She Pays The Rent

There are two ways to respond to the news that “increasingly” parents are cutting off Williamsburg trustafarians. One, relief that the parental stimulus money that has disturbed and bubbled the economic ecosystem in the outer boroughs, driving up prices of crappy small rental apartments and other services (similar to the bubbling of the Manhattan real estate ecosystem by wealthy people who turn crappy small rental apartments into pied-a-terres and drive up the prices for people who actually live and work in the city), may be waning, bringing costs back down to reality for those who do not get stimulus checks. The other way to respond is something along the lines of “Hahahahahahahahaha!”:

For the past five years, Ernie DiGiacomo has been able to count on parents to guarantee the $1,500 to $2,500 rents he charges for the 15 apartments he owns in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. When he called renters who had missed payments, he often heard, “My parents will send you a check.”

But in the past six months, the parents are pulling back financial help, he said, and as a result, he has watched more renters move out.

“Most of them are moving back with parents,” Mr. DiGiacomo said.

Luis Illades, an owner of the Urban Rustic Market and Cafe on North 12th Street, said he had seen a steady number of applicants, in their late 20s, who had never held paid jobs: They were interns at a modeling agency, for example, or worked at a college radio station. In some cases, applicants have stormed out of the market after hearing the job requirements.

“They say, ‘You want me to work eight hours?’ ” Mr. Illades said. “There is a bubble bursting.”

Famed for its concentration of heavily subsidized 20-something residents — also nicknamed trust-funders or trustafarians — Williamsburg is showing signs of trouble. Parents whose money helped fuel one of the city’s most radical gentrifications in recent years have stopped buying their children new luxury condos, subsidizing rents and providing cash to spend at Bedford Avenue’s boutiques and coffee houses.

. . .

The cutbacks for the more privileged residents are a welcome change for locals who have struggled to support themselves without parental help.

Katie Deedy, 27, an artist, works two bartending jobs to shore up her designer wallpaper business. Gazing out from the bar at the patrons playing darts and sipping bloody marys during a Sunday shift at the Brooklyn Ale House, she described how refreshing it felt not being the only local resident trying to live on less.

“If I’m going to be completely honest, it does make me feel a little bit better,” she said. “It’s bringing a lot of Williamsburg back to reality.”

The Secret Plan To Drive Up Housing Prices Again

And while you’re at it, compare and contrast to the effects of eliminating the more media-friendly M8:

Some bus riders would be stranded by bus cuts leaving them up to 2 miles from the nearest mass transit option, according to an MTA study.

Residents in four areas on the city’s border face the longest treks if the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s array of doomsday service cuts go into effect: the far West Side of Manhattan; Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn; Woodlawn, the Bronx, and Oakwood Beach, Staten Island, according to an impact study done in connection with the authority’s planned service cuts.

“It’s not right to leave us stranded,” said house cleaner Linda Girron, who works six days a week and lives at 49th St. and 11th Ave. “The bus is my only way of getting to work. We can’t get anywhere without the bus.”

Since last year, transit officials have warned they’d have to make severe service cuts to fill massive budget gaps if the state doesn’t adopt a bailout.

On the chopping block is weekend service on the crosstown M50 route used by Girron. Its demise would leave some workers and residents west of 11th Ave. a mile from mass transit, according to the study.

Residents in Gerritsen Beach, a corner of Brooklyn near Sheepshead Bay, would fare worse during the wee hours of the morning. Some parts of the neighborhood would be nearly 2 miles from another bus route if the B31 is shut down as planned between 1:30 and 4:30 a.m.

That’s bad news for late-shift workers like Alex Popov, 28, who works at a Times Square restaurant. He rides the B31 between 2 and 3 a.m. on his way home. “I need this bus,” Popov said.

On the city’s northern border, Woodlawn residents may lose the Bx34, which runs along Katonah Ave., the heart of the neighborhood, connecting with the last stop on the No. 4 subway line. Some sections of Woodlawn would be left with “no transit service within a walkable distance” during some overnight hours, the study states.

Scoreboard, Baby!

That’s it. Just “scoreboard.” We don’t even want to buy something in this stupid city; we just want you to admit that you were wrong all along:

For years, Halstead Property’s Richard Grossman has run a boot camp, teaching agents how to get buyers approved by co-op boards. In it, he presents four hypothetical applicant profiles. The first is a professional — a teacher, perhaps — with an average income but an outsize down payment. The second is a bonus-dependent candidate like a banker, who makes $80,000 and is putting down the minimum, but has a bonus three times his salary. The third, a non–Wall Streeter, earns somewhere in the low six figures and has a small bonus and a standard down payment, and the fourth, a first-time buyer with a good job, relies on relatives to cobble together a decent down payment.

In the past, says Grossman, agents invariably picked the financier as the most board-worthy, thanks to his bonus. At last month’s seminar, however, the answers were unanimous: “Go with the teacher.” And that is a big change. “If you were bidding against someone from Wall Street who had this kind of bonus history, you couldn’t compete. First of all, they were willing to outbid you, and second of all, the sellers were willing to take them over somebody else,” says Gumley Haft Kleier president Michele Kleier. “Bonus used to be the favorite word in everybody’s vocabulary. Now salary is a much more attractive word.” Admits one Upper West Side board member: “We’re definitely cautious across the board now, especially when someone’s touting their bonus.”

Memo Fr. CEO Jamie Dimon To Marketing/Special Events: Set Up Mtg. With Professional Bowlers Association Abt. Sponsorship Opportunities

I don’t think it’s so much that they’re sponsoring an event — no one expects banks not to advertise, for example — as it is which event they decided to sponsor:

Despite receiving a whopping $28 billion in federal taxpayer funds, JPMorgan Chase and American Express spent $125,000 to sponsor a weeklong squash tournament at Grand Central Terminal.

The six-day event — known as the “Tournament of Champions” — ended Jan. 29 and drew about 200,000 fans to what was billed as one of the “world’s premier squash championships” at the same time as lawmakers on Capitol Hill were denouncing wasteful Wall Street spending.

Reps at JPMorgan Chase declined to specify how much it spent on the tournament, but a source close to the deal told Fox News Channel it was roughly $100,000.

American Express officials also declined to provide an amount, but the company is believed to have spent $25,000, a source told Fox News Channel.

Critics have said companies should not be sponsoring sporting events if they’re getting federal bailout money.

Not Out Of Touch At All!

Don’t worry — the participants and organizers of this year’s International Debutante Ball are clued in to the pain each of us feels:

Champagne flowed. Men in tails waltzed and fox-trotted with debutantes in long white gowns to music by the 12-piece Lester Lanin Orchestra, a fixture at the ball almost since its inception in 1954. And shortly before midnight, the young debutantes, each flanked by a civilian and military escort, ascended the stage for a deep curtsy.

But the experienced hands, including mothers like the duchesse who made their own debuts in society in this very ballroom, could see the subtle difference in the layout of the hall. And there were fewer debutantes, 47 this year rather than the 58 at the last biennial ball in 2006, and far fewer guests — 662 instead of 976.

The director of the ball, Margaret Hedberg, brushed off the $14,000 cost of a table — “Watches cost more,” she said — although she acknowledged that perhaps the deepening recession accounted for the smaller crowd.

. . .

Looking back on past recessions, she said, “We got through ’87 and ’93, and life does have a way of going on.

“I don’t mean it in a flippant way, but romance and having fun and looking pretty — I hope that doesn’t go away.”

Except what happened in 1987 or 1993? I thought the earlier recessions happened in 1980-82 and 1990-91 . . .