So much stuff is going on, and all I want to do i lie around on the couch. No such luck, however, as the Holidays are upon us.

I gotta remember to take a picture of our Xmas lights, it's so lame. Rite Aid has a sale on lights so I bought a couple strings and put them around the perimeter of the windows on the ground floor. They're white lights too so they don't even look all that festive; it looks like a dressing room mirror. Oh well, I'm a Jew, your traditions are 'strange' and 'frightening' to me.

Great upheaval includes the departure of our tenants. Yep, they moved up to Greenpoint yesterday, piano and all! Incredibly, we were able to sleep through most of the actual move, except when one of the movers loudly bet another that he'd pay him a hundred bucks to ride Buzz's bike down the stairs. Without going into it too much, they decided to move due to some safety issues, for which I totally don't fault them. We knew going into it that Bushwick is not exactly the safest place on earth, and I always felt a little bad that we sort of dragged them here in the first place. Still, they got a darned cheap rent for a duplex apartment! But money isn't everything and now they're in a neighborhood that's not only one of the safest in town, but is full of those amenities that everybody normally aspires to: grocery stores, restaurants, book/record stores, and an Irish pub right across the street. Damn, I could use one of those!

That's what sucks about home ownership; we're stuck here. Eventually this might turn into an advantage, say, if the neighborhood gets all fancy around us and we make a killing in real estate. Of course, the way things are going, this doesn't look too likely in the foreseeable future (for instance, all eyes were on the local corner property that was about to open, as a litmus test of the area; it opened as a wig store.) But I still like the house and, barring any personal violence I might endure, I'm okay with the neighborhood. But what are we gonna do with this house?

For the time being we are going to see if we can afford the whole joint without rental income. This comes mostly because the house, as it is set up, is unworkable for a rental to any but those we can wholeheartedly trust (and of course, my motto is: Trust No One). It's a legal 2-family, but there's no actual division between the units. To divide the house properly would take quite an undertaking at this point, and honestly wasn't something I was planning to do for a while. But if push comes to shove we'll have to jumpstart the renovations. Assuming we win the lottery, no problem!

Having the house to ourselves at this point has another big advantage: we have people coming for Christmas. Jeannie's mom and nephew are coming up for the Holidays, so they will be camping out on separate floors, on their respective futons (futons currently make up 50% of our furniture now, classy!) We certainly won't feel crowded. Now the problem is, what do we do with a 13 year old kid?

The nephew looks like he's in his 20's, he's 6 feet tall and otherwise precocious, so he's pretty flexible. But the law is not. So we can't just blithely take him to shows and bars as we would do with, say, Jeannie's mom. We're trying to figure out what a kid from St. Thomas would want to do in the city, but we're coming up short. Worse still, Todd P, purveyor of all ages shows, just announced he's cutting back on his bookings, meaning shows we could get a kid into will be in short supply. Argh.

I dunno, if I was a kid raised in the Caribbean, NYC in the winter sounds like Siberia. Hell, now that I've visited the Caribbean, NYC feels like a gulag to me too. Don't get me wrong, I love it here, but I just don't wanna have to leave the house. Aside from the requisite tours, museums, restaurants, what do kids do here? Should we give him some spray paint or what?

Labels: Holidays, House, Real Estate, Relatives, Renovation, Renting, The City, Vacation, Weather

Ever-attuned to all things related to soundproofing, I read with interest the NYTimes article about people dealing with noise issues in their homes. I'm mostly glad they actually devoted a (small) section of the article to the DIYer, though the brunt of the article was clearly aimed at people who will pay through the nose for quiet. It still astounds me not only that people are willing to pay so much ($3-4K PER ROOM!) for stuff like this, but that plenty of folks in this town are willing to do this for property they don't even own.

Like that episode of Seinfeld when Jerry has Conrad/Con/Conny redo his kitchen cabinets, it always sticks in my craw that he was just renting. But apparently it's not the unheard-of for renters to upgrade their apartments. I guess they assume they'll be there long enough to make the lost expense when they move worth their while. Maybe I'm more old-fashioned that I thought (don't worry kids, I'm still wicked cool), less existential than I thought I was (don't worry kids, I'm still wicked goth). Maybe it doesn't matter in the long run if you own something, as long as you have landlords who will let you install $10,000 soundproof windows and $250 per panel Quietrock drywall.

Meanwhile, the cops have been outfitted with Segways. If there is a god in heaven, please let them start patrolling my neighborhood. Oh sweet jesus I would love to see what the neighborhood would have to say about that. I hope they're teaching the cops to juggle spaldeens as well. That's money well spent!

And congratulations to Jenblossom, whose stray cat just moved a little of kittens into her yard. Ah, what fun awaits them! At least those kittens look a little better than the ones I got (pictured). But they're hanging in there, as is their mom.

Labels: Bushwick, Cats, Friends, Renting, Soundproofing, The City

I'm sure the article has already been linked to death, but I just read it for the first time, and like everybody else who's seen it, have been struck with the similarities in real estate issues now and over 20 years ago:

• NYT: The Gentrification of the East Village

You can argue what neighborhood most closely resembles what the East Village was encountering in 1984, but the language used and points made are lifted every day to describe a bunch of Brooklyn neighborhoods. This could be an article in 2007 about Williamsburg, Bushwick, even speculation-heavy Clinton Hill. Here's a list of stuff lifted from this article that parallel what we've been seeing happen lately:

• Local commenting on newcomers: ''I see them walking down the street in identical blue suits with their briefcases and I think, 'There goes the neighborhood.' ''
  
  and
  
  ''Why are all these people coming here, where they're so riotously out of place? I don't want my neighborhood to change.''

• Contrast of old-school and new construction: "The chrome and glass facade of a newly renovated co-op is a block away from a corner known for prostitution."
  
  and
  
  "There is a sushi bar across the street from an abandoned warehouse and a neoned art gallery stands across from a Ukrainian restaurant closed by spiraling rents after 32 years."

• A reminder of how the process tends to work: "The first of these [steps to gentrification] is marked by building deterioration and neighborhood crime, the second by short-term speculators, the third by long-term investors and renovators and the last by full-scale construction."

• Quarrels over the very name of a neighborhood: ''As soon as they said 'East Village,' they tripled the rent. It's the East Village to the real-estate brokers,'' she said of the area that has been her home for 30 years. ''To us it's the Lower East Side.''

• Quotables from those for and against the changes:
  
  "The area used to be a last-choice area - people thought I was crazy when I started buying here in [insert year]."
  
  ''It's finally happened down there. It went through the burnout and the druggies and now there's action.''
  
  ''I think it's hypocritical of the people who live here who rail against it. They benefit from the changes. We all do.''
  

• The East Village had (and still has) a Life Cafe, as does a certain, other so-called up & coming neighborhood. Okay, that's a stretch, but I like the symmetry.

• And my favorite one-sentence description of a new resident: "The neighborhood is now home to people like Miss Kelley, who graduated from the State University of New York at Binghamton two years ago with a degree in art history and works for a Wall Street real estate broker."

But at what price, your rent? If you run some of the the numbers mentioned in the article through an inflation calculator, you get this:

1984/Now
Studio: $570/$1112
1-Bedroom: $700/$1366
2-Bedroom: $900/$1756
Store with Adjoining loft: $500/$975
3-Bedroom: $2000/$3,900
3-story Brownstone: $100,000/$195,153

A cursory search of craigslist seems to show that 3-bedroom apartments are still in that range (those there are tons up in the $4500-5000 range). But most 2-bedrooms are nearly twice what they used to be. Studios seem to be as low as $1500. Sadly, brownstones (even in the bad neighborhoods) go for a helluva lot more than $200K. Feel the burn!

Labels: Bushwick, Gentrification, Renting, The City

There's a Pay-O-Matic Check Cashing shop near my house (there's one in every fine neighborhood, don't you know). Is it just me, or does their logo remind anyone else of the old Mr Yuk logos people put on poison containers? When you see it out of the corner of your eye, it looks like this sour frowny face. It makes me feel sorry for the people who patronize the establishment. Then I realize if I had gone to Pay-O-Matic right when I got my deposit check back from my landlady, she wouldn't have been able to stop payment and proceed to take back two-thirds of said deposit for dubious 'repairs' to the apartment. Then I console myself that it was worth it just to never have to deal with her and her flaky behavior again. Then I realize I too am sporting a sour frowny face, just like the Pay-O-Matic logo. Then I play some Sudoku and forget all my problems.

Ah, Banterist has also noted the peculiar nature of the corporate logo.

Labels: Funny to Me, Renting