We begin the week with High Culture/Low Culture by way of the NYT real estate section. On the front page, we find this:
More than ever before, neighbors are teaming up to sell their apartments together ? to buyers who plan to combine them ? to take advantage of the growing number of people looking for larger spaces and willing to pay a premium for them.Buried inside the section, in a lonely Letter to the Editor, there's this:
In a matter of weeks, I had lost not only the trees and my view, but all my natural light... Some of my neighbors in the lobby rubbed their hands in glee, mentally calculating how much their own apartments will be enhanced by this fancy new interloper. My lovely sunny studio has become a dungeon, my living room a bunker, unfit for human habitation let alone an artist's atelier. My board is unsympathetic. They shrug, amiably: how were they to know that our air rights had expired in 1948?The moral of the story? Ha! Trick question!
· Good Neighbors Make Good Profits [NYTimes]
· An Artist's Lament for Air and Light [NYTimes]