Monday, January 13, 2020
Someone took the trouble to review the language in 1.2 million real estate listings that were active in July 2019 across the United States. Then, the New York Times arranged the most popular words by price range.
It's no surprise that a pool and a wine cellar appear in the $5 million plus market, while a new roof was touted for homes under $250,000. One feature appealed to all up and down the economic scale: hardwood floors. Will linoleum ever make a comeback?
. . .
There was more interesting real estate data this weekend, but specific to the Holy Land. Buried in a long article on real estate activity in the past decade was information on the change in home purchase price by neighborhood. While the numbers might startle all of you (except possibly if you live in San Francisco), New Yorkers will recognize that 3 of the top 4 areas were "bad neighborhoods" not too long ago.
2010
|
2019
|
CHANGE
|
|
Cobble Hill,
Brooklyn
|
$834,115
|
$2,591,446
|
211%
|
Greenpoint, Brooklyn
|
$539,714
|
$1,578,287
|
192%
|
Lower East Side,
Manhattan
|
$521,000
|
$1,395,000
|
168%
|
Bedford-Stuyvesant,
Brooklyn
|
$363,000
|
$938,486
|
159%
|
. . .
Often, when the Upper West Side's Power Couple have no plans on a Sunday, we venture forth to Curry Hill, a subsection of Murray Hill, centered on Lexington Avenue and East 28th Street, heavily populated with Indian restaurants and grocery stores. Our favorite joints are DB Dhaba, 108 Lexington Avenue, and Sahib, 104 Lexington Avenue, reputedly owned by the the same person. Yesterday, for a change, we got on Air India flight 102, non-stop to New Delhi. After the 12 1/2 hour flight and 10 1/2 hour time change, you can understand that the first thing that we did upon arrival at the Saryaa New Delhi Hotel was take a good nap.
I realized my first two mistakes even before we boarded the airplane. I left behind the entire Sunday New York Times, neatly stacked to be put in my carry-on canvas bag, and I forgot to pack a hat. Neither oversight has proved critical. NYTimes.com gives you just about the whole paper, but is not a perfect substitute. I will miss the special feel of a newspaper in my hands for the next few days. Also, I vastly prefer doing the crossword puzzle on paper.
Unwisely, I rarely wear a hat outdoors at home, but I usually pack one when traveling to sunnier climes. New Delhi, however, is experiencing a plague of heavily polluted air, worse than I ever saw anywhere else. Visibility is poor, throats are scratchy. My hat is the least of the issues. One major reason for the bad air is vehicular traffic. Compared to what I observed in Beijing, Shanghai, Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi (admittedly several years ago), New Delhi adds bazillions of automobiles to the swarm of motorbikes, motor scooters and motorcycles on the streets and sometimes on the sidewalk as well. Toyota, Hyundai and Suzuki seem to dominate the market, the cars painted white more often than not.
Traffic patterns are interesting. Driving lanes are clearly marked, but that only seems to matter to those municipal employees who have to paint the lines. Drivers ignore them completely and squeeze as many vehicles across a road as possible with separation between them as thin as a Republican's conscience. Navigation is conducted by horn.
. . .
By the way, Jill and Steve, intrepid fellow travelers, are with us again. For our first meal in India, we stayed in the hotel and ate at Ssence, one of several restaurants on site. I ordered fish and chips (1095 INR) ($1 = 70 Indian New Rupees), a fine tribute to the country's colonial heritage.
Tuesday, January 14, 2020
Just as someone scoured 1.2 million real estate ads recently, the New York Public Library reviewed its 125-year history to determine the most popular books checked out. https://www.npr.org/2020/01/
Children's books dominated the list and I think that's good news. The top adult book is "1984" and I also consider that good news.
. . .
Jeopardy, the popular quiz show, has just kicked a hornet's nest. Jesus's birthplace? Palestine - wrong! Israel - right!
Bethlehem is indisputably somewhere. Palestine, the occupied territories, Judea and Samaria, the West Bank, eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel). The little humor that I can extract from this linguistic brawl is my pre-1948 youthful memory. I remember hearing about Palestine, the place where Jews lived on the Mediterranean Sea. Back on August 29, 2016, I noted "a Zionist cookbook from 1936, 'How to Cook in Palestine,' published in Hebrew, English and German," one of myriad uses of the name before Israeli independence. To an old Jew, Palestine is the right answer or, at least, a right answer.
. . .
The four of us hired a car and driver and visited several major local sites, all splendidly designed and beautifully crafted: Lotus Temple, the starkly contemporary Baha'i prayer center; Swaminarayan Akshardham, a Hindu temple complex, classical in appearance, but completed this century; Humayun’s Tomb, the tomb of a Mughal Emperor built in 1572. While each was worth visiting, you may never see anything more ungepotchked than Swaminarayan Akshardham and charmingly so. Dating from different centuries and traditions, these shrines had in common sitting on huge tracts of land in an otherwise densely-packed city.
With all the walking that we did, we were happy to return to Ssence for a late lunch/early dinner. This time, I ordered Indian food and boy did they do a good job. I had chicken tikka, five chunks of grilled thigh meat, marinated in yogurt and spices (995 INR), and Awadhi mutton biryani, layered rice, vegetables and meat baked in a handi, a deep, wide-mouthed clay or metal cooking vessel (945 INR). I've never tasted finer Indian cooking. P.S. I learned that mutton is a generic term here for lamb and goat. My biryani was lamb.
. . .
During our ride today, I noticed that some taxis and tuk-tuks (small motorized rickshaws) displayed a sign, in response to recent hideous crimes against women: "The driver of this vehicle respects women." I repeat that only some vehicles displayed this sign.
Wednesday, January 15, 2020
A footnote to an interview with Cory Booker, conducted just before he dropped out of the presidential race, offered an interesting historical perspective. In the last 50 years, only three early front-runners won the Democratic presidential nomination: Mondale, Gore and Hillary Clinton. So much for momentum.
. . .
We hired the same driver today for some more sightseeing before our tour officially begins tomorrow. We went first to what is officially named Gurudwara Bangla Sahib, primarily a place of devotion for Sikhs, members of a monotheistic religion spun off from Hinduism that originated in the 15th century, in the Punjab region of India. Everyone entering had to go barefoot and have a head covering, bandannas provided, baseball caps unacceptable. Several musicians played and sang continuously while we were there. We stopped briefly at the architecturally significant Agrasen ki Baoli, a well built in the 14th century that may have replaced one dug as much as 1,000 years earlier.
Jantar Mantar, dating from the early 18th century is sort of New Delhi's Stonehenge. To quote Wikpedia: "The Jantar Mantar is an equinoctial sundial, consisting of a gigantic triangular gnomon with the hypotenuse parallel to the Earth's axis. On either side of the gnomon is a quadrant of a circle, parallel to the plane of the equator. The instrument is intended to measure the time of day, correct to half a second and declination of the Sun and the other heavenly bodies." Got that?
Led Zeppelin must have visited Jantar Mantar.
Our last stop was another temple that I refused to enter, claiming conscientious objector status.
Thursday, January 16, 2020
We started our tour with two big stops and one exciting ride today. First, the group went to Jama Masjid, the biggest mosque in India, built in 1656 by the same emperor who built the Taj Mahal. As they said about Nelson Rockefeller when he was governor of New York, he had an Edifice Complex. Removing shoes was mandatory, but the rain that continued to fall when we approached made for an unpleasant choice: soaking wet socks or wet cold feet for the rest of the day. I spared my socks.
Next, we went to Gandhi Smriti, Gandhi's last home and site of his assassination. His simple possessions were on display along with photographic and artistic representations of his life and works. There were a only few random individual visitors and two groups, ours (18 Americans and 2 New Zealanders) and one of two dozen plus Israelis. While known worldwide for his preaching of non-violence, Gandhi led another campaign that proved ineffectual, calling for non-possession, austerity and self-help, now sometimes characterized as living off the grid. I suggest that Martin Luther King, Jr. did not want African Americans to have less of the goods and services of the 20th century American economy, but rather their fair share.
Between these two stops, we took a bicycle rickshaw ride through Old Delhi, a collection of narrow streets and narrower alleys lined with countless shops six or eight feet wide, with rough living quarters above. There was a stretch of hundreds of shops selling books, including textbooks and study guides likely on the wrong side of copyright infringement. Interspersed were many shops devoted to custom printing calendars and still others producing wedding invitations, a big production for middle class Indians. Then, saris; bolts of the brightest-colored cloth, displayed in hundreds of narrow openings. Jewelry, some fine, some costume. Trimmings - tassels, braid, ribbons, glitter everywhere. This all was typical of India as I have experienced it even in a short time. Many of everything, people, places and things. Oh, and monkeys running around the low rooftops and balconies.
. . .
A new study of over 25,000 men and women from England and the United States found that "people in the poorest group could expect to live seven to nine fewer years without disability than those in the richest group at the age of 50."
While less scientific, Sophie Tucker concluded that "I've been rich and I've been poor. Rich is better."
Friday, January 17, 2020
This morning, our group went to Qutub Minar, a decommissioned mosque dating from 1199, with a minaret rising 73 metres (240 feet). It replaced a Jain temple that may have stood for 1,000 years. In doing so, the Muslims chiseled away all human representation found on walls and columns. You know, that graven image stuff.
In the afternoon, our group went to Gurudwara Bangla Sahib, the Sikh temple that the four of us visited Wednesday. This allowed me to sit in the bus, keep my shoes and socks on and read my mystery novel.
...and what mystery novel is that, pray tell?
ReplyDeleteThe Substitution Order, Martin Clark.
ReplyDeleteGood legal and scam stuff, silly minor characters.
So glad you took good notes. My memory is failing me
ReplyDeleteWhen we visited a Sikh temple (probably the same one) we were invited into the kitchen to help food preparation for the soup kitchen. Sikhs are big on charity and feeding / sheltering anyone who needs it, not just other Sikhs. I had never seen such huge pots and pans. Can’t remember now the number but they fed a ton of people per day.
ReplyDelete