Economy Slumps; Actors Reduced To Pulling Rickshaws

It’s not that pulling a rickshaw is inherently degrading; there are so many degrading jobs out there, and if someone wants to pull one of these mofos for big-ass tips, more power to them. Still, you have to wonder who exactly rides in rickshaws. And as New York Magazine explains we’re talking about the old-school dude-on-foot-pulling-a-cart kind of rickshaw, not those newfangled cycle rickshaws:

Those droopy workhorses on Central Park South have nothing on Jeff Iftekaruddin, a 30-year-old actor, musician, and, now, rickshaw beast of burden. He can drag up to 600 pounds of tourist all over midtown, charging $40 for a twenty-minute ride. Still, he admits, “Some people don’t like the rickshaws. They find what we do degrading.”

Iftekaruddin’s rickshaw is one of five now deployed around Times Square and Central Park by Shanghai Rickshaw. They should not be confused with the pedicab, of which there are around 250 in the city, according to Frank Luo, Shanghai’s co-owner.

. . .

[Luo’s] partner, Arty Nichols, who already owns a fleet of horsedrawn carriages and pedicabs, thinks it’s the next big thing: “People don’t come to New York to take a rickshaw ride . . . yet.”

Nichols estimates the pullers — typically immigrants, actors, and athletes — make about $150 for a five-to-six-hour shift, with about two hours of actual pull time. Though Luo admits some get pretty winded, the majority find it’s easier than it looks because the rickshaws are so well balanced. But the appearance of difficulty works in the drivers’ favor. “I think people tip them to death,” says Nichols, “because they really feel these guys are busting their ass.”

Princeton Review: The Hamptons

New York Magazine stumbles upon a great reality TV idea in an item about the Hampton Bays summer pad housing Princeton Review tutors who service the Jitney set:

Achievement doesn’t take the summers off, especially if you’re a kid whose parents are successful enough to have a place in the Hamptons. So in the interests of meritocracy maintenance, cramming for the standardized tests that are the gateways to the best colleges and boarding schools has become as common a summer ritual as horseback-riding lessons. “Nearly everyone’s getting SAT tutoring, and now it’s the same with the SSATs,” says Katheryn Patterson Kempner, daughter-in-law of the late socialite Nan. “If you don’t have a tutor, you’re putting your child at a disadvantage.”

Which is where the Princeton Review beach house comes in, a relatively modest three-bedroom ranch just outside the gold coast, in Hampton Bays. “I love it out here. You don’t get invitations to parties, but there’s a lot of sitting on decks with incredible ocean views,” says Brendan Mernin, one of the “premier tutors” who lives there while charging upwards of $300 an hour to increase the admissions chances of the area’s princelings. Tutors average three to four clients a day. One summer, he twice a week boarded a magnate’s yacht in the Sag Harbor Marina to work with his teenage daughter. “And yeah, I get a great tan.”

There are challenges, of course. Mernin stubbed a toe in the jaws of a real tiger pelt in one mansion foyer. Not only that, but “it’s a victory to get a glass of water with ice” at some of these homes, says Jonathan Arak. He’s tutoring his third Kempner child this summer (for the record, the Kempners don’t stint on the ice). “Some kids can’t be bothered to concentrate when they’re thinking about that night’s party, or last night’s,” he says. “And when you’re charging $7,500 for just the basic SAT preparation, parents have very high expectations. It’s not easy explaining that junior’s not going to score 1400 no matter how much they pay me.”

No ice? That’s the only downside? We should be so lucky!

Ice Cream Truck Parked Outside Not Included

What may be the last great mansion on Fifth Avenue is up for sale for $50 million, which would make it New York’s most expensive private home sale ever. And the ice cream guy parked outside claims he knows who is serious about buying it:

Lenny Kravitz, the rock star and budding designer, has visited the house twice, said Mamdouh Nasr, the owner of an ice cream truck that has parked for 28 years on the corner of 82nd Street and Fifth Avenue, just steps from the mansion’s front door.

To Mr. Nasr, it’s clear evidence that the musician, who enjoys buying and fixing up real estate, is buying the home. “To this guy time is money,” Mr. Nasr said. “So why he comes inside two times?”

Where did Lenny Kravitz get all that money? Just asking.

Anyhoo, the Times notes that even at this price, the property is a “fixer-upper”:

As a reporter noted this week on a tour of five of its eight floors, it has grand, well-lighted rooms, 11 marble fireplaces, three elevators and a sweeping brass-and-wrought-iron staircase. A prospective buyer might also note wood paneling buckling in the receiving room, a small kitchen in the former butler’s pantry and a tiny toilet in an otherwise striking marble bathroom.

. . .

Real estate brokers who have seen the property say a buyer would likely have to invest $10 million to renovate it. Because the property is now divided into three apartments – one on the first five floors, a small one-bedroom apartment on the fifth floor and a penthouse on the sixth and seventh floors – and includes a doctor’s office in the basement, anyone who wants to turn it back into a single-family residence will have to do substantial work.

No Accounting For Good Taste

The bumper sticker showing where you summer is rubbing it in our faces and besides which, is totally obnoxious:

You might think it would be enough for someone who vacations in one of the elite communities of the Northeast to slip away quietly on weekends, to recuperate and laze in peace without heckling the less fortunate.

But certain vacationers, apparently, cannot fully enjoy themselves unless they lord their summer plans over those left to swelter in less idyllic realms. Look around on the Long Island Expressway on any Friday evening in summer, and you’ll see Range Rovers by the dozens ghosting by, bearing small oval European-style bumper stickers that announce in clipped code the drivers’ destinations: EH for East Hampton, SGH for Sag Harbor, BH for Bridgehampton. Stroll the Upper East Side, and you’ll see the hot item this summer is a canvas tote bag by Steven Stolman, embroidered with the numbers 11968. Don’t know what that means? Why it’s the ZIP code for Southampton, you poor soul.

Pretty straightforward, right? Not so fast, bub — it wouldn’t be a Sunday Styles Article That Makes You Want To Flee New York without some tidbit that sheds light on all that is truly disturbing about the 7.5 percent that can afford what the Times advertises:

Perhaps the most arcane version of this game, played among the old-money residents of East Hampton and Southampton – and by those who want to be perceived as old-money residents – is the battle to obtain prestigious telephone exchanges for summer homes. Certain exchanges – 283 in Southampton and 324 in East Hampton – have been around for decades, while exchanges like 259, 204 and 907 were created more recently. Eighty percent of the numbers in the Blue Book, the social directory for established Southampton residents, are 283 or 324.

Andrea Ackerman, the manager of the Southampton and Sag Harbor offices of Brown Harris Stevens, the real estate brokerage, said that it is common for buyers of old Hamptons homes to ask sellers to include the older telephone numbers. And for some newer residents, getting stuck with a new-money exchange is a gnawing source of shame.

“I hate to say it, but I’m a 204 guy,” said Jason Binn, the chief executive of Niche Media, which owns the Hamptons and Gotham magazines, and a relatively new Hamptons homeowner. “It was something I had to face up to.”

Desperate Times, Desperate Measures

As trustafarians artificially inflate prices across the city, regular working-class joes are forced to pilfer household goods from their parents, as reported by the Times’ Style Section:

A generation ago, adult children visiting their parents’ homes might have left with a Tupperware container of lasagna. Today, many of them stealthily make off with toiletries, groceries, sometimes clothing and even furniture. It is an apparently widespread practice, born of a sense of entitlement among young adults – and usually amusedly tolerated by parents – that gives new meaning to the phrase “home shopping.” Like most adults, the pilferers have set up their own households, but they seem not to have given up the expectation that their parents should provide for them in certain ways. They loot their parents’ houses to cut costs, or because they would rather not pay for incidentals. Or because they want things with sentimental value.

Sometimes the children ask if they can take things. Often they do not.

. . .

Stephen Kunken, 34, an actor in New York who is an admitted “pillager” of his parents’ possessions, said he rationalized that his parents had too much stuff and that he was both “trimming the fat” and “liberating” things. “I thought: ‘These poor things. These are never going to get used. I’m going to liberate them and bring them into the city,’ ” he said.

Through the years Mr. Kunken has taken briefcases, a slide projector, an electric toothbrush, razors, blank tapes, paper towels, soap and bottles of wine.

His parents did not know their wine was missing until he served it to them at a party at his Brooklyn apartment. “We had our own wine that he stole,” his mother, Ginny Kunken, said. “It was very nice that he invited us.”

His parents are accustomed to finding things missing. “What have they taken?” said her husband, Fred Kunken, a dentist from Upper Brookville, N.Y., referring to Stephen and his 37-year-old brother, Jeffrey. “What haven’t they taken? They’ve taken just about every bit of my clothing, from my underwear and socks to –”

“Bathing suits,” his wife interjected, laughing.

“All of a sudden my razors disappear,” Dr. Kunken said. “Shaving cream disappears. It’s gotten to the point that if I see them coming, and if it’s something I just got that I want to wear, I hide it.”

To be sure, it’s quite possible that the subjects’ professions have something to do with it. Age, Sex, Profession and Neighborhood of interviewees in article follows:

• F, 24, Fashion Model, Manhattan
• M, 34, Actor, Brooklyn
• F, 26, Musician, Brooklyn
• F, 31, Actress, [No Neighborhood Mentioned]
• F, 24, “campus recruiter for a financial institution,” [No Neighborhood Mentioned]

You see where we’re going with this . . .

Is there any end in sight? Researchers are optimistic:

The phrase “emerging adulthood” does imply that these sticky fingers will eventually become independent. Is there a specific age by which one should finally accept the responsibility of paying one’s way? Psychologists and economists point to the early or mid-30’s.

“By the early 30’s the assistance that kids are receiving from their parents dissipates strongly,” said Robert F. Schoeni, an associate professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “The kids are establishing their careers, they’re getting better-paid jobs, getting married.”

Ms. [Nicole] Atkins, who has decorated her Brooklyn apartment with shot glasses, candles, Mexican marionettes and boxing gloves from her parents’ house in Neptune, N.J., says she will cease her home shopping once she gets married and has a family.

“If I had kids and a husband, and I was still taking stuff from my parents,” she said, “that would be really lame.”