Seattle | The New York Observer

Shott On Location: Blind Tiger's Long Draught Drought Over

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 06:00:00 -0400

Some guys just really like their Brooklyn Smoked Dunkel. A line of roughly 15 men had gathered outside the Blind Tiger in Greenwich Village at 4:01 p.m. on Thursday, when the renowned beer-lover's mecca finally reopened its doors--this time, with actual beer. "People have been waiting for, like, a year for this," noted the last guy in line, who added that he'd taken the day off from work. After 10 years at Hudson and 10th streets, the...

The Invention of Human Topiary

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 19:00:00 -0500

I spoke to Ivan Rezki, who still lives in the house where he grew up, in Bayside, Queens. SPARROW: I understand your mother, Sarah, invented human topiary. MR. REZKI: Yes, she did. Sparrow: Can you explain? Mr. Rezki: Topiary, of course, is the art of trimming trees and bushes into amusing shapes. My mother was always fascinated with such gardens. One day, she noticed that our backyard contained a large number of overgrown vines....

Meet the Junebug Weddings Contest Winner!

Tue, 21 Nov 2006 10:08:14 -0500

SHALINI: I received an email informing me that I was a JUNEBUG WEDDINGS CONTEST WINNER ($500 gift certificate to Tulip, one of my favorite Seattle boutiques). This made up for my car getting towed last week and the $230 ticket/towing fee. It doesn't stop there. Junebug has another great contest on their website this month: Visit www.JunebugWeddings.com on or before Dec.15th and enter to win a luxurious spa package from Frenchy's Day Spa,...

Letters

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 19:00:00 -0500

Bocly Bust

To the Editor: It’s sad, really, that the editors of The Observer thought the ditzy, disrespectful and lazy Charlotte Bocly worthy of all the column space they gave her story [“I Am Charlotte Bocly,” George Gurley, Oct. 23]. The overriding feeling I experienced after reading her profile was dismay. Tayt Harlin Manhattan Spoiler Alert! To the Editor: I am going to give Rex Reed the...

Guffaw Firm

Sun, 13 Aug 2006 20:00:00 -0400

Guffaw Firm

To the Editor: In “ Save This Firm! Milberg Weiss Is Nearing Iceberg” [Aug. 7], Anna Schneider-Mayerson mentioned the Arthur Andersen debacle. My question is this: Aren’t the people jumping ship just as guilty—if they find wrongdoing in the firm—as those who will possibly stand accused at trial? Jumping ship, like those at Arthur Andersen, simply implies those jumpers are willing to work in a tainted environment...

Letters

Sun, 14 May 2006 20:00:00 -0400

Tip of the Hat, Wag of the Finger

To the Editor: I enjoyed Chris Lehmann’s critique of Stephen Colbert’s performance at the White House correspondents’ dinner [“The Smarmies of the Night,” May 8]. I think that he got closer to the reality of what went on than most that covered the event. I think he may have missed the essential point, though. Mr. Colbert wasn’t really interested in making anyone in...

Mallification of Carroll Gardens

Fri, 17 Mar 2006 07:38:25 -0500

The Carroll Gardens/Cobble Hill Courier checks the nabe's barometer after the recent closings of several mom-and-pop stores, which were then turned into a Dunkin' Donuts and other neighborhood-unspecific commercial ventures. Words of wisdom: “Every dollar you spend at Starbucks goes to Seattle …. ” But with some spaces commanding $16,000 a month in rent, a goodly portion of that dollar is going to the landlord. -Matthew...

Zillow Launches. Get Your Zestimate!

Tue, 07 Feb 2006 19:00:10 -0500

Zillow.com Zillow is here. From what we hear, the pressure-cooker environment in which the launch was being anticipated--and in many cases beaten to the market by prospective competitors--had a lot to do with the sudden launch, initially scheduled loosely for the Spring or thought to be on hold till the Summer. Look for the whole story in today's editions of the Observer; read their full press release after the jump. In today's other real estate news: Johnny...

Countdown to Bliss

Sun, 08 Jan 2006 19:00:00 -0500

Elizabeth Dziadik and Brett Kiefer Met: June 1999 Engaged: Aug. 28, 2005 Projected Wedding Date: Oct. 21, 2006 Elizabeth Dziadik, 28, a sleek brunette resident in internal medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital, plans to marry Brett Kiefer, also 28, a boyish developer at Fog Creek Software, at the Union Theological Seminary on the Upper West Side. Although the two were in the same class at Dartmouth, they didn’t meet until late senior year, when both were...

Overpriced in Exurbia

Fri, 15 Jul 2005 08:46:00 -0400

Forbes' Sara Clemence trudges through economic data to weave together this year's list of the 10 Most Overpriced Places in the U.S. Once again, New York gets beat out by Seattle (a city that's famous for World's Fair relics, Kurt Cobains-in-training journaling on the Vashon Island ferry , excellent coffee, and a wacky new library. Although New York missed the top spot, there are other reasons to celebrate throwing away money in the metropolitan area....

Inverted Selfishness: Thank You, New York, For Tucking In My Tag

Sun, 05 Jun 2005 20:00:00 -0400

I felt my understanding and empathy for my fellow New Yorkers swell like a big glowing orb of Care Bears and butterfly kisses.

I know it seems like a late start, but I was 22 my first time. Like many women in New York, I lost it in the back of a cab. Unlike many-I got it back the next day. A man showed up at the address printed on my first business...

Inverted Selfishness: Thank You, New York, For Tucking In My Tag

Sun, 05 Jun 2005 20:00:00 -0400

I know it seems like a late start, but I was 22 my first time. Like many women in New York, I lost it in the back of a cab. Unlike many-I got it back the next day.

A man showed up at the address printed on my first business card and asked the receptionist if anyone had lost a wallet. These days, I barely remember to take business cards with me when I leave...

Eric Gioia to Gate A13

Fri, 20 May 2005 10:09:00 -0400

We were hoping to get the Long Island City Councilman's opinion on a subject of pressing interest, but instead we spoke to Lloyd of Delta Airlines: "Whoever owns this phone left it on the plane," he told us, from...

Living and Dying a Poet: A Celebration of Joy and Pain

Sun, 15 May 2005 20:00:00 -0400

The Best Day the Worst Day: Life with Jane Kenyon, by Donald Hall. Houghton Mifflin, 258 pages, $23.

Jane Kenyon died in the morning 10 years ago, at three minutes before the 8 o'clock news, with her husband, Donald Hall, beside her, in the long, two-story, white clapboard house, Eagle Pond Farm, where they lived in Wilmot, N.H. She had been ill with leukemia since early 1994, but it was only for the last 11...

Urban Delusion

Thu, 10 Mar 2005 16:57:00 -0500

The folks over at the Center for an Urban Future aren't going to like this, but Joel Kotkin has a new article arguing fairly persuasively that the future is actually suburban. Planners, architects, and environmentalists, he says, should get used to it. Kotkin offers some data to back up the claim that "the notions of suburban decline or a big-time downtown revival are delusional. "All the growth predicted recently for the 30 top U.S. downtowns through...

The Struggle for Reform In Globalization's Back Office

Sun, 23 Mar 2003 19:00:00 -0500

A World Without Walls: Freedom, Development, Free Trade and Global Governance , by Mike Moore. Cambridge University Press, 302 pages, $28.

I was filing a story from the street, blocked in by peaceful protesters, when the pepper spray hit. Sure, the trade ministers standing near me were frustrated and befuddled, but did that warrant the use of chemical agents? These protesters had struck a nerve. In November 1999, tens of thousands of people...

Graham Nickson's Paintings Are Extreme, Important

Sun, 22 Apr 2001 20:00:00 -0400

When we think of the great colorists in the history of Western painting, we tend almost automatically to associate their work with the light of Southern Europe. From Giorgione and Titian in Venice to the Impressionists at Argenteuil, from Cézanne in Aix to Matisse at Collioure and the Riviera to Bonnard at Le Cannet, the triumphs of the classic colorists seem all but inseparable from gentle climates and abundant sunlight–the lands of " Luxe,...

Politics Reappears to Challenge Economics

Sun, 23 Apr 2000 20:00:00 -0400

The dive in the financial markets has some members of Investors Without Borders wondering about the cant, hype and lies that have made up their sacred text for the better part of this decade. Meanwhile, on the streets of the nation's capital, those citizens forced to live with the consequences of the free-floating craps game that is global economics once again are making their presence known. When demonstrators protested the World Trade Organization's meeting...

New York Values, Examined at a Tavern in India

Sun, 09 Jan 2000 19:00:00 -0500

My wife and I got a ride from the ashram back to Mysore on Dec. 29, and the road was awful. For several miles it was made of fist-sized rocks, and the driver crawled along in the sandy rutted shoulder beside sugarcane fields. Then the Indian highway, with its swerving close shaves and exhaust and piss-stink. We got back to our hotel at 5, and my wife was done. She got into bed and...

Politics Bites Back on Streets of Seattle

Sun, 12 Dec 1999 19:00:00 -0500

For years, the author and columnist Richard Reeves has been writing that the great change in America and indeed throughout the world since 1980 is the triumph of economics over politics. Power no longer is centered in the corridors of democracy, but in the suites of global corporations. With the rise of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan two decades ago, Britain and America began instructing the world that the great global market, where all...

Writer Lost on Mt. Rainier Driven by Sense of Mission

Sun, 01 Aug 1999 20:00:00 -0400

Democratic Presidential hopeful Bill Bradley was one of the last people to see Joe Wood before the 34-year-old New York-based writer and book editor went up Mount Rainier on July 8 and didn't come down. Mr. Bradley was in Seattle for the Unity '99 Journalism Conference, a gathering of 6,000 black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American journalists, and Mr. Wood was one of eight black journalists sitting down to breakfast at the Westin Seattle...

Banned From Starbucks! Or, the Dark Side of the Roast

Sun, 13 Jun 1999 20:00:00 -0400

An open letter to Howard Schultz, chief executive of Starbucks:

Dear Mr. Schultz, I didn't really want to write this letter. Some advised me not to do it. Don't take on the Empire, it's too late to reform it. It's a behemoth grown beyond hope of alteration or redemption. They told me I'd just be one lone individual raising his voice against a java juggernaut that professes to be all New Agey and people-centered but...

Seinfeld 'n' Starbucks: One Down, One to Go

Sun, 11 Jan 1998 19:00:00 -0500

You didn't think I was going to let the occasion pass without a little celebration, did you, just a bit of gloating. I'm talking about Jerry Seinfeld's departure. Jeez, you read the papers, you get the impression this was an occasion for unanimous nationwide mourning-that the entire populace was weeping and gnashing its teeth. Yet I happen to know, as I've demonstrated with my "Can't Stand Seinfeld " coupon survey a year or so...