From a gilded age to a great emptiness...

An excerpt from Judith Warner's "Waiting for Schadenfreude" column in the Times today:

For those of us who have hated this period — the wealth worship, the wealth gap, the elevation of everything suspiciously shiny and irrationally bubbly and stupidly ebullient, there should be some feeling of vindication. But it just isn’t coming. A great emptiness — and a gnawing kind of fear — has taken its place.

Schadenfreude is impossible because the fat cats — the ones who bent the rules, the ones who pushed the envelopes, the ones who paid lower taxes because capital gains were most of their income, the ones who opposed regulations on the banking and mortgage industries — are taking us down with them.

"In the East Village they’re destroying all the beautiful old buildings"

From an article on exploring Brooklyn Heights in the Times today:

Today Montague Street is home to Joe Coleman, an artist who moved there in 1994 after 20 years in the East Village. A painter known for his meticulously detailed portraits of serial killers and other nightmarish imagery, Mr. Coleman and his wife, Whitney Ward, live in an apartment that he calls the Odditorium. Wax figures of Charles Manson and the serial killer Richard Speck, John Dillinger’s death mask, a bullet from Jack Ruby’s pistol and a letter from the cannibal Albert Fish share the Ripleyesque space with some of Mr. Coleman’s paintings.
“The East Village that I came to know and love doesn’t exist anymore,” Mr. Coleman said. “I like it much better here. In the East Village they’re destroying all the beautiful old buildings. So escaping here seemed comforting.”

[Photo of the former Gaseteria on Avenue B and Houston Street via GammaBlog. Not that the Gaseteria was a beautiful old building...]

Flier of the week

On First Avenue near Fifth Street. Is this some kind of joke?

In case you're thinking of driving on Avenue C tonight...

Good luck! Avenue C is getting roughed up...And the side streets are blocked off at Avenue B. What a mess.

About that fruit salad at Citibank

Remember yesterday, when I did a post about fruit salad being sold for $2.50 in the lobby of the Citibank branch at 120 Broadway, kiddingly suggesting that the bank was only able to stay afloat by selling fruit...?

Anyway! First, the good news. It's really nice out today -- perfect fall weather. Oh, and Citibank isn't going out of business. The fruit salad was back today, and I took a closer look. (At the lobby, not the fruit salad.)

In my haste to transfer all my money ($5.76) to Chase yesterday after spotting the fruit salad sale....I overlooked a few things. Like! The fruit salad is only $2. And! All proceeds go to the Light the Night Walk sponsored by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

My apologies to Vikram Pandit (and same time tomorrow night for cards, VP?).

Buy an East Village row house for $32.73

Perfect for the Winter Wonderland in the East Village display I'm creating in my living room this December!

Buy this FiDi condo on eBay for $529,000

And no payments until 2009!

Read the fine print here.

The bubble man of Nassau Street

Dunno how popular bubbles are these days in the Financial District, though.

Noted

From Page Six today:

THAT Kwiat Diamonds will send security to 20 Pine St. tonight to guard the jewels Amanda Hearst and Andres Santo Domingo will wear at artist David Foote's opening, hosted by Porsche Design's fragrance, The Essence . . .

And!:
THE "Sex and the City" tour buses will take a detour today so that diehard fans can take a gander at screen star Gilles Marini . Marini, who played Samantha's shirtless neighbor in "Sex and the City: The Movie," may even strip down again this afternoon while facing off in Ethan Zohn's Grassroots Soccer United match at Sara D. Roosevelt Park on the Lower East Side. The hottie will play with Brandon Routh and gold-medalist Heather O'Reilly to raise money for AIDS awareness.

Candidates for the John Varvatos Preservationist of the Month Club

From the Times today:

The 21-story Cooper Square Hotel may be an imposing presence on the Lower East Side, but its interiors have an intimate scale more evocative of neighborhood buildings. In fact, the hotel was built around one of them, a 19th-century tenement that was not torn down because two tenants refused to move. “It would have been much cheaper to demolish,” said Carlos Zapata, center in picture, the designer, but in the end “the tenement had a positive effect” on the design, inspiring smaller, more livable interior spaces. The first two floors of the tenement became the hotel’s library and offices; the third and fourth house the two tenants, who have their own entrance.

For guests, who will pay $375 to $1,000 a night ($7,500 for the penthouse), “the hotel means to be a home away from home,” said Klaus Ortlieb, left in picture, who developed the $115 million project with Matt Moss, right in picture, his partner at MK Hotels. Among other things, that means there is no formal check-in desk in the lobby, above right: The registration process will take place out of sight, while guests are greeted by a hostess bearing drinks.

Previously on EV Grieve:
“This used to be an area where people got their start. Now it’s a place to land once you’ve made it.”


[Photo: Rebecca McAlpin for The New York Times]

Biden, Palin and popcorn in the garden tonight

Tonight in La Plaza Cultural at Avenue C and Ninth Street...



I'll need something stronger than popcorn to get through this tonight.

About that earthquake in NYC

Curbed had the post yesterday about the earthquake that will likely wipe us out.

(How will the affect your weekend? Don't know!) Meanwhile, here's a scene from the 1933 film Deluge, in which an earthquake LEVELS NEW YORK CITY. And the rest of the country. IT CAN TOTALLY HAPPEN! Run!



Still. I'm more worried about this...seeing as I live on a lower floor and all...