Monday, April 1, 2019
Right now, the answer is Brooklyn. 8 of the top 10 neighborhoods where sellers regularly got over asking price in the last 12 months are in Brooklyn, the other 2 in Queens. By contrast, 6 of the bottom 10 are in Manhattan. Does that mean that there are bargains out there, somewhere? Unlikely.
I
spent so much time last week speaking on the telephone to Air France,
Road Scholar and its insurer about my (still) missing luggage that I
fell behind in my reading. Therefore, I read most of the March 24th
issue of the New York Times Magazine yesterday, one week late.
I'm glad that I finally found the time, because it had several
fascinating articles dealing with travel.
While
some of the articles were appropriately exotic about people and places
outside my experience, one article brought back turbulent memories,
"We're All In This Together," taking a train across the United States.
The author and her trip seem quite different from me and mine, but I was
taken back to September 1976. My Original Wife (MOW) and I decided to
attend my cousin Michael's wedding in New Jersey. He had, after all,
been one of my very few relatives who attended ours in California almost
4 years earlier. MOW had taken an extended vacation in Western Europe
shortly before I met her, having a wonderful time traveling country to
country by train. She hoped to emulate it going coast to coast in
America. After all this time, I don't recall my reaction to her
suggestion, although I don't imagine that I jumped for joy. However, with the addition of her brother to our party, I went
along figuratively and literally.
The
train ride was hellish. We only had sleeping accommodations for small
segments of the trip -- Kansas City to Chicago, for instance. It seemed
interminable. We left Los Angeles on Sunday afternoon and got to New
York midday Wednesday, 60-something hours. And MOW and I fought
bitterly. About what? Who knows, but our marriage had reached a point
where any excuse to battle was seized upon, I regret to say. Even her
brother's moderating presence (we both trusted and respected him) was
insufficient. Thinking back now, I'm surprised that we stayed married
three more years.
Other
aspects of the trip, the wedding, sightseeing in New York, driving
around New England, were pleasant enough, somehow not spoiled by our
emotional chasm. Possibly, fresh air had a salutary effect. We even had a pair of good experiences. On the
necessary layover in Chicago eastbound, we ate at the original Uno Pizzeria,
29 East Ohio Street, well before it went national in 1979, which I knew
from business trips to Chicago. On the way back, we bought two
uncooked pizzas and took them home, with the cooperation of the dining
car staff, to cook in Los Angeles. Maybe this served as a temporary
balm to our very raw nerves.
. . .
. . .
The weekend's real estate section, addressing local property, asks "Where Will Sellers Get What They're Asking?" https://www.nytimes.
Right now, the answer is Brooklyn. 8 of the top 10 neighborhoods where sellers regularly got over asking price in the last 12 months are in Brooklyn, the other 2 in Queens. By contrast, 6 of the bottom 10 are in Manhattan. Does that mean that there are bargains out there, somewhere? Unlikely.
. . .
Several
articles this weekend discussed efforts by social media to
curb/control/contain hate speech or incendiary rhetoric. I fear that
this will prove a fruitless pursuit, forgetting for a moment libertarian
objections to censorship. Ultimately, who will police the policemen?
I
know that there are people who believe that some (or all) of the child
victims of the Sandy Hook school massacre are alive and well,
participants in a giant hoax. They read it on the Internet, after all.
Even though they are adults, able to zip
up their pants or put on their brassieres, they seem unable to discern
folly in a couple of sentences of text. Suppressing one outlet
or more of such bilge, I fear, will not stop the flow of disinformation,
restore the gullible to reason or give the fearmonger a bright, new
outlook on life. Generally, the antidote to suspect speech is more
speech. It's not a perfect solution, but I am skeptical of any other.
. . .
Overnight,
I dreamt that my doorman greeted me with a broad smile, indicating that
my luggage had arrived. It was only a dream.
Tuesday, April 2, 2019
Connie and David gave us a copy of The 100 Most Jewish Foods,
a new book edited by Alana Newhouse. It includes recipes and
commentary by the likes of Ruth Reichl, Mimi Sheraton and Joan Nathan.
You don't have to be Jewish. Tom Colicchio, a very successful local
chef and Italian restauranteur, writes about whitefish salad. And,
Chinese food merits a listing without question, as does Stella D'oro
Swiss Fudge Cookies.
The entries
are alphabetical; an attempt to prioritize the items would end
friendships. Some of them are foreign even to a fresser like me. The
book is obviously informative and, as a house gift, might get you
invited back.
. . .
. . .
Punta
Cana. Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. This afternoon, I got positive
confirmation that my suitcase is at the Punta Cana International
Airport. I have before me a photograph of the suitcase that left
Casablanca with me on Thursday, March 21st, on an Air France flight to
Paris, to be transferred to an Air France flight to New York, now
sitting in a storage area in the Punta Cana International Airport.
While
the property claim folks at Air France and Delta (handling US-based
claims) were insisting in conversation each day in this interim that my
bag had been tracked electronically to Paris, a young Delta employee in
Punta Cana was curious about a bag that had been forwarded to a guest at
a nearby resort hotel, only to be refused by him. He was not and never
had been Alan Gotthelf.
Using
a telephone number written on a luggage tag, she sent a "What's App"
message to me, with a photograph of the unwanted bag, unwanted that is
anywhere 1,564 miles south of New York City. A flurry of telephone
calls followed with several very caring staff people at the Punta Cana
International Airport culminating in a promise to put the bag on a Delta
flight to New York on Wednesday.
By
the way, there is one direct Air France flight daily from Paris to
Punta Cana. Otherwise, my bag would have had to fly another
airline, changing planes in one or more of the following cities:
Toronto, Montreal, Miami, Frankfurt, Dallas, Bogota, Washington,
Dusseldorf, Moscow, London, Madrid, Dublin, Chicago, Ft. Lauderdale,
Panama City, Mexico City, Geneva, Zurich, Philadelphia, Charlotte or
Newark. That might have been too demanding of one suitcase traveling alone.
Thursday, April 4, 2019
The Wall Street Journal examines why "[t]he New York Mets hit well in almost every baseball stadium in the majors — except their own." https://www.wsj.com/
The Wall Street Journal examines why "[t]he New York Mets hit well in almost every baseball stadium in the majors — except their own." https://www.wsj.com/
Many
players blame the wind coming in from Flushing Bay that keeps balls in
the stadium and playable. That's almost as great a concern as the president's
claim that wind turbines cause cancer.
https://www.desmoinesregister.
. . .
https://www.desmoinesregister.
. . .
Katia Mesel is a Brazilian filmmaker, whose documentary The Rock and the Star,
tells the story of the first Jewish colony in the Americas, in Recife,
Brazil, her hometown. She is here for its showing at the New York
Public Library. Today, Stony Brook Steve and I took her for a bit of a
walk around lower Manhattan (then Nieuw Amsterdam), where 23 Jews from
Recife landed in 1654.
Steve led the way until I took over as we approached Chinatown, our lunch destination. Befitting such a talented guest from afar, Wo Hop, 17 Mott Street, Chinatown’s gift to humanity, was the inevitable choice. The beef chow fun ($8.25) and the shrimps in lobster sauce over shrimp fried rice ($14.95) may have earned a future film role.
. . .
8 P.M. tonight, our
doorman phoned to tell us that our luggage had arrived, exactly 2 weeks
after we returned to Palazzo di Gotthelf. It had flown in from Punta
Cana yesterday, arriving at JFK before 6 P.M., where it sat for another
day before traveling the last 19 miles over land.
Apparently
missing are a pair of my shoes, two sweatshirts, a quilted jacket
belonging to my young bride, a Baggallini® folding satchel borrowed from
Next Door Susan, my prescription sunglasses and two 100 ml. containers of certified 100% Argan
cosmetic oil, our last purchase in Morocco. To tease us, the malefactor
left one empty box that had held the Argan oil. Fortunately, my new
New York Mets slippers were undisturbed.
Friday, April 5, 2019
The Upper West Side's Power Couple are off again. This time not Nairobi, not Marrakesh, not even London. We are headed to Philadelphia for the weekend and, having learned our lesson, we are carrying our own luggage into and out of our own car.
Inquiring minds want to know: 1) Estimate % of missing suitcase contents, and 2) Air France making good?
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