I put the post I wrote on the sidebar as I wanted this to be front and center. If this bores you don’t read it. I have to get it out.

The real estate blog I read was filled with people exuberant over the “death of the Manhattan real estate market.” One man in particular has been all over the threads and in posting so much spreads negativity.

He has a very vested interest in seeing others suffer as he wants to buy at depression prices. He cashed out. Or something. You never really know who commenters are. I gave up on political writing for large blogs a long time ago (as defined by the “youthful age of blogging”) because so many commenters had an agenda and would refuse to listen to any other POV. They and a few other people know everything and they know it well.

If they did, they would understand that a bad housing market is good for nobody as is a bad stock market which does go hand in hand. I caught this man talking about putting 250K into the stock market instead of a down payment. He mentioned putting it in one stock that would pay eight percent therefore paying $20,000 a year in interest.

In that one statement he showed ignorance in everything that he was trying to be an expert in. Nobody puts or should put that amount of money in one stock, one stock fund, bond etc. The 250K–put in a diversified portfoli– might go up but will probably go down. Therefore eight percent is eight percent of a lower number that is probably constantly changing and can’t be reliably predicted this year. He created a perfect stock market scenario which is exactly the opposite of what he says for the real estate market. You can’t have it both ways.

But what do I know? And for the record I don’t comment on that blog. It’s not worth it.

These people don’t seem to understand that that many of us bought not thinking of an apartment as an investment but were forced to by the very media that now tells us we never should have thought that way. And the psychology of entitlement that pervaded this country.

I never bought into that. I have never felt entitled to anything including being comfortable with my own intelligence and/or talent. This lack of feeling entitled caused me to wait too long. Or maybe not as I priced my apartment too high for me to feel comfortable with but I did that to see if anybody would bite. It was a couple of days before Bear Stearns went under but that was one event that shouldn’t cause an entire city to give up.

I know longer no what a fair price is but I know it’s not 100% less than somebody with a comparable apartment who sold last month. I have bills to pay and a life to maintain. Unfortunately it is that simple. I don’t have a mortgage so I can afford to be more flexible than most people but….

If my apartment doesn’t go into contract in x amount of time I will take it off the market. I can’t afford to pay maintenance and rent indefinitely. A strict coop board might be forced to let me rent me out.

Personally times are very different for me than during the last recession. I’m older. I can’t afford to wait ten years for housing prices to spike back.

I think new media and the affect of it on MSM can be very dangerous. People should bear some responsibility for what they say and not be content saying “the public has a right to know.”

The public doesn’t have a right to feel fear needlessly. And so far much of what’s been happening in Manhattan specifically is very fear generated. It might be a one industry town–the stock market–but it is different for many reasons I don’t have the time to go into now.

Tosay is seventeen years since my father died. That day was also the day the government officially said the stock market began its long trip upward.

I refuse to give into either fear or depression so I’m getting my hair done. Of course it’s pouring and very cold for the South.

I think murdering a contractor who took my money and stopped working and kept begging me for another chance would be considered justifiable homicide. I don’t want to get into that mind frame.

We are all in this together and we have a responsibility to look for answers that help all of us, not feed our own agenda.

Stumble it!

Doug, my dawg of wonderful colors is on vacation. But he left an interactive post to help me design my new house. So help me please!!!

This is long and maybe a bit verbose but my heart is bursting. I forgot to say my apartment’s 600 square feet. Everything I did was with tricks and gives an illusion…

In Manhattan it’s always been about real estate and always will be about it. A good apartment with that intangible “wow” factor brings up the apartment’s worth immensely. Today’s consumer might be perfectly prepared on paper, but falling in love is falling in love whether with a person or an apartment.

*Actually I met them yesterday.

Ten years, seven and a half a months ago, on my birthday, I circled the ad that led to the first apartment I found that said to me: WOW, I HAVE TO OWN THIS. Continue Reading »

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I updated my other blog. I’m doing all apartment stories, past and present, in it.

Somebody close to me believes I have no patience and expect people to do things when I snap my fingers. Most other people, close to me, think I’m a total jerk for having so much patience.

I should be submitting. I’m not for many reasons including paralysis, and fear, not of being rejected but of life itself. It seems as if it’s an endless to do list that I never come close to completing. The new sub contractor is supposed to be here at noon. “Do you have a point list?” my best friend asked. “Uh, if a point list is what’s to be done than I have it.” Continue Reading »

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I’m real nervous about many things so I included the perfect song and video. Perfect for many reasons. I used this blog like a nervous tic today. wrote the bottom yesterday. Work started on the apartment. Now my cable’s out just when I want to retreat from the world and watch totally mindless….
Unless I can think about other things this blog is going to be mostly about selling a coop, and other minutia in life
I totally forgot that I have sold a coop. My mom’s and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. I deleted the rest of the post as I need positive energy. Lots of positive energy. It had a happy ending. My sister and I became closer and we did make money. I spent a good part of my share at the dentists.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I didn’t get my mail yesterday so I didn’t know that my bank had bounced my health insurance check. This was very confusing as they included my balance which was more than ten times the amount of the check. The balance reflected this check as having been paid. With me so far? Good because I’m lost.

By the time the woman said they would refund the $25 service fee I was laughing too hard to listen. She began to laugh, as she tried and failed to come up with some excuse for the bank. I have no idea why I found this so funny tears were coming from my eyes. We were both choking by the time the call ended. She dispensed with the usual formalities as she was laughing too hard. The letter told me that I qualified for a credit line. That I have one and the amount was mentioned a few sentences down. I scanned it in both to keep it and as proof that not every problem in the world is caused by me.

It turned out that they actually resent the check to the health insurance company with an explanation. Still I know I will have to spend an hour tomorrow straightening this out. Epilogue: it’s a dull and dreary day and I can’t deal with health insurance companies. If they cut me off, I will….

I’m truly tired of this bank making mistakes that I have to straighten out. They seem to especially like to bounce or lose then find checks to health insurance companies–the one industry that will cut you off before the due date. It’s no longer a New York bank but is very much associated with New York.

I can’t wait to officially move and cut all ties to it. To truly go on with my life I have to leave the New York area.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Work begins on my apartment tomorrow. The guy I hired, to oversee it and hire the others, is the son of the man who named Talking Heads. My deep love of music and Talking Heads–late 70’s–80’s played no part in this decision really. He happened to see a book an old beloved friend of mine wrote that has pictures of many Village musicians on the cover. He said “that person looks familiar. Is it?” “No he is___” We have been finding that we know many people in common.

I admire women who can take care of twins and three other kids while selling a house, buying a new one, working full time, and are deeply immersed in a new relationship. I’m not one of them. Recently I have begun to give myself permission to be imperfect.

Beginning to give myself permission isn’t exactly allowing myself to screw up. It’s so hard to be imperfect and want to be perfect.
here were many Talking Heads “psycho killer” videos to choose from, and most sounded more professional and more Talking Heady–but only the one from CBGBs would do. Really the New York I love lives on in many memories.

I can’t seem to face up to the facts
I’m tense and nervous and I
Can’t relax
I can’t sleep ’cause my bed’s on fire
Don’t touch me I’m a real live wire
Psycho Killer
Qu’est-ce que c’est
fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better
Run run run run run run run away
Psycho Killer
Qu’est-ce que c’est
fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better
Run run run run run run run away

You start a conversation you can’t even finish it.
You’re talkin’ a lot, but you’re not sayin’ anything.
When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed.
Say something once, why say it again?

Psycho Killer,
Qu’est-ce que c’est
fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better
Run run run run run run run away
Psycho Killer
Qu’est-ce que c’est
fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better
Run run run run run run run away

Ce que j’ai fais, ce soir la
Ce qu’elle a dit, ce soir la
Realisant mon espoir
Je me lance, vers la gloire … OK
We are vain and we are blind
I hate people when they’re not polite

Psycho Killer,
Qu’est-ce que c’est
fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better
Run run run run run run run away
Psycho Killer,
Qu’est-ce que c’est
fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better
Run run run run run run run away

oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh….

Stumble it!

Yesterday I missed the family, our family, Thanksgiving. Thursday I will go to my sister’s in-laws who are lovely people but they’re not my family. I’m comfortable there but haunted by Thanksgivings past, and want new traditions of my own. Finally I want to be the grown-up. How old do you have to be to stop being an adult orphan? When your children reach college age? What happens when you don’t have kids to mark your life cycle?

I’m anxious. At one with Streeteasy.com which has real prices, how long apartments languish for, reductions in price, pictures of apartments, sometimes videos, and floor plans that do or do not have square feet. It lets me see what I should expect. My apartment is larger than some on sale in my building, and smaller than one. It has one more bath than all, and more marble and granite. I know marble and granite’s so yesterday but I’m not going to change it, just buff it. My apartment had its walls skim coated in 90 and they are still in excellent condition. Just look tie died from the floods.

Floods aren’t a bad thing. They allow the steam risers, something I never heard of until last year, to be replaced with the building’s insurance. The building is making a schematic of all pipes. This is a well run building. The super is an expert in floods and in luxe pre-war Manhattan buildings that’s what counts.

It took me weeks to get the nerve to go to the storage room. In my imagination it’s a huge scary place where everybody’s cages are more organized than mine. The reality is different, but I literally get sick before I go down each time. Last week I became sicker than ever.

On Friday I cleaned out the storage cage. Apparently clothes from Studio 54 days are in vogue. Many books were ruined by the basement flood. But I did it. And formed my storage cage theory of life. When you’re ready to tackle the impossible you will. No matter how scary it feels at first.

Today I was too antsy to stay here. I was going to go a movie, one of my Monday afternoon guilty pleasures, but there wasn’t a movie I wanted to see badly enough for $11.75, no Fandango. They’ll be on pay per view soon enough.

I wondered the streets keeping myself outside of stores as I’m into getting rid of things, not adding. This holiday season will be on the cheap. I’m also one with Morningstar.com and don’t see any good signs.

When I point out the newish West 72nd Street subway stop and park to people who aren’t Manhattancentric or didn’t live her then, they don’t see the beauty though it looks like a Nora Ephron movie set. They don’t know it once was called Needle Park, see Panic In Needle Park one of the most underrated movies ever. Logically to me Panic… reminds me of my father as he knew Jerry Schatzberg, the director.

I guess my father knew him during his photographer days as he knew many, but I remember him telling me a story involving Schatzberg and a porn film, Elka don’t read this, that my father somehow was involved with. Apparently people did porn films for tax write-offs but this one was a success. I remember reading an article in Playboy about it. I could be wrong but I’m 99% sure it was Schatzberg though it’s in nothing official about him and frankly I didn’t feel like delving further.

This Island is filled with real people and ghosts. My father’s ghost being the most preeminent. Last week
The Times had an article on high stakes poker games that made them sound sleazy. I don’t know when my father’s game began, sometime before I was born. I do know he met many of his clients and friends through it. I imagined it to be like Felix & Oscar’s game. Though I knew there weren’t people like Murray the Cop. It began at an Ivy League club and moved to apartments. For most of my life it was on Monday night, then Thursday.

My father and I had a standing dinner date. He would go through food phases. One year it was all Shun Lee Palace when Ed, Shoenfeld was maitre de and the nation’s first Jewish Chinese food specialist, though some would argue we all are. He would come sit with us and tell us stories. Probably my father told more stories.

In the 80’s there was a cheap chain of seafood restaurants Hobeaus,(each restaurant had a different name, and once Lucia and I had an inadvertent lobster fight that people applauded) that everybody went to including us, when we didn’t go to Faye & Allen’s or a few other pricier ones. My sister lived in The West Village and my father was determined to eat in every restaurant in it.

Toward the end of my father’s life he began to revolt against pricey restaurants and we would usually go to Ottomanelli’s Cafe a chain of Italian past restaurants based on a butcher shop.

When I think of my father I think of restaurants, poker, New York and so so much more. I went out, and go out all the time, and will never classify myself as a “foodie” a word I disdain as it implies and infers being better than others. When really most Manhattanites live their lives in some restaurants or others. I don’t find it exciting or interesting anymore. There seems nothing left to be discovered. Nothing new. I like bistros, tavernas and diners though I can live without actually being in them.

I’m jaded. I know that. When you live in Manhattan for most of the past 32 years and can’t get excited about restaurants it’s past time to leave.

There are so many other ghosts. I used to have lavish parties when I lived on East 63rd. An old friend asked the other day if I still make rice with vermouth and I had to dig deep to remember that dish I invented. I used to read cookbooks for fun, and substitute ingredients. White vermouth, something I have never been able to abide straight, is great for cooking as it has many herbs.

I no longer eat rice, white or brown, nor do I usually eat pasta my very favorite food.

I’m trying to calm myself down by writing about my father’s ghost and food. It took me a year of searching to find this apartment. I don’t know how many apartments I saw. Most were ordinary and no amount of decorating would change that. Many were put on the market dirty and in much worse condition than I can imagine my apartment being in.

Though prices were much lower then I felt the owners greed. I didn’t feel that when I first saw this one. I saw an apartment that had been lavished with love and respect for original detail. I want the person or people who buy mine to have that same feeling. I want them to walk into the building and think “please, please, let the apartment be as nice.” It was nicer.

I know I will never be a recluse and only the doormen will know my name. I actually tried that and it didn’t work. I have too much of my parents in me. But it scares me that I take little pleasure in restaurants anymore.

I never imagined myself moving to The South. Southern Florida, yes, but I know too many people who I don’t want to reestablish relationships with. Something vapid in their values. Cousins excluded.

I’m antsy and I can’t work on the novel I’m writing strictly for fun. My head is filled with lists of things to be done. I have to decide what to get rid of; what to keep and put in the storage cage so that next week when my apartment is worked on it will be an almost clean slate. Clothes, I can get rid of in a second, but books they are hard.

I hope to look back at this time in six months and think how much easier it was than I thought it would be. I hope the person or people who buy it will be as entranced with painting it and making it into a “wow” statement as I was a decade ago. Now everybody has multi colored walls. I want them to love how secluded the bedroom feels, almost as if it’s part of a private home.

I want them to be haunted by their own private good ghosts, and when the ghosts begin talking too much or stop talking to know it’s a sign. I’m not sure what the sign means but it means something.

Stumble it!

It’s afternoon and I’m not feeling this way anymore. I want to put up a “light” “happy” post to cover it, but I don’t want to take this post down as it’s a testament to the way I felt too often the past six years. Good to have it down to one night, one morning and half an afternoon.

Days like today make me scared that I will never leave the legacy I want to. Days like today should make me appreciate life so much more. I’m surrounded by so much beauty and wish I were in the only place that will ever really be home. I have never been away before on 9/11. I think I will have to return to New York every September
I wrote this several weeks ago, and never edited it. It’s rambling but explains a lot about me–things I have never said, even. It’s a sidebar post. All side bar posts can be found under the category
“250 word rant.”

I wrote a long post. Actually I wrote three. The title now has nothing to do with the post. I just like it

Six generations of my family have lived in Manhattan. I thought it was fewer but forgot to count great grandparents and cousins kids.

I found every excuse not to leave including having to go to the most expensive dentists in New York I have finally run out of excuses

They say nobody has ever gone broke living in Manhattan. Obviously nobody has ever lived in a building where owner’s expenses went up 40% with one months notice and no meeting to talk about it. That should be criminal. It’s not.

I no longer believe in any kind of security–in all its meanings. I do believe that as long as people refuse to discuss how 9/11 hastened the ever rising costs in New York, and the lack of help available to people who didn’t meet strict criteria, we haven’t learned anything.
I can’t apologize for caring about something that changed my life.

Yet I feel self-centered and wrong for bringing this up. The story I wrote below this is much better.

I have no perspective today. At home, in New York, it’s just another day. Here I look at the American flags raised in homes that don’t usually have them and wonder the myriad of reasons for raising them. Is it pure patriotism? Do people believe we went to war in the name of 9/11? God, I hope not

This was my last 9/11 post. I too suffer from 9/11 fatigue but until I sell my apartment it won’t be over for me. I repeat myself because I haven’t done what so badly needs to be done.

As Michael Stipes says it’s easier to leave than to be left behind…. Leaving New York never easy. I saw the light fading out

Stumble it!

There will be a 3WW up on Wednesday. I wrote the story without the three words–relaxes me.
I don’t usually believe in blogging awards but when they’re for a single post, especially one that is personally meaningful, I do. I was nominated for an award on being a teen age rebel who happened to be adopted. So uh vote for me.

I can and never will forget how Karl Rove purposely created schisms in America. More than anybody else in the Bush admin he tried to make Americans hate other Americans. OK, Rove unleashed truly scares me more than Rove in the White House. I’m just glad he resigned on some ground or another. Here’s John Dean, the man who brought down Nixon on him.
Courting began three years ago today. I feel like I should have had a party for it, or bought it a cupcake or something. I forgot about it until I was through with another post.

Three years in blog years is how long Bone? He has a formula for blog years.

It’s a long time. I feel as if its true birth was that November when I first discovered that people actually read blogs. Continue Reading »

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