Women Unable To Marry Men In New York (Except One Woman!) @12:25 PM
What's up, ladies? Where you at? Two stories in today's Observer suggest it's "somewhere tricky." Did you know a mother of four was at the head of doing the Bank of America TARP repayment stock-offer deal? Imagine that, a lady—one with children even. That is so crazy! I'm not even going to be like Jesus Christ no profile of a man ever started like that because, why bother, guys. (The rest of it is interesting though! She is actually of interest!) And here is a report on a gathering of women, who have had it with the commitment-phobia of New York men and have resorted to dating Europeans (but NOT people from like Africa or Asia or anything gross like that). READ MORE 31
Ye Olde Design Is Making Manhattan a Theme Park of Itself @12:50 PM
It's an understandable thing that Manhattan is being recast as a shiny, silver-and-glass futureworld in these first thirty years of the Bloomberg era. Still, the antiquated vintage looks from many disparate decades that seem to be overtaking everything from restaurants to license plates to mustaches isn't really helping anything, such as our City's sense of self. Don't get me wrong, I like many of the establishments in the Frankie's Spuntino empire! And I got sick of feeling like I was in the Jetson's every time I walked past Astor Place, too. But when the zeitgeist gets a-rolling like this, people need to chill out. With all the faux-distressed wood and tiling and all the old-timey, painted-mirror style fonts, Clinton Street is starting to feel like one of those wild west film set facades. 7
Bike Polo: What Is Next, Horse Waterskiing? @10:20 AM
Do you know what the kids are doing on the Lower East Side? They are playing something called Bike Polo. 17
The Great Dentist Crisis! Is It? @4:09 PM
Slate claims that no one wants to be a dentist anymore, and that everyone hates them because of the movies. (There may be some truth in that! But I think people hated them first. Mostly people hate them because people hate dental work and are suspect of anyone who would do it all day!) Says Slate: "during the 20th century's final decades, a dwindling number of Americans chose to become dentists. In the early 1980s, U.S. dental schools produced about 5,750 new graduates per year. In 2007, with a population that's nearly one-third larger, there were about 4,700." And that: "In 1980, the United States had 60 dental schools; today there are 58, and class sizes are smaller." That is one way to look at the history of dentists! But let's pull some teeth here. READ MORE 29
Purell: The New Toilet Bowl Moonshine @12:04 PM
There's a hullaballoo afoot in a Dorset prison where inmates have been found getting shitfaced on anti-bacterial hand gel provided to combat swine flu. Prison brass are fuhreaking out and it's slightly confusing since it's not like these enterprising fellows weren't using trashbags rolled into towels for other clever uses, getting stabbish with anything that can be sharpened to a point, and learning, despite all differences, to dance in unison to Michael Jackson songs. Did they think they wouldn't drink something where the active ingredient is a 62 percent concentration of ethyl alcohol just because it's supposed to go on your hands? Fuck outta here. Call me when they're getting pruno through duodenal absorption. 12
Roger Ebert, Are You In Good Company? @12:00 PM
Roger Ebert came out of the A.A. closet last week, with a long and fascinating essay about his experience in A.A. Lots of people loved it, and found it pretty educational. But what are the negative repercussions of this, asked some in the comments—as A.A. has no public spokespeople and it asks that media outlets keep members private and also (mildly) asks that members don't represent the organization publicly. (It seems like a fine point—but how well can an alcoholism treatment program be perceived if its spokespeople later kill people whilst driving drunk, say?) Of course, it's unlikely that Ebert will give people a bad impression of A.A., unless he goes on a stabbing spree or something later this year, which in any event would be kind of awesome, really—and yet he now finds himself in some pretty strange company, with people who've gone public to improve their reputations and/or careers… or just because they were too wasted to know better. Or because they had a tacky memoir to sell! READ MORE 26
Will Leitch Hates You, Reader @3:14 PM
Uh oh! Another author goes postal in the quick-publish Internet age! It is famed sports-blog shouter Will Leitch, who shares his outraged private letter with the world to bring maximum shame: "My first book was reviewed by rangersfan4324. So who are you, tomtom24? WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU? Your Twitter page says you are from 'Tehran.' SO WHY AREN'T YOU SPEAKING IN FARSI?" Oh Will Leitch, are you a victim of the performance-enhancing drugs as well as the Age of Venti Venting? 11
Gross Trendy Hotel Opens In New York City @3:03 PM
Now you can spend $200 a night at a New York City hotel that is all dressed up to look like some hipster's dirty dorm room. 9
Slight Increase In Number Of White People Going To Jail For Drugs! @2:15 PM
Meth epidemic whitens America's prisons!
In a new survey of state prisons, the number of black people sent up-river for drug offenses is shrinking, for the first time in 20 years—and also the number of white people behind bars for drugs is growing. And still! No one really wants to mention that, despite this trend, in the time period studied (1999 to 2005), courts still put away on drug charges 41,000 more black people than white people. 2
Up on the roof @12:04 PM
The New Yorker's George Packer shares the wisdom of the roofer:
"It's like they're afraid of me! So they hire a guy who's more comfortable dealing with a masculine-type person. I stand there and talk to the customer, and the customer doesn't talk to me or look at me, he talks to the intermediary, and the intermediary talks to me. It's the yuppie buffer." He wasn't slurring gay men-he described these customers as mainly "metrosexuals"-nor was the problem all yuppies, some of whom had been his customers for years. It was a new group who had moved from Manhattan in the past few years, and who could not detach themselves from their communications devices long enough to look someone in the eye or notice the source of a leak. This was a completely new phenomenon in the roofer's world: a mass upper class that was so immersed in symbolic and digital cerebration that it had become incapable of carrying out the most ordinary functions-had become, in effect, like small children with Asperger's symptoms. It was a ruling class that, out of sheer over-civilization, was quickly losing the ability to hold onto its power.
The Real Trends Of Manhattan's Residential Real Estate Sales @2:52 PM
Today, the Times officially declares the Manhattan housing sales slump. They note, quite correctly, that the just-released numbers on the first three months of 2009 are really just the beginning of some serious bad times. Yup! Residential real estate will get hammered in the second and third quarters. Then the Times gets odd: "The stress is most severe at the high end of the market," they say. "There are 350 apartments and town houses for sale in Manhattan with asking prices of more than $10 million." This is true and also really irrelevant, for a few reasons! TO THE NUMBERS! READ MORE 2
