Lindsay Lohan Finally Comes Down HomeLast October, our columnists the Fug Girls asked: “Can New York help save Lindsay Lohan?” Rumor had it at the time that she was going to be spending more time here, living out of her apartment at the tony Atelier building in Hell’s Kitchen. (Nick Lachey lives there, too!) But it turns out we had to wait longer than expected to find the answer to the Fugs’ question. Well, the wait is over! According to Ben Widdicombe’s “Gatecrasher” column, LiLo has moved into her apartment — and, appropriately, she threw a chem-free party with her younger sister, Ali, in the building’s rooftop party space to celebrate. How do we know this? Because Lindsay’s friends over at the Shadow PR agency were there and they took photos to send to the press. In the staged pics, she really looks swell! (And not in the nasty, “YOU’RE A HOG” way “Page Six” said she looked “swell” in a photo today.) Anyway, we know she’s not only staying at home and going to bed early: We’ve already spotted her out on the town. But we still think there’s hope that the Big Apple will help her and her tagalong sister keep their heads on straight. After all, it’s done wonders for the Olsen twins.
Lohan’s Sibling Revelry [NYDN]
neighborhood watch
Dutch Kills Residents So Mad They Could, Um, Berate the Zoning BoardDutch Kills: Seems that by the time they finish zoning this swath of Long Island City against tall hotels, it’ll already be chock-full of ‘em Ground’s been broken on too many to stop. [NYDN]
East Harlem: In other critter news, this story about a poodle named Miss Bea — rescued from a closet after so much neglect that her matted, dirty coat became “like a tortoiseshell” — will probably make you cry, barf, or both. [NYDN]
Hell’s Kitchen: We must say, we remain fascinated with the charmingly boring blog of this HKer who posts such daily banalities as photos of his dishes in local eateries and accounts of his walks around town. [Hell’s Kitchen NYC]
neighborhood watch
Ivy League Grad Will Rub Your Shoulders, Write Your BiographyAstoria: Councilman Vallone, if you thought you could just put that preconstructed, toxin-belching smokestack there on 37th Street and nobody would notice, you were sadly mistaken. Oh, and “you’re slowly turning the area into a ghetto,” too, by the way. [Queens Crap]
Carroll Gardens: If you give this “Ivy-educated” author, psychologist, educator, and editor a free place to live, he (she?) will be your shrink and write your memoir. Yeah, we’ve heard that one before. [Pardon Me for Asking]
Harlem: They’re standing by original funk-soul brother Bill Clinton up here, especially with that Obama being “a nice white middle-class guy.” Ouch! [NYT]
neighborhood watch
Where Is Sherri’s Sketchy High-rise?Next to the Methadone Clinic: Not only is The View’s Sherri Shepherd insisting that Jesus predated the great classical civilizations, she’s also looking at buying a condo in a high-rise “next to a methadone clinic.” But where? Only that pre-Greco-Roman J.C. guy knows. [Curbed]
Bedford-Stuyvesant: Lots of cute kitties here need a home. If you’ve already got enough cats, don’t look at the cute pictures, or you may end up with more, you big softie. (Or is it that you just can’t get along with people?) [Bed-Stuy Blog]
Corona: First there was white flight. Now there’s black flight. And when Martians land here, everybody-else flight will ensue. [Junction Boulevard]
neighborhood watch
Urban Outfitters to Bring Freshman-Dorm Furniture to Cobble HillCobble Hill: Urban Outfitters is “coming soon!” [BK11201]
Downtown Brooklyn: After endless outrage, the city will spare the little Duffield Street house believed to have been a stop on the Underground Railroad. [DDDB via Gowanus Lounge]
Financial District: Maybe, in time, all the pretty old buildings in Manhattan will be reduced, like this one, to Hollywood-set-style façades for the big new buildings behind them. [Curbed]
neighborhood watch
Fishing in the Gowanus Canal: Yeah, They Do It. What?Astoria: Boy, Pete Hamill’s writer bro Dennis sure loves the park here. Perhaps just a few hundred words more than necessary? [NYDN via Queens Crap]
Bushwick: Horny gay gentrifiers, listen up. That hot local papi you just took home may agree to tie you up … but only to steal your Gucci watch. [NYP via BushwickBK]
Gowanus: They’re fishing bluefish out of the toxic Gowanus Canal … and eating them! Ew, that’s just naasty! [Gowanus Lounge]
neighborhood watch
How About Some Gargoyles for Your Halloween?Bay Ridge: If you see lots of nooses tonight, don’t bug out and call Rev. Al. It’s Halloween, people — the night when nooses are exempt from Jim Crow overtones. [Bay Ridge Rover]
Harlem: Did you know that the gargoyles on this old building tell a story about chicken soup? Check them out, ‘cause they’re plenty creepy-lookin’ for the holiday. [The Weblicist]
Hell’s Kitchen: Does the forbidding of a sax player from practicing in his apartment signal the morphing of Manhattan Plaza from an artists’ enclave to a yuppie one? [NYDN]
neighborhood watch
Bushwick: Now With Ice Caves!Bedford-Stuyvesant: Wanna know if your Bed-Stuy block is respectable? Check to see if FreshDirect delivers there. [Bed Stuy Blog]
Bushwick: If you rent a subterranean room in the Lair, you won’t get a window, but you will enjoy “the only indoor ice cave that Bushwick has ever seen.” Sounds like breaking even to us. [Curbed]
Ditmas Park: All those serious-looking South Asians outside P.S. 139 the other day? They were there for local elections for the Chittagong Association, which sends disaster relief to folks back home in Bangladesh. Duh! [Ditmas Park Blog]
neighborhood watch
It’s the Circle, the Circle of Homeless Life…Coney Island: Is it really any surprise that arguably the creepiest Halloween freak show in the city is here? [Kinetic Carnival]
Corona: The city has evicted rent-stabilized tenants to make room for homeless families, leaving the original families … uh, homeless. [NYDN via Queens Crap]
Dumbo: The Village Voice thinks this is the Best Manhattan Neighborhood in Brooklyn, and it even comes with that all-important “nostalgic desolation” that Manhattan now lacks. [VV]
vu.
Open House Video: A Two-Bedroom in Hell’s Kitchen
An open house is not only a chance to tour your potential new home, it’s also an opportunity to be nosy without consequence. You can judge others’ decorating schemes and feel out your competition by eavesdropping on other wannabe buyers. Last weekend, New York real-estate writer S. Jhoanna Robledo attended an open house at 400 West 58th Street, and our camera went along. The two-bedroom co-op was listed at $999,000, and several hopefuls checked it out. Meet the Greenwich newlyweds who “want a footprint in the city”; the dog owners who’ve been looking for a year; and the young couple somewhat suspicious of a two-bedroom under the $1 million mark. So did anyone buy? Corcoran broker Jeffery Sholeen tells us that the owners have “accepted a bid” but declined to I.D. the buyer or the price. What would you offer? Watch the video and start calculating.
Open House Log: Hell’s Kitchen [Video]
neighborhood watch
Missing the Old ‘Treats’ of the Meatpacking DistrictChelsea: It used to be the tranny hookers on 14th Street who advertised as “Not too fancy, always delicious!” Now it’s just the Treats Truck. [Vanishing New York]
Crown Heights: If the Slope’s old armory gets to become a swank new athletic center, why not the one here? That’s what council member Tish James wants to know… [Brownstoner]
Dumbo: Remember 2005, when it wasn’t completely certain the neighborhood was going the way of a bourgeois, sanitized, amenity-rich enclave? Seems so long ago… [DumboNYC]
Hell’s Kitchen: Time Out New York learns that the hood ain’t just for thugs and tramps anymore, scoring it higher than the East and West Village. [Hell’s Kitchen NYC]
Park Slope: OMG, the new debit-card machines at the food co-op actually work. That’s so awesome! [Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn]
South Slope: What would this fifties family think if they knew that the home they vacated to make room for the Prospect Expressway is now the site of a dumpy unused park? That’s a shondah. [Icky in Brooklyn]
Upper East Side: What we love most about this high-profile battle between a laundromat and a customer is that the launderer apparently changed his name from Todd Ofsink to Todd Layne. Isn’t having “sink” in your name a good thing for a launderer? [78thand2nd]
in other news
Dina Lohan Readies Hell’s Kitchen for Lindsay’s ArrivalLindsay Lohan is finally getting ready to move into Hell’s Kitchen’s ultraluxe residential tower, the Atelier. In the spring, the Post pooh-poohed reports that she was going to live there, saying that the building was just using her for publicity. But today her mom, Dina, is on Access Hollywood picking out the décor for the new place. “I’m just kind of here trying to help her get it together quickly,” Dina explains. “Because she’s traveling and other things.” (Like getting out of rehab?) Dina says she’s going to make the New York area her home base to be near family, but she won’t be staying with them on Long Island all the time. “When they’re 21, they don’t want to live at home anymore,” Dina says. We’ll try not to think about what kids who are 21 and living alone do want to do. Lohan will be in good company at the Atelier — Nick Lachey and other celebrity residents have been spotted by the building’s pool and on the basketball court. We’re kind of bashful to admit it, but we’re really rooting for Lindsay this time around. This might just be the time she stays clean! But if it isn’t, well, we’re glad she’ll be in the city. Why should L.A. always get to have all the good train wrecks?
Apartment Shopping With Dina Lohan [Access Hollywood]
neighborhood watch
Jackson Heights: The Musical! Wait, That Sounds Familiar…Cobble Hill: Some performance-art weirdos queued up, droidlike, outside of the future Trader Joe’s here. Was this some sort of Marxist semiotic commentary on the store’s long lines to come? [A Brooklyn Life]
Elmhurst: The locals are getting into t’ai chi, which is cool, but they look like they’re doing the Thriller zombie dance in this pic. [Junction Blvd]
Hell’s Kitchen: The flea markets haven’t been doing as well since they moved here from their longtime home in Chelsea, where condo-velopment pushed them out. [Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York via Chelsea Now]
Jackson Heights: Stay tuned for Jackson Heights: The Musical! Hey, wait a minute, that Washington Heights show hasn’t even opened on Broadway yet! [Queens Crap via NYDN]
Morningside Heights: Creatures including a camel, two llamas, some goats, a Chinese goose, a fourteen-pound rabbit, a porcupine, and a hermit crab paraded down the aisle at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine yesterday for a blessing. These pics are so cute! [Gothamist]
Upper East Side: This sticky Indian summer is hardest of all on uptown gals planning the final stages of their wedding, don’t you agree? [Sex and the UES]
Williamsburg: Yuppies moving here and to Greenpoint don’t want to send their kids to the local public schools, leaving some of them half-empty. [Brownstoner]
neighborhood watch
Brits Complain About How Expensive New York IsBattery Park City: Move over, David Rockwell and your high-tech playground, there’s another kid in the sandbox. Frank Gehry’s now designing a $4 million kiddiespace for the Battery. [Gothamist]
Chelsea: The London Times complains about how much it costs to call London from New York ($35 for five minutes from the Chelsea Hotel). But doesn’t everyone just use cell phones? [London Times via Living with Legends]
Hell’s Kitchen: Locals meet tonight to formulate their official suggestions for desnarling congestion on Ninth Avenue near the Lincoln Tunnel. Good luck to them. [Streetsblog]
Park Slope: Enrique Norten will follow Richard Meier as the next starchitect in the area, designing a swank condo on Garfield Place, complete with English garden. [Brooklyn Eagle via Brownstoner]
Willets Point: Wi-Fi at Shea Stadium? Not so much. [East Village Idiot]
Williamsburg: Sweet! Get inside the Domino Sugar factory. [BlueJake]
neighborhood watch
Forget the Toxins. Just Build the Damn Whole Foods.Brooklyn Heights: Get a look inside the fancy One Brooklyn Bridge Park at a rare open house tonight. [Brooklyn Eagle via mcbrooklyn]
Bushwick: It’s a zoning puzzle on Harrison and Wallabout: a residential building on a “light manufacturing” lot. [QueensCrap]
Central Park: The city’s transportation commish is considering a car-free Central Park trial this summer. [Streetsblog]
Clinton Hill: Looking for the right community garden? Here’s where you can picnic or pull weeds. [Clinton Hill Blog]
Gowanus: An informal poll suggests that some are concerned about the environmental impact of the new Whole Foods, while others just want the damn market already. [Brownstoner]
Greenpoint: Discarded self-help guides suggest “quarter-life crises” are rampant around here. Egads. [Newyorkshitty]
Hell’s Kitchen: A new condo is looking for buyers, preferably ones made of precious metals. [CopyRanter]
Long Island City: How long till owner Tishman-Speyer demos this (admittedly none-too-charming) parking garage and puts up an office park? [LICNYC]
South Beach: It’s dirty-needle season at the beach! [7online via Gothamist]
Williamsburg: Will drawing attention to this cool new street art attract the wrath of the graffiti-defacing Splasher? [Williamsburg]
sex diaries
The Busy FreelancerOnce a week, Daily Intel takes a peek at what your friends and neighbors are doing behind doors left slightly ajar. Today, the Busy Freelancer: male, 28, Hell’s Kitchen, freelance writer, gay.
DAY 1
10 a.m.: New construction next door wakes me up. Wonder if any of the construction workers are hot. Get undressed in front of the window, just in case they’re looking.
10:30 a.m.: A hot guy is checking me out on the subway. Actually, I think he’s straight and eyeing my Thundercats lunch box and not my ass.
1:15 p.m.: Get worked up thinking about a past hookup with a masseur who likes to give a rub-and-tug. E-mail him to see if he wants to hang out this weekend.
2:50 p.m.: Get a text from a friend inviting me for a blow job at his private glory hole tomorrow night. Quickly respond, “Can’t wait.” Get hard.
12:25 a.m.: Log on to Manhunt.net to see who’s around, knowing I’m too lazy to get off the couch tonight.
ByArianne Cohen
neighborhood watch
Stuyvesant Town Gets UppityAstoria: After promising for eighteen months, Fresh Start is opening its back patio. [Joey in Astoria]
Clinton Hill: This weekend’s annual house tour was so popular that someone even stole tickets (for scalping?). [Brownstoner]
Greenwich Village: Ricky “Livin’ la Vida Loca” Martin just paid $7 mil for a three-bedroom at Ian Schrager’s new 40 Bond. [NYP]
Hell’s Kitchen: Vote now for your preferred redesign of traffic patterns on Ninth Avenue. [Streetsblog]
Park Slope: Look for eighteen new bike racks around the hood, including, of course, in front of Ozzie’s. [Gowanus Lounge]
Red Hook: Ikea denies that the extra square footage it acquired on the waterfront will become a Bed Bath & Beyond. [The Brooklyn Paper]
Stuyvesant Town: What does the complex’s new logo say about its occupants? And is that a putting green near the fountain? [Curbed]
Williamsburg: More crude bubbles up on the Roebling Oil Fields. [Gowanus Lounge]
the morning line
The British Are Coming!
• Remember Steven Johnson, the freak who terrorized Bar Veloce in 2002, splashing kerosene on patrons? Well, he just got 240 years in prison. Yeah, we don’t know what took five years, either. [NYP]
• Renaming corners, part one: A coalition of local businesses, backed by no less than Virgin Airways, is campaigning to call a slice of the West Village “Little Britain.” The stage-one strategy apparently involves sub–Benny Hill humor. (“What’s one more queen in the Village?”) [MetroNY]
• Renaming corners, part two: Elaine Orbach may yet get the intersection of 53rd and Eighth named after her late husband, Jerry. After striking out with the grumpy Community Board 5, she found fans on Board 4 — which controls the west side of the same avenue. [NYT]
• In a high-tech twist on a classic, a married couple is suing a Park Avenue clinic for allegedly inseminating the wife with the wrong man’s sperm: The father is white, the mother Dominican, the baby black. [NYDN]
• And New York has joined more than twenty states moving their presidential primaries up to February 5. With any luck, Assemblyman Keith Wright’s coinage for the occasion — “Super-Duper Tuesday” — won’t get any kind of traction in the media. Oh, crap, we just did it. [NYT]
neighborhood watch
New Zoning Laws Make Queens Boulevard Even UglierBrooklyn Heights: Looks like the popular eatery Le Petit Marche (there’s no “e” on Petit, people, it’s masculin!) is getting a fancy face-lift. [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
Fort Greene: The landmarks commish last month gave the nod to the Carlton Mews Project — which, remarkably, everyone seems to love. [Brownstoner]
Harlem: Now that H&H bagels are at Saurin Parke Café it requires 24-hour police surveillance. [Harlem Fur]
Hell’s Kitchen: After two pedestrians were killed and one injured by vehicles on Ninth Avenue, it’s Manhattan’s latest “Boulevard of Death.” [Streetsblog]
Park Slope: You think all those Saabs and Volvos cruising Seventh Avenue are just out wildin’? Nah, they’re looking for parking … because, a new study finds, there isn’t any. [Gowanus Lounge]
West Village: Longstanding and beloved bistro Florent, the last bohemian holdout of the newly flashy meatpacking district, is now taking credit cards. Sacre bleu! [Blog Chelsea]
Woodside: The upzoning of Queens Boulevard has led to ugly, cheap buildings too tall for the area. [Queens Crap]
neighborhood watch
It’s Never Too Early to Get on Line for the Shake ShackCarroll Gardens: If you want to work at the local beer garden, prepare to submit a self-promoting essay with your app. SATs optional. [Brooklyn Record]
Flatiron: Madison Square Park’s Shake Shack — home to those petite but perfect burgers — reopens March 21. Better start queuing up now. [NewYorkology]
Harlem: St. Nicholas and 135th is getting a Subway sub shop, plus the Frederick Douglass Furniture store. What’s next, Harriet Tubman Light Fixtures? [Uptown Flavor]
Hell’s Kitchen: Rustic chic or red flag? Some balconies on an ugly mid-century high-rise have been propped up with timber à la Swiss Family Robinson. [Manhattan Offender]
Lower East Side: Residents seek revenge on Microsoft after the software maker blasted music from a promo SUV on Ludlow Street at 3 a.m. Sunday. [
neighborhood watch
Forest City Ratner Wants to Hear Your ComplaintsClinton Hill: Whoever thought that a bar-hopping query would be so charged with race and class drama? [Brooklynian]
Clinton: Thanks to Renzo Piano’s eco-swank Times tower, the legendarily scuzzy Port Authority district is now safe for top-line businesses. [Gothamist]
Gowanus: Park Slopesters want the Whole Foods megastore coming to 3rd Street and Third Avenue to swap its planned rooftop parking deck for solar panels. [Gowanus Lounge]
Harlem: A new luxury condo from architects Feder & Stia will soon cantilever boldly over the 116th Street mosque where Malcolm X once held court. [City Realty via Curbed]
Nolita: Sure, the billboard on Houston and Lafayette is for a clothing line, but what if “Come as you are” was the new neighborhood tagline? [Copyranter]
Prospect Heights: Come vent! Forest City Ratner, developer of Atlantic Yards, has opened a “community liaison” office. [Brooklyn Speaks via No Land Grab]
neighborhood watch
Drug Business Picks Up in West ChelseaBrooklyn Heights: A restaurant owner accuses his former partner of anti-Semitism. Their restaurant was Kosher. Rim shot! [The Brooklyn Paper]
Hell’s Kitchen: Conjure your inner urban planner on Saturday afternoon by suggesting new designs for too-busy intersections. [Streetsblog]
Midtown East: Gotham Book Mart has gone fishing for good. Now it’s for sale. [Curbed]
West Chelsea: Call your dealer! Sol and Crobar will reopen this weekend. [Brooklyn Vegan]
Williamsburg: The four condo towers of “The Edge” will start construction in February. If you weren’t already sure it’s over, it is. [I’m Not Sayin, I’m Just Sayin via Gowanus Lounge]
in other news
New York’s Rats: Irritating When Infesting, Delicious When SmokedWhile New Yorkers have been tying up the 311 lines to report their ever-escalating rodent problems, as the Times reminded us early last week, the enterprising folks at West African Grocery in Hell’s Kitchen don’t complain about their rodents — they stock them in the refrigerator section. Food-safety inspectors seized two pounds of smoked rodent meat from the market last week; there’s no word on whether these were imported specimens or New York’s native Norways. According to Microlivestock: Little-Known Small Animals With a Promising Economic Future, a book put out by the National Research Council, an estimated 42 cultures worldwide eat rodents; the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that rat meat makes up half the locally produced meat consumed in Ghana. The rats for sale at West African Grocery don’t seem to be in quite as high demand — a prescient poster on Chowhound wrote of the place last May, “while I’m not at all squeamish about the arguable lack of sanitary conditions (to put it mildly), I’ve just never had the impression they have particularly high turnover.” And, really, who likes rat that isn’t fresh? —Wren Abbott
N.Y. Cracks Down on Armadillos, Iguanas, Rodents and Cow Lungs [AP via WABC]
neighborhood watch
Bruce Ratner, Atlantic Yards Neighbors, All Set to Have Heart AttacksAtlantic Yards: IRS set to make thing more expensive for Bruce Ratner. [Brooklyn Papers]
Brownstone Brooklyn: In fancy-pants gentrified neighborhoods, people binge-drink more and die more often of heart disease. [Brooklyn Papers]
Carroll Gardens: Is a biodiesel plant coming? [Carroll Gardens Courier]
Downtown Brooklyn: Developer wants to “Botox” Fulton Street Mall, adding maybe a Cheesecake Factory and an Equinox. Existing shoppers ain’t thrilled. [Brooklyn Record]
East Village: Crappy scaffolding gets a scolding. [Neither More Nor Less]
Flatlands: The Aviator Sports complex, opening soon at Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field, will be joined by high-end and highly caloric eateries like Junior’s, Grimaldi’s, and Jacques Torres. [Brooklyn Record]
Fort Greene: Residents fight to save a big rock. [NYDN]
Hell’s Kitchen: Pier 76, behind the Javits Center, would be a good place for a recycling transfer station. But then what to do with the tow pound? [Villager]
West Village: Locals still don’t think enough is being done about the queer kids who hang out at the Christopher Street Pier. [Villager]
Williamsburg: Northsix to close for renovations, plans are in the works for a new version of the club with a really lame name. [Brooklyn Record]
buy low
Hell’s Kitchen 1BR: Such a Bargain!In today’s uncertain Manhattan real-estate market, there are bargains to be found. Each week, we show you one.
Listing broker Cynthia Dillon admits she and the seller purposefully priced this one-bedroom, one-bathroom co-op so it’ll stand out as a bargain. Some other Hell’s Kitchen one-bedrooms are cheaper, but they also offer less space; many others are actually asking more. There’s also a slightly smaller unit — this one’s 624 square feet — for sale in the same complex but for $60,000 more, though admittedly it’s in a bit better shape. (Forget about new construction in the vicinity; you’d easily pay double, or close to it, for a one-bedroom in those.) “There’s so much on the market that a property has to be really unique or perfectly done or priced right or it’ll sit for a really long time,” says Dillon. Apparently, they wanted to avoid that fate. The living room’s kind of gloomy — it’s in the middle of the apartment — but the bedroom faces south and gets lots of light. Plus the floors have been refinished.
— S. Jhoanna Robledo
