1) The Great Broadway Pedestrian Experiment kicked off on Memorial Day with the closing off of the Great White Way to cars between 42nd Street to 47th Street, and 33rd Street to 35th Street. Though the plazas have yet to really be built-out, it's so far, so good, says Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff. It's splendid if a little rushed, says Big Nic, and if the idea becomes permanent the city will need to design plazas that better reflect the city rather than just some small café tables. Above, a gallery pulled from Flickr of some of yesterday's sights in Times Square. ['Lose the Traffic. Keep That Times Square Grit.']
2) Did you know that many brokers actually hire someone to write their brokerbabble? And often times that person is Valerie Haboush, a "freelance marketing communications writer" who is the high priestess of listings poetry. As the Times wonders, "The language of real estate advertising copy in New York is beyond parody: how can you make fun of something that already reads like a satire of itself?" Indeed, which makes Valerie Haboush our Jonathan Swift. ['The Poet of Property']
3) Though the story of affordable housing units in shiny new developments hitting the open market has been told, we do get something new to work with here: a photo of one such apartment. It's in Harlem's Beacon Towers, aka the Giving Tree, and illustrates how affordable units get slightly lesser finishes than their fancypants neighbors. ['When Affordable Is Still Out of Reach']
4) Our Hunters this week are a couple looking to finally shack up. He's willing to ditch his Chelsea for her Brooklyn because of a lack of good rental options, and they end up in a very recognizable place for our Brooklyn Heights friends: the Herman Behr Mansion. [The Hunt/'A Place They Both Call Home']
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