Results tagged “inmanhattan”

In November, Charlie Rose sat down with rapper and entrepreneur Jay-Z. The musician is originally from Brooklyn and late in the interview Rose queries about the expected success of the Nets once they move to Kings County. Jay-Z is very enthusiastic about the potential of the team and the virtues of the borough, as he prefaces every statement about Brooklyn with the words "we" and "ours." It is unintentionally comedic then when Rose immediately follows up with the question "And where do you live now?" The answer is a terse "In Manhattan, uh." The exchange begins around 48 minutes and 45 seconds into the interview and a quick transcript is available at the Atlantic Yards Report site here. It reminded us of the first time that we heard that director Spike Lee had moved to the Upper East Side.

FILM: Ease in to Halloween with classic horror flick The Innocents, based on Henry James' novella The Turn Of The Screw. Evil and innocence, the strange and the everday, will mingle as you...enjoy complimentary vodka an tapas!

Mayor Bloomberg unveiled a new campaign, Just Ask The Locals, "the City's first-ever five-borough marketing and advertising campaign to make visitors feel more welcome, thank them for visiting, and help them navigate New York City." The Mayor made the announcement at the new American Airlines terminal at JFK and said, "New Yorkers have always been welcoming and friendly, but not enough people around the world know it. So now we're going the extra mile to make visitors feel even more at home by offering a helpful piece of advice, an insider's tip, or just a friendly smile as they explore and enjoy all the wonderful attractions here in our City."

On the national level, sales of existing homes slowed by 17 percent in the second quarter of 2007, compared with the second quarter of 2006, while inventory swelled by 16 percent, according to figures provided by the National Association of Realtors. New homes fared even worse: they fell by almost 19 percent, according to Commerce Department figures.

Continue reading "New York City's Teflon Real Estate Market"

When Omar Freilla founded Green Worker Cooperatives, an incubator for eco-friendly worker coops, he set the initial goal of $700,000. “We weren’t even sure how we were going to raise that much,” he said in a recent telephone call. Almost four years later, the organization has raised well beyond their initial goal, thanks to RSF Social Finance and numerous local churches.

The relatively recent boom of opening bank branches in Manhattan is examined in amNew York. With a 36% increase in Manhattan bank branches between 2000 and 2006, it's hard for many people to walk a block or two without passing at least one (though there are more in places like Midtown or the intersection of Second Avenue and 10th Street). Banks will pay higher rents, which makes landlords less willing to continue to rent spaces to mom-and-pop businesses. And basically, a pun explains why there are so many:

Chase spokesman Tom Kelly...pointed out that "economies of scale" make operating 120 bank branches not that much more expensive than running just 90...

Continue reading "Bank On It"

THEATER: Theodora Skipitares is a Greek-American playwright, director and puppeteer who uses near life-size puppets and Greek tragedies to look at our current situation in Iraq. (Her rendition of the Iliad and the Odyssey was a sold-out hit at La MaMa last year.) Her new show, which features puppetry and video, is The Exiles, an adaptation of the Orestes/Electra myth. “In this particular story of betrayal and vengeance, these puppets are an eerie construction of facade and public display, while their operators are a shadow of primal, often raw emotions and personal desires.” (Read last month's Times profile of Skipitares here.) - John Del Signore

Time At Tunnel: Approx 12:20 AM (Wednesday morning)

Mister Cutlets is somewhat of a role model for me . . . maybe even a father figure. We are both food writers. We are both lovers of meat puns (his book is called "Meat Me In Manhattan" and my last post was about a place with the motto "Let's Meat At Sahara.") We've both appointed ourselves absurd nicknames. And we both find it appropriate, even though neither of us are super heroes as far as I can tell, to take on theme songs ("With the bacon and the lamb chops and the scrapple and the ham hocks, Mister Cutlets spend some time with me" written by Life In A Blender West versus "Pickles! Salami! Dumplings! Pastrami! Take a look, grab a bite, put it in your tummy!" written by Jack Dolgen of Sam Champion before, mind you, he ever heard that phenomenal Mister Cutlets theme song.)

Poor Columbia Street. In Manhattan, streets are completely torn up, repaired, and repaved and functional in a day. But for the past 6 months this street on the edge of Carroll Gardens and Red Hook has been in a stages of distinct disrepair, each frustrating in its own particular way. There were the potholes of the summer, the big dig of the fall -when all the concrete and asphalt were removed and new concrete poured- and the seemingly intentional crevices the new concrete came with, which were worse than the potholes. But all that uneven walking couldn’t hide the fact that it’s lined with some interesting bars, and a month ago it gained something kind of novel for the area, a tapas bar.

Yesterday the Department of Transportation installed the first countdown pedestrian signal at the intersection of Coney Island Avenue and Kings Highway. Here's how the city explains the timer:

The pedestrian countdown signals are the same size as the existing pedestrian signal head, but feature a dual display - the traditional "Walking Man" and "Hand" display, and a pedestrian interval countdown display. The countdown feature is programmed to start at the beginning of the "flashing hand" cycle and end when the flashing hand becomes steady. At the five test intersections pedestrians will be given a minimum 15-second countdown before the light changes.

Halloween is just arond the corner, and a new haunted house has been developed to fit your fears! The creators of Haunted House NYC polled people in each borough about their top 13 fears, and each haunted house in each borough was developed differently based on that poll.

At the farmer’s market you’re entranced. The stalls swell with the season’s natural bounty—corn, tomatoes, peaches, peppers—all the foods that taste right only when eaten at this time of year. You buy pounds and lug the harvest home. But as the shortening days slip by, those special $2 bags of veggies risk going to rot in your fridge. It’s enough to make a gourmet’s heart sink. What do you do? Can it. That’s what some people in the city are learning to do. It may seem like a lost art, but canning could be coming into a revival. “Putting up” food has an old-fashioned homey appeal, not unlike that of knitting, another noble homestead craft that has spurred a recent craze. This summer the Unitarian Church in Brooklyn Heights threw a couple “jam sessions,” and the Park Slope CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) group gave a tutorial for members last week. If you’re a believer in the importance of buying locally, canning gives you a way to have your cake and eat it too. Stock up on berries now, cook them into jam, and eat them in January without any guilt. Preserving food at home can even feel a little revolutionary in this era when industrially produced food is the norm.

With the mercury rising to high for the city's liking, Mayor Bloomberg held a press conference at the Office of Emergency Operations in Brooklyn to emphasize what the city is doing during the heat wave. We suspect he's trying to be extra visible and genially authoritative (check out the plaid shirt!) in order to salvage public opinion after the Queens blackout, but his words are important:

“The heat wave affects New Yorkers in all five boroughs, and that’s why the City is aggressively moving to protect New Yorkers from Tottenville to Co-Op City from this week’s oppressive heat and promote energy conservation. Hundreds of people have already tragically passed away due to the heat wave in other parts of the country, and I urge New Yorkers – especially seniors – to take the danger of high temperatures and humidity seriously. You can beat the heat by drinking plenty of water, staying out of the sun, avoiding strenuous activity, and taking advantage of City cooling centers and public pools. The City is also actively taking large energy users such as wastewater treatment plants off the grid and conserving energy at City buildings across the five boroughs to help cope with the increased demands on the electrical grid.”

Thinking of all the college grads who just busted their asses looking for reasonably priced rentals in the city, the NY Times looked at one-bedroom rentals in the $1,000 range. The perhaps-catch: None were in Manhattan, but that may be due to the fact that many Manhattan deals "often change hands by word of mouth." Quite a few of the apartments sounded nice, but Gothamist enjoyed the ritual of the Times actually attempting to find these apartments:

The toughest part about finding the apartments was occasionally having to endure the ritual of the scoffing broker, who delighted in spending the first few minutes of an exploratory phone call insisting that there were no one-bedrooms out there in the $1,000 range. One broker said: "$1,100 in Williamsburg? Must be a dump," as he scrolled down his listings. Another broker in the Bronx said "$1,100 in the city? Must be a studio."

For a long time we didn't listen to Wolfmother just because they had "wolf" in their name. We were sick it. Wolfmother, Wolf Eyes, We Are Wolves..."how could any of them be better than Wolf Parade?" we thought.

- Horrible accident in Harlem: An SUV crushed a three-year old in a stroller

Morning Theft, fresh off the bus from Boston in 2003, have been desribed as Pearl Jam meets Travis, Nirvana meets the Cure, the Pixies meets Radiohead...you get the point. But these guys have their own sound. And it sounds good. They're the band who has been (not so) silently brooding in the corner of the indie rock scene. They're loud. They're catchy. They're pensive mood rock. Gothamist (and pretty much everyone below 14th St) loves Morning Theft, you should too. Go check them out for free at Luna Lounge tomorrow night. More details after the interview...

According to the poll, Bloomberg still outpaces Democratic ticket hopeful, City Council Speaker Gifford Miller. In the Observer today, there's article about Miller's team spearheading his run for mayor. The team's youth is noted in one reference from the Observer ("Ferris Bueller brigade") and one reference from a staffer (calling their offices "the Bat Cave").