Sub-Sub-Sub Sublet

Converted dining rooms, converted living rooms, a sheet or shower curtain for a door . . . now the Times reports on a $35-per-month hole in the wall, which literally is a hole in the wall:

One night recently, a group of architecture students staying up late in a loft in Brooklyn took to amusing themselves by stuffing a mattress into a hole cut into the wall above a bedroom door. Then they tried the mattress out for comfort. Not half bad! It occurred to one of them, Nick Freeman, that people might pay money to call that elevated mattress home.

So Mr. Freeman posted an ad on the Web site Craigslist: “$35 — elevated mattress-sized space between rooms.” He used a minimalist pitch. “Opening between hall and room available for long/short-term use, accessible by ladder, sheets and pillows not provided.” The ad went up around noon, and by the end of that day, Mr. Freeman had a dozen potential takers.

“I was actually surprised with the amount of places that fall into that category — kind of like ‘I’ll rent a corner,’ ” said Drew Hart, who answered the ad. “I went to look at a place recently in Queens; I wasn’t aware until I got there that it was a cloth shower curtain separating part of the living room.”

. . .

The mattress episode began sometime before dawn on Jan. 16. John Ivanoff, a 22-year-old architecture student at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, who shares the 1,500-square-foot apartment on Taaffe Place with five others — the person with the only room with a real window pays an extra $50 in rent — said he and his roommates and Mr. Freeman, a friend, had stayed up drinking and suddenly decided to stuff a spare mattress into the rectangular hole cut into the wall above one bedroom door.

“There were three of us up there at one time,” Mr. Freeman recalled. “All three of us hung out there. After the night was done, I said it would be funny if I put this on a room-share thing on Craigslist and see if anyone responds.”

One who did was Adam Kriney, a 29-year-old experimental jazz drummer “looking for living spaces for under $200, if possible,” as he put it later. He had given up his share in an apartment in Williamsburg and had been staying on various couches of friends.

“Look, I’m looking to live in a crawl space,” said Mr. Kriney, who said he spent his money on rehearsal space. “What do I really need besides my laptop, a sleeping bag and a suitcase?”

The mattress ad caught his eye.

“I kind of thought it was like a cubby cubbyhole where I could hang out,” Mr. Kriney said in an interview. “I didn’t realize it was suspended. Which isn’t a problem. That wouldn’t be a strange thing. It’s just where I lay my head. I’m only here to do my music.”

. . .

An open house for the mattress was scheduled for that Saturday, Jan. 21, between 6 and 9 p.m. Mr. Hart arrived, checked out the real estate and was willing to give it a shot. But, according to Mr. Freeman, the existing inhabitant of the bedroom in question was unenthusiastic. “Pretty much that was the point where it fizzled out,” Mr. Freeman said.

If You Can’t Beat Them, Load Them Up On Liquor And Babes At Scores So That They Are Ineffectual The Next Day

The Post reports on a sexual harrassment suit filed against Knicks President and NBA Hall-of-Famer Isiah Thomas:

Isiah Thomas is a foul-mouthed, slobbering harasser who propositioned the Knicks’ former top marketing exec for sex — and even plotted to lure opposing teams to boozy strip joints to throw off their games, an explosive new lawsuit charges.

“I know you think I’m inappropriate, but I’m in love with you,” Knick President Thomas allegedly cooed to statuesque, then-Vice President Anucha Browne Sanders, according to her suit, which was filed in Manhattan yesterday.

But the salacious details aren’t what is interesting. Instead, check out Thomas’ inventive James-Bondish strategy to throw off visiting teams:

One source close to the Knick prez insisted that Thomas “is a happily married man — I don’t think [Sanders] was even on his radar. ”

But Sanders — a former IBM honcho with an impressive record who once helped oversee marketing for that firm’s Olympics sponsorship — charges that Thomas’ repulsive behavior wasn’t limited to her.

In October 2004, “a female employee of the Knicks told Sanders that Thomas had instructed her to flirt with certain men connected to the game and make them happy,” her suit alleges.

Then early last year, “Thomas told [her] he was pushing to get more Sunday noon games on the schedule,” the lawsuit says.

“Thomas said he was working with the concierges of the hotels frequented by the visiting teams to have the concierges direct players to certain nightclubs — including strip clubs — that Thomas had established relationships with.

“Thomas said that his plan was to induce visiting players to go to these clubs on Saturday night and get them intoxicated so that they would not be prepared to play on Sunday,” she says in the suit.

The question is whether the strategy worked. The 2004-05 Knicks went 33-49, 22-19 at home — their worst home record since the 2001-02 season.

Bigger Than A Football Field, Bigger Than A Futbol Field — Introducing The 350-Foot-Wide Billboard

The question remains whether anyone will be able to read a 350-foot-wide billboard:

The two-block-long facade of the James A. Farley Post Office is due to become a giant billboard.

Empire State Development Corp. is accepting bids from ad firms that would put up displays on scaffolding now in place for exterior restoration work.

The canvas being offered on the landmark building — from March 1 until the scaffolding comes down next fall — is 350 feet long and 60 feet high.

Would You Like To Come Up And See My Etchings?

The Times’ Clyde Haberman (extracted from captivity like a character on 24) tells us something we didn’t know:

We’re not talking about the usual chickenlike scratching in the glass that most riders barely notice anymore because it has been routine for so long. The problem now is large white billows of undecipherable scribbling. In some instances, they cover entire windows, conjuring up memories of darker times when a subway ride sometimes felt like a creepy scene out of “Death Wish.”

In the old days, the imbecility was typically sprayed in black paint, on nearly every surface. (Those who glamorize the vandals often refer to them even today as “graffiti writers,” as if they were all Thomas Pynchons and Toni Morrisons.)

The new outrages, confined for now to windows, are done in what looks like white paint. It isn’t. It is the kind of etching acid used by artists who work with glass. In the hands of the new Visigoths, the acid is liberally sprayed or brushed onto train windows so that it eats into the glass, impossible to erase. [Emph. added]

MTA officials note that removing the window is “prohibitively expensive” — $130 for a larger window.

Bonus Point: Charles Chea’s Graffiti Takeover, Bombing, & Racism.

Oy, Pass The Aspirin

By tomorrow night, a Brooklyn man will have visited 1,000 bars this year:

Raise a glass to Dan Freeman.

The 61-year-old Brooklyn barhopper is set tonight to mark the end of a quest to down at least one drink in 1,000 pubs in 2005.

Freeman’s boozy odyssey — which has led him to watering holes in three states, four countries and five boroughs — will wind down on the Bowery with a glass of champagne at bar No. 1,000, the Pioneer.

“It seems somehow appropriate to finish up on the Bowery,” said Freeman, who retired from his own consulting firm. “I’m sure that’s where many people thought I’d finish up anyway.”

His project is of course chronicled on a blog, 1000 Bars.