of the "no women" rule. (AP Photo/John Rooney)
Mr. Mitchell had discovered McSorley's Old Ale House shortly after he joined The New Yorker. The saloon opened in 1854 and, as the oldest continuously run institution of its kind in New York, immediately endeared itself to Mr. Mitchell. He loathed most forms of progress and technology and so did the succession of people who drank in McSorley's.
"It is equipped with electricity," he wrote of it, "but the bar is stubbornly illuminated with a pair of gas lamps, which flicker fitfully and throw shadows on the low, cobwebby ceiling each time someone opens the street door. There is no cash register. Coins are dropped in soup bowls -- one for nickels, one for dimes, one for quarters, and one for halves -- and bills are kept in a rosewood cashbox."
And what of the service?
"It is a drowsy place; the bartenders never make a needless move, the customers nurse their mugs of ale, and the three clocks on the walls have not been in agreement for many years. "
Who went to such a place?
"The backbone of the clientele is a rapidly thinning group of crusty old men, predominantly Irish, who have been drinking there since they were youths and now have a proprietary feeling about the place. Some of them have tiny pensions, and are alone in the world; they sleep in Bowery hotels and spend practically all their waking hours in McSorley's."
As season two of Bravo's guilty pleasure launches [tonight], housewife Jill Zarin warns, "You're gonna see some [expensive] toys come out, unfortunately. We filmed the show before the recession happened."
The recession that has put millions of New Yorkers out of work threatens to make New York's real housewives appear even more self-indulgent and childishly pampered than last season. Back then, they were merely cougars of conspicuous consumption, spending perversely amusing bundles on themselves. This season, when housewife Alex McCord and husband (some say honorary housewife) Simon van Kampen drop $8,000 on clothing at a Hamptons boutique, their extravagance will likely strike viewers as prodigal in the extreme.
Van Kampen, manager of Murray Hill's Hotel Chandler, hopes the economy doesn't turn off viewers to the cast's wasteful spending habits. "This is escapist television for a lot of people," he says. "I don't think there'll be much negative reaction. Honestly, I think there is less conspicuous consumption in season two."