Home | The New York Observer

Opening This Weekend: ZOMG New Moon! Plus Sandra Bullock Makes the Boys Cry in The Blind Side

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:55:45 -0500

It might be just days before Thanksgiving (and, btw, when did that happen?), but if you head to a movie theater this weekend, don't be surprised if it feels a little bit like summertime. The box office is littered with big-ticket effects films (the second weekend of 2012), the return of a beloved franchise (New Moon) and even a Sandra Bullock movie. You've heard of Christmas in July? Well consider this Independence Day in...

Gehry Gets Topped Out in Lower Manhattan

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:20:06 -0500

...

Oprah's Exit: Milepost on the Road to the End of Broadcast TV

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:08:53 -0500

Last night WABC (ABC's owned-and-operated station in New York) broke the story that Oprah Winfrey will be ending her broadcast talk show in 2011. She's decamping to cable, where she will run OWN, a cable network, jointly owned by her and Discovery Communications.

The Oprah Winfrey Show is the most successful syndicated daytime talk show in history. And the news that its days are now numbered sent...

Is Rudy Picking on a Weakling?

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:30:51 -0500

It may turn out to be a red herring for the ages, but Thursday afternoon brought a report - citing a single, unnamed source - that Rudy Giuliani would within the next 48 hours announce his candidacy for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Kirsten Gillibrand.

Let's assume the news is true.

If he really is running for the Senate, then Rudy ought to first be applauded for making an unexpectedly shrewd political calculation. All...

More Litigation, Questions Hurled at Atlantic Yards as Finance Deadline Nears

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:11:29 -0500

During its six years in the court of public opinion, this much has been certain about the planned Atlantic Yards project: It's not without drama.

Racing to meet an I.R.S.-imposed Dec. 31 deadline to secure financing, developer Bruce Ratner is scrambling to tie down all of the loose balloons that are trying to float away (he's been having trouble getting some $700 million in tax-free bonds rated, for one) and cobble together a completed...

Study: Subprime Loans Went to Minority-Heavy Neighborhoods

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:27:43 -0500

Residents of largely non-white neighborhoods in New York City were far more likely to receive a subprime loan than those in largely white neighborhoods, regardless of the borrower's race, according to a new study from NYU's Furman Center.

The study, which controlled for differences in income and loan amounts, found that African-American borrowers living in neighborhoods with the lowest share of non-white residents had a 24 percent chance of receiving a subprime loan. That...

The Cubicle Queue: The New Yorker's Funny People, Everyday New Yorkers, and More!

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:54:01 -0500

Tired of clicking around YouTube and iTunes for online videos of substance? Search no more! The Observer has your weekly handy guide to what's worth watching on the Web.

One in 8 Million series on NYTimes.com - How many times have you walked around the city streets wondering about the people who pass you by every day--the pretty girl who sits next to you on the subway or the scruffy guy who orders...

New Moon Has Enough Bite For Us!

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:41:47 -0500

So, Twilight Saga: New Moon. Where to start with this Twilight frenzy? Well, for starters, I--and the 13-year-old girl that will forever live inside me--totally get it! In the first film (and book) of the Stephenie Meyer series we were introduced to Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson), as tortured and star-crossed as Romeo and Juliet (which is also the book that we see beside Bella's pillow in the opening scenes of New...

Schumer Shoots Down Majority-Leader Speculation. Also Military Trials, Pheasants

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:28:09 -0500

Morning Joe may be losing its steam, but Chuck Schumer seemed well-caffeinated in a pre-dawn interview this morning, launching into long defenses of Harry Reid, health care, and Eric Holder.

The segment began with Mr. Schumer's least favorite subject: His desire (unstated, hypothetical, overwhelmingly probably) to be majority leader of the United States Senate.

"If I had to pick a guy to run the Senate, and I was a Democrat, it sure as hell wouldn't be...

8.5 Bathrooms, Seven Bedrooms, $1 M. Off

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:44:36 -0500

...

Obama and the Reagan Trajectory

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:03:36 -0500

A year after his sweeping election victory - and ten months after he was inaugurated amid widespread public optimism - the new president's support is slipping in the polls, faith in his policies is vanishing, and the opposition is smelling blood.

That sentence could aptly describe the political outlook that Barack Obama faces as the first year of his presidency nears its end. It also describes, just as aptly, what Ronald Reagan was facing...

Silverstein Wants $2.6 B. in WTC Bonds—But for What?

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:10:39 -0500

Anyone paging through the end of The Times' business section Wednesday might have noticed an unusual legal notice nestled in between the commercial real estate classifieds and a bank ad (a reader had to point it out to us):

NEW YORK LIBERTY DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION

Notice of Public Hearing

World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein, it seems, is eager to issue the $2.6 billion in tax-free bonds he was pledged to rebuild office towers at...

Rothschild Manse, Almost Woody Allen's, Hops from $15 M. to $35 M. to $25.5 M.

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:55:16 -0500

Five and half years ago, the Century Foundation's enormous brownstone at 41 East 70th Street nearly sold to Woody Allen and his wife, until he decided that renovating the place from offices into a house would take too much work. The house was asking $15 million.

Since then, the price of the townhouse--which Paula Del Nunzio, probably the most powerful townhouse broker in Manhattan, is calling the Rothschild Mansion, after its builder--has seesawed from $25...

These Are Our Confessions: Suggestions To Make Great Glee Even Better

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:28:52 -0500

For the most obvious news of the fall, allow us to direct you to a recent Los Angeles Times article about dwindling television ratings. As it turns out, people aren't watching TV like they used to, unless it falls under the moniker of the NCIS franchise (how did that happen?).

That Glee is arguably a hit, then, is all the more surprising. The Fox series—which combines elements of High School Musical, American Idol, Election...

Dash to D.C.! Tech Guru Will Head Gov't Incubator, Digitize Democracy

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:00:00 -0500

Last February, Anil Dash; the co-founder and “chief evangelist” for Six Apart, the company that creates the most popular blogging software in the world; was visiting his family in India for the first time in 25 years, explaining what he does for a living. Mr. Dash, 34, is an influential tech blogger and consultant who coaxed business executives and newspaper editors into embracing social media long before every site from The New York Times...

At the Frick, a Focus on the Collector as Art History

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:48:56 -0500

Inge Reist’s father was not interested in the subject of money. A medievalist in the comp lit department at Columbia, he reserved a “certain disdain for business and the stock market,” according to his daughter, and preferred instead to spend his time thinking about more meaningful things. “I think,” Ms. Reist said, “it was just the culture among academics to have this disdain for things that related to commerce.”

Ms. Reist began her career...

Four Years Hard Labor

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:48:54 -0500

A repetitive refrain filled City Hall’s council chambers on Tuesday morning. For a good hour at a zoning committee hearing on the contentious plan to redevelop the Bronx’s Kingsbridge Armory into a mall, council member after council member battered the Bloomberg administration and the developer, the Related Companies, with a similar line of questioning: Given that city subsidies are to be used in the $323 million project, why isn’t there a guarantee that all...

John Liu Says It's All Business

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:43:36 -0500

Asked to predict what sort of working relationship he’d have with Michael Bloomberg over the next four years, the incoming city comptroller talked about physics.

“An electromagnetic force,” he said, “it’s unlike gravity. Gravitational force is only one direction, it’s an attractive force. Electromagnetic forces can be attractive or repulsive.”

That’s John Liu’s approach, for now.

As a two-term councilman from Flushing, Mr. Liu aligned himself with the mayor on some issues...

It's Madtown!

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:38:34 -0500

Gherardo Guarducci and Dimitri Pauli, the two handsome Italian owners of Sant Ambroeus in the West Village, were sitting recently on a spacious leather banquette in the dining room of their latest venture, Casa Lever, under the watchful Technicolor gaze of 10 original Warhol portraits (Bob Colacello, Robert Mapplethorpe, Giorgio Armani) on the opposite wall.

They were recounting the restaurant’s opening party on Oct. 10, during which Madonna stopped by to sing “Happy Birthday”...

The Last Gillibrand Fighter

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:35:59 -0500

Jon Cooper says he saw “the first red flag” back in January, as he sat in his home in Glen Cove with his spouse, Rob, watching David Paterson introduce Kirsten Gillibrand as the state’s new junior U.S. senator.

“Rob said, ‘Isn’t that Al D’Amato standing next to Gillibrand?’”

For Mr. Cooper, the 54-year-old majority leader of the Suffolk County Legislature, that red flag was followed by others, as he learned of the conservative...

The Woman Who Takes Clooney To Task

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:24:44 -0500

"Think of me as you with a vagina,” Vera Farmiga’s character Alex says to George Clooney’s Ryan at one point in Up in the Air, the new film from Jason Reitman (Juno, Thank You For Smoking), opening in theaters Dec. 4. “It’s a killer line,” Ms. Farmiga said recently, drumming her fingers absently in a conference room overlooking the lights of Times Square. “That’s the line I had to stand in front of a...

Go Jodi Go! Times' Kantor Scores Seven Figures From Little, Brown For Obama Book

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:08:15 -0500

New York Times Washington correspondent Jodi Kantor has secured a stunning seven-figure book deal this week with Little, Brown to write a volume on the Obamas.

The deal was the result of a heated citywide auction, and was brokered by independent lit agent Elyse Cheney. It comes on the heels of the 34-year-old reporter’s New York Times Magazine cover story on the Obamas’ marriage, which argued that “the Obamas mix politics and romance in a...

Morning Joe, Piping Hot a Year Ago, Steadily Loses Steam

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:01:04 -0500

Joe Scarborough held up a copy of The New York Times. It was Monday, Nov. 16, and earlier in the morning The Times had published a piece about Newsweek, which had recently laid off 13 staffers. Quarterly ad revenue at the newsweekly was down 48 percent versus last year. That said, according to The Times, things were looking up. In the third quarter, The Washington Post’s magazine division, largely comprised of Newsweek, lost only...

Gilding the Lobby Lily

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:21:46 -0500

The frugality fad is fading fast.

Bidders are dropping multimillions on Warhols at Sotheby’s; Goldman Sachs wives are preparing holiday shopping extravaganzas in anticipation of record bonuses; and in the realm of commercial real estate, tenants are spending more than $100 a square foot on office space (in which to hang their newly acquired artwork?).

Right now, an Italian Bank is negotiating for offices atop Mort Zuckerman’s monumental white marble GM Building for more than...

Private Practices Strapped, Upper East Siders Swarm for Swine-Flu Shots at Humble Clinic

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:15:24 -0500

A little over a month ago, as the second wave of the great H1N1 hysteria of 2009 began to swell, it seemed like vaccines would be made available to any New Yorker who’d decided he would rather not gamble on contracting the feverish, vomit-inducing, kinda-maybe-sorta-lethal porcine plague.

Things didn’t work out that way.

Shots are in short supply, and children are getting special permission to cut to...

Saturday Night Hives: How a Wart Ruined My Windows

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:54:47 -0500

What a week! Or, should I say, “Wart a week!”

Yes, a horrid wart! In full view of my public? Can you believe? That’s what I get for trying to avoid the H1N1 virus. What the hell am I talking about? I’ll explain all about Mr. Wart in just a moment. First, let’s talk about something more uplifting and festive:

The Barneys holiday windows! This year I have created, along with my elves,...

Times Media Desk May Be Headed for Small Screen

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:37:22 -0500

Our favorite humble hometown reporters might be on the verge of TV stardom!

A documentary filmmaker has hit the Times Tower with camera in tow and is planning to make a movie focused on the Times media desk.

“I think that these writers have something invested in their stories that is sort of unique compared to what it would have been like five years ago,” said Andrew Rossi, the filmmaker, who produced...

CUNY’s New Community College

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:13:36 -0500

The City University of New York is slogging ahead with plans for a new, experimental community college, and has enlisted brokerage Newmark Knight Frank to find it a temporary home.

The broker leading the hunt is Howard Kesseler, a Bowdoin-educated executive managing director who has grown popular with the education crowd, having represented both MetSchools and the Department of Education in their Manhattan peregrinations.

Mr. Kesseler (pictured) wouldn’t comment for this story. In an Oct. 15...

What Are They Afraid of?

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:13:21 -0500

The loudest voices on the right never tire of telling us that they are the truest patriots. They claim to be the deepest believers in our system, the strongest defenders of our Constitution, the most upbeat, bold and courageous Americans anywhere. But now that the government is finally prepared to put the perpetrators of the 9/11 terror attacks on trial, these same patriots are the first to spread doubt, instigate anxiety and abandon constitutional...

Carl Kruger, Obstacle

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:38:45 -0500

ALBANY—With negotiations over how to bridge a $3.2 billion budget deficit stalemated, Carl Kruger—a primary contributor to the blockage—took to his bully pulpit.

"Part of being a New Yorker is paying taxes that are assessed upon you," Mr. Kruger, a Democratic state senator from south Brooklyn, fairly screeched at a Nov. 16 press conference. "Today is the day that we draw the line in the sand, and I say that we should collect before...

The Case for Star Trek, Best Picture Nominee

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:11:05 -0500

Normally you have to be some kind of big shot—or perhaps familiar in the art of bit torrent downloading, which we are not—to get an Academy Awards screener. But today, everyone has the opportunity to go to their local Best Buy or Blockbuster (these places still exist!) and pick up a copy of not one, but two of the potential Best Picture nominees next March: Pixar's Up and the just released Star Trek.

Don't...

Who Can Resist the Cuomo Slate?

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:00:17 -0500

Eliot Spitzer infamously dubbed himself "a f------ steamroller" in his early days in office - a description that didn't exactly hold up as the legislature stared him down and his popularity waned in the ensuing months.

But as a candidate for governor in 2006, Mr. Spitzer absolutely was a steamroller, powered by untouchable, sky-high-popularity that forced his fellow Democrats to give him wide latitude.

And with each day, it's more likely that there'll be...

East Villagers, Unite! Documentary on Ending Poverty Rich in Critiques

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:36:23 -0500

It wasn’t all doom and gloom at Friday’s premiere of “The End of Poverty?” at Village East Cinemas. The film, which traces the origins of global poverty back to the Age of Exploration, offers a reason for hope: things might soon get so bad that the impoverished will rise up in armed rebellion.

The documentary, narrated by Martin Sheen, argues that economic imperialism is the cause of widespread poverty in the Southern Hemisphere. According...

Doug Von Allmen, Big Scott Rothstein Investor, Wants $18.45 M. for Condo

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:24:47 -0500

Earlier this month, a very wealthy and very Republican slice of Florida society was thrown into a very sweaty panic when the multimillionaire attorney Scott Rothstein was accused of running a Ponzi scheme that could total more than a billion dollars. Even though Mr. Rothstein, a spiky-haired and alligator-shoed Lamborghini driver, has said he was born in the Bronx (to a condom salesman), the scandal probably won't hit Manhattan as hard as Madoff's.

But one...

Time's Techland: The Nerdy Wonderland

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:21:46 -0500

Nerds, rev your browsers! Time Inc. has just launched a new site titled Techland. In his introductory post, technology editor Peter Ha writes: "Think of TECHLAND as the water cooler for nerds. Or, the way I see it, TECHLAND is the result of some weird orgy involving Jeff Albertson, a Cylon, Lev Grossman and Nikola Tesla. Weird, right? But it just works."

In January 2007, Lev Grossman started a blog called Nerd World for Time.com....

The Week in DVR: Edward Norton is a Rock Star! Plus, Project Runway Finale, Penelope Cruz and The Notebook

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:29:26 -0500

Monday: House

It’s been interesting to watch the writers on this show try different things to see if they can breathe new life into a program that is plagued by complaints that it's the same week to week. We understand the argument--there tends to be a fairly unbreakable formula (strange patient and symptoms/three or four wrong diagnoses/almost death/cured by the brilliance of Dr. House in the last three to four minutes). That said, eat...

Rudy Sounds the Alarm Again

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:15:13 -0500

Rudy Giuliani lives for weekends like this.

The Obama administration's decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9/11 defendants in federal court gave the former mayor a chance to showcase his Tough Guy act on three separate Sunday morning shows.

On "Fox News Sunday," ABC's "This Week," and CNN's "State of the Union," Giuliani played up the fear and emotion, hyping the security risks that the trial could pose to everyday New...

Inside Iran's Fifth Avenue Skyscraper

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:07:23 -0500

Citigroup, Joseph Abboud, Kurt Salmon Associates, Pali Capital, and the Liz Claiborne Art Ortenberg Foundation are just a few of the bold-faced names who may have been paying rent to the Iranian government for their offices in a Fifth Avenue skyscraper, according to real estate sources, the tenants' own Web sites, and a complaint filed Thursday by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

The U.S. Attorney’s office alleges that the Alavi...

New Doubts About Atlantic Yards Financing as Deadline Approaches

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:26:26 -0500

On Sept. 9, Bruce Ratner, the powerful developer scrambling to start building a new Brooklyn basketball arena for the Nets, gave a prediction: The credit ratings agencies would deliver ratings on about $700 million in bonds for the arena by the end of the month. The ratings are a necessary precursor of financing the arena, an act that must be finished by Dec. 31 to meet an Internal Revenue Service deadline.

On Sept. 30,...

NBC's Adventurous Foray into Repurposed Local News

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:07:02 -0500

"The beauty of this show is that it's got content from all over the NBC Universal platforms," said Matt Glassman.

It was Wednesday afternoon, and Mr. Glassman, a senior producer of content at NBC's local owned-and-operated station in Washington D.C., was on the phone with The Observer talking about a newfangled, pioneering-type show called Daily Connection.

The program, which soft-launched on WRC-4 on Sept. 14 and currently airs every weekday at 3 p.m, is arguably the...

Trader Joe's Stakes Claim on Sixth Avenue

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:51:15 -0500

Trader Joe's, oh ye of endless lines, Hawaiian shirts, eerily pleasant staff, and to-die-for chipotle-flavored hummus, finally you're coming to Sixth Avenue!

The store has signed a lease for the retail space at the handsome Mattel Building at 675 Sixth Avenue, the storefront formerly occupied by Barnes & Noble, according to an industry source. Trader Joe's, as is its notoriously press-unfriendly wont, declined to comment for this story, except to remind The Observer that Trader...

The Cubicle Queue: Hitchcock Speaks, Lou Dobbs' Greatest Hits, and More.

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:33:45 -0500

Tired of clicking around YouTube and iTunes for online videos of substance? Search no more! The Observer has your weekly handy guide to what's worth watching on the Web.

How to draw a New Yorker cover - Speaking of the last magazine standing, artist Jorge Colombo sketched another one of his New Yorker covers with the iPhone Brushes application.

Lou Dobbs' most scandalous moments on HuffPo - Now that he's fleeing from...

Oil-Rich UAE Buys Distressed East 46th Street Site

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:57:28 -0500

The United Arab Emirates has dropped a princely sum on a stalled development site in midtown east.

In an odd denouement to a development story that began in 2007, the Middle Eastern nation has paid $44.7 million to take the property at 313-317 East 46th Street, between First and Second avenues, off the hands of seller and real estate developer Alexander Gurevich. Property records indicate Mr. Gurevich bought the site from Gary Barnett's Extell Development for $40.95...

Zoning the Sustainable City

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:25:07 -0500

About a week before Election Day, with little fanfare, the Bloomberg Administration announced its one hundredth zoning change since the mayor came into office in 2002. In New York City, zoning is one of the most important regulatory tools available to government in its efforts to enhance sustainability and the quality of life available for the city's residents, workers and tourists. The Bloomberg Administration, under the leadership of City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden, has...

In Wake Of Dobbs' Abrupt Departure, CNN Names John King New 7 p.m. Anchor

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:37:06 -0500

Today, CNN executives announced that John King will be the network's new 7 p.m. anchor. Mr. King will take over the time slot sometime early next year. For the time being he will continue to anchor CNN's Sunday morning public affairs show, State of the Union. According to a press release, Mr. King's yet-to-be-named program will focus on "key political movements in Washington and across the nation."

The announcement came in the wake of Lou...

Sharon Baum Bids Farewell to Her Vespa, Returns to Rolls-Royce

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:01:11 -0500

Back in February 2008, when the doyenne real estate broker Sharon Baum announced that she'd no longer be driving a hunter green Rolls-Royce Silver Spur--upholstered in camel-colored leather, and blessed with her famous "SOLD 1" custom license plate--it was an early sign that the Upper East Side's long era of sparkly glitz was ending.

Ms. Baum, who dated Michael Bloomberg after Harvard Business School, sold a record $40 million townhouse, and is known for wearing a...

But Really: Why Didn't Weiner Run?

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:36:53 -0500

Anthony Weiner is absolutely right when he says, as he did in Wednesday's New York Times, that Mayor Bloomberg and his re-election team were scared of him.

But Weiner is forgetting another perfectly valid point: He was scared of them, too. And he blinked.

It's no accident that he's not talking about this aspect of his decision-making process. The Brooklyn congressman, who nearly took Fernando Ferrer to a run-off in the 2005 Democratic mayoral race,...

The Last Magazine Standing

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:53:38 -0500

Magazines are shrinking—smaller staffs, fewer writers, fewer stories written per writer, fewer words for each story—but The New Yorker continues to look, remarkably, about the same as it did five years ago, even as its parent company has cut hundreds of jobs and folded a handful of titles in the past few weeks.

The New Yorker has never published a masthead. But four and a half...

Professor Skyscraper

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:52:33 -0500

In a late September planning conference at N.Y.U., Vishaan Chakrabarti strode into the college's Kimmell Center a healthy hour after the event began.

Taking his place onstage, the former city planning official and development executive began to speak about his favorite project: the redevelopment of Pennsylvania Station-in the planning stages for nearly two decades-an effort he led for developers Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust.

"What I've finally come to realize about this is that as...

City Opera's Long Weekend

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:30:53 -0500

When the lights went up Sunday afternoon on a shirtless man next to a pantsless man—both American, both young—I knew that City Opera was back. It was the start of the second act of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and the two men were playing the eponymous antihero and his servant, Leporello.

Christopher Alden’s new production of Giovanni was the highlight of a long weekend marking the start of the company’s 2009-2010 season. Mr. Alden’s staging...