Showing posts with label NYC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NYC. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Best Manhattan Chinese

New York foodies will claim it's heresy to pick a favorite NYC Chinese joint and rule out Brooklyn, which, by any measure, has the best Chinese food in the City (Win Shing on Avenue U and 12th St leads the pack), but for those of us in the greatest borough...head to Oriental Garden on Elizabeth below Canal.

Look for big, angry- and carnivorous-looking live fish, and giant crab in the window. Stare at the blond prostitutes that the Chinese tycoons in cheap suits have on their arms (no joke!). Notice how polite the staff is, especially for Chinese. Imagine what the $285 pot of shark-fin soup tastes like while ordering the duck-pork lettuce medallions, the mixed-seafood soup, and the snow-pea-and-sea-food dumplings. Sit at a big, round family table with your crew, and order too much food. Go at 9:30pm on a weekday, when the place still has some diners, but you'll get seated without a wait. And make a pact with your companions to hit up Win Shing next time you go for Chinese (go in the fall or winter for crab with black bean sauce)!

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Schnabel's Mark Downs and Super Sales

Here's a phrase that's new for Manhattan real estate agents, "Price reduced $2,995,000 about 20 hours ago."

Vacancies on the Rise in Manhattan

Busy here, so I'm straight ripping off the Observer:

"The 16,000 jobs that Manhattan employers are expected to shed this year will help by the end of 2008 drive the borough's apartment vacancy rate up to 2.8 percent for larger buildings, according to a report from Marcus & Millichap.

The rate could rise even further in 2009 ("further" being a relative term in Manhattan, which traditionally has the nation's lowest apartment vacancy rate). The City Comptroller's office last week predicted New York would lose over 165,000 private-sector jobs in the next 24 months. Higher unemployment usually means less demand for apartments. Less demand generally means lower rents--over time. So far, despite several consecutive quarters of iffy economic news, Manhattan apartment rents have stayed generally steady.

The Marcus & Millichap report also concluded that apartment development will produce nearly 1,500 new units in Manhattan this year."

Link here.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Carbon Footprint=0, Awesomeness Footprint=1,000,000,000,000

Pedi-stripper pole. 8th Ave and 23rd St. 10:23pm. New York City. Friday, October 17, 2008. Suck on this, London!

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Sign of the Times

The uber hip (but also ugly and tacky ... apologies Ian, you rock, it's just Julian who effed this one up) Gramercy Park Hotel is advertising discounted rooms on its homepage. Several months ago, this would have been unimaginable. Whoa.

If I were in Manhattan retail, I would start freaking out right now. This can only mean that the Europeans are no longer flooding JFK/EWR.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Real Estate Porn to End All Real Estate Porns

This is the kind of stuff that makes you thrill inside when the DOW drops and the president of the United States starts saying shit like, "this sucker is gonna go down." You imagine (fantasize) what it would be like if the market tanked so far down that you take over this building in some kind of Blade Runneresque orgy with all of your arty friends, building impromptu fireplaces on the protruding balconies, and climbing the stairs 'cause there isn't enough money to fix the elevators. I mean, who the eff are the people who get to live in this awesomeness? If it's some Saudi with 6 hijabed wives, 24 kids, and a dozen Phillipina maids, I am SO gonna go United 93 on this crap!

Friday, October 10, 2008

Joel Kotkin on NYC Real Estate

The Observer sits down with Joel Kotkin, the author of The City: A Global History and an authority on urban social trends. The 55-year-old took some time on a recent visit from L.A. to talk about what’s to become of his native New York in a post-boom universe.
"You know, I was walking around the corner [in the Flatiron district], the two-bedroom apartments were still $3,000, $4,000 [monthly]. I mean, who’s got that kind of money?

So, if the prices were allowed to drop, what would happen? More of the young people who are now leaving New York in their 30s might stay; the immigrants who are now leaving New York once they get their feet on the ground, they might stay. You could see a similar scenario as to what happened in L.A. in the ’90s and Houston in the ’80s—which is, the drop in property prices allowed people an opportunity to get into a market that became very affordable. … In L.A. after the ’90s, after the riots and earthquakes and everything, what happened? The middle-class people were finally able to afford nice houses that they could never afford before; and immigrants went and bought everything that wasn’t nailed down."

Remember Hearst

In 1929, the plans for the Hearst skyscraper in New York were curtailed to 6 stories. For the next 77 years, the building remained a squat profile until the Norman Foster addition was added in 2006.

Down the street from DOWWTF?!, at the corner of 8th Ave and Greenwich Ave, construction is now under way on One Jackson Square, an 11 story luxury condominium, asking $6 million for 2 bedroom units. So far, concrete has been poured on 4 of the 11 story units, not all of which have been sold.

I suspect many of the pre-sold contracts cannot be dissolved, but if no fools step up to buy the remaining units, and if some of the existing contracts don't come through, and people pull out (as has been the trend in Las Vegas for over two years), the corner of 8th and Greenwich may not look like the developers hope...

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

"Bronx Residents on the Bailout"

This is worth it for the title alone, which can be read a number of different ways...


Permalink: http://dowwtf.blogspot.com/2008/10/bronx-residents-on-bailout.html

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Standard and Poors Drops Rating on Stuy Town Bonds

Standard and Poors decides to finally show up for work and look what happens...
"On Friday, Standard & Poor’s dropped its rating on the bonds used in Tishman’s $5.4 billion purchase of the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village apartment complexes in 2006, the biggest real estate deal in modern history. Standard & Poor’s said it cut the rating, in part, because of an estimated 10 percent decline in the properties’ value and the rapid depletion of reserve funds."
(Keep in mind that Tishman's partner in the Stuy Town deal is BlackRock, which Merrill Lynch bought several years ago, and which itself was sold to Bank of America last week.)


Permalink: http://dowwtf.blogspot.com/2008/09/standard-and-poors-drops-rating-on-stuy.html

Bloomberg Seeking Third Term = Hell Yes

Yes, New York voters voted for term limits. Yes, he let any tasteless dip sh*t with a $40mm-credit line build a sh*tty glass tower anywhere he wanted. But like the presidential election, the main question facing an increasingly cash-strapped city is, above all else, Who can secure the necessary capital to keep the lights on? Quinn et al are simply not up to the job.


Permalink: http://dowwtf.blogspot.com/2008/09/bloomberg-seeking-third-term-hell-yes.html