Bankers and Friend
At community board meeting on Oct. 2, Battery Park City resident Jeff Galloway praised B.P.C. for its rooted, neighborhood feel. By contrast, he said, the Financial District has a much more transient population.
“Traders right out of school have to live somewhere,” he said.
Well, if a recent report by the New York Post is true, young traders buying into the condo conversion at 20 Pine St. may have a reason to stick around for a while. Page Six reported that Jennifer Aniston has purchased a unit in the building.
You go, girl
Talking with Assemblymember Deborah Glick after the Hudson River Park Trust’s board meeting on Sept. 29, we asked her if she would be heading up to see Barack Obama in Washington Square. “When my mother was born, she didn’t have the right to vote,” Glick responded. “Hillary Clinton is smart enough, tough enough and experienced enough” to be president and has “foreign policy credibility,” she said, leaving out Clinton’s vote authorizing war in Iraq. “I’ve spent my life voting for men of varying quality, and now I have a chance to vote for a woman for president,” Glick said. We took that as a No.
Surf your turf
In the ever-expanding world of the Web, it is becoming easier and easier to find the things you need — as well as stuff you never knew you wanted.
Need a new pad? The Real Estate Board of New York recently launched a site, residentialnyc.com, that gives the public access to listings from multiple brokerages across the city. There are still a few kinks, though. First, major brokerages like Corcoran and Bond have chosen not to include their listings on the site. Second, the site apparently does not recognize the existence of Battery Park City’s north neighborhood. A search for the zip code “10282” sent ResidentialNYC’s map hovering over the southeast corner of Central Park.
But if you are able to locate an apartment and want to know what your future neighbors will be like, you can click over to rottenneighbor.com, where folks post their horror stories about wild parties, strange behavior and generally unfriendly folks in their buildings.
Lastly, primospot.com lets New Yorkers locate legal street parking in their neighborhoods. The color-coded map displays where people can park and for how long. A scroll-over reveals details of parking restrictions. Unfortunately, the site is little more than a novelty for Downtowners, since most of Lower Manhattan is coded black (no parking anytime).
Downtown gouge
Downtowners have long complained about the paucity of grocery stores in the neighborhood. Turns out, they have a right to complain about prices as well.
A recent survey by WNYC Radio revealed that the law of supply and demand makes Lower Manhattan one of the most expensive places in the metro area to buy basic items.
The survey asked listeners to go to their local shops and report back on the price of a six-pack of Budweiser beer, a head of lettuce and a quart of milk. Out of 357 entries, the deli on the corner of North End Ave. and Chambers St. had the second-most expensive six-pack — $13.69. We suspect that folks are willing to pay the mark-up since the deli is the only store west of West St. and north of the World Financial Center that is open 24 hours.
The Food Emporium on Greenwich and Reade Sts. was not to be outdone, however. While six-packs there will only set you back $6.99, the Emporium scored the survey’s highest price for a head of lettuce — $3.49. By contrast, participants listed several New Jersey stores with lettuce for sale at less than a dollar a head.
