Everything You Want Him To Be

Brian Carter, our favorite broker (although to be fair, that’s not saying much), adjusts his work style by “playing dumb”:

No longer the grey voice of reason and experience, I’ve decided that if a client believes the Upper East Side is a great place to explore cutting edge nightlife, it’s not my job to disagree. I may see the neighborhood as an unfortunate blend of the ultra rich and wildly immature, a sort of a large fraternity mixer sponsored by corporate donors who have to double as chaperones, but that’s just my opinion.

If they have to live in the Village because that’s where Sarah Jessica Parker lives, then to the Village we shall go. I’ll then admit to almost having moved there myself for the exact same reason. They are somehow under the impression that Hells Kitchen is a dangerous and drug infested neighborhood where criminals are forced to mug each other because no one else will venture there. I’ll confess that I had no idea and will thank them for the tip. In the meantime we should keep looking on the Upper West Side where crime doesn’t exist.

. . .

In the past, I’ve allowed my personal experience and taste to dictate my sales technique, naively believing that informing and educating renters would be rewarded with loyalty. But that hasn’t been the case. The “honesty is the best policy” approach in this business has gotten me nominal results, but plenty of dinner invitations and comments like, “Sorry about finding our place with that other jerk, but we should really hang out sometime.” I guess, but it seems pretty weird to me that somehow these people missed the fact that I was working. My new approach of agreeing with absolutely every misguided idea that renters come up with and enthusiastically sharing in their fantasies is going to pay big dividends. And they’ll never mistake me for a friend again.

I don’t want to start worrying about Carter, but it may be getting more difficult for brokers:

In a step toward opening up New York’s real estate marketplace, the Real Estate Board of New York announced yesterday that it plans to launch a public Internet portal containing all the exclusive apartment sales and rental listings of its 319 members, including the city’s biggest brokerages.

While similar systems exist in many real estate markets around the country, establishing a comprehensive, shared, and free listing system on the Web has been a long, hard slog in New York City. Earlier attempts at cooperation among the city’s largest and most competitive real estate firms crashed and burned amid squabbling.

Currently, brokers with member firms must share information with one another about their exclusive listings within 72 hours, and about 10,000 to 15,000 sales and rental listings are available to brokers from member firms. The new portal, to be released early next year with the fanfare of a seven-figure advertising budget, would offer these listings online to the public.

Real Life Terry Malloy Fights For His Right To Enjoy Wildlife

But “wildlife” is obviously in the eye of the beholder:

David Casciello, 39, who has lived on Huntington Ave. in Schuylerville his whole life, has turned his narrow yard into an outdoor aviary, filling feeders that attract hundreds of pigeons, sparrows, finches and even monk parakeets.

“I’ve always had a life-long interest in wildlife and in birds,” Casciello, who cares for his elderly parents full-time, said as he tossed a peanut to a squirrel scurrying at his feet. “The sparrows are my favorite.”

But some neighbors see Casciello’s passion as a major nuisance and health hazard, and they are trying to enlist city officials to stop the feeding frenzy.

“This wacko is a pigeon freak,” grumbled Joe McDermott, 68. “He’s got to be told to take the pigeons to the park or someplace where they don’t do damage to anybody.”

McDermott said he had to close his swimming pool because of bird droppings. He blames his dog’s fleas on the birds.

Other neighbors say the avian visitors make their children sick. They also have to spend hours cleaning bird droppings off their cars and roofs.

Other neighbors seem to have an ulterior motive:

“You could probably eat these birds, that’s how clean they are,” said Alan Roman, 35, a general contractor. “It was sad to see these people gang up on him the way they are. The guy, all he does is care for his birds and make sure everything is clean.”

With Any Luck This Means The Economy Is Correcting Itself

Time was, “trend-spotting reporters eager for pampered-pooch stories” couldn’t get enough of WoofSpa. Oh how times have changed:

To peek inside the windows of the WoofSpa and Resort at 678 Hudson Street was once to glimpse a real-life Cassius Marcellus Coolidge painting in action: Dogs of every breed lounged on leather dog furniture in the lobby. Multicolored Andy Warhol–esque portraits of the proprietor’s Wheaten Terriers adorned the walls. And for non-canine glitz, the likes of Ed Burns, Julianne Moore, Lili Taylor, Molly Ringwald and Molly Shannon coming through the front doors was unbeatable.

But this fall, a sign was posted to the entrance, dated Sept. 15, announcing that the pet spa had been “forced out” of its lease.

In fact, the departure of WoofSpa from the meatpacking district was the culmination of a prolonged legal struggle with its landlord over tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid rent, as well as numerous regulatory violations and customer complaints of less-than-luxurious animal accommodations.

. . .

The sudden shuttering came as little surprise to some disgruntled patrons, who became dissatisfied with the upscale dog-hotel.

“With the fake Le Corbusier sofas and fake Warhols, it was very much geared toward the West Village aesthetic done doggie-style,” said one neighborhood dog owner and former client, who wanted her name—and that of her precious pooch—withheld. “[WoofSpa proprietor] Keith [Acker] really tapped into something, knowing that there was a certain comfort level that us West Village–meatpacking [district]–Chelsea residents felt in leaving our dogs somewhere stylish.”

Conversations with several patrons revealed that however luxurious-looking the place may have been, a kennel is still finally an indoor place where lots of dogs spend lots of time; dogs with rich owners, it turns out, don’t smell any better than the less fortunate of their species, making the prospect of an upscale kennel seem, at best, paradoxical.

Only In New York Does $145,000 Qualify As “Middle-Income”

As some decry the plan to bring poor people into the neighborhood, a study notes that most Queens residents would not be able to afford it in the first place:

Praised as a major advance for affordable housing in Queens, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plan to build 5,000 middle-income rental units on the Long Island City waterfront would actually exclude more than 60 percent of Queens residents, notes a report that will be released today by the Pratt Center for Community Development.

The median income in Queens was $45,000 last year, but the income required to qualify for the new apartments would fall between $60,000 and $145,000 a year for a family of four. Rents would run from $1,200 to $2,500 a month.

Bloomberg announced his proposal for a mixed-income housing complex on 24 acres in Queens West just two days after the private sale of the 110 apartment buildings that make up the middle-class haven of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village. The new Queens development was hailed as the city’s largest middle-income housing development since 1974, when the 5,888-unit Starrett City was built in Brooklyn. Bloomberg promised the new project would “provide needed housing for the real backbone of our city — our teachers, nurses, police officers.”

“But the majority of teachers, police officers, firefighters and nurses in Queens earn less than the $60,000 cutoff for Queens West,” pointed out Marnie McGregor, a senior policy analyst at the Pratt Center and the author of the report.

Heat Just Became More Expensive

The mayor’s campaign to stanch the flow of illegal guns has raised prices on the black market and encouraged bad people to engage in more cigarette smuggling:

The price of illegally acquired guns has been rising in the city since the mayor began his campaign against “the scourge of illegal guns” in January, a police source said.

Many handguns are selling for about $200 more than they were, averaging about $700 to $1,000 apiece, the source said. Rifles are selling for about $300 more, averaging between $1,200 and $1,500, the source said.

The black market for guns operates like any other market, experts said yesterday, meaning that when pressures are put on supply or demand, prices tend to rise.

“It’s a commodity like any other commodity,” a former agent and manager at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, William Vizzard, said. Mr. Vizzard, a professor at California State University, Sacramento, said pressure exerted on gun traffickers by the BATFE and the New York Police Department have likely made many criminals turn to less risky ventures, such as cigarette smuggling.