“You can’t go out. Your Friday and Saturday nights are done,” said Somrah, who was paying $750 a month for his basement room. Samrah is now saving to eventually buy in Florida. “It’s too expensive here.”

Nearly 530,000 renters in the city are spending 50 percent or more of their income on housing, a 14.9 percent jump from 1999, according to data released yesterday by Rep. Anthony Weiner.

“Financial advisors say, ‘You should spend no more than a third of your income on rent'” said Weiner. “That’s sounding more and more like a pipe dream.”

To solve the problem, Dr. Blutt bought the two town houses directly east of his current home on East 90th Street, between Park and Madison Avenues, in order to combine the three Romanesque Revival, four-story town houses into one 17,000-square-foot dwelling. His plans have prompted protest from neighbors, who see an intrusion of a suburban-style “McMansion,” and from preservationists, who fear that they would destroy the character of the landmark-protected buildings.

“It’s an audacious proposal,” said Simeon Bankoff, the executive director of the Historic Districts Council, which works to preserve New York’s historic neighborhoods and buildings. “It’s the kind of thing that seems to be extraordinarily conspicuous consumption.”

Even by the extravagant standards set by the real estate forays of this century’s gilded elite, Dr. Blutt’s plan is unusual. Because the combination of brownstones is relatively rare, especially for conversion into a single-family home, it raises a host of questions not easily answered.

Dr. Blutt had proposed a three-story rear-yard addition that would extend some 15 ½ feet beyond the buildings’ original rear walls. He also wanted to add more than 20 feet to the height of the buildings by adding a fifth floor, as well as a concrete bulkhead for a new elevator shaft.

When Dr. Blutt’s architect presented the plans to the Landmarks Preservation Commission last Tuesday, the commission took no formal vote, but some members noted their concern about the proposed fifth floor and the character of the rear-yard addition. The commission told the architect to submit redrawn plans.

Lo van der Valk, president of Carnegie Hill Neighbors, said that since the historical preservation movement took hold in the late 1960s, the expansion of dwelling space usually took place by building up and out. For instance, during the 1990s, homeowners scurried to buy neighboring apartments, knocking down walls to scrape out a few hundred extra feet.

But neither Mr. van der Valk nor Mr. Bankoff could recall a single case of a person turning three attached brownstones into one single-family home.

As a way to express outrage, linguists say the word is an effective choice. It sounds more astute than “terrible.” It has more syllables than “disgraceful.” It has a certain weight that “unbelievable” and “disgraceful” lack.

And the word implies a subtle yet stinging critique of Mr. Bloomberg’s antagonists: that they lack a conscience. Because its meaning is so loaded, some linguists wondered whether Mr. Bloomberg might be using the word a little too liberally.

“It is a strong word and has a little bit of heft,” said Ben Zimmer, the editor of Visual Thesaurus, a Web site that charts synonyms and their relationships to one another. “So in terms of style, it might be better to use it less frequently.”

. . .

It became one of his favorite adjectives to describe the strike by Metropolitan Transportation Authority employees in 2005, which shut down the city’s subway system for three days during a frigid snap of weather right before Christmas. “This is a strike that is deliberately designed to take place at a time of the year when it can hurt the most people the quickest,” he said. “It is just unconscionable.”

Apparently, “unconscionable” alone was insufficient to describe the mayor’s outrage. During the strike he used the word on more than one occasion with a string of other colorful adjectives like “thuggish,” “cowardly” and “reprehensible.”

Absofrickinlutely not! say the makers of the “Sex and the City” movie after news broke Monday that the flick will debut first across the pond.

“Sex and the City: The Movie” will show in London’s Leicester Square on May 12 — two weeks before its much-anticipated debut in New York.

“London will be much smaller,” a New Line spokesman said. “The whole cast isn’t even going.”

Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Cynthia Nixon and Kristin Davis all will make the trip, but other big names, including Mr. Big himself, Chris Noth, and Jennifer Hudson, will not.

. . .

Overseas premieres are hardly a new concept when it comes to blockbuster movies with large casts and lots of planning. “Spider-Man 3,” “Lord of the Rings” and “Wedding Crashers” all had world premieres outside the U.S.

There’s also hope the British debut will stoke overseas obsession with all things Carrie – and all things New York.

“It creates additional buzz for our U.K. customers,” said Cathy Epstein, marketing directing of New York-based On Location Tours, which runs a daily “Sex and the City” Hotspots tour.

“Anything that brings more tourists to New York is good for our restaurants,” said Chuck Hunt, executive vice president of the New York State Restaurant Association.