$150 Million Could Fund Tenafly’s Budget Needs For Six Years

But I guess you have a better view at 15 CPW:

Remember that rumored $90 million listing at 15 Central Park West? It was nothing.

Dolly Lenz, New York City’s most gargantuan real estate agent, broke astounding news at Portofio’s Four Seasons get-together this morning: “There are a few apartments on the market at 15 CPW, a new development on Central Park West, asking somewhere between $80 and $125 million — three different apartments — and one quietly on the market at $150 million,” she said.

Wowzah. Brokers have already made it known that two condos in the Robert A.M. Stern-designed blockbuster building are being offered at $80 and $90 million, so Ms. Lenz’s quote not only means that there’s a third apartment on the market in the building for somewhere between $80 and $125 million, but that there’s a fourth spread whose owner wants $150 million.

That would be more than any single-family residential property in New York City has ever asked for.

See also: Borough of Tenafly, New Jersey 2008 Municipal Budget.

What Part Of 85 Activists Murdered, The Opposition Pulling Out Of A Runoff, Toddlers Having Their Legs Shattered And Elderly People Seeing Their Arms Broken Do You Not Understand?*

Clyde Haberman can’t say it so I will — Charles Barron is totally fucking disgusting for apologizing for Robert Mugabe in 2008. Wow:

Foreign leaders aren’t routinely honored with receptions at New York’s City Hall. In the last two decades, as best as we can tell, only two Africans have received this red-carpet treatment.

One was the revered Nelson Mandela. That was in 1990, when David N. Dinkins was mayor. Mr. Mandela had been released four months earlier from his 27 years of imprisonment in South Africa.

The other leader was President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Not many people put his name and “revered” together.

Perhaps they once did, when he led the liberation of his country, then called Rhodesia, from oppressive rule by its white minority. But by 2002, when he was ushered into New York’s seat of democracy, he was a certified human rights disaster.

Rights groups condemned him for jailing and torturing political opponents, for repressing independent-minded judges and journalists, for starving many of his people by denying government food aid to opposition-dominated districts.

His signature program, the seizure of white-owned farms, was blamed for contributing to mass hunger and for amounting to a land grab that benefited only his loyalists.

This was the man warmly welcomed at City Hall under the aegis of the City Council’s Black, Hispanic and Asian Caucus. His main host was Councilman Charles Barron of Brooklyn, a former Black Panther who has lost none of his zest for revolutionary oratory, 1960s-style.

Only a dozen of the Council’s 51 members attended the event. But the many who stayed away, fearing the third-rail potential of a racially sensitive issue, acquiesced with their silence. Gifford Miller, then the Council speaker, issued a statement calling the reception a matter of free speech.

Six years later, the human-rights situation in Zimbabwe has hardly improved. A runoff presidential election set for Friday has been marked by violence, with dozens of opposition supporters reported to have been killed. The opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, though he won the first election round, withdrew from the race and took refuge in the Dutch Embassy. On Wednesday, no less than Mr. Mandela registered strong disapproval, condemning the “tragic failure of leadership” in Zimbabwe.

Given all that, might Mr. Barron harbor second thoughts about having brought Mr. Mugabe into City Hall?

“Absolutely not,” the councilman said.

“Does he do things that I disagree with? Yes,” Mr. Barron said. But he clearly still regards Mr. Mugabe as a liberator more than an oppressor. “You didn’t care about black Africans when whites were killing them in Rhodesia,” he said. As he sees it, the real reason that Mr. Mugabe has come under strong attack from the West is the confiscation of white-owned farms.

Echoing Mr. Mugabe’s party line, he suggested that Mr. Tsvangirai is a tool of “British imperialism and the United States as well.” As for political violence, “I don’t think we can deny people are dying,” Mr. Barron said. “Who’s responsible and how many — we need to really get reports other than from the opposition.”

*Or do you not read the paper, moron?

Plus, It Sounds Fun, Like Skiing

Wow — they should have a black diamond line for all sorts of things — entering the subway, walking in Midtown, navigating the counter at Katz’s, etc.:

The Transportation Security Administration introduced a new screening system at La Guardia Airport on Wednesday that tries to speed things up — and reduce anxiety and frustration — by asking travelers to choose a line based on their familiarity with checkpoint procedures.

The system relies on travelers to sort themselves into three groups, each assigned a color and shape: a green circle for families with small children and strollers, groups, people needing special assistance and those new to flying; a blue square for casual travelers who are familiar with security checkpoint procedures and have multiple carry-on bags; and a black diamond for expert travelers who are well-versed in the procedures.

Expert travelers fly more than twice a month, travel light, and are “always ready with items removed” (no metal, no shoes). Elite-status members of frequent-flyer programs are included in this category.

La Guardia is the 24th airport to implement the program, which began in Salt Lake City and Denver in February.

. . .

Skeptics have suggested, however, that people are likely to overestimate their abilities to get through a line quickly, and that relying on passengers to sort themselves is a recipe for failure.

Those in charge of the Self-Select Lanes program, as the authorities are calling it, said such worries were unfounded.

“It’s kind of like going to the line for 10 items at the grocery store,” said the program’s national director, Earl Morris. “Nobody wants to be that person with 20 items holding everyone else up. It’s peer pressure.”

Slow News Day

This just in — U.N. diplomats still haven’t paid their parking tickets:

More than a decade after Mayor Rudy Giuliani declared war on diplomatic scofflaws over unpaid parking tickets, the city is still owed more than $18 million, leaving many New Yorkers enraged.

“They should pay,” said Carmen Mercer, 35, of Bedford-Stuyvesant, standing outside a midtown DMV office. “Everybody else has to pay. It comes with the responsibility of having a car.”

Deadbeat nations are clearly in no rush to pay off their debts, the vast majority of which were incurred before a 2002 agreement provided more parking spaces for them. That deal has cut the number of new tickets issued by 94 percent and helped lower the total owed to the city from more than $21 million.

Nevertheless, the total owed has been stuck at $18 million since at least 2005. Some 175 countries are to blame for the missing pot of money, with Egypt and Kuwait leading the list of offenders.

After all, $18 million could be used to build one-tenth of the High Line:

City officials and the Friends of the High Line presented the final design on Wednesday for the first phase of the High Line, the $170 million park that is under construction on the West Side of Manhattan and has been called one of New York City’s more distinctive public projects.

The park, modeled loosely on the Promenade Plantée in Paris, is being built on a 1.45-mile elevated freight rail structure that stretches 22 blocks, from Gansevoort Street to 34th Street, near the Hudson River. The rail structure, built to support two fully loaded freight trains, was built from 1929 to 1934 when the West Side was a freight-transportation hub, but has been unused for decades. The tracks are 30 to 60 feet wide and 18 to 30 feet above the ground.

Ground was broken in April 2006. Over the past two years, crews have been constructing the first, $85 million segment of the 6.7-acre park, which is estimated to cost $170 million and is financed by federal, city and private money.

Location Scout: UN, High Line.

Study Sponsored By Consumer Goods Company That Shall Remain Nameless Because These Kinds Of Studies Are Generally Stupid . . .

. . . but I can’t believe someone is actually named “Jay Gooch”. I can’t believe he’s come this far since the days of terrorizing Gary Coleman:

Gotham took first for overall sweat production in a new study — although it came in only 68th among sweatiest cities per capita. The shining Apple produces an estimated 1.3 million gallons of sweat per hour — enough to fill the Central Park Reservoir in one summer month.

New Yorkers collectively outsweat Los Angeles, Chicago and even Houston.

For the fifth year in a row, Phoenix, Ariz., was named the sweatiest U.S. city with an average summer temperature of 95.1 degrees, according to sweat expert Dr. Jay Gooch.

And Gooch said New York’s humidity doesn’t make New Yorkers sweat more — it only increases the “misery factor.”