Oh, and I found this user review on Yelp:
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Window shopping at the Build-a-Bear Workshop store
On Fifth Avenue and 46th Street.
Oh, and I found this user review on Yelp:
Oh, and I found this user review on Yelp:
Noted
Forbes released their annual list of most expensive zip codes.
How a prolonged decline in the finance sector will affect next year's list is unknown, but there's already been slowing in prime areas around New York that depend on Wall Street cash. Amagansett (11930), on Long Island, home to mansions, sailboats and big cars, fell $375,000 this year to $1.675 million. Great Neck, N.Y., (11024)--the model for F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby--on the landed North Shore, dropped $310,000 last year to $1.03 million.
Crain's broke it down for us.
[Long Island] claimed five of the Top 25 wealthiest ZIP codes in the country . . . Two of the Top 25 were in Manhattan, and one was in Westchester. The rankings were based on 2007 median home prices.
Taking the cake for New York state was Mill Neck, ZIP code 11765, in Nassau County, which ranked third overall with a median sales price of $3 million. Water Mill, ZIP code 11976, in Suffolk County ranked fifth with a median sales price of $2.7 million, and Wainscott, ZIP code 11975, in Suffolk County ranked eighth with a median home price of $2.6 million.
Manhattan joined the list at No. 14 with TriBeCa, ZIP code 10013, which had a median sale price of $2.2 million in 2007. ZIP code 10007, also in TriBeCa, came in 17th with a median sales price of nearly $2 million. Bridgehampton in Suffolk County, Purchase in Westchester County and Old Westbury in Nassau County came in 19th, 20th and 22nd, respectively.
Bars and quality of life
Time Out tackles community boards and liquor licenses:
It was only a decade or so ago that the presence of restaurants and bars in neighborhoods like the East Village and Lower East Side defined a new quality of life there. Now . . . those same establishments are degrading neighborhood conditions. The fears usually amount to sidewalks littered with noisy smokers, loitering cabs and loud cell-phone conversations at 4am.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Doing what New Yorkers do best
I'm all for good causes, supporting our public schools, helping with the education of our children, etc. Still, given this recessive economy, is this the best time to be encouraging people to go shopping? And check out the walk-off line for this Fund for Public Schools ad..."help support public schools by doing what New Yorkers do best -- shopping." Really? Is this what people think we do best? What does this say about what NYC has become?
Seeing this prompted me to revisit Jeremiah's shopping essay from July. Maybe we should be encouraged to save some money.
Spotted on Avenue C near 8th Street. Note the "this is light pollution" graffiti.
Seeing this prompted me to revisit Jeremiah's shopping essay from July. Maybe we should be encouraged to save some money.
Spotted on Avenue C near 8th Street. Note the "this is light pollution" graffiti.
Monday, October 6, 2008
"The Battle Hymn of the Republic" on Wall Street
A (rather eerie, if you ask me) version of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" performed on the steps of Federal Hall on Wall Street across the street from the New York Stock Exchange.
We can probably read into this in many ways...
We can probably read into this in many ways...
Looking at old Wall Street
Well, old as in 1966, with this spot for Shearson Hammill. Love the ticker tapes and punch buttons on the NYSE floor. And the fat cat getting a shave...
Sunday, October 5, 2008
A comment
There's a lengthy comment about the coming global depression on my post from Friday that was titled From a gilded age to a great emptiness...
New York City to become wedding destination
The Manhattan Marriage Bureau is on the second floor of the Municipal Building downtown. As the Times describes today, its hallways are "lined with cracked tile floors, fading yellow walls and dim fluorescent lighting where city employees . . . have been giving true love a brief, secular send-off since 1916."
No more, though. This fall, the Bureau moves to shiny new digs up the street at Centre and Worth. Why the move? Stupid question! As the Times notes:
The relocation will mean more than just swapping one space for another, or reconfiguring furniture into new surroundings. What will happen, in fact, is the death of the marriage bureau as Manhattan has known it for generations: a storied but shabby place, long on protocol but short on charm and comfort..
The move, an idea that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has nursed for almost as long as he has been in office, was inspired in part by concerns about dignity. The bureau’s appearance has not changed much over its 92 years, and despite periodic renovations, Room 257 — which houses the wedding chapel — looks as bureaucratically stiff as all the other Municipal Building offices. The chapel itself has no adornment except a pulpit used by the handful of officiants who perform the ceremonies.
The other reason for the switch is purely strategic. City officials see in the revamped marriage bureau an opportunity to market the city as a wedding destination, offering it as a more tasteful alternative to Las Vegas.
[T]here will be are doors coated in bronze, heating-unit covers fashioned by a Brooklyn artisan to match the building’s Art Deco style, and ornate columns throughout the 5,000-square-foot space
I know a few couples who were married at City Hall. They've said there is something romantic about the drab surroundings. If they wanted fancy (say, art deco style and ornate columns), they'd have got hitched in a hotel ballroom somewhere. According to city records, there have been 1.2 million weddings at the Bureau since 1930. Here are a few of them, via YouTube.
Is technology making the city more boring to discover?
From the Times today:
The only way to learn the city is to get lost a few times, people tell you. Learning your way around a space happens negatively. It is when you take a wrong turn that you really begin interacting with the world around you. You discover the city when you stumble.
Cellphone tracking services like Loopt and Buddy Beacon are increasingly popular, making us all more “connected” with the hundred “friends” in our digital phonebook.
This network of satellites and screens quickly becomes part of our sensory apparatus, replacing eyes, ears, nose and feet, as if these devices are natural extensions of our bodies. We tell ourselves that they will maximize efficiency and minimize the unknown. There’s no time to get lost.
In the back seat of a newly equipped taxi, we watch the two-dimensional map as the three-dimensional world zooms by outside: “Wow! Look at this wonderful touch screen! I can see exactly where I’m at and where I want to go! Latest updates on sports and real estate included!”
Saturday, October 4, 2008
The Marble Cemetery is open today
The Marble Cemetery on Second Street between First Avenue and Second Avenue will be open to the public today....just one of two days a year that this happens, I'm told...In fact, there's a whole block party going on (a good kind of block party thrown by local residents, not professional sausage-on-a-stick types)...The cemetery opened in 1832...and it's one of the loveliest spots in the East Village...this Times piece has much more on the history...
And here are some shots I took from inside the cemetery when it (cough) may not have been open to the public...
And here are some shots I took from inside the cemetery when it (cough) may not have been open to the public...
Friday, October 3, 2008
The networks are taking the presidential debates a little too far
Obama/Luke Skywalker vs. McCain/Darth Vader in front of the NYSE today on Wall Street.
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