Craigslist Inc.

Location: What sort of reaction have you gotten from New York brokers about the $10 fee for placing  read more »

• How do starving artists pay for Manhattan rent? With the Artist Help Network, and the city's affordable housing administration, and non-sketchy Craigslist posts. Or by getting a real job. [Gothamist]
• The South Bronx is so hot right now--just like it's been since the dawn of the expression "so hot right now." [NY Mag]
• Scandal! Intrigue! Mortgage! "According to several sources," Preferred Empire CEO Marcia Kaufman "is rumored to have left the company because of a strained relationship with residential brokerage Prudential Douglas Elliman, which owns the mortgage company." Brokers are used to interpersonal strains, naturally. [Real Deal]
• Horrifying interior-design obsessiveness has new unofficial headquarters at Michael Mitchell Interior Murals on East 116th Street. Mr. Mitchell paints "custom interior murals," like the three doozies up above. [Apartment Therapy]
- Max Abelson
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• $689 million Manhattan Mall deal closes.
[GlobeSt]
• Bronx mall sells for $165 million.
[GlobeSt]
• Anthropologists find more bones at Ground Zero.
[NY Times]
• Mayor announces Coney Island development.
[NY Times]
• Mayor hesitates on property tax cuts.
[NY Post]
• A new W Hotel for Downtown?
[NY Post]
• Bogus West Side Craigslist ad won't disappear.
[Daily News]
• Mortgage rates rise this week.
[Journal]

Did we miss any New York City real estate news this morning? Please send along tips and links.

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Ben follows Hillary's cross-wearing habits.

Kirsten Gillibrand tries making a strip club an issue in her race against John Sweeney.

Rudy's blogger thinks Hotline is cheerleading for John McCain.

New York Magazine notes that Esquire withdrew its endorsement of Tom Reynolds because of his weird press conference where he used kids as a human shield. The other Esquire endorsements are here

John DeSio wonders who posted this ad looking for a "fearless investigative reporter" on Craigslist.

Mike Bloomberg gave $143.9 million to charities last year.

Barry Popik wonders why the mayor hasn't held a fund-raiser for Chris Callaghan.  read more »

Shelly Silver parks himself on the couch and opens up to City Hall News.

-- Azi Paybarah

On Monday night in Havana, Fidel Castro reportedly lay in a hospital bed, recovering from abdominal  read more »

Janny Scott's Times story on utopian Harlem "dorms" doesn't get around to providing any addresses--though that hasn't stopped the piece from soaring up the charts to #1 Most E-Mailed.

We called colorful landlady/housemother Karen Falcon (pictured) to help solve the Internet-wide panic over the missing address.

Ms. Falcon said that she owns and rents out a two-family brownstone at Broadway and the 150s. She also "does the rentals" for a friend's two buildings in the same neighborhood: another two-family brownstone, plus "a large building with 60 apartments," surely what the Times called the "dorm in Harlem for young professionals."

No names or precise locations were provided, though eager fans of dorm-like housing should also know that The Times identifies Ms. Falcon's neighborhood as "from 145th to 155th." Ergo: Broadway and 150-155th Street.

Why the lack of precision? "I just don't need the publicity," she answered. "If I place an ad"--on Craigslist, of course--"I get 20 people calling me. Now I advertise on Saturday night at 8 o'clock so fewer people call."

Is it Ms. Falcon's personality that attracts buyers? "No, honestly I think there are so many people moving to New York right now. Have you noticed?"

Sure, we have.  read more »

Bonus: More from Janny Scott, and more from Karen Falcon! - Max Abelson, with Jonathan Liu

While Rupert Murdoch is completing renovations on his triplex at 834 Fifth, the media mogul has had to improvise, according to Forbes.com.

Most recently, Rupert, and his wife, Wendi Deng, were crashing at the Pierre. But the lease is up, and the couple are heading over to Trump Park Avenue.  read more »

Here's where it gets interesting.

Though luxurious--and expensive, at around $60,000 per month--the residence comes unfurnished. So, the Murdochs have been asking to borrow couches and beds from model apartments in the building, the source says.

What? Maybe there are some remnants from the show house that occupied the duplex penthouse there last year. Or perhaps he can always try craigslist for something to get through his time as a renter. - Michael Calderone

• With the slew of retailers and condos popping up in Hudson Square, it's time to coin a new name for the neighborhood. We recognize some of the candidates from before "Hudson Square" was coined. (Curbed)
• An MTA survey of service shows that the W line isn't working well. Duh. (Gothamist)
• Now, people are listing their homes on Ebay! Oh, it's in New Jersey. (Brownstoner)
• Trader Joe's is upon us. (Curbed)
• The Atomium in Belgium, a huge replica of an iron molecule, gets a complete overhaul. (The New York Times)
• Ian Schrager is getting "harder to notice," but 40 Bond can't be ignored. (The New York Times)
• Hundreds of thousands of people visited Zillow yesterday, but the Web site suffered from many outages. (Inman News)
• Chicago Lawyers Committee For Civil Rights Under Law has sued Craigslist for "publishing discriminatory advertisements," claiming that it posted more than 100 ads in Chicago against the federal Fair Housing Act. (Inman News)
• Big news: "Demand for townhouses is incredibly high." New York is so on top of their game.
• So, this woman was riding a horse on private property and hurt herself. What do you think comes next? The law suit. (Inman News)
• The Art Students League of New York sold 135,000 square feet of air rights to Extell, which will develop a high-rise residential tower. (The Real Deal)
• Now that The New York Times has reported that fatty foods aren't that bad for you, Junior's is opening its cheescake chain in Times Square near their offices . (New York Post)
• A new construction is embracing its surroundings, quite literally. A house is being built around a tree because it crosses over onto a neighbors property and they don't want it cut down. (Gothamist)
• In a profile of a Staten Island neighborhood, The Village Voice calls it the "quietest borough." We'd like to direct your attention to an article published two days earlier.

- Riva Froymovich  read more »

Holly Hughes once remarked, “I’m a man-hater, [but] I don’t hate men as much as a  read more »

I have been accused by baffled friends of perpetrating endless home renovations because I unconsciou  read more »

An irregular feature—posted tardily because, you know, one sometimes must commit actual work—presented as a public service by The Transom, in which Off The Record columnist Tom Scocca explicates the Thursday Style section of the New York Times. The Media Mob: Know what yesterday was? The Daily Transom: The day the last of my important brain cells died, right here in my office? Sort of apropos: today our fantabulous receptionist presented the theory to me that the older a man gets, the more his brain dies, solely because of his cumulative lifetime total of erections. You see? The Media Mob: Yes! Also, apparently there is a new trend: women are buying expensive pocketbooks. The Daily Transom: Oh god. I didn't even read Thursday Styles. The Media Mob: "'How did this happen?' Nina Collins asked as she settled down to a lunch of miso soup and salad in downtown Manhattan. 'When did we get to this place where we spend $1,000 on a bag?'" The Media Mob: And how did we get to this place where the non-revelatory lunch-menu celebrity profile "scene" lead is now used to open a piece that is not a profile and does not deal with a celebrity? The Daily Transom: You're going to make me read this aren't you? You're a horrible awful man. Also, for the record, Nina Collins is totally, utterly fabulous. The woman lives large. And I'm not just saying that because she's my agents' boss. The Media Mob: Well ain't you the Peach Festival Queen. The Daily Transom: But, all my disclosable ties aside—and here let me reiterate my deep, luscious, and not at all fulsome appreciation of Ms. Collins—your point is well taken. This miso soup? It is filled with red herring. The Media Mob: Like, where else are they going to start doing the celebrity-style lunch lead? The Daily Transom: Baghdad, I hope. The Media Mob: "It's tough when you let a team like the Angels hang around," Joe Torre said, picking at a plate of chicken fingers and a cup of chili from the clubhouse buffet table after seeing the Yankees slip into a 1-1 tie in the American League Divisional Series. The Media Mob: "The boat looked completely normal, and all of a sudden it was upside-down in the water," said Gladys DuBois, 75, nibbling on a cheese danish and sipping Maxwell House from a styrofoam cup as she stood on the shore of Lake George, wrapped in an emergency blanket. The Daily Transom: Or the logical progression: "Oh, it's the hardest choice in a woman's life," said the actress Shirley Maclaine. The New Age visionary and comeback queen let her fingers trace the stiff tablecloth at The Ivy. Meanwhile, across town, Dolores Mierda was preparing for her first abortion. The Daily Transom: I blame Capote. The Media Mob: The man or the movie? The Daily Transom: Well, I'm not sure anyone but me saw that movie... The Media Mob: How was it? The Daily Transom: Essentially, it made being a nonfiction writer something comparable to, oh, being a shipper of empty eBay packages, or perhaps a grifter, or a White House employee. The Media Mob: So it's a documentary. Speaking of Truman Capote, Guy Trebay is unhappy that models look like Kate Moss. The Daily Transom: But Russians are the new Canadians who are the new Belgians who are the new Brazilians! The Media Mob: Where was mean, stomping Carmen Kass from? The Daily Transom: Carmen Kass, the chess-playing Estonian?? Who went from being Miss Paide to being Miss Jrvamma?? The Media Mob: I thought maybe she was Brazilian, because her last name sounds German. Where's Karolina Kurkova from? The Daily Transom: Oh I'm sure she's Czech. She's my people. The Media Mob: We strolled past her on Broadway a couple of weeks ago. She was saying "Ciao!" into her cell phone. Much better model sighting than that time we saw Giselle Bundchen down on Union Square with her bare, emaciated, lumpy skeleton back and her distinctly unerotic buttcrack showing. Weren't we reading a newspaper or something? The Daily Transom: I miss Linda Evangelista. So does Gay Trebuy, to his credit. The Media Mob: Yes. Her "haughty demanding beauty." As she stalked the runways with twitching human arteries dangling from the corner of her broad, elegant mouth. The Media Mob: Meanwhile, the "Online Shopper" column spent 30-odd words EXPLAINING WHAT CRAIGSLIST--sorry, "Craigslist dot org"--is? "Craigslist.org, an online bulletin board where local buyers and sellers meet in communities--from Beijing to Boise--all around the world, listed 117,977 items for sale in the San Francisco area, where I live, with 20 described as phonographs and 155 described as record players, including . . . " So that means that 117,802 of those items have NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR PIECE. The Media Mob: "I turned on my modem--short for 'modulator / demodulator,' a piece of equipment which allows one computer to communicate with other computers--and proceeded to 'log on' to a network of computers all over the globe, which is fittingly referred to as the 'World Wide Web.'" The Daily Transom: Also? I don't have any joke for this, but really, really, this piece has THE WORST KICKER EVER. Her daughter didn't know record players had needles. SO SHE OF COURSE ALSO DOES NOT KNOW WHAT A 78 RPM RECORD IS. THE END. The Media Mob: My old housemate used to have a 78 of calypso by The Charmer. Before the Charmer decided his name should be Louis Farrakhan. I read profiles of Colin Powell sometimes, about how he was such a deeply dedicated calypso fan in his youth, and I picture him going off to see the Charmer. The Daily Transom: Well, ta da! You're in luck: The Charmer sound files.

[Calypso plays throughout the office.]  read more »

The Media Mob: So now Alex K., that critical shopper, is venturing to New Jersey. "I tossed a scarf around my neck and thought, 'Hmm, not as soft as that Hermès cashmere scarf someone left in my apartment a few years ago and that I neglected to return.' (You know who you are, and you still have my Burberry umbrella, so there.)" The Media Mob: Seems like Alex K. is maybe trying to get her Joyce Wadler on. The Media Mob: Nobody beats Auntie Joyce, as she demonstrated oh-so-well this week, in that piece buried at the back of House & Home, AKA the "Wait, I Thought WE Were Thursday Styles" section. The Daily Transom: Oh, were we still talking? I was outside smoking. Much as Auntie Joyce probably is. That piece was totally amazing, no matter how nuts she is. The Media Mob: No wonder they dumped her in the back of the paper. She'll always be a boldface name in our book. Like this: Joyce Wadler. The Daily Transom: Not that we'd ever want God's gift, Campbell Robertson, to leave that post. Especially after today's absolute evisceration of Tim Robbins. Anyway. Jesus. Are we done? The Media Mob: --30--

Behind a door in an apartment building in the West 70’s lives a man who has been anonymously pleas  read more »

Behind a door in an apartment building in the West 70’s lives a man who has been anonymously p  read more »

So somebody is making a pitch for Hispanic Bloomberg volunteers on Craigslist:

"If you are interested in volunteering for a major political race then keep reading. As you know, NYC, post 9/11, the city had to come to grips with the destruction of the World Trade Center and the lives lost.... Based on this, NEW LEADERSHIP was what people voted for. That LEADERSHIP was one given to a gentleman by the name of Michael Bloomberg, your current mayor... [Feel] free to come on board and volunteer for Mayor Bloomberg.  read more »

The reply-to address is american_strategies@yahoo.com. Anyone know who that is?

Craigslist CommunityFertile Ground for Hucksters  read more »