1) Rothkos and Chihulys and prints by Milton Glaser! Babbling brooks, plasma screens and twenty-six-foot-long fireplaces! Buildings like the Platinum near Times Square and the Atelier on Far West 42nd Street were built during boom times, and their lobbies reflect that fact. But the Times apparently had this story on fancy lobbies in the can, so they just tweaked the angle to make it more sensitive to today's climate: "In an increasingly tough market that has left some high-rises sitting half-empty, the lobby has become a site of innovation for developers who find it more urgent than ever to make their buildings stand out from the crowd." ['The Come-Hither Lobby']
2) Don't panic: Very rich people are still buying fancy places to live. And that 15 Central Park West pad just sold by casino developer Richard Fields for $27 million set a price-per-square-foot record for condominiums, at $9,480 per. [Big Deal/'Someone Still Has Money']
3) Don't panic: Moderately rich people are still buying fancy places to live, albeit for less than those selling the places would have liked. One couple recently snapped up a 34th floor apartment in the Chelsea Stratus for $2.135, even though a similar apartment in the same line sold for $2.4 million PMD (pre-meltdown). [Big Deal/'Signs of a Silver Lining']
4) When you've lived in developing countries for six years and move to New York in search of secretive ethnic enclaves, you move to Queens. And that's just what this dude did, but the citizens of Jackson Heights weren't really feeling his desire to explore other cultures and gain entry to secret Korean karaoke bars. [The City/'In Queens: A Melting Pot, and a Closed Book']
5) Speaking of melting pots, this fellow was gentrified out of the East Village and Park Slope, and he thinks the current scene in East Harlem is so weird?immigrants living in run-down apartments next to "young bohemian types"?that he's making a documentary about the changing face of El Barrio. [The City/'Apartment Lost, Home Found']
6) It's move-in-together time for this young couple, and as they sign a lease on a Jersey City rental, panic suddenly grips the Chelsea-abandoning female half of the pair: "What have I done, leaving the city probably forever? Once you leave the city, do you move back into it?" Moving to Jersey always makes people slip into an existential wormhole. [The Hunt/'Apartment Hunters Chart New Territory']
7) Author Thomas Beller lived in a rented West Village studio apartment for 13 years, and tried to convince his wife that life there would be just dandy, even if the fourth-floor walk-up wasn't quite baby friendly. He failed. [The City/'Home, Sweet, Elusive Home']