1) It's that time of year again, when a reporter sets out to find NYC apartments for under or around the national median price (which is now $224,000). This go-round's winning neighborhoods: Inwood, Jackson Heights, Forest Hills, Flatbush?and the place you're really not moving to?Riverdale. ['Even in New York, Affordable Apartments'/Vivian S. Toy]
2) Urban anthropologist Fred Kent chips in his two cents on some parts of our fair city and how to improve them. Washington Square Park: almost perfect. Brooklyn Borough Hall: "Brooklyn could be defined by this space." Bleecker Street: no cars! Battery Park City: "a mishmash of stuff that doesn’t fulfill human needs."
3) In Suzanne Slesin's latest real estate porn column, she heads to the 650 Sixth Avenue gallery because she's married to an art dealer, and she checks out 151 Wooster (right) because the architect once designed an addition for a house she and her husband owned. The New York Times, everybody! Oh, and apparently those 151 Wooster penthouses weren't combined, because they are still on the market. [Window Shopping/Suzanne Slesin]
4) "The carriage house was almost like a status symbol, and all my friends loved going there," she said, "but now I realize that while the house is very inward looking, this apartment, with the weather constantly changing out the windows, is expansive." A 16-year-old said that. Wow, rich people are weird. [Habitats/Stephen P. Williams]
5) "Something that made sense to us, where we could see our energies flowing in and out very naturally." A 22-year-old said that. Wow, NYU hippies are weird. [The Hunt/Joyce Cohen]
6) A peek at Fiske Terrace and Midwood Park in Central Brooklyn, which will most likely be landmarked as a historic district on October 18. [The City/Jennifer Bleyer]