News

Call me Nostradamus. No, no I wouldn’t want the heavy weight of knowing what the future holds, especially these days. How about the second coming of John Paulson? Sadly it would just be a fantasy as my large wager was only in my head. Like the bottom of the Mets batting line-up, two strikes and I may as well be out. Nevertheless my call for a 15% reduction in monthly apartment rents is looking very prescient these days given a recent Crain’s report indicating two months free rent1is becoming more normal in NYC.

1. 14 months for the price of 12 = 15% lower per month (12/14 = .85) [↩]

Come on up for the rising
Come on up, lay your hands in mine
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight

Macy’s opened the first segment of their 4th of July 2020 Coronavirus Fireworks Tour in familiar territory along the LIC waterfront tonight. It began around 9:45pm and came in three short explosive bursts each lasting 2-3 minutes. Unveiled to the press around two hours prior, it was a resounding success in terms of garnering just the right amount of viewers onsite to be completely safe and being a very welcomed respite and resumption of normality. Oh, and though short they were also spectacular. The planners get an A+ for tonight’s event.

What’s the big news in LIC this week? Well it’s not politics, despite a primary that basically determines the winners in the general election. Sure there are schisms within the predominant party, the Democrats, but I wouldn’t generalize the results in Queens, or the Bronx or Brooklyn last night, to a national level. NYC had already elected (and then re-elected) a progressive Mayor back in 2013. AOC’s startling win in 2018 came on the heels of ~20% of the country choosing a Socialist for President in 20161. So it should come as no surprise that additional upstart progressives defeated more mainstream, or at least incumbent, candidates in pockets of NYC, especially those more economically disadvantaged. At varying times over recent decades the backlash of extremism has happened on both sides of the aisle – think Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America in 1994 and the Tea Party in 2010.

1. if Dems represent 50% of voters and 40% of these voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary = ~20% [↩]