Category: Consuming

Zoning laws be damned, porno is returning in Times Square. I’m all in favor, as I’ve said many times before, of sleaze. These stores are managing to open by being technically non-adult businesses: they have less than sixty percent of their store space dedicated to porn, so they count as regular old video stores. Still, if I was running a video store in Times Square, I’d try to run it as a good independent video store: lots of neat directors, good wacky TV series, employee recs, and, yes, an Adult section. But if you’re going to dedicate 41% of your store to something, you might as well have it be something that will sell, not a thousand copies of “Worlds Greatest Golf Swings.”

It’s a weird strategy of revenge, in which the porno vendors take that economic hit more or less to insult the point of the law. Take that, battleship! they seem to say.

OK, that didn’t fit at all, but I really wanted to link to the shirt because it’s so cute.

So we’re moving April 1, although our lease ends June 31. That means that unless we find a new renter for our landlord, we’re stuck with two leases. Most sane and reasonable landlords will let you out of a lease with a one-month-rent penalty. Not these: they say we’re responsible for April, May, and June unless we find someone else. Also, that someone else must be willing to pay $150 more per month than we’re currently paying.

I think they’ll have a hard time finding someone to pay $1350 for a 500-square-foot 1BR facing College Ave, with no keys to the mailbox (you can jimmy it open with a paperclip, as M. does, although I never got the hang of it) and with paint and plaster falling off the damn ceiling in the bedroom and the linoleum in the kitchen peeling up from the damage caused by the sink’s periodic episodes of bulimia.

But we signed the lease. So we’re stuck with it. M. and I can handle this, and can find a new lessor, but they’re certainly not going to bother trying. But this reminds me of Under the Lion’s Paw, a story of economic exploitation and the origins of the sometimes-violent populism that shook this nation to its core back when people thought they had some kind of right to things.

From the NYT: Within six months last year, Carlos and Betti Lidsky bought and sold two condominiums. Then they bought and sold two houses. They say they will clear a half-million dollars in profit, and none of the homes have even been built.

Economists point out that the speed and size of inevitable rise in interest rates “will determine whether the speculative fever in the market just goes flat or whether it caves.”

Whoo! Here comes the poppin’!

The ever-perceptive John Fleck of Inkstain.net sends me an article on the latest sort of marriage: real estate marriage. Instead of starting a tiny condominium corporation, more and more people are just banding together in groups of two to six to buy places as tenants-and-owners-in-common. IMHO, you’d do better with a formal co-op or condo association. But hey, whatever works for them.

Obviously I am incredibly jealous.

Bookdwarf took a lot of pictures on vacation, all of them very pretty, but I think that my favorite is still the sign advertising a Superbowl party.

Some may call it selling false hope, but I prefer to think of it as fabricating dreams, and what are dreams but the truest expression of human desire for beauty? And what is beauty but truth? So the promotional sciences of advertising and marketing are, in fact, the sciences of truth and beauty.

Drool.

Last year’s results were N. This year’s results were anticipated to be N-1, but turned out to be N as well. N is OK, but N+1 would be better. Even so, things turned out better than expected. Especially when, if you count the one-time windfalls, the results are N+87.

Why is this considered disappointing? Bah, humbug. Wall Street is dumb.

Every weekend I read the real estate sections in the Globe and the Times and I get vaguely uneasy. Today: people who love sprawl, which is to say, lots and lots of people. Well, they all have bad taste. I guess someone keeps buying those hideous SUVs and driving them everywhere. “Walk everywhere with five kids?” says the interviewee. They have legs, don’t they? Maybe you need a giant stroller. Or a leash. At least it keeps the squalling brats out of my cafes.

Also, yet another article that supports my contention that the real estate market is an unhealthy and ineffecient market. I don’t just mean that the prices are too high, although they are: I mean that the way the market is structured, proper prices can’t be determined. The article suggests that it’s getting better, but I won’t be satisfied for some time yet.

I made the mistake of playing a few rounds of Unreal Tournament at the AMD/Sun demo stations this week. Now I’m halfway through downloading my kernel sources so I can recompile my kernel to take advantage of the latest ATI 3D drivers just so I can play the demo– I haven’t even had time to get the full version of the game yet.

Argh.

Deeshaa.org is Attanu Dey’s thoughts on the economy and development of India. Highly regarded by the big-shots and also I like it.