February 24, 2016--Donald TRUMP and the Jews of New York

For this I know I will be in big trouble.

Yesterday, on its Web page, the New York Times published two articles that essentially trashed Donald TRUMP:

"Donald Trump, Crony Capitalist" and "Trump Is No Power Broker in New York, Despite All the Signs." The signs being the ones on all the buildings with TRUMP on their facades--TRUMP Plaza, TRUMP Tower, and so on.

Putting aside the remarkable coincidence that the articles appeared on the day of the Nevada caucuses and exactly a week before Super Tuesday, they left out one important thing when talking about TRUMP as a crony capitalist, making deals with City officials to get permits and tax abatements to make his deals work (so what else is new in NYC?) and noting that his real estate "empire" is hardly an empire when compared to those of the real moguls--the Tishmans, the Silversteins, the Dursts, and so on--the critical thing missing from both articles is one thing that goes a long way to explain why TRUMP's NYC real estate colleagues have little good to say about him--

It is the fact that he isn't Jewish.

What do the following leading real estate families have in common with the aforementioned Dursts, Silversteins, and Tishmans?

The Malkins
The Roses
The Rudins
The Tishes
The Resnicks
The Zekendorfs
The Speyers
The Sterns
The Macklowes
The LeFraks

This is not a random or closely edited list, but rather the names of most of the major real estate families of New York City.

At the risk of being accused of being anti-Semitic, let me note that I am not a self-hating Jew, but someone proud of my heritage.

I also happen to be someone who spent a number of years involved with many of these remarkable men (they were all men) when I was acting dean of New York University's School of Continuing Education within which was situated the amazing Real Estate Institute.

With NYU's president I spend quite a few breakfasts and dinners with various mixes of these men in an attempt to advance the interests of the Institute and to, frankly, raise money for the university.

At the time, Donald TRUMP was beginning to make a BIG name for himself, consummating and carrying out huge deals in Manhattan all with his name emblazoned in brass. A little tacky some of my real estate friends said. Though Larry Silverstein, the Institute's chairman was angling to purchase the World Trade Center, there was no move to rename it for his beloved mother who launched the family real estate empire by each month visited the Silverstein tenement buildings on the Lower East Side to collect cash rents.

And so, though there were office buildings, residential towers, and hospital wings named for each of these men, TRUMP's obsession to name everything he owned after himself was considered to be beyond tacky. And it didn't help that he was not generous in his philanthropic work. Hardly an emergency room in town was named for him or Fred, his greatly-admired father, or his prematurely deceased brother. The Donald seemed interested only in making money and promoting himself. He was, I realize now, even at that early time, halfway to starring on The Apprentice.

Unspoken, but clearly implied or hinted at was that TRUMP was "not one of us."

At first I thought this referred to his lack of interest in NYU and the Institute, though each year he bought a table at the Real Estate Dinner and kicked in a minimalist $25K or so as a place holder. This when Larry and the other "boys" were anteing up millions for us and other New York charities. Especially, contributions to numerous Jewish causes, including for pretty much anything to help Israel and its government.

I once, perhaps after a drink or two or three, asked a couple of our benefactors, who also were university trustees, if Donald's estrangement from NYU and the RE Institute was because he wasn't Jewish.

The glances they exchanged and the fact that they changed the subject resonates with me still.

Larry Silverstein, Third From Left

May 27, 2015--Safe Rooms

The latest thing in New York City real estate chic are safe rooms where owners can hide from intruders; those seeking to do them harm; and, for the seriously anxious, protect them from chemical or nuclear attack.

This is post 9/11 behavior for those in fact feeling that kind of serious threat or just another form of conspicuous consumption.

According to a report in yesterday's New York Times some with safe rooms that set apartment dwellers back six figures to construct are pretty comfortably set up and stocked with enough provisions and entertainments to accommodate them for some time--until burglars leave or when after a terrorist attack it is considered safe to venture out.

Some, who do not have an extra bedroom that can be converted into a safe room, are fortifying closets and bathrooms. Though in Manhattan closet space is at a premium. When Gwyneth Paltrow had a town house in the city, her safe room doubled as a closet. A typical New York solution to never feeling you have enough square footage.

But according to safe-room contractor Tom Gaffney, president of Gaffco Ballistics . . .

The world is a very scary place right now, especially for people of means; they feel cornered and threatened. When you have so much to lose, and you can afford it, you put a premium on your safety.

My first thought--why then have a place at Ground Zero, New York City? Why not hole up in the country where you can build an electronic moat around your place and have the perimeter patrolled by security forces armed with attack dogs and the latest weapons?

But the Big Apple is irresistible even for the hyper-nervous. And for the Middle Eastern and Russian billionaire condo owners, looking for safe havens for their ill-gotten wealth, in spite of the perceived threats, NYC is still a good and safe-enough deal. Worrying about intruders or even chemical attacks is something they are used to back in their home countries.

It all, as they say, comes literally with the territory.

April 29, 2015--The Dead Who Know Brooklyn

We've been to Brooklyn four times this month. To the new hip Williamsburg Brooklyn and the other of my childhood neighborhoods, memories, and misdemeanors

There's a garden center we've been back and forth to right by Kings County Hospital where my gang used to hung out by its lunatic asylum wing--no euphemisms back then--to shamelessly taunt residents who, to get a breath of air summers, in their pajamas and robes, would come out onto caged-in terraces, screaming at the elements in their private languages. It was a first experience with unfairness and inhumanity. Ours.

Deeper into Brooklyn there is Butler Street which, opposite the toxic Gowanus Canal, was where the borough's ASPCA was located. it was one of my father's favorite places, not because he was an animal lover, quite the contrary--we were forbidden to have pets-- but because after a week of not being adopted, dogs and cats were, he said, gassed.

To exorcise that memory I drove-by last Sunday and brought to vivid recollection how my father used to take me there after I had seriously misbehaved to let me know that if I didn't shape up, he would drop me off there and after a week . . .

He would pull over in front and we would just sit in the car for half an hour with the motor turned off and the windows rolled down, in any weather, so I could hear the desperate yelping leaking through the door.

I got the point and instantly stopped my misbehaving. Or at least continued it more surreptitiously.

I found that the ASPA is no longer there--the neighborhood is fully gentrified--and the old dog pound has been converted into million-dollar, open-space lofts. The Gowanus, however, is still nearby and deadly to all forms of life.

Not far from Butler Street is Sterling Place where, at 7th Avenue, my father owned a four-story parking garage. He should have held onto it as real estate values subsequently soared but his partner, Uncle Herman, decided he wanted to cash-out and my father couldn't pay what he asked. Just another in a series of failed ventures. All involving family-member partners.

The Sterling Place Garage, while still in my father's and Uncle Herman's hands, before its conversion also into lofts, had a brief history in the tragic and morbid.

On December 16, 1960, high over Staten island, a TWA jet crashed into a United Airline jet, with the fragments of one plummeting onto the Island while the other, the United flight, crashing in Brooklyn, the fuselage and body parts, falling in Park Slope, most right at the corner of 7th Avenue and Sterling Place.

There was only one survivor, an 11-year-old boy who was thrown clear of the wreckage. He lived only one day and then succumbed to his injuries, saying, before he died, from his hospital bed, that moments before the collision, he had looked out the window at the snow falling on the city, "It looked like a picture out of a fairy book. It was a beautiful sight."

One hundred-twenty-eight were killed. Most had been on the United plane. My father's garage became their temporary morgue.

January 16, 2015--Size Matters

The one place size really matters is when it come to the size of one's apartment, condo, or house.

We're talking less about the number of bed and bath rooms (though this counts too) but square footage. And we're not talking about how much square footage one needs to be comfortable--700 per person is more than enough--but how much square footage one needs to feel, literally, like the king of the hill. In this case we could be talking about seven bedroom-seven bathroom houses ranging upwards from 10,000 to 20,000 square feet. Places that begin at $5.0 million and could set you back $75 million or more.

Mine is bigger than yours is the name of the game.

A cautionary tale--

Out in Malibu, ordinances restrict houses to no more than 11,100 square feet; and so back in 2007 when Hong Kong multi-multimillionaire Hiroshi Horiike saw one advertised by Coldwell that was 15,000 square feet and was going for only $12.25 million he plunked down cash and was a happy camper.

Happy, that is, until more recently when he wanted to add a sunroom and, after submitting plans to the county planning commission, learned that the house was not 15,000 square feet as advertised but a mere 10,000. So he is suing everyone in sight, especially the celebrity broker, Chris Cortazzo, who sold him the house. The same Cortazzo who peddled properties to Ellen DeGeneres. Pamela Anderson, Kid Rock, and other such luminaries.

I think he has a strong case and understand why he would want $5.0 million in damages; but here's what I don't understand--

Mr. Horiike seemed to like his Tuscan-style mansion enough to want to add a sunroom so why is he now so unhappy with it? Because he feels tricked? Because he feels like a fool for not having someone independently verify the square footage? Didn't he realize that real estate brokers can be a lower form of life right down there with used car salesmen?

Not for any of these understandable reasons. In his own words, according to a story in the New York Times, the house he loved when he learned it's a third smaller than he thought, he no longer loves--

"I don't love my house. It has become a bad dream. It has broken my heart and broke my dream about American people. Before I thought everything here is beautiful. And perfect."

So he didn't love the house. He love its size. Not a size that offered him enough space to roll around in and feel happy but the size itself. Or at least the idea of it.

September 11, 2014--The Poor Door

I am beginning to feel badly for New York City real estate developers. You know, the ones who build condo towers that they squeeze into the cityscape that rise 50, 75, 100 stories. Where third-floor apartments start at $10 million and top prices soar even higher than the triplex penthouses. It is not unheard of for some Russian oligarch or Persian Gulf gazillionaire to plop down $75, $90 million for a pad of their dreams that they inhabit at the most a few weeks a year.

The new mayor of New York City (who replaced Mike Bloomberg who is worth $33 billion), Bill de Blasio, a self-proclaimed man of the people, in now insisting that to get city approval to add a few more stories beyond the allowable limits, as part of the deal, builders have to agree to add some "affordable housing" units to the otherwise gilded towers.

As you might imagine, these real estate moguls are not happy about this. They fear that someone willing to shell out tens of millions for an apartment will not be eager to share an elevator with the unwashed. Much less the in-house gym, pool, game rooms, spa, or concierge services.

So what to do?

One project that hit the news a few weeks ago is at 62nd Street on Riverside Boulevard, a tony address facing the Hudson River where there will be 33 floors of condos with bargain basement  prices beginning at about $5 million and ranging up to only $25 million

They figured out how to handle the problem--build separate entrances, elevators, and facilities for those lucky enough to win the affordable-housing lottery. (That's indeed how buyers earning less than $50,000 a year will be selected--their names will be drawn from a hat).

Liberals in the city--most of whom are themselves affluent and living in their own upper-middle-class enclaves--are outraged, calling this plan separate but unequal and have labeled the alternate entrance a "poor door."

Under pressure, the developer agreed to spiff up the entrance with marble veneer, tasteful furnishing and appointments, and chandeliers.

Others have figured out even cleverer ways to protect their high-end clients from, well, the rest of us.

Reported in the New York Times a few days ago are plans for a new loft building in one of the city's highest-rent downtown districts--Soho.

The ten lofts there will go for $8.7 to 25 million, averaging about $3,200 a square foot.  But that's not the news. These days that's chump change.

The real news is about the ten underground parking spaces.

On a first-come-first-serve basis each will sell for a cool million. To be fair, they will be generously proportioned, about 200 square feet, so there is little danger of getting too many of those annoying dings in your doors.

But here's the real news--at a million each, depending on the actual size of the parking spaces, the square foot cost is much more than for the apartments--ranging from $5,000 to $6,666.

More news--you don't actually own the parking space. Rather, for your million, you'll get only a 99-year lease.

That shouldn't be a problem for most of us except, perhaps, for my 106 year-old mother. What would she do with her old Buick?

November 21, 2013--NYC: The Shoe Lady

The only thing I have from my father--in addition to his DNA--is a pair of black leather gloves. When I wear them I feel as if I am in his hands, a place I occasionally want or need to be.

Like last week.

The transition from small-town Maine to very-big-city New York was traumatic. We have done this many times before but each year it becomes more difficult. Perhaps because any change at a certain time in life is disorienting and frequently upsetting.

And upsetting this time it was.

I have less motivation and stamina to negotiate the teeming life of the streets. People, cars, buses, careening taxis, and now more and more people on municipally-provided bicycles--Citibikes named for their sponsor Citibank.

Everything feels even more commodified than in the past; and though we are fortunately financially comfortable, reentering the world of the one-percenters is a vivid reminder of the other 99 percent. Of both what people have and do not have. Reality here ranges from $100 million condos to rent-controlled walkups in the outer boroughs. And the palpable frustration nearly everyone appears to evince, particularly those blessed with so much who ironically, in that state of being, are aware of what they do not have and which will always be out of reach.

It's a tough town.

My father's gloves needed some repair. I am careful with them, as you might imagine, but during the 15 years he has been gone one of the finger tips frayed and needed to be expertly stitched.

Rona knows a place where the work will be carefully done. Shops of this sort have become uncommon in the city where even modest retail space ranges upwards from $5,000 a month.

As we were heading toward the shop Rona had in mind, she said, "I hope it's still there and hasn't been converted into a cafe or bank."

"Unlikely," I said, "As I remember it, it's too small for a bank or--"

"But not for a coffee shop. We've already passed three new ones that opened while we were up in Maine. I'm beginning to think New Yorkers have become coffee addicts."

It in fact the shoe and leather shop was still there on Sixth Avenue.

The glove required a simple repair and we were told that if we had the time we could wait while they stitched it. So we plopped down in comfortable chairs and read through Curve magazine, which says that it is, "The nation's best-selling lesbian magazine [and] spotlights all that is fresh, funny, exciting, controversial, and cutting-edge in our community."

"We are for sure back in New York," I said, for the first time since returning feeling good about my town.

In came a woman who looked frazzled. On the counter there was a bell to ring for service. Sweating though it was chilly outside as well as in the store, she began pounding on it.

From the back, someone said, "Hold on a moment. Please. I'm fixing someone's glove. I'll be out in a minute."

The woman seemed so agitated that I feared she would have a thrombosis. "It's OK," I called out, trying to help, "We're in no hurry. Please take care of your other customer."

The repairman appeared and the woman thrust a claim ticket at him. He squinted at it. "Am I right?" he asked, "This is for 14 pairs of shoes?"

"I'm in a hurry."

"That's a lot of shoes. Give me a moment, if you will, to round them up." She began to tap her foot as he disappeared behind the counter.

"Yes, fourteen. Make sure you find them all. I don't have forever."

"I'm doing the best I can," he said from floor level. "From the ticket I can see you brought them in ten days ago. There are so many and space here is so limited that I'll have to look carefully to be sure I find them all."

In separate brown paper bags they began to be tossed up onto the counter."

She was tapping her toe even faster. "Be careful with them, will you. Most are Pradas. I only brought them in to be polished," she sounded overwhelmed and exasperated.

"Are they all yours?" I couldn't help myself from asking. She glared at me. "I mean, I thought you might be--" I don't know where I was going with this.

"They're mine," she snapped, not looking in my direction. "Count them, would you." The shoemaker had reemerged, smiling at the heap of shoes he had tossed up on top of each other."I want to see what's in each of the bags. I don't want someone else's shoes."

He bagan to take the shoes out of the bags. "I think there are fourteen."

"I can count, thank you." She was sorting through the shoes. "As I said, I want to be sure they're mine. The last thing I want is to have to come back later and fight with you about giving me the wrong shoes."

"Whatever," he said, shrugging in my direction.

"I think these are all mine. You put new heals on these, right?" She showed him his handiwork. He nodded. "And tips on these?" He nodded again, smiling. "And what about these? Weren't you supposed to replace the full soles?"

"Not those," he said, taking the shoes from her. "But these. As you can see, these have new soles."

"How much?"

"Please?"

"How much do I owe you? For everything?"

"I think I have the bill in one of these." He began again to look into each of the bags in the pile. "Here it is. All together, it comes to, let me see, $276. Tax included."

"You charge tax for polishing shoes?"

"Just for the materials. For the heels and soles."

She snorted and muttered with some disgust, "Taxes, taxes. What'll they think to tax next? The air?"

"In some cases it wouldn't be such a bad idea," I said under my breath.

"You take checks?"

"Cash is preferred, but a check from you is OK."

"All these people love cash," she said to no one in particular.

She flipped the check in his direction, scooped up the shoes--which he had consolidated into three large shopping bags--and stomped toward the door, allowing one of the overstuffed bags to bang into a woman and small child who were trying to negotiate the tight space and approach the counter.

"Excuse me too," the childcare woman said to the back of the departing customer. "I guess time is money."

"Not to her," I couldn't help myself from saying. "In her case money is money."

"I get yuh," the new woman said with a knowing smile. Rona in the meantime was attempting to engage the little boy who appeared to be about three years old.

"Can you fix the chain on this pocketbook?" she asked the repairman.

"Let me take a look." He bent to get a closer look. "No problem. None at all."

The boy was fiddling with a stack of innersoles. Rona asked, "Do you know what they're for?" He smiled shyly. "You're too young to need them. When you get to be his age," she gestured toward me, "then maybe you'll need them." He continued to take the foam inserts out of the packages and stole a quick glance in my direction.

"How much you say this costs?" The caregiver seemed outraged.

"Twenty dollars," he said.

"I paid only twenty-five for that old thing."

He shrugged apologetically. "What you gonna do," she sighed, resigned. "Everything here costs so much. It's a wonder anybody can live in this place. Mercy." I thought about the woman with the 14 pairs of shoes.

"Now leave that nice lady alone," she said to the child. "Don't you see she's reading her magazine?" At its mention, Rona slipped Curves out of sight, not wanting the child to see any of the pictures.

"It's OK," she said, "He's not bothering me. Are you?" she turned to him. "He's adorable. How old are you?" Not looking at her he held up three fingers. "My, you're big for three."

"You should see the mother," the nanny said under her breath, to illustrate, raising her arm to at least six inches over her head. He moved toward her and hugged her leg, burying his face in her coat. "He gets like that sometimes. Clingy. Whenever I mention his m-o-t-h-e-r. To tell you the truth, he misses her. 'Specially mornings."

"I can understand that," Rona said. "It isn't easy juggling so many things."

"To tell you the truth, though it's what I do, it wouldn't be my choice."

"Choice?"

"This." She pointed down at him. He continued to cling to her thigh. "Is this really the best way? I mean."

"Wouldn't be the way I'd do it," Rona said. "But I can understand. As you said about your pocketbook, things here are really expensive."

"I know I'm talking myself out of a job I need, but . . . ," she trailed off.

She left after leaving her bag, saying she'd be back in an hour to pick it up. "Glory be, twenty dollars."

Even though the weather was unseasonably mild, all the way home I wore my father's gloves.

October 1, 2103--Dog Wars

"Did you see what they got for the apartment across the hall?" Rona was reading her favorite section of the Sunday Times--Real Estate.

"Not yet. I'm still reading about Iran."

"It's not as nice as ours and it went for . . ."

"Don't tell me. I have a weak heart. But I do know that prices for any apartment Downtown have gone through the roof and anything for sale is rarely on the market for more than a few days."

"I really don't get it," Rona said. "In truth there's nothing special about our building except maybe one thing."

"What's that?"

"Location. For some reason everyone in Manhattan seems to want to live Downtown and there are relatively few places; and, also, because of zoning they aren't building any more apartment houses."

"Location, location, location. A place like ours in Cleveland would probably go for $200,000."

"If that. But one more thing."

"What's that?"

"We're a pet-friendly building."

"Good point. More and more places in the city don't allow pets."

"And we do allow them. So those who have dogs and don't want to live in the suburbs are willing to pay a premium for buildings that allow pets. Like our building."

"So I should like the fact that those two guys down the hall, living in a small one-bedroom, had three hunting dogs who howled at the moon in the middle of the night?"

"Thankfully they finally moved out. But, yes, from an economic point of view we should be happy we're friendly to dogs."

"I hate having so many in the building, but I guess you're right," I sighed. "Lucky us."

"But listen to what else is going on," Rona had continued to thumb through the Real Estate section.

"Fire away."

"In a lot of fancy Manhattan buildings that don't allow pets people are claiming they need so-called 'service' and 'companion' dogs."

"No surprise. I knew this was about to become a big issue. Finding alleged medical reasons to get around house bylaws."

"Including St. Bernards."

"St. Bernards as companion dogs? I love it. And probably in a 700-square-foot apartment where the dog requires at least 200-square-feet for himself."

"Be serious," Rona said, "There are lots of situations where having a dog is good for one's health and safety. Seeing-eye dogs, for example."

"Without doubt, but I'm sure if you read the entire article we're not talking just about dogs for blind people."

"You're right," Rona said, "There are examples cited in the article where apartment owners say that having a dog helps get them out of the house--they have to be walked two or three times a day--and that having to walk one's dog provides them with the opportunity to exercise. Which in turn is good for their health."

"And, I assume, they use this reasoning to seek approval from their co-op boards to get a waiver to allow them to have a dog."

"Yes. Though listen to this--someone claimed that he had a version of Parkinson's that made him unstable on his feet. The board asked for a letter from his doctor to verify this. And based on it granted a waiver. But then a couple of weeks later they saw the person with 'Parkinson's' running in Central Park without his dog."

"I love it. So what did they do?"

"The rescinded the waiver."

"It's really complicated. There's evidence that older people who live alone live longer and are healthier if they have a pet than those who don't."

"Any kind of pet?" Rona asked.

"I don't remember."

"So maybe people should start off with goldfish to see how they do."

"You're bad."

May 20, 2013--Serious Square Footage

Just as I was getting comfortable with the cost of things in New York City--$1.50 Dannon yogurts and having to pay more than $500 a month to garage our car--in the Sunday New York Times real estate section, in the "Big Ticket" column, I read about "the most expensive residential sale of the week"--

At 320 West 12th Street (three blocks from us) in a former nursing home that was converted to luxury condominiums, a penthouse apartment sold for $29,783,812.50.

The seven-bedroom, eight-bath condo was created by combining apartment No. 9, a four-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bath duplex, originally listed for $19.5 million, with  No. 7, a $10.5 million 3,200-square-foot unit below it, for a total of 8,500 square feet spread over three floors.

While I was wondering why anyone would want seven bedrooms in New York City, much less eight baths, I couldn't figure out how they got to the final selling price--$29,783,812.50. Especially the 50 cents part.

How did the negotiating go, I couldn't help myself from thinking--

"So let me see, you're asking $19.5 million for No. 9 and $10.5 for No. 7. By my calculations, if I bought the both of them, you'd be asking an even $30 million. Do I have that right?" 

"Yes, you do." 

"OK then. Will you take $29,783,812.50 for the two of them? The 50 cents should demonstrate that I'm literally counting every penny and that this is thus a serious offer." 

The broker would think about it for a moment, rubbing his chin and running the numbers, and then would say, "I guess you have me over a barrel. It's a deal! 

And then he would ask, "Will that be all cash?"

According to the Times, the broker commented, "I think the buyer [who remains anonymous, having bought the place via a LLC] saw this rare opportunity to aggregate serious square footage."

Speaking of square footage, if you are really serious about your square footage, on the front page of the first section of the same New York Times there was a piece about the construction on Park Avenue of a building, which when completed, will be 84 stories and thus the tallest residential building in the entire Western Hemisphere.

If you have the money, the penthouse can be yours for $95 million. For this you will get your six bedrooms and your seven baths. And, if you read books, it includes a library. If you don't, it can be converted into a closet. Plus, for one of your housekeepers, for an additional $3.9 million you can have a studio apartment and for your wine, a storage place for only $300,000 more.

Of course it won't hurt if you're a Russian oligarch or a Persian Gulf prince.

The developer behind this project is Harry B. Macklowe, who tore down the charming Drake Hotel to lay his hands on the land for this behemoth. Prior to that, he was a legend in the real estate community for tearing down, without proper permits, in the middle of the night, a row of historic midtown townhouses and a welfare hotel so he could build his eponymous eyesore, the Macklowe Hotel.

In case you're wondering about his bottom lines, it is estimated that the overall cost of the Park Avenue project will run to $1.25 billion and when all the condos are sold--and they appear to be selling like hotcakes--it will fetch at least $3.0 billion, yielding $2.75 billion in profit for Macklowe. A nice payday.

If these numbers daunt you and you are not an Arab sheik but would like to rub elbows with some real ones, you can buy a 351 square-foot studio in Macklowe House (or whatever it will be called) for $1.59 million. But do not be expecting much of a view--these holes-in-the-walls are located on the first few floors and overlook a bus stop and taxi stand.

Macklowe is reportedly very impressed with himself. When talking about his ultimate project, he mused, "This is the building of the 21st century the way the Empire State Building was the building of the 20th century."

One can only hope that King Kong is paying attention.

May 2, 2013--New New York

Since we try to catch up on trends while in New York City, it was fortuitous that a double issue of New York Magazine--"The Best of New York"-- awaited us in our mailbox.

They do this every year and, as usual, the first article was about restaurants, because everything new and trendy gets played out more than anywhere else in the city's restaurant scene. 

For example, I learned that during the time we had been out of town, "Asian fusion" cuisine has been replaced by "Asian hipster" cuisine. So to get with things we had to figure out the difference--what is the meaning of hipster when applied to food? Where do we go to find the best of it? And what now constitutes hipster dress since I didn't want to look like a lapsed snowbird when sampling some?

New York Magazine food critic Adam Platt, tries to help--

Long ago, Asian fusion was the all the rage in trendy culinary circles, but these days Asian Hipster is the fashionable phrase on many jaded Manhattan chowhounds’ lips. At his eponymous West Village restaurant, Wong, on Cornelia Street, the talented Simpson Wong dresses his light, temperate Southeast Asian creations with sunflower sprouts (on shrimp fritters) and shiitake mushrooms (over rice noodles), but if you’re in the market for a stout Chang-style feast, try the appropriately named typhoon lobster, which Wong and his chefs toss, in grand neo-Cantonese style, with curry leaves, crispy garlic, and industrial amounts of ground pork.

Get it?

And, I learned, that in order to blend in, a hipster jacket from Rag & Bone would be a good idea. As incredible as it may seem, since a friend works for R&B, I already have one in my closet and so I am all set. Rona, on the other hand, is not so uptight; and whenever we head out for typhoon lobster she’ll be just fine.

More striking is Platt’s list of the best restaurants in the city. To me this usually means in Manhattan.

Technically, the “City” consists of all five boroughs—but what could possible be best in a place like the Bronx much less Staten Island? A ride on the ferry? And Brooklyn? That’s where Rona and I were born and raised; and we spent decades—like millions of ambitious others—desperately trying to figure out how to get out and find our way to the City—the real city, Manhattan--across the East River. That, after all, is why more than 100 years ago they built the Brooklyn Bridge. 

But fully half the restaurants Platt listed as New York’s best are in Brooklyn. Most of those in Williamsburg. Where, New York tells us, are found the best real hipster and “indie rockers.” It’s also where the hottest of hot HBO series is based—Girls. Lena Dunham’s creation that captures depressingly well the vacuous lives of her generation of young people. Especially those from over-privileged backgrounds who are being subsidized by their parents. How else can these under-employed 20-somethings afford $7.50 lattes and apartments that begin at a million-two?

The Brooklyn I remember had a few local Chinese restaurants like the Golden Ox and Italian places such the Tower of Pisa. Shrimp with lobster sauce was featured on Kings Highway and spaghetti and meatballs at the Tower in East Flatbush.

But at Parish Hall in the new Williamsburg, where the Satmar Hasids and old Polish immigrants are being squeezed out by soaring real estate prices, you can order grass-fed lamb tartare, steamy bowls of Cayuga-flour dumplings threaded with turnips and Swiss chard, and wedges of a classic French pear tart for dessert, which the kitchen tops with scoops of vanilla ice cream flavored with the faintest hint of blue cheese.

Suddenly ravenous, I asked Rona, "Do you know anything about Cayuga flour?"

Ruefully, she said, "I think we've been out of town too long."

"Though I don't know," I said, "about ice cream with blue cheese."