New York real estate is a contact sport. Stories involve elbowing, tripping, jostling and worse. The result is prices that are unbelievable for those of us who live here and unimaginable for those who don’t. Here is the latest ranking of neighborhoods. https://www.propertyshark.com/Real-Estate-Reports/priciest-nyc-neighborhoods/
The most expensive neighborhood is Hudson Yards, with a median sale price of $7.5 million. Besides the outlandish number, the interesting fact is that Hudson Yards didn’t exist a short time ago. It is built over a vast rail yard for the Long Island Railroad, construction only having begun in 2012. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_Yards,_Manhattan
There are now offices, a performing arts center, a glitzy mall and high rise apartment houses centered around a new subway station, an extension of the #7 train, although, if you are spending $7.5 million for your crib, you might not resort to the subway.
While many Brooklyn neighborhoods are now among the most expensive, Coney Island isn’t one of them. Yet, we three, Bubbe, Grandpa Alan and Noam, headed there to visit the New York Aquarium, 602 Surf Avenue, a place that none of us had ever been to before. After seeing it, I can only urge you to visit. The collection of sharks, sea lions, sea horses, sting rays and myriad other sea creatures is amazing, displayed indoors and outdoors in imaginative fashion.
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With the temperature hovering around 90, we skipped strolling on the boardwalk and returned to an air conditioned subway car after a couple of hours. Just as we got seated, Jet Blue sent us a message that our early morning flight tomorrow has been canceled. We didn’t have to stew in our juices too long before another message came rescheduling us on a 6:35 PM flight, arriving about 11 hours later than planned, after the welcome dinner and orientation for our grandparent/teen package tour. The only positive aspect to this change is replacing a change of plane in Orlando, Florida with a nonstop flight. The chances for lost luggage are now the square root of what they might have been.
Actually, I might have gotten the last, last word. The plane was sold out, we were told. Every seat occupied except the two next to me. Bubbe and Noam had been moved forward and no one replaced them. No one crawling over me to get to the bathroom, no fighting for an armrest.
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A review of a book about refrigeration states “American households open the fridge door an average of 107 times a day.” If I weren’t seated in 19C on Jet Blue flight 1893, I would start counting. Although you’ll just have to wait for me to catch up, there is no reason you can’t get going.
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Costa Rica is in the tropics, but it doesn’t feel like it after August in New York. The predicted high temperature today in San Jose, the capital, is 81, the highest prediction for the entire week. I may not have to take two showers every day.
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You might use it as your shopping list for your adolescent’s next birthday.
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We visited a family owned and operated chocolate production business this morning, Costa Rica Best Chocolate, Corredor Noratlántico, Sarapiqui. http://www.crbestchocolate.com/
Besides its claim to superior quality, it prides itself on its devotion to conservation and sustainability. Starting with the history of cacao, we had “the chance to see, taste, drink and feel all the stages of the chocolate process.” This certainly hit, you’ll pardon me, my sweet spot.
We had a lunch at a local resident’s home, arranged by the Sarapiqui Conservation Learning Center, an NGO offering, among other things, environmental education, ecotourism activities, English classes and community outreach.
Hazel, our host, directed some of our group in preparing a few of the dishes. Her stewed chicken was the delicious main course and the plantain latkes were exceptional. The good meal gave me another excuse to skip the afternoon’s nature walk.
They not only were an exciting sight, they were thoroughly indifferent to the presence of humans. They flew directly overhead, allowed people to approach within inches and would eat peanuts or bits of pineapple right out of your hands.
There was reason for McCarthy’s animus, but it really was about ideas not verbiage. Today, however, Donald Trump comes close to fitting this description. His claim that Willie Brown, once speaker of the California State Assembly, who dated Kamala Harris 30 years ago, disparaged her to Trump after the two men shared a dangerous helicopter ride, is completely false. It never happened, but former Governor Jerry Brown acknowledges an uneventful helicopter ride with Trump. https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/08/politics/trump-helicopter-story-willie-brown?cid=ios_app
Does it matter? Does any of it matter?
Called to testify by my brother, I report as follows: Delaney Stadium was the moniker we gave to the playground attached to PS 159 on Pitkin Ave. in East New York, Brooklyn. We named it after Miss (never MS.) Delaney, the battle-ax principal of the school. Luckily, some miscreant broke the lock on the gate of the playground, so we were able to play there whenever we wished. Except during the summer, when the school system sent some guy dressed like a vanilla ice cream cone to organize the activities. At which point, we removed ourselves from the playground and gamboled about on Hemlock Street outside its fence. One of the great things about Delaney Stadium was that although kids of all ages played there, there never was a dispute about territory; everybody got along. I recommend the following article from The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2024/07/play-streets-children-adults/679258/
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