Drunk People Assert Claim To Ancestal Homeland

"The Bowery" was once synonymous with the natural habitat for intoxicated ne'er-do-wells whose rich language and traditions and legendary hospitality toward outsiders were celebrated in the lyrics of a popular ditty:

The Bow'ry, the Bow'ry
They say such things and they do strange things,
On the Bow'ry! The Bow'ry!
I'll never go there any more.
-"The Bowery", by Charles H. Hoyt and Percy Gaunt

In the early 1960s, however, an influx of bohemians, artists, writers and musicians dramatically shifted the demographics of the neighborhood due east of Greenwich Village away from the lovable, comically hiccuping and staggering tramps to a new breed of vainglorious substance abuser--and the East Village was born!

According to the New York Times, the East Village's unchecked proliferation of bars, clubs and lounges is luring a new generation of sloppy, noisy inebriates back to the homeland of their forebears. In an ironic reversal of fortune worthy of a lugubrious spoken word poem, it is now the the diverse, bohemian culture that is being driven from the land, due--in part--to the resurgent hearty partiers and their deep-pocketed backers, the Bank of Mom and Dad.

But the near extinction of the East Village Bohemian is a result of many irreversible changes in the neighborhood's eco-system, and the introduction of invasive, well-heeled species is but one. Initiatives to preserve the neighborhood's unique character through historical preservation and subsidized housing for artists are--fortunately--underway.

LINX
If you live in Apt. #665, just guess who lives next door... (NYT)
Shoplifters Look Forward To Easier Commute (BP)
What's a home without a nosebleed? (Sun)

BYO Hazmat Suit

Ok, picture this: a creepy little guy surrounded by porno mags and skin-flicks he "produced" himself, living steps from playgrounds and schools in a double-wide with a leaky roof... Hey, come back here! Did I say "picture Florida?"

Nope, that would be New York City rainwater pouring through the roof of Bob Guccione's 22,000 square foot double-wide Penthouse--I mean, combined townhouses--and possibly reconstituting decades worth of untold body fluids and odors. According to the New York Post's Braden Keil, someone just ponied almost $60 million for the privilege of raising their "test-tube twins" in that wriggling Petri dish.

Woman Attributes Apartment Find To Being Special-er

Now that she is comfortably settled in her sweet-deal-of-a-one-bedroom in Brooklyn Heights, actress-turned-interior designer, Catherine Brophy, tells the New York Times that it was her unique ability to sense the feng shui, or the flow of energy through the apartments she saw during her hunt that guided her to her present gem.

“[The apartment she sought] had to have the perfect energy and good bones.”

But other than satisfy Ms. Brophy’s ghoulish demand for bones, it would seem her special sensibilities did little to guide her that smart, NYC apartment hunters’ common sense could not.

For example, Ms. Brophy says she applied to a cute, inexpensive apartment because the northwest facing front door indicated good feng shui. And yet, the apartment’s mysterious mojo—the working fireplace? the claw-foot tub?—wasn’t lost on the many other applicants who probably wouldn’t have cared if the front door faced a portal to hell, and one of whom is living there now since the management company “lost” Ms. Brophy’s application.

Most apartment hunters' street smarts were probably also equally matched against Ms. Brophy's ability to read feng shui when it came to dodging overpriced-hell-hole bullets. Luckily for her, among the apartments that didn't pass feng shui muster were apartments that were: out her price range, way too far away from work, in scary places to come home to at night, overlooking garbage, within an arm's length of subway tracks, really ugly, or dangerous.

But where Ms. Brophy seems most satisfied that her specialness merited her the awesome apartment she lives in now, was in her ability to know that she had finally found "the one." Of course it would be extremely difficult to demonstrate that this was not the case. After all, without a search warrant or probable cause, no one will ever know exactly how many good bones she has away in there.

LINX
Aw, c'mon! But he's barely even Down Under yet! (NYM)
'Cause then you'll be all like BFFs?(NYM)
Chelsea may move west of Chelsea (NYM)

Gossip Girl = Death

“Is Gossip Girl Dangerous?” queried the New York Observer’s Tom Acitelli of the CW television program, a mere nano-second before supplying his own foam-flecked “Yes” to the deceptively rhetorical-appearing question.

I didn't want to write this about the CW show Gossip Girl, but I feel I have to before it's too late.

Yikes! Does it preach hatred and intolerance? Does it encourage violence, drug use, and promiscuity? Well, yes, but none of those are the insidious threat that keeps Mr. Acitelli’s duvet pulled up over his head at night.

…Gossip Girl is giving the impression to Suzy in Nebraska and Mandy in Alabama that real estate in New York is as affordable as anywhere and that poor in New York means living in a $2 million Williamsburg loft.

Wait, he thinks that’s not “poor in New York”?

We must dash these notions quickly, lest a fresh wave of flyover country folk flock to neighborhoods like Williamsburg (just like they did in the 1990's) to waste some of the choicest years of their life coming to grips with the reality that $1,000 in this city is like $100 elsewhere.

Mr. Acitelli would see those dashed notions replaced with more attainable goals for feeble-minded flocks of flyover folk. The humane Mr. Acitelli laments:

The television networks long ago did away with most vestiges of working-class reality in their prime-time programming…

Wouldn’t they would be so much more contented if only they knew their place wasn’t here?

...Gossip Girl seems silly and trite and stupid in places. You get the joke. Others may not. They're banking on that $2 million loft and they'll take the mortgage to get it.

It’s all fun and games until the flyover folk flock! Then they’ll brazenly walk among us undetected—riding our L train, eating our Batali-franchise food, maybe even mingling their flyover bloodlines with our own!—don’t say Mr. Acitelli didn’t warn you.

Don't sweat it, FFFs, real NY loves you.

CONGRATULATIONS NEW YORK GIANTS!!!

Now that your Super Bowl party is going to last all year long, it’s never been more important to consider the impact of all those wings-sauce stained paper napkins and red plastic beer cups on the great planet that brought you the great NY Giants: yep, Mother Earth!

Some websites have really super tips on how you can throw an eco-friendly Super Bowl party that your friends will think is on the steroids, like using reusable cloth napkins, china, and glassware.

Oh, stop cringing… It’s not that hard to have all of the football you want with less of the carbon footprint and smashy-smashy you don’t want. After all, green Philadelphia has had the greenest stadium and the Eagles have been the greenest team in the NFL since the early ‘90s, and you can be sure there’d be no eco-assault their Super Bowl parties. But probably no championship for the Eagles either.

Ok, back to your year-long Super Bowl party. What could be greener than letting nature take its course? Forget about the landfill-bound disposables. You can even forget about the cloth napkins and the smashy-smashies—they need to be washed and washing costs water. Why not just let your friends wipe their greasy hands on their shirts and take turns suckling straight from the beer tap? It was probably what they were doing by that magical 4th quarter anyway.

Manhattan Real Estate Best Purchased With Booty

While real estate firms are reporting that apartment prices topped record highs in 2007, some critics claim these dollar-based values belie Manhattan properties’ actual, plummeting value as measured in secret buried treasure. In an article appearing in the NY Sun, Julie Satow reports:

None of the reports from the real estate industry values the apartments in gold, but the gold value of apartments — and other assets — is being glanced at more frequently by sound-money advocates and others…

Among those casting increasingly frequent, eye-patched glances toward the gold value of property is Peter Schiff, the president of financial brokerage firm Euro Pacific Capital:

…Apartments in New York City [will lose] 90% of their value in terms of gold. […] The dollar is a deceptive way to measure the value of any asset, because the dollar itself is losing value, so prices have to rise just to stay constant.

Yikes! But of course, there are two sides to every doubloon. Ms. Satow further reports:

Not all economists worry about the collapse of the dollar against gold. […] They see its soaring price in dollars reflecting a variety of factors affecting other commodities, including a booming industrial sector in some parts of the world.

Foreign buyers plundering Manhattan’s shores and luxury market also keep the dollar values of apartments high. Aaarrrgh!

Shiver me timbers! This can't be good...
(Link to graph)

"Dude, I totally subprimed my NYRE exam..."

Earlier this year, the American Dialect Society (ADS) announced the winner of its 18th annual Word of the Year award at a catered affair in a subterranean “ballroom” at the Chicago Hilton.

The 2007 honoree was “subprime”, an adjective that over the past year has become many Americans’ shorthand description for shady mortgages that consumers agree to because lenders deliberately minimize the appearance of risk.

Reincarnated as a verb, “to subprime” has come to mean to devastate or destroy something or “to tank” as in to fail completely, especially at great cost.

Subprime declined to make an acceptance speech in deference to the striking writers whose unflagging commitment to the fuelling of hysteria to the point of numb complacency guaranteed subprime’s ubiquity in lexical pop culture.

2007 Word of the Year also-rans include:

Googlegänger: A person with your name who shows up when you google yourself.

Wide stance, to have a: To be hypocritical or to express two conflicting points of view. [When Senator Larry Craig was arrested in a public restroom and accused of making signals with his foot that police said meant he was in search of a anonymous sex, Craig said it was a misunderstanding and that he just had a wide stance when using the toilet.]

For the complete list of winners dating back to 1990, please see the ADS’s press release for the 2007 Word of the Year.