Is Mamdani targeting us?
Zohran Mamdani said a dumbfounding thing over the weekend. He told a gathering in Harlem that he would raise taxes on “richer and whiter neighborhoods.” That, he explained, would bring relief to “overtaxed homeowners in the outer boroughs.”
Could Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist who won the Democratic mayoral primary, be referring to us? No need to answer. The East Side is generally prosperous. No one will argue with that. But with the exception of the most expensive corners, the East Side is not more expensive than other expensive neighborhoods, some in the outer boroughs.
The left-fringe’s obsession with Manhattan, especially the UES, reflects the myth that it is an exclusive white enclave. It’s true that the East Side tends to be whiter and older and its people still dress nicely. Those are not crimes. Nor was preferring Andrew Cuomo in the primary, as did most voters in both the Upper East Side and Upper West Side.
As you can see from the above chart, though the city’s five richest zip codes are in Manhattan, none of them is on the Upper East Side or in Midtown East. A longer list of the most prosperous neighborhoods ranks at least two zip codes in Brooklyn — those covering Park Slope and Carroll Gardens/Cobble Hill — higher than any of ours.
Set aside the astounding idea of linking tax rates to race. The reality is that all New York neighborhoods are racially mixed to some extent, many to a large extent. As for Manhattan, whites comprise only half of the borough’s population, and that includes Hispanic whites, according to the 2020 U.S. Census.
State-assemblyman Mamdani lives in rapidly gentrifying Astoria. That Queens enclave, right over the East River from us, is 43% white.
An underreported aspect of the primary election is that June 24 marked the hottest day in Central Park since 1888. Triple-digit heat and high humidity made parts of the city feel like 126 degrees. No doubt many Cuomo supporters, comforted by polls showing their candidate with a commanding lead, thought they could take the day off from voting.
And much else. Mika over at the Vartali hair salon on East 57th Street tells us that many customers, especially older ones, canceled their appointments that day. We imagine there were a lot of cancellations at hair salons, doctor offices and restaurants.
We will be writing a lot more about the mayoral race. I discuss why I believe that Mamdani will not prevail in November in my latest syndicated column: Mamdani Probably Won’t be Mayor.
The East Side is Already Abundant
The book “Abundance” berates big city “liberals” for all those building rules, regulations and pesky zoning ordinances that raise the cost of housing. These make it harder for the non-rich to obtain affluence, authors Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson say. More annoyingly, Klein and Thompson imply that true opportunity knocks in only that only a handful of “superstar” cities. They would be San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston and, of course, New York City.
This shrunken worldview by a pair New Yorkers fails to take into account such relevant factors as geography, history and reality. Recent waves of impoverished immigrants have somehow managed to set roots in New York City, and we don’t lack for police, teachers and piano tuners. Perhaps they can’t afford three-bedroom duplexes on Sutton Place. Who can?
The comparisons of these high-cost cities with lower-cost ones are remarkably off-base if not off-the-wall. Example: Houston “is not facing the crises of homelessness and housing affordability seen in the superstar cities of many blue states.” In Houston almost anyone can build almost anywhere. Thus, in 2023, Houston issued almost 70,000 new housing permit, while the Boston metro area issued only 10,500.
“The Austin metro area led the nation in housing permits in 2022,” we are told, “permitting 18 new homes for every thousand residents. Los Angeles’s and San Francisco’s metro areas permitted only 2.5 units per thousand residents.”
Where do we start? The population density of San Francisco is five times that of Austin. Even sprawling Los Angeles has nearly three times as many people per square mile as Austin does.
Boston has nearly 4 times the number of people per square mile as Houston.
Furthermore, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York are all bounded by water. The only borough In New York City that’s not on an island is the Bronx. The Atlantic Ocean would be an impediment to growth, don’t you think? Houston and Austin can expand into big country.
By the way, Austin’s heralded building boom, fueled by the pandemic, is currently over. Austin now suffers from overbuilding. Its vacancy rates are sky-high both for office space and apartments. One reason, offered by The Wall Street Journal, is that tech talent is leaving Austin for, of all places, New York and San Francisco.
Here on the East Side we fight wars over zoning, not to preserve two-acre single-family plats, but to preserve such basics as light. We can defend quality of life without guilt. To which we’ll add, quality of life is the big reason these superstar cities are rich in the first place.
This East Side will have lots more to say about these matters.
The Four Seasons hotel is a proud Canadian
From stuck up to sticks up.
We have long wondered why the super-deluxe Four Seasons Hotel on East 57th Street between Madison and Park Avenues always flew the Canadian flag next to the American one. That this display of camaraderie continues as Donald Trump villainizes our dear neighbor to the north — and the hotel is only two city blocks from Trump Tower — made us inquire further.
It turns out that Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts is a Canadian company, founded in Toronto in 1960. It is co-owned by Bill Gates and Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, and still headquartered in Toronto. The property on 57th Street is owned by Ty Warner, the Beanie Baby mogul (remember him?).
As Crain’s New York reported last Nov. 14 , “the eight rooms still available for Friday night ranged from a $2,300 room for two to an $80,000 suite.” The latter would be the 4,300-square-foot Ty Warner Penthouse — one of the world’s most expensive hotel rooms.
The place closed during COVID. Because Warner got into a dispute with the Four Seasons corporate management, it remained closed until last November.
More evidence that the East Side is a fine place to roost
As Flaco the owl is being memorialized at the New York State Historical Society, another bird visitor of note is making the rounds on the East Side. Unlike Flaco, whom some miscreant human helped escape from the Central Park Zoo, Astoria the turkey seems to have come to East Side out of her own volition. Her normal digs are Roosevelt Island. (She was named after Astoria, the neighborhood at the Queens end of the Queensboro Bridge.)
Needless to say, the image above is not of Astoria, but you’ll find video and stills in The New York Times.. The Times is on the case.
This is at least Astoria’s second visit to Manhattan. She was seen here last year, fashionably posing above the entrance of Saks Fifth Avenue. How she gets over the East River is not entirely known. Does she fly? Does she walk across the bridge? Does she take the Roosevelt Island Tramway, figuring she’d save some mileage on her wings ?
Anyhow, earlier this week she was seen on a balcony around 58th Street, between First Avenue and Sutton Place,
Astoria is not the first being to look across the river at the bright lights of Manhattan and think, “Looks more fun over there.”
Flaco had a good run. May Astoria’s last longer.
COVID on the Upper East Side
Covid may seem far in our past, but it was just five years ago that our lives were rearranged and the future of the city became a big question mark. The East Side, however, persevered.
Here are some memories:
Dining al fresco at the Palace Restaurant coffee shop, East 57th Street.
Inspiration from Tiffany.
Gems gone from the window — and the mobs who gasped at them.
Park Avenue on a work day.
Maggie’s Place, on East 47th Street, showing true grit.
Scary signs everywhere we looked.
A nearly empty Acela car headed to New York from Boston.
Grand Central Terminal at 4:45 on a weekday afternoon.
Can you believe?
Central Park was a quiet wilderness on a perfect summer afternoon.
We still had to eat. The restaurant was always open at the Central Park Zoo.
She left me with her kids at Morton Williams
Coffee area at Morton Williams
Iris Apfel forever
Iris Apfel returning to her Park Avenue apartment in 2019.
It’s hard to think that it’s been almost a year since Iris Apfel left us at age 102. She didn’t seem a candidate for death.
Starting Jan. 28, there will be an online auction of some of Iris’ clothes and objets at Chistie’s: Unapologetically Iris: The Collection of Iris Apfel.
They called Iris a “fashion icon” but her resemblance toTruman Capote’s tasteful swans was minimal except for an obsession with dress. No beige or greige outfits in her life.
Iris piled on a riot of textiles and jewelry and hats and belts and scarves and bags. The Metropolitan Museum of Art put on a fabulous show about her in 2005, and she became subject of an Albert Maysles documentary, Iris, in 2014. And from there a woman of fascination here and in Europe.
She says to Maysles’ camera: “There’s so much sameness. Everything is homogenized. I hate it.” After a pause she adds, “Whatever.” And off she goes covered in five(?) strands of big bead necklaces, bangles almost up to her elbows and in a tunic from a tribe, that she notes, comprised a Chinese minority. The tunic came with a hood that she didn’t like so she had it made into a collar.
Outside her condo in Palm Beach, you see Iris and her husband Carl waiting for a driver.
They were debating whose yogurt was sitting in the fridge, just like the loving old Jewish couple they were.
But a spacious and eccentric Park Avenue apartment was their natural habitat. The documentary has scenes of Iris walking through the grand-hotel lobby steadied by her cane.
At left is a picture of Iris coming in from the night in her finery. It was taken by one of the doormen who shared it with me. By the way, her skirt is part of the auction.
Are New York hospitals recruiting on Easter Island?
Photo: ThisEastSide
New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center can’t be knocked for quality of doctors, nurses or other medical providers. But its customer service borders on dismal.
First time I came to see a patient still in recovery after major surgery, the expressionless, charmless security officer at the visitor’s desk said “second floor” and nothing else. I was reminded of those stone heads on Easter Island but naively thought I had information enough. I found an elevator, which left me in a huge warren of long, poorly marked corridors, A, B, C, D and so on. I wandered around asking for the recovery room. The badged workers I accosted in the hallways tried to be helpful, but they had no idea. Finally, one suggested I go back to the visitor’s desk on the first floor and start all over.
I felt my way to an elevator going down and exited through the Emergency Room. OK. I went outside and walked back to the Main Entrance. I went to the visitors’ desk and demanded more details. Turned out, the patient was on the third floor, not the second, and this time I was given a corridor letter, G. I again wandered around corridor G, third floor but finally came upon the proper recovery room and visited a patient who wondered where I had been all this time.
Half hour waits just to get a visitor’s pass.
That night the patient was moved to a regular room. When I arrived the next day to take him home, the line at the visitor’s desk wound down the hall. There was only one officer at the desk, and it took half an hour to get to her. All we needed was a pass and a room number. I was not alone in my frustration.
New York hospitals, this one in particular, would do well to spend less money advertising for patients and more on basic customer service.
Finally, Congestion Pricing!
Here is the best explanation, and argument, for congestion pricing.
Below is a complaint in the front window of Sephora, on Lexington and 59th, one block into the zone.
We couldn’t disagree more!
Photo: Craig McLaughlin
Is Liberty Bagels that terrific?
We can’t help but note that every Sunday morning, and some other mornings, a long, long snake-of-a-line forms outside Liberty Bagels. The eatery is located on 58th Street between Madison and Fifth.
We asked a couple at the end of the line, “What is the reason for this line.” A German tourist observing the scene said she was also curious. The man answered, “It is a famous bagel store.”
I pointed out that there were a lot of bagel places nearby that they could walk right into. Didn’t matter.
Nothing against Liberty Bagel’s bagels. The place happens to be a few steps from the Apple Store, Central Park, hotels and other places tourists congregate. That, we guess, explains it.
Hochul is Misery
She couldn’t just honor the hard work city officials put in to ease the gridlock that has made pedestrian life in Midtown a misery. If it worked according to plan, congestion pricing would have reduced the number of vehicles passing below 60th Street while providing desperately needed funds for the subways.
But no. Hochul had to insert herself into a highly thought-out plan and muck it up. She “temporarily” froze its start planned for June. Most read the move as an effort to curry favor with New Yorkers in the suburb. The argument was that the $15 charge was a tax on drivers already paying stiff tolls on the bridges and tunnels to enter Manhattan. Funny, but despite those “stiff tolls,” Manhattan is perpetually clogged with traffic drawn to near standstills.
The video clip below shows what happens every single day. Note how the crosswalks are totally blocked while the “Walk” signs are lit. (Sometimes pedestrians can’t even see the walks signs due to blockage by by trucks.) Pedestrians having to squeeze between fenders to get across the street are a normal occurrence.
One of the dumber objections to congestion pricing was made by United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew. He held that congestion pricing was cooked up to benefit allegedly rich white Manhattanites at the expense of “people of color” elsewhere in the city. I suggest that Mulgrew compare the racial makeup of people driving cars in Midtown with that of the subway riders. By the way, only one in a hundred travelers into the congestion zone come via car.
The original congestion pricing plan was intended to provide the Metropolitan Transportation Authority with $15 billion in bonds to improve the city’s decrepit bus and subway system. The upgrades would have also created thousands of jobs.
And what about the psychic and physical costs gridlock forces on those crossing streets in Midtown? Could subjecting residents, shoppers and workers to this experience be good for business? Leading city-based business groups don’t think so. They have been backing congestion pricing, according to Politico.
Now Hochul has returned to the mess she created and given a green light for congestion pricing. She’s lowered the fee for cars to $9 a day from $15.
Had the original $15 fee gone into effect as previously planned, everyone would be used to it by now. If it did seem to hurt midtown businesses, the fee could have then been lowered.
And so congestion pricing should start early next month, just in time for the start of Donald Trump’s second presidential term. Trump has vowed to kill the program. Good work, Kathy!