Murray Hill Is Tragically MisunderstoodBrooklyn Heights: A couple moved into a new building in 1901 and later passed the apartment on to their son. When he died in March, he was paying $451 a month for a two-bedroom. [Brooklyn Eagle via Brooklyn Heights Blog]
Clinton Hill: Depending on which typo you follow, dumping at this building on Emerson will cost you either $3,000 or $3 million in fines. [Clinton Hill Blog]
Fort Greene: Does a plywood fence at Carlton Mews mean work will finally begin there? [Brownstoner]
Greenpoint: Oversize ads drilled into vinyl siding wouldn’t last a second in Williamsburg or Park Slope. So why here? [newyorkshitty]
Murray Hill: Unless the frat boys have all moved away, this is no “lagoon of calm.” [Curbed]
Prospect Lefferts Gardens: Miss the PLG house tours over the weekend? There’s a slideshow to keep you sated. [Planet PLG]
Upper West Side: Tonight, take a rare chance to complain about how cruddy the subway station is at 96th and Broadway. [Second Avenue Sagas]
Neighborhood Watch
Midwood Facing a Second DiFara Crisis As Health Department RevisitsEast Village: Plans for the Bowery Hotel’s subterranean Japanese restaurant get scrapped for a spa. [Down by the Hipster] Drown your sorrows (or pickup takeout sushi) and head to Astor Wines for over 50 varieties of shochu, the Japanese alcohol that “goes down easy.” [Gridskipper]
Fort Greene: The first South African restaurant in the United States, Madiba, has just been closed by the Department of Health. [VV]
Long Island City: Junior’s Cheesecake and Harry’s Water Taxi Beach are among the participants in tomorrow night’s Taste of LIC to support the Chocolate Factory’s arts programs. [The Chocolate Factory]
Midtown West: Starwood’s new (opening in 2010) green hotel overlooking Bryant Park will feature restaurants by Stephen Hanson. [Gothamist]
Midwood: DiFara closed by the Department of Health for the second time since March. Dom, please just wear the hat. [Eater]
Diddy on Passive-Aggressive Designer Discounting
We’ll have more red-carpet interviews from last night’s CFDA awards later today, including Oprah on The Vagina Monologues, Rashida Jones on The Office — she’s not leaving! — and Alicia Keys on sunbathing naked. But for now, let’s hear what Diddy told Jada Yuan about his designer-discount arrangement with Tom Ford:
What designer do you most like getting free stuff from?Probably Tom Ford, but he ain’t sent me nothin’ free yet. If I wear something at an awards show, he’ll send me stuff, but I like just waking up and just wearing it. I’m cool with the discount. He has the same one at the Sean John store.
A small one?
Thirty percent. He gives me 30. I give him 30.
We’re amused by this transparent cry for help, but we’re also curious: Which designers hook each other up? Can Miucca and Donatella take what they want from each other’s collections? Presumably Valentino and Armani would have to pay retail. Does Diddy get his pick of Zac Posen … but make Zac pay for Sean John? This is a realm of etiquette we hadn’t considered before.
buy low
Home Sweet Foundry
A penthouse for less than a million? In a new condo project? This $999,000 duplex atop Jackson Foundry, a “Civil War–era” conversion on Jackson Street and Manhattan Avenue in Williamsburg, got massively price-whacked yesterday (by $146,000, according to Streeteasy.com). At over 1,400 square feet, that’s less than $700 per square foot, almost unheard of in these oh-so-trendy parts — especially when you consider that it comes with intact period details that don’t always survive the modernization process, like exposed-timber columns, cast-iron staircases, and rolling fire doors. (Some ceiling heights go up to seventeen feet.) And the huge terrace is yearning for barbecue season. A call placed to someone in the know about the development reveals that “it’s a correction, rather than a reduction,” but we’ll take our discounts where we can. S. Jhoanna Robledo
it just happened
Scooter Libby Will Not See the Aspens Turn
Is it gauche that seeing this headline just made us smile a bit? Is it even gaucher that we started wondering (hoping?) which Bushie might next go to jail? Also: Do you think Judy Miller will visit him in prison?
Libby Gets 30 Months in Prison in CIA Leak Case [NYT]
