Photo by Carol Brewer on West 74th Street.
May 10, 2021 Weather: Cloudy, with a high of 61 degrees.
Notices:
Our calendar has local and virtual events. Today marks the start of the outdoor festival Restart Stages!
News:
A 30-year-old Upper West Side woman went from a corporate job to combing through the neighborhood’s trash for reusable items and becoming an environmental expert and activist, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Usually armed with reusable bags and a pair of puncture-proof gardening gloves, Anna tries to salvage every item she can get her hands on. At home she sorts her finds, deciding what stays with her, what she gives to friends and family, and what she donates to charitable organizations. She simultaneously documents the process on TikTok and later on Instagram, coining the experience as “Trashwalks” and her figure as “The Trash Walker.”
There’s been another incident in Central Park involving calls to police and racial tension, wrote The Daily Beast. Last year, the case of Amy Cooper grabbed international headlines and led to a change in the law. In this case, a white woman cyclist refused to return a cellphone charger that had allegedly fallen from the bag of a black woman cyclist, until the latter “proved it was hers.” The white woman appeared to call the police and accuse the black woman of threatening her physically, although the police had no record of the call. “In a separate series of videos [the black woman] is heard attempting to file a police report. An officer tells them that the woman didn’t seem “mentally sane,” and “doesn’t seem like a good person,” but he didn’t think a crime had occurred.”
Real estate from the ridiculous to the sublime — you decide which is which. Two Upper West Side properties are on the market, both duplexes. One, a penthouse at 15 Central Park West (61st Street), is currently the most expensive offering in the city, with an asking price of $65 million, 5,900 square feet of living space, plus a 1,000 square-foot terrace, wrote Curbed. The other is a “tiny” studio with a sleeping loft, “carved wood moldings, stained-glass transoms, wood radiator covers and shutters, and exposed brick,” wrote 6sqft. Just steps from the Museum of Natural History, the asking price is $465,000. Which one could be your happy place?
And here’s another reminder that it’s important to make way for ducklings — particularly on Mother’s Day. Police officers brought ducklings that had wandered over to Lexington Avenue back to Central Park, with their mother in tow:
Officers from the @NYPD19Pct rescued a family of a dozen ducklings this morning that had wandered past Lexington Avenue. They put the ducklings in a carrier and mom heard 🔊 their peeps and followed them back to Central Park, by Conservatory Water! pic.twitter.com/MJmr7lK5Og
— Manhattan Bird Alert (@BirdCentralPark) May 9, 2021
The only “mentally sane” character in this article is the Mother duck.
Is it not the worst possible time to be going through trash?! We’re still in the middle of a pandemic!!!
Unless she is eating and drinking the leftover contents, I think she’s safe…
Are wood radiator covers now a feature to entice buyers?
I had the exact same thought!
Let’s see, a crazy white woman can steal a black woman’s property, verbally abuse them, and threaten to call the police claiming physical assault when there is none — and no police report is even *permitted* to be filed– as if none of those are even crimes, or the victims aren’t even victims. And the victims actually had to worry that police would automatically blame them. If you think you know what’s like to walk in a black person’s shoes, you don’t. Have a nice day.
Huh? To what are you referring?
my comment that said “Huh?” was in response to Alex.
Wow Alex, nothing like grossly extrapolating this one instance. I for one am so sick of everything (and I mean everything) being viewed from a racial perspective. Here’s a question…why are all white on black crimes considered hate crimes, but black on white aren’t? Can you say double standard?
Are you freakin’ for real, sg? Cannot you not even begin to see the privilege you carry as you move through this world? Guess what? Black people HAVE to see everything through a racial perspective, because prejudice is everywhere and it can be fatal.
Prejudice IS everywhere but it is not limited to one race, gender, or class, neither is privilege. Hate is hate regardless of who is perpetrating the crime. Seeing everything though a racial perspective is the real danger. Ever hear of divide and conquer? The self proclaimed “woke” crowd is using race, gender, and class as a method to divide Americans because a united people can never be defeated. United we stand. Divided we fall.
I’m all ears, Peace. Explain black privilege to me. I’d like to get woke.
I couldn’t live in building with a mis-set lintel stones over the main door, especially since the door leads to CPW.
Then there’s the fake bronze moldings on the windows in the retail spaces facing Broadway, devalues any apartment, even one with a 1000 square foot terrace.
Sting moved out for a reason.
A tiny studio for half a million dollars…. how is anyone supposed to raise a family in this neighborhood? And this isn’t in one of the new “luxury” buildings that people like to blame for our affordability problems – this is as cheap as it gets here. I wish the candidates for city council (and the media covering them, WSR!) were treating this like the crisis that it is.
There are no “affordability problems.” Virtually all housing stock is or quickly get filled – with living breathing humans who can clearly “afford” the prices. The market clears. (I’ll exclude the $13M penthouses sitting on the market longer because the developers don’t want to take $11M quickly and sacrifice profits.)
The real estate market does not exist to allow one to “raise a family” in a place they can’t afford. If that’s the case, one picks up and moves.
Why is this neighborhood so expensive though? It’s not a fact of nature, it’s a a policy choice (a bad, shortsighted policy choice).
That studio did not cost almost half a million dollars to build. It’s so expensive because it sits on extremely expensive land. The land is expensive because this is a great neighborhood and they aren’t making any more of it, which isn’t going to change. But you could share the cost of the land between a bunch of apartments by building up. This is a five story building, so each floor has to pay for 20% of the land. A 10 story building would cut the cost of land in half.
Legalize building up and this neighborhood becomes a place where you can raise a family again.
One just “picks up and moves”–so easy for you to say because you’re apparently clueless about other people’s circumstances. Picture this–you’re working a minimum wage job because that’s all you’re offered, you or your partner gets pregnant, you’re living in a tiny studio you can barely afford. To “pick up and move” you need money and a place to go, and you’ve got neither. Maybe try to develop a little compassion, Peter.
To summarize the hypothetical plight of our dear protagonists: A young, apparently able-bodied, evidently healthy/fertile couple, with (likely) only one minimum-wage income, little understanding of contraception and family planning (or just even MORE bad luck), no desire for a second/third job or side hustle, zero savings, and apparently no friends/family to help them even a little bit on the margin. Did I get that right? That’s a lot to pile on someone so young.
Yet somehow, they decide and are able to shack up in one of the most expensive neighborhoods of one of the most expensive cities in the world. They pass credit and background checks. They post the deposit. They actually manage to move in (but apparently moving out is a step too far). And through that all, they still somehow believe that the ONLY minimum-wage job in the world is on the UWS.
You are right, I am clueless. But thank you for making my affordability argument for me.
Game, set and match – Peter!
The 6sqft link takes you to the Curbed article.
Thanks, fixed.