Noted

The end of bling. Via The Wall Street Journal:

Francesco Trapani, chief executive of Bulgari Group, is cutting back on the fixed costs of his jet-setting lifestyle. The jewelry, luxury-goods and hotel magnate recently sold his 137-foot yacht, the "Christianne B," and he's holding off on buying any more homes. Even his bespoke Micocci shirt was slightly frayed at the collar last week -- a fact he acknowledged with an apologetic smile.

"I'm being more prudent," Mr. Trapani said. "I spent a lot of money this summer renting houses and things. But when the summer's over, it's over."

Not even the richest people are feeling untouched by our current financial crisis. In their personal lives, as in business, the purveyors of luxury are sizing up what it all means. Some of the questions: Is it unseemly to spend money publicly? Will people still shop for the all-important holiday season? Is this the end of bling?

Francois Henri Pinault, chief executive of French luxury giant PPR, said a few weeks ago that there will always be rich people, but the question is how they will behave as consumers.

The answer may have a lot to do with how these consumers want to be seen. It's not necessarily a good thing to show up at the tennis club with a new $30,000 crocodile handbag when your friends' net worth has been halved and the Federal Reserve is spending billions to keep the banking system afloat

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Dunzo Journalism

Via Guest of a Guest...:

The Bowery may be the hottest street in the city, but is it too hot for its own good? We have already gotten more than one email from very “in the know” New Yorkers that insist that the LES (Lower East Side), including the Bowery and her hip hotel and bars are OVER. As in DUNZO. At least for the “cool kids” of the city that refuse to follow trends.

Down by the Hipster's take:

What happens when someone asks a question that has already been answered years ago? ...
So yes - the LES is Dunzo, and has been for quite a long time. It certainly doesn't take an "in the know" New Yorker to tell you that. Or maybe it does, and that makes us weep.

Loving "Kojak"

"Life on Mars," the new time-a-traveling crime drama, debuts tonight on ABC at 10. The show, based on the BBC series, follows a NYC detective who's transported from 2008 to 1973. Confusion ensues! They've been filming the show around the East Village and LES, as Bowery Boogie and Jeremiah have chronicled for us. The show's main character, Sam Tyler (Jason O'Mara), lives in the East Village. In any event, it looks interesting...and I may actually tune in.

Still! The show goes to great lengths to recreate 1973 NYC. The time in which "Kojak" was on the job. The Telly Savalas crime drama debuted in 1973 and played for five seasons.

Here's an entire episode from season four that aired Sept. 26, 1976. Guest stars Richard Gere. Oh, the thing is 45 minutes or so. I'd recommend tuning in for some tough Telly love at the 24-minute mark...and again at the 38-minute mark.



[Via the YouTube page set up by Nicholas Savalas. There are other full episodes there.]

Bonus trivia:
"Life of Mars" co-stars Esquared favorite Gretchen Mol.

A touch of Hollywood on C

A neon sign that I like. On Avenue C.

Caution: objects in mirror are dumber than they appear

Driving on 7th Street near Avenue B.

VIPs leaving City Hall

Bet I know who the Mayor was with!



Wonder what Elmo thinks of the third term...

EV Green

Check out the cool video by East Village Podcasts on the Wild Project, the eco-conscious gallery/theater on East Third Street between Avenue A and Avenue B.

Noted

At St. Jerome's on Rivington between Clinton and Suffolk. Via BC at NYC.com.

Are we in a recession because that one seller on craigslist says we are?

Are we in a recession? (New York Times)

Hogs and hoboes, gloom and doom

Catching up on this week's New York.

There's James Cramer's column:

What will New York look like a year from now? The answer: bad and probably worse, and perhaps downright catastrophic. Three degrees of awful.

And an interview with financial historian Niall Ferguson:

I’m in Venice now, which used to be a financial center and is now a tourist center. And the nightmare is that a crisis of this magnitude will turn New York from a financial center into a tourist center. The good news is that London seems to be handling this crisis slightly worse than New York. My sense is that the great financial crisis we’re living through will fundamentally tilt the balance of the world from West to East. Sovereign-wealth funds will matter much, much more because they’ve got the money and we haven’t. New York isn’t quite Venice yet, but I certainly am quite relieved that I don’t own a large block of real estate in Manhattan right now.

And there's a piece on that newish place on 7th Street between Avenue A and First Avenue that sells fancy sliced hog:

It fills the shop with a lovely aroma that wafts its way down the block, causing startled passersby to lift their noses and sniff the air like cartoon hoboes on the trail of a windowsill pie. Resistance is futile.

Unless you're a vegetarian.

NYC's boutique baseball teams

Pablo S. Torre on SI.com:

If you're a typical sports fan -- you know, the kind who worries about gas prices, tuition and the trade deadline -- New York's new stadiums might look as if they belong behind a boutique window.

In the Bronx looms the skeleton of Yankee Stadium 2.0, a coliseum with half as many bleacher seats as its predecessor but more than three times the luxury boxes. In Queens, the Mets traded Shea's 20,420-seat hull of an upper deck for Citi Field and its 54 suites, burnished by leases priced firmly in the six figures.

The fro-yo wars will be getting ugly (and pricy!)

AdAge.com delves into the competitive world of marketing frozen yogurt.

Red Mango is throwing down the gauntlet in the "authentic frozen yogurt" wars. The chain has hired the Richards Group, Dallas, in a seven-figure deal to create online, in-store, public relations and event marketing. Print and outdoor work will likely be added in 2009.

The chain's announcement comes just weeks after news that archrival Pinkberry hired branding firm Bulldog Drummond, San Diego.

EV Grieve's complete Fro-Yo library.

An end to the bank branch glut?

Some passages from a Times article today:

[I]t seems highly likely there will be some branch closings and that the dynamics of the market for retail space in Manhattan could be altered, although not immediately.

Brokers say that eventually Chase will almost certainly want to shut some branches once Washington Mutual has been absorbed.

Chase has 121 full-service branches in Manhattan, and WaMu has opened about 45.

But shedding excess branches may prove problematic. For one thing, WaMu signed most of its New York leases in the last four years. Banks tend to favor 15-year leases, so a lot of these leases may have 11 to 14 years left before they expire.

Window shopping at the Build-a-Bear Workshop store

On Fifth Avenue and 46th Street.






Oh, and I found this user review on Yelp:

Yahoo!'s new e-mail interface remains optimistic about the stock market

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.

Maybe this will seem funny in a few years

National Debt Too Big for National Debt Clock to Handle (Gothamist)

Today's Post fails to instill confidence in the economy

The Dow's Damage: 13 percent in Five Days (WSJ)

Seen in the Bad Timing Department

At Whole Foods on Union Square.