There was an interesting exchange on Robert Meyer’s vintage guitars Web site a while back. The headline (“Collecting Vintage Guitars is a Financially Sound Investment”) insistently summed it up. Then, as evidence, Meyer went on to spin tales of a 1959 Fender Sunburst Stratocaster ($250 new) now bringing $17,000. And Eric Clapton’s favorite Strat from the ’70s, which sold for almost a million.
“Values only continue to go up,” Meyer wrote. To which a commenter replied, “Yes, interesting, but with the credit crisis, where will the vintage market be in a year?”
Meyer published his article on Sept. 28, 2008. The next day Congress rejected the $700 billion bailout package and $1.2 trillion disappeared from the U.S. stock market. And now James R. Baker of Shoreham can tell you where the vintage guitar market is a year and a few months later.
“This year has been very hard,” he told me the other day. In fact, he said, “I’m not sure why I’ve survived all these years” while other guitar makers and restorers have gone out of business.
A big reason is that Baker learned early on the value of diversifying. Raised in Queens, he lived in Huntington in the ’70s and ’80s and worked in Manhattan for design companies, doing projects of every kind, including furniture.
At his first firm his boss drove home the eggs-in-many-baskets philosophy. “All it takes is a slowdown and you’re really in trouble,” he was catechized. “That’s why I still make furniture and do design work.”
With the ’80s recession he and his family moved to Shoreham, which he describes as “a wonderful place – so many creative people here.”
Now another recession is gnawing and Baker is again finding ways to survive. That involves a three-prong assault, with an eBay outlet for lower-end instruments, a Web site for his most avant-garde guitars and auction houses for historic pieces. It’s all backed up by his custom furniture work. Plus he’s working on a book, which, fittingly, is about managing creative work.
Other than guitars, that’s the subject Baker is hottest on: the financing struggle faced by creative people in a bottom-line world. If you have a pizza place, no problem, he fumes. But if you make rare guitars, you’re in a gray area, regardless of the fact that you’ve never missed a bill payment. “And don’t even get me started on ARC loans.”
His solution: Work even harder, leverage your house and use credit cards when necessary. “What else can you do?” he said.
Countering the economic angst is the beauty of the work, which is its own reward. Baker loves woodworking and his James R. Baker guitars, which sell in the $4,000 range, show it. He’s one of a smallish breed devoted to the survival of archtop guitars. But that’s not his only focus. “My favorite guitars are the instruments with a story,” he said. “I could give you a 15-minute history on almost every one in my collection.”
Such as his Mario Maccaferri guitar, one of the first made by plastic injection. No, it’s not a classic rosewood Martin, but it represents a watershed moment in guitar history. “He had the guts to invent the next generation,” prefiguring Ovation and the others, Baker said.
Not that he doesn’t have his own stash of magnificent old Martins and Gibsons, plus some very rare instruments, such as a 1790s Fabricatore, dating back to the guitar’s very beginnings.
What’s striking about it all is that such reverence for old-world craftsmanship can find a place in modern times. A Web site offering such gems is like a detour in a time machine.
Baker is excited about it and about reaching a new generation.
“Kids today are really amazing,” he said. “So smart, so quick to absorb new things. They don’t have the cultural boundaries my generation had.” In other words, they’re not locked into a Les Paul as the only guitar worth wanting. “They’re not attached to one look,” he said. “Their vistas are open wide.”
And so, despite the struggles and the recession, Baker is optimistic that his guitars will play on. An indicator: He’s only been marketing via the Internet a short while but already he’s sold six guitars.
Long Island Business News / December 29, 2009
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Spreading some holiday deer
You think your job is hard, try finding a heartwarming economic column to wrap up 2009. I asked around the East End and came up with some pretty threadbare suggestions. For instance this: “Well,” said my dentist, Dr. Al, “body shops are busy because of all the deer accidents.”
And that was the best of them.
But as East Enders know, the deer menace is considerable, growing and getting lots of press. When “Today” show host Matt Lauer collided with one in the Hamptons in March it was big news. Adding impact was the fact that Lauer was on his bike at the time.
A while back a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study estimated that 1.5 million deer crashes occur each year causing $1.1 billion in damage and 150 deaths, and the totals are rising. The study listed the top 10 crash states and New York wasn’t on the list, but if it were broken down by towns, I’ll bet the East End would be way up there.
All those collisions mean business. Are the numbers up? “Absolutely,” said Brian Klos of Ted’s Auto Body in Peconic. “Maybe 10 cars a week – twice as much as ever.”
Deer strikes account for 20 to 30 percent of business at Fireplace Auto Collision in East Hampton, reported office manager Lily Paulovic. One day last year they took in a record nine such cars in a single day, until it became ridiculous. The numbers were big last year and about the same this year. “They’re everywhere,” Paulovic said. The other day she was driving her truck, glanced over and saw a deer running alongside, like traffic.
Same thing, of course, on Shelter Island, which has evolved into virtually a moated deer community. “I’ve never seen this many,” said George Hubbard at Hubbard’s Repair Shop. “They come walking right down the street in broad daylight.”
When not cruising the streets, deer are devouring vegetation. New York state took it seriously enough to send Suffolk County almost $1 million for agricultural deer fencing this year. Last year 66 farmers won such grants, and each got some $14,000 worth of fencing, according to a story in The Suffolk Times.
“We employ fencers and give them a lot of work,” Vickie Cardaro of Buttercup Farms on Shelter Island told me. But a hungry doe is persistent, and so fencing strategy has had to become almost a military operation. These days she favors the “double-four” technique, which involves two four-foot fences four feet apart. “Deer have very poor depth perception,” she said. The double hurdle apparently is enough to discourage leaping.
As for landscaping, after 11 years in the trenches Cardaro said she’s “got it down to a science.” Her weapons: boxwood, ornamental nepeta and a few others. Eight years ago spirea used to work “but now they eat that too,” she said. “I’ve learned that deer can change diets over the years.”
How much of Cardaro’s career is tied up in deer management? “One hundred percent,” she said. “My whole life is entirely about the deer.” Every season has its challenges. “After Labor Day we have to wrap trees with PVC or chicken wire.” Otherwise, during rutting season, stags rubbing velvet off their new antlers will destroy tree bark, which can lead to infestations, etc.
Much of her fencing business goes to Kingdom Fence in Riverhead, whose co-owner Bob Keen agrees that the double-four can be effective and less visually intrusive than taller blockades. Sometimes homeowners get so frustrated they spend as much as $20,000 putting up super structures to protect their properties. “Some homes look like concentration camps,” he said.
A hint of the desperation was evident at a recent Southampton Village Board meeting. Up for discussion was Mayor Mark Epley’s proposed law to allow residents to defend their homes with bows and arrows. Village officials were hesitant out of concern that arrows might zing into innocent passers-by.
At that point in the meeting, according to the Southampton Press story, village resident Heide Loefken asked if it would be OK if she dug a hole and enticed the deer to fall into it, “like a grave.” Said Loefken, “I’ve thought about this deeply.”
Long Island Business News / December 22, 2009
And that was the best of them.
But as East Enders know, the deer menace is considerable, growing and getting lots of press. When “Today” show host Matt Lauer collided with one in the Hamptons in March it was big news. Adding impact was the fact that Lauer was on his bike at the time.
A while back a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study estimated that 1.5 million deer crashes occur each year causing $1.1 billion in damage and 150 deaths, and the totals are rising. The study listed the top 10 crash states and New York wasn’t on the list, but if it were broken down by towns, I’ll bet the East End would be way up there.
All those collisions mean business. Are the numbers up? “Absolutely,” said Brian Klos of Ted’s Auto Body in Peconic. “Maybe 10 cars a week – twice as much as ever.”
Deer strikes account for 20 to 30 percent of business at Fireplace Auto Collision in East Hampton, reported office manager Lily Paulovic. One day last year they took in a record nine such cars in a single day, until it became ridiculous. The numbers were big last year and about the same this year. “They’re everywhere,” Paulovic said. The other day she was driving her truck, glanced over and saw a deer running alongside, like traffic.
Same thing, of course, on Shelter Island, which has evolved into virtually a moated deer community. “I’ve never seen this many,” said George Hubbard at Hubbard’s Repair Shop. “They come walking right down the street in broad daylight.”
When not cruising the streets, deer are devouring vegetation. New York state took it seriously enough to send Suffolk County almost $1 million for agricultural deer fencing this year. Last year 66 farmers won such grants, and each got some $14,000 worth of fencing, according to a story in The Suffolk Times.
“We employ fencers and give them a lot of work,” Vickie Cardaro of Buttercup Farms on Shelter Island told me. But a hungry doe is persistent, and so fencing strategy has had to become almost a military operation. These days she favors the “double-four” technique, which involves two four-foot fences four feet apart. “Deer have very poor depth perception,” she said. The double hurdle apparently is enough to discourage leaping.
As for landscaping, after 11 years in the trenches Cardaro said she’s “got it down to a science.” Her weapons: boxwood, ornamental nepeta and a few others. Eight years ago spirea used to work “but now they eat that too,” she said. “I’ve learned that deer can change diets over the years.”
How much of Cardaro’s career is tied up in deer management? “One hundred percent,” she said. “My whole life is entirely about the deer.” Every season has its challenges. “After Labor Day we have to wrap trees with PVC or chicken wire.” Otherwise, during rutting season, stags rubbing velvet off their new antlers will destroy tree bark, which can lead to infestations, etc.
Much of her fencing business goes to Kingdom Fence in Riverhead, whose co-owner Bob Keen agrees that the double-four can be effective and less visually intrusive than taller blockades. Sometimes homeowners get so frustrated they spend as much as $20,000 putting up super structures to protect their properties. “Some homes look like concentration camps,” he said.
A hint of the desperation was evident at a recent Southampton Village Board meeting. Up for discussion was Mayor Mark Epley’s proposed law to allow residents to defend their homes with bows and arrows. Village officials were hesitant out of concern that arrows might zing into innocent passers-by.
At that point in the meeting, according to the Southampton Press story, village resident Heide Loefken asked if it would be OK if she dug a hole and enticed the deer to fall into it, “like a grave.” Said Loefken, “I’ve thought about this deeply.”
Long Island Business News / December 22, 2009
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Landmark shop needs second miracle
Samuel Levine founded the Arcade Department Store in 1928. One year later the stock market crashed but the Arcade rolled on, becoming a Greenport landmark. It was located in the heart of the village in every sense of the phrase.
Sixty-nine years later it was going out of business and Greenporters were bereft. With its wooden floors and aisles of necessities and notions, it was an emotional touchstone to the good old days.
Then a mercantile miracle happened: Bob and Roseanne Paquette appeared. Not only did they buy the old place, but they vowed to keep it as it was.
Now, 13 years later, the country’s battling another financial crisis and some fear this one might finally be the Arcade’s Waterloo. The store’s been on the market for a year but there are no serious offers. “Only bottom-feeders looking for a fire sale,” Bob Paquette told me last week. “I’m not looking for that.”
In the meantime, Paquette has reefed the store’s sails to weather the storm. Among other things, that’s meant cutting the staff from 22 to eight. Painful? “It certainly is,” he said. “Hours have been cut somewhat too.” Nevertheless, he said morale remains remarkably high. “The people here know we’re doing the best we can,” he said. “I’m very lucky; I’ve got a good crew.”
While the store cuts back, of course, costs do not. Energy, taxes, insurance – “they’re all going up,” Paquette said. “I’m trying to reinvent the store to keep it together.”
That reinvention involves a plan to lease out one-third of the space to others with products to sell. Products like sporting goods, shoes, linens, jewelry, gifts and art. “People are talking to me,” he said. “I’m taking phone numbers and will determine what’s best. I don’t want a flea market feel.”
Paquette said sharing space is an old idea that’s been used successfully across the country as the big-box revolution gutted downtowns. And for the record, he said, that’s what’s happening with the Arcade.
“It’s been very difficult to keep it going,” Paquette said. “There are so many second-home owners out here now,” and they tend to gravitate to Riverhead for their serious shopping. “It was hard when it was just Tanger,” he said. “But now it’s Tanger, Sports Authority, Best Buy, Michael’s, Border’s, TGIF. People make it a destination and stay all day.”
It’s “the way America’s gone,” he said, noting the transition from downtown shopping at places like Bohack and Sears.
Add to that a Great Recession and the slide gets steep. “New York sales tax receipts are down 30 to 35 percent,” Paquette said. “That tells you what’s happening.”
It’s a grim turn for someone who has a genetic attraction to all things five-and-dime. Paquette’s father was in the business for 50 years. “Retail was in my blood,” he told The New York Times in 1996. “I was always on the floor with my dad.”
Paquette himself worked at McClellan-McCrory in Riverhead before going into radio in New York. When he left that career in 1996, it was almost kismet that he found the Arcade with a “For Sale” sign in place.
It was a fortuitous pairing for both parties, but the joy is draining away now. “It’s a dinosaur,” Paquette said, and it would take a special person to want to ride it. “We carry over 40,000 items. A lot of people are intimidated by the inventory alone.”
The last year has been funereal for Paquette. Once he lived on a boat, and now he dreams about doing that again. Then there’s this fantasy: “I’d rather be a customer at the Arcade than the owner.”
Nevertheless, he’s going to soldier on with the shared-space plan in hopes that the old variety store can ride out this latest tempest.
Thirteen years ago I wrote a column wishing that there could be some kind of business preservation program, because some shops are as important to our sense of place as are the farms and the old homes we currently strive to save. The focus of the column was the Arcade. Then, miraculously, the Paquettes arrived and did it.
Is it too much to hope for another miracle?
Long Island Business News / December 16, 2009
Sixty-nine years later it was going out of business and Greenporters were bereft. With its wooden floors and aisles of necessities and notions, it was an emotional touchstone to the good old days.
Then a mercantile miracle happened: Bob and Roseanne Paquette appeared. Not only did they buy the old place, but they vowed to keep it as it was.
Now, 13 years later, the country’s battling another financial crisis and some fear this one might finally be the Arcade’s Waterloo. The store’s been on the market for a year but there are no serious offers. “Only bottom-feeders looking for a fire sale,” Bob Paquette told me last week. “I’m not looking for that.”
In the meantime, Paquette has reefed the store’s sails to weather the storm. Among other things, that’s meant cutting the staff from 22 to eight. Painful? “It certainly is,” he said. “Hours have been cut somewhat too.” Nevertheless, he said morale remains remarkably high. “The people here know we’re doing the best we can,” he said. “I’m very lucky; I’ve got a good crew.”
While the store cuts back, of course, costs do not. Energy, taxes, insurance – “they’re all going up,” Paquette said. “I’m trying to reinvent the store to keep it together.”
That reinvention involves a plan to lease out one-third of the space to others with products to sell. Products like sporting goods, shoes, linens, jewelry, gifts and art. “People are talking to me,” he said. “I’m taking phone numbers and will determine what’s best. I don’t want a flea market feel.”
Paquette said sharing space is an old idea that’s been used successfully across the country as the big-box revolution gutted downtowns. And for the record, he said, that’s what’s happening with the Arcade.
“It’s been very difficult to keep it going,” Paquette said. “There are so many second-home owners out here now,” and they tend to gravitate to Riverhead for their serious shopping. “It was hard when it was just Tanger,” he said. “But now it’s Tanger, Sports Authority, Best Buy, Michael’s, Border’s, TGIF. People make it a destination and stay all day.”
It’s “the way America’s gone,” he said, noting the transition from downtown shopping at places like Bohack and Sears.
Add to that a Great Recession and the slide gets steep. “New York sales tax receipts are down 30 to 35 percent,” Paquette said. “That tells you what’s happening.”
It’s a grim turn for someone who has a genetic attraction to all things five-and-dime. Paquette’s father was in the business for 50 years. “Retail was in my blood,” he told The New York Times in 1996. “I was always on the floor with my dad.”
Paquette himself worked at McClellan-McCrory in Riverhead before going into radio in New York. When he left that career in 1996, it was almost kismet that he found the Arcade with a “For Sale” sign in place.
It was a fortuitous pairing for both parties, but the joy is draining away now. “It’s a dinosaur,” Paquette said, and it would take a special person to want to ride it. “We carry over 40,000 items. A lot of people are intimidated by the inventory alone.”
The last year has been funereal for Paquette. Once he lived on a boat, and now he dreams about doing that again. Then there’s this fantasy: “I’d rather be a customer at the Arcade than the owner.”
Nevertheless, he’s going to soldier on with the shared-space plan in hopes that the old variety store can ride out this latest tempest.
Thirteen years ago I wrote a column wishing that there could be some kind of business preservation program, because some shops are as important to our sense of place as are the farms and the old homes we currently strive to save. The focus of the column was the Arcade. Then, miraculously, the Paquettes arrived and did it.
Is it too much to hope for another miracle?
Long Island Business News / December 16, 2009
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Paparazzi swarm out east
“Fame is a disease,” said comedian Margaret Cho, and she wasn’t joking. These days it’s a pandemic that afflicts both stars and the star-struck. Take, for instance, the Tiger Woods story.
Newspapers have been feasting on it, and not because he’s got a fun name (“Cagey Tiger,” “Tiger Hides His Tale,” etc.). Also not because it’s high time golf finally generated some shock value. It’s really all about us. Celebrity sells. Sex sells. Scandal sells. So a celebrity sex scandal is catnip on steroids. If people weren’t addicted to it, tabloids wouldn’t be surviving even as legitimate newspapers are folding.
Tiger is big-time catnip, and since there’s a scandal, of course it has a Hamptons connection. His alleged/rumored/staunchly denied mistress, Rachel Uchitel, reportedly has worked as a Hamptons nightclub hostess, “policing the velvet rope,” as the lush expression goes.
The last time Woods was linked to the Hamptons was March 2008, when rumors swirled (from the New York Post) that he had bought a $65 million waterfront home in Southampton. The story was debunked but still managed to live on for a while.
Another case of celebrity psychosis recently hit the East End in the form of “The Romantics,” the “Big Chill”-ish movie being filmed in and around Southold. For those whose People magazine subscriptions have expired, its cast includes Anna Paquin, Elijah Wood, Jeremy Strong, Adam Brody, Josh Duhamel and (cymbal crash, please) Katie Holmes.
It’s the last name that brought the paparazzi out in force, lining the beach to capture the filming of a bayside wedding scene. But since the beach was too low, the canny photogs raided local hardware stores to buy ladders, The Suffolk Times reported.
So showbiz has been good for the local economy. Motels, restaurants and coffee shops have also seen upticks. But since it’s fame we’re speaking of, there must also be a dose of crazy. It was summed up in a Times editorial headlined, “Paparazzi, don’t let the door hit you in the … ,” which culminated by asserting that the photographers’ “intrusive behavior … far outweighs the little good they’ve brought to the local economy.”
The Times itself, however, did photograph Tom Cruise (Katie Holmes’ husband, for those who read books) while jogging, and asked him a question, which he ignored. “And you know what?” said the editorial, “We completely understand.”
Nonetheless, the paper did put a video of the encounter on its Web site, and even the respectful Times was chastised by a reader in an online comment for intrusive behavior. The video is no longer available.
But what’s a newspaper to do? Imagine the debate inside the newsroom. Mega-stars are walking among us. If we ignore them, aren’t we missing a story? But if we cover it, how are we different from the paparazzi?
To get an insider’s thoughts, I called a paparazzo who was here for the big event. “No, I didn’t buy a ladder,” Bobby Bank told me. “I rented a speedboat.” (Coincidentally, he’s no stranger to the North Fork. As a kid he and his father used to go fishing out of Mitchell’s Dock in Greenport.)
Google “bobby bank romantics” and you’ll see a flood of his shots from Southold. A few days after his visit he told me by phone, “I’m just coming back from shooting Barry Manilow, Lance Armstrong and Matt Damon.” Every day, he said, many constellations of stars twinkle around the tri-state area. Bank and his long lenses zoom in on as many as possible, including “The Romantics” in Southold.
The 54-year-old Bank is unapologetic about his profession, and accepts the public’s hunger for what it is. Which means he treats celebrities as a sort of cash crop to be harvested with his camera. “I know the pulse of the city very well,” he said.
I read recently that paparazzi pay has declined from the glory days when a shot of a rampaging Britney Spears brought a reported $300,000. So how much will Bank’s Southold photos yield? He said it depends on how widely they’re purchased through WireImage and Getty Images, which broker his work. But he did assert this: The real money to be would have been a certain picture shot through an unshaded window. The subject: “Katie Holmes naked.”
Long Island Business News / December 10, 2009
Newspapers have been feasting on it, and not because he’s got a fun name (“Cagey Tiger,” “Tiger Hides His Tale,” etc.). Also not because it’s high time golf finally generated some shock value. It’s really all about us. Celebrity sells. Sex sells. Scandal sells. So a celebrity sex scandal is catnip on steroids. If people weren’t addicted to it, tabloids wouldn’t be surviving even as legitimate newspapers are folding.
Tiger is big-time catnip, and since there’s a scandal, of course it has a Hamptons connection. His alleged/rumored/staunchly denied mistress, Rachel Uchitel, reportedly has worked as a Hamptons nightclub hostess, “policing the velvet rope,” as the lush expression goes.
The last time Woods was linked to the Hamptons was March 2008, when rumors swirled (from the New York Post) that he had bought a $65 million waterfront home in Southampton. The story was debunked but still managed to live on for a while.
Another case of celebrity psychosis recently hit the East End in the form of “The Romantics,” the “Big Chill”-ish movie being filmed in and around Southold. For those whose People magazine subscriptions have expired, its cast includes Anna Paquin, Elijah Wood, Jeremy Strong, Adam Brody, Josh Duhamel and (cymbal crash, please) Katie Holmes.
It’s the last name that brought the paparazzi out in force, lining the beach to capture the filming of a bayside wedding scene. But since the beach was too low, the canny photogs raided local hardware stores to buy ladders, The Suffolk Times reported.
So showbiz has been good for the local economy. Motels, restaurants and coffee shops have also seen upticks. But since it’s fame we’re speaking of, there must also be a dose of crazy. It was summed up in a Times editorial headlined, “Paparazzi, don’t let the door hit you in the … ,” which culminated by asserting that the photographers’ “intrusive behavior … far outweighs the little good they’ve brought to the local economy.”
The Times itself, however, did photograph Tom Cruise (Katie Holmes’ husband, for those who read books) while jogging, and asked him a question, which he ignored. “And you know what?” said the editorial, “We completely understand.”
Nonetheless, the paper did put a video of the encounter on its Web site, and even the respectful Times was chastised by a reader in an online comment for intrusive behavior. The video is no longer available.
But what’s a newspaper to do? Imagine the debate inside the newsroom. Mega-stars are walking among us. If we ignore them, aren’t we missing a story? But if we cover it, how are we different from the paparazzi?
To get an insider’s thoughts, I called a paparazzo who was here for the big event. “No, I didn’t buy a ladder,” Bobby Bank told me. “I rented a speedboat.” (Coincidentally, he’s no stranger to the North Fork. As a kid he and his father used to go fishing out of Mitchell’s Dock in Greenport.)
Google “bobby bank romantics” and you’ll see a flood of his shots from Southold. A few days after his visit he told me by phone, “I’m just coming back from shooting Barry Manilow, Lance Armstrong and Matt Damon.” Every day, he said, many constellations of stars twinkle around the tri-state area. Bank and his long lenses zoom in on as many as possible, including “The Romantics” in Southold.
The 54-year-old Bank is unapologetic about his profession, and accepts the public’s hunger for what it is. Which means he treats celebrities as a sort of cash crop to be harvested with his camera. “I know the pulse of the city very well,” he said.
I read recently that paparazzi pay has declined from the glory days when a shot of a rampaging Britney Spears brought a reported $300,000. So how much will Bank’s Southold photos yield? He said it depends on how widely they’re purchased through WireImage and Getty Images, which broker his work. But he did assert this: The real money to be would have been a certain picture shot through an unshaded window. The subject: “Katie Holmes naked.”
Long Island Business News / December 10, 2009
Put to rest the myth of the highly paid doctor
In case you missed it, there’s been lots of health talk recently. Much has been about patients struggling to get care. Rarely do we hear about doctors struggling to give it.
One such doctor is Erica Jurasits.
Not long ago the owner of North Country Family Health and Medicine in Rocky Point was thinking of giving up the fight. “I keep putting money in, reinvesting in the practice, but not getting anything back out,” she told me recently. “At some point you have to say that’s enough, cut your losses and move on. Join a multispecialty practice or become a teacher at the university. A lot of physicians are retiring early and moving out of state.”
But she doesn’t want to do any of that. “I love my practice, and I love my patients,” she said. “I think I give quality care but the business end of things gets a little difficult.”
The business end includes Long Island’s notoriously high real estate prices and taxes, plus salaries for her 3.5 employees, big student loans that are “like a second mortgage, basically,” and on and on. Worst of all is the “horrendous” malpractice insurance.
In Nassau/Suffolk, which ranks sixth highest in the nation, specialists pay well over $100,000. “Even family physicians are in the $20,000 range,” Jurasits said. Match all that outlay with inadequate HMO reimbursements and the dilemma is clear. “Insurance barely covers costs. I don’t even give vaccinations for HPV or shingles anymore.”
As a result, Jurasits began taking on more and more patients and seeing up to 50 a day. “It really burnt me out,” she said. “It’s what I needed to do to keep my practice afloat, but I just knew I couldn’t give quality care.” Since then she’s added another doctor and is cutting her appointments to a maximum of 30 a day.
Problem solved? “Not yet, but we’re working on it,” she said.
Jurasits brings a broad spectrum of experience to the subject. A 1991 graduate of the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine, she interned at Peninsula Medical Center in Queens and then at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey. On a health policy fellowship she helped write one of the nation’s first patient protection acts.
She also has two children, one of whom was home sick the day we spoke. So you could say that Jurasits sees health issues from all sides: public, private and practitioner. “Absolutely,” she agreed with a laugh.
And not only from a U.S. viewpoint, since she also did a residency rotation in England. I asked her about the popularly held notion that doctors in countries with nationalized health care make modest livings while those in the United States all live in beachfront mansions and drive Mercedeses. Her laugh turned rueful. “That’s a definite misconception,” she said. “We live in a two-bedroom ranch house on barely a quarter-acre, and it’s not on the water. I drive a little Toyota van.”
(By the way, she doesn’t have much hope for nationalized medicine here due to restricted access. “I don’t think the American people will stand for that,” she said.)
Meanwhile, some U.S. doctors aren’t standing for the current situation. Some have started charging a flat $75 per visit. Some are offering concierge service, in which patients pay a couple thousand dollars per year just to get guaranteed access. The advantage there is the ability to see fewer patients and give them more time and attention.
Jurasits has seen figures indicating that a primary care physician’s practice needs 3,000 to 4,000 active patients to survive. But that doesn’t work for her brand of doctoring. “Osteopaths are much more geared toward prevention,” she said, daunted by the notion of giving thorough care to that many patients.
Yet another problem might be the average person’s disbelief that doctors can suffer financial distress. It’s a refutation of a deeply held American belief: that medicine is a sure-fire career path to wealth.
These days, in many cases, it’s apparently not true. And after 11 years of practicing, six of them in her own company, Dr. Jurasits herself seemed surprised to be saying, “I would have thought it would be profitable.”
Long Island Business News / December 3, 2009
One such doctor is Erica Jurasits.
Not long ago the owner of North Country Family Health and Medicine in Rocky Point was thinking of giving up the fight. “I keep putting money in, reinvesting in the practice, but not getting anything back out,” she told me recently. “At some point you have to say that’s enough, cut your losses and move on. Join a multispecialty practice or become a teacher at the university. A lot of physicians are retiring early and moving out of state.”
But she doesn’t want to do any of that. “I love my practice, and I love my patients,” she said. “I think I give quality care but the business end of things gets a little difficult.”
The business end includes Long Island’s notoriously high real estate prices and taxes, plus salaries for her 3.5 employees, big student loans that are “like a second mortgage, basically,” and on and on. Worst of all is the “horrendous” malpractice insurance.
In Nassau/Suffolk, which ranks sixth highest in the nation, specialists pay well over $100,000. “Even family physicians are in the $20,000 range,” Jurasits said. Match all that outlay with inadequate HMO reimbursements and the dilemma is clear. “Insurance barely covers costs. I don’t even give vaccinations for HPV or shingles anymore.”
As a result, Jurasits began taking on more and more patients and seeing up to 50 a day. “It really burnt me out,” she said. “It’s what I needed to do to keep my practice afloat, but I just knew I couldn’t give quality care.” Since then she’s added another doctor and is cutting her appointments to a maximum of 30 a day.
Problem solved? “Not yet, but we’re working on it,” she said.
Jurasits brings a broad spectrum of experience to the subject. A 1991 graduate of the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine, she interned at Peninsula Medical Center in Queens and then at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey. On a health policy fellowship she helped write one of the nation’s first patient protection acts.
She also has two children, one of whom was home sick the day we spoke. So you could say that Jurasits sees health issues from all sides: public, private and practitioner. “Absolutely,” she agreed with a laugh.
And not only from a U.S. viewpoint, since she also did a residency rotation in England. I asked her about the popularly held notion that doctors in countries with nationalized health care make modest livings while those in the United States all live in beachfront mansions and drive Mercedeses. Her laugh turned rueful. “That’s a definite misconception,” she said. “We live in a two-bedroom ranch house on barely a quarter-acre, and it’s not on the water. I drive a little Toyota van.”
(By the way, she doesn’t have much hope for nationalized medicine here due to restricted access. “I don’t think the American people will stand for that,” she said.)
Meanwhile, some U.S. doctors aren’t standing for the current situation. Some have started charging a flat $75 per visit. Some are offering concierge service, in which patients pay a couple thousand dollars per year just to get guaranteed access. The advantage there is the ability to see fewer patients and give them more time and attention.
Jurasits has seen figures indicating that a primary care physician’s practice needs 3,000 to 4,000 active patients to survive. But that doesn’t work for her brand of doctoring. “Osteopaths are much more geared toward prevention,” she said, daunted by the notion of giving thorough care to that many patients.
Yet another problem might be the average person’s disbelief that doctors can suffer financial distress. It’s a refutation of a deeply held American belief: that medicine is a sure-fire career path to wealth.
These days, in many cases, it’s apparently not true. And after 11 years of practicing, six of them in her own company, Dr. Jurasits herself seemed surprised to be saying, “I would have thought it would be profitable.”
Long Island Business News / December 3, 2009
Restoring the Cricket II
“Jaws” swims on.
Thirty-four years after the blockbuster was released, the movie and its offshoots are still scaring the bejesus out of people and earning a lot of money doing it.
There are Jaws theme parks in Orlando, San Francisco and Japan. There’s a documentary. There are toys, posters, games, T-shirts and fan clubs. Martha’s Vineyard hosts JawsFests.
All of which screams that a monument to Montauk fishing with the Cricket II as its centerpiece simply has to happen.
To explain:
Frank Mundus was the legendary Montauk shark hunter who was the basis for the crusty, crazed Capt. Quint in the movie. Mundus died a year ago and his boat, the Cricket II, upon which the movie’s Orca was based, went to auction. It was bought for $51,750 by Jon Dodd of Rhode Island, who has begun renovation.
Meanwhile, however, efforts to keep the boat here as part of a monument to Montauk fishing were under way. At the helm was Henry Uihlein of Uihlein Marine in Montauk, where the Cricket II has been berthed.
As a result, the two men ended up at odds. That’s unfortunate because they have a lot in common. Most importantly, they both had fond connections with Mundus dating back to their childhoods. “My father had that effect on a lot of young men,” the captain’s daughter, Patty Mundus of Greenport, told me last week.
Dodd, who won the auction, was 13 when he started writing Mundus letters, offering to swab decks if he could go along on a shark-hunting expedition. “He was my Mickey Mantle,” Dodd said.
Same sort of thing for Uihlein. “As a kid I saw those sharks being pulled,” he recalled. “There was a lot of excitement. He gave me sharks’ eyes and taught me how to make marbles out of them by burying them.”
Uihlein went on to run the marina where the Cricket II was kept. “Frank trusted me with the boat,” he said. “He came to me two or three days before he died and told me to take care of it. He wanted the boat here.”
The captain’s daughter agrees. “I like the idea of the Cricket remaining in Montauk, not just as a memorial to my father,” but as part of a monument to Montauk fishing.
Uihlein said he’d succeeded in getting the county to donate a piece of land to that end, but now the campaign is scuttled. The money’s not there and “the boat is gone,” he said. “It’s no longer Frank’s boat.”
Patty Mundus agrees. “It’s very unfortunate it’s already been taken apart,” she said. “It was in sort of artifact state before. Now the whole boat’s been gutted.”
Dodd says he didn’t know about the memorial idea when he won the auction and began restoration. When he did hear, he said he would be willing to part with the Cricket II if his $71,850 investment could be reimbursed. More recently an unnamed Montauk accountant sent him an e-mail suggesting he could cover his costs by donating the boat to Montauk. That interests him.
“I’ve been reading the comments about what a shame it is, etc.” Dodd said. “I’m not extremely desirous to get rid of it, but if something special could be done …” He had planned to use the rebuilt Cricket II for family outings, but he too likes the idea of it being “the centerpiece of a monument to commemorate Montauk as the fishing capital of the world.”
As for the loss of artifact status, he said the things he’s done, such as removing the gas tank, would have to be done anyway. If there’s truly interest, however, he said it should happen quickly before major expenses are incurred.
This is too good an idea to let fizzle. Think of all the Montauk anglers who might contribute. Maybe Steven Spielberg would help too. (I called and got as far as his publicist’s secretary. No reply yet. Also no reply from East Hampton’s supervisor-elect or acting supervisor.)
But I hope we don’t let this one get away. Something’s not right about Martha’s Vineyard hosting the highly successful JawsFests. It was all based on our shark, our Mundus and our Cricket II. It ought to be our attraction too.
Long Island Business News / November 23, 2009
Thirty-four years after the blockbuster was released, the movie and its offshoots are still scaring the bejesus out of people and earning a lot of money doing it.
There are Jaws theme parks in Orlando, San Francisco and Japan. There’s a documentary. There are toys, posters, games, T-shirts and fan clubs. Martha’s Vineyard hosts JawsFests.
All of which screams that a monument to Montauk fishing with the Cricket II as its centerpiece simply has to happen.
To explain:
Frank Mundus was the legendary Montauk shark hunter who was the basis for the crusty, crazed Capt. Quint in the movie. Mundus died a year ago and his boat, the Cricket II, upon which the movie’s Orca was based, went to auction. It was bought for $51,750 by Jon Dodd of Rhode Island, who has begun renovation.
Meanwhile, however, efforts to keep the boat here as part of a monument to Montauk fishing were under way. At the helm was Henry Uihlein of Uihlein Marine in Montauk, where the Cricket II has been berthed.
As a result, the two men ended up at odds. That’s unfortunate because they have a lot in common. Most importantly, they both had fond connections with Mundus dating back to their childhoods. “My father had that effect on a lot of young men,” the captain’s daughter, Patty Mundus of Greenport, told me last week.
Dodd, who won the auction, was 13 when he started writing Mundus letters, offering to swab decks if he could go along on a shark-hunting expedition. “He was my Mickey Mantle,” Dodd said.
Same sort of thing for Uihlein. “As a kid I saw those sharks being pulled,” he recalled. “There was a lot of excitement. He gave me sharks’ eyes and taught me how to make marbles out of them by burying them.”
Uihlein went on to run the marina where the Cricket II was kept. “Frank trusted me with the boat,” he said. “He came to me two or three days before he died and told me to take care of it. He wanted the boat here.”
The captain’s daughter agrees. “I like the idea of the Cricket remaining in Montauk, not just as a memorial to my father,” but as part of a monument to Montauk fishing.
Uihlein said he’d succeeded in getting the county to donate a piece of land to that end, but now the campaign is scuttled. The money’s not there and “the boat is gone,” he said. “It’s no longer Frank’s boat.”
Patty Mundus agrees. “It’s very unfortunate it’s already been taken apart,” she said. “It was in sort of artifact state before. Now the whole boat’s been gutted.”
Dodd says he didn’t know about the memorial idea when he won the auction and began restoration. When he did hear, he said he would be willing to part with the Cricket II if his $71,850 investment could be reimbursed. More recently an unnamed Montauk accountant sent him an e-mail suggesting he could cover his costs by donating the boat to Montauk. That interests him.
“I’ve been reading the comments about what a shame it is, etc.” Dodd said. “I’m not extremely desirous to get rid of it, but if something special could be done …” He had planned to use the rebuilt Cricket II for family outings, but he too likes the idea of it being “the centerpiece of a monument to commemorate Montauk as the fishing capital of the world.”
As for the loss of artifact status, he said the things he’s done, such as removing the gas tank, would have to be done anyway. If there’s truly interest, however, he said it should happen quickly before major expenses are incurred.
This is too good an idea to let fizzle. Think of all the Montauk anglers who might contribute. Maybe Steven Spielberg would help too. (I called and got as far as his publicist’s secretary. No reply yet. Also no reply from East Hampton’s supervisor-elect or acting supervisor.)
But I hope we don’t let this one get away. Something’s not right about Martha’s Vineyard hosting the highly successful JawsFests. It was all based on our shark, our Mundus and our Cricket II. It ought to be our attraction too.
Long Island Business News / November 23, 2009
Greenport thumbs nose at recession
1. Go to a bar and order a Fine and Dandy.
2. Watch the ultimate screwball comedy, “It Happened One Night.”
3. Read some Dorothy Parker.
Those are the top three Internet suggestions I just found for shaking off The Great Recession. The writer said they should work because they helped people shake off The Great Depression, too.
But there’s another way, which involves gestures of confidence in the future. Maybe not gestures as grand as Warren Buffett’s $34 billion bet on a railroad and, by extension, American commerce, but still acts that are so buoyantly heedless of danger that they appear somewhat zany. Sort of like creating a Nello in Greenport.
Nello is a Manhattan restaurant launched in 1992 by Nello Balan. It was followed in 2005 by Nello Summertimes in Southampton. And now, in a few months, a Nello tentatively dubbed “Seaweed” should be cooking in Greenport.
To some that seems a bit strange. Greenport isn’t a backwater but it’s not exactly Hamptonic (yet). Nello, on the other hand, is all that and then some. “The setting is beautiful, the food is very good and the prices are obscene,” said the lede of Joanne Starkey’s 2005 New York Times review of Nello Summertime, “Long Island’s most expensive restaurant.” She reported choking over the $17 price tag on a dish of mixed berries. On viewing the wine list, one in her party said a cardiologist should be on the staff. And many online commenters note that while the food tends to be excellent, Nello is really about being somebody, being glam and being seen.
So, again: Greenport?
The restaurant is actually part of a two-building project envisioned and bankrolled by Manhattan real estate player Khedouri Ezair and art gallerist Marijana Bego. Adding to the degree of difficulty is the fact that the two buildings are separated by Greenport’s Main Street.
To the east is the restaurant, in the white clapboard building that formerly housed the crêperie Ile de Beauté. To the west is a long-vacant building that’s being gutted to become a nine-room hotel, an art gallery and a Japanese-style cafe also to be run by Balan.
Ambitious? That it is, said Greenport Village Administrator Dave Abatelli. “The hotel they’re virtually rebuilding stick by stick.” Over the two-year planning process, parking issues nearly derailed the whole thing, but now all is go. “They could make it by Memorial Day,” Abatelli ventured.
Ezair went one better. “I assume April or so,” he said.
Ezair is Nello’s landlord in Manhattan, Southampton and now in Greenport. And like the other two locations, Greenport will also host a gallery headed up by Bego. In fact, Ezair credits Bego as the catalyst behind the Greenport venture. She’s excited about it? “Very much so,” he said. “Basically it was her idea. She saw the buildings sitting there empty and said, why not do something?”
It’s all part of a new orientation for the couple.
“I’m a city kid,” Ezair said, having grown up in Queens. And so, he didn’t really know much about the North Fork even after they opened the Southampton location and established a residence there. Now, smitten by the North, the couple has bought the 90-acre former Whitmore Tree Farm in Orient and set up a beachhead there too. “It’s a beautiful place,” Ezair said.
But still hangs the question of restaurant impresario Nello Balan, who’s comfortable offering pasta at $100 a plate, fitting in on the less glitzy North Fork stage. “I don’t think he’ll do what he does in New York and Southampton,” Ezair guessed. “I think he’ll tone it down a little bit.”
On the other hand, noting the rise of upmarket restaurants like Greenport’s Frisky Oyster and Southold’s North Fork Table & Inn, he thinks the North Fork and especially Greenport are becoming serious destinations.
The project’s architect, Peter Wilson of Bridgehampton, agrees. “I think Greenport could eclipse Sag Harbor,” he told me. But still, is it ready for Nello, who is perhaps New York’s most eccentric restaurateur and describes himself as a descendant of Vlad the Impaler?
“Being totally outrageous is part of the cachet,” Wilson said.
Maybe, gulp, we could use a helping of that.
Long Island Business News / November 17, 2009
2. Watch the ultimate screwball comedy, “It Happened One Night.”
3. Read some Dorothy Parker.
Those are the top three Internet suggestions I just found for shaking off The Great Recession. The writer said they should work because they helped people shake off The Great Depression, too.
But there’s another way, which involves gestures of confidence in the future. Maybe not gestures as grand as Warren Buffett’s $34 billion bet on a railroad and, by extension, American commerce, but still acts that are so buoyantly heedless of danger that they appear somewhat zany. Sort of like creating a Nello in Greenport.
Nello is a Manhattan restaurant launched in 1992 by Nello Balan. It was followed in 2005 by Nello Summertimes in Southampton. And now, in a few months, a Nello tentatively dubbed “Seaweed” should be cooking in Greenport.
To some that seems a bit strange. Greenport isn’t a backwater but it’s not exactly Hamptonic (yet). Nello, on the other hand, is all that and then some. “The setting is beautiful, the food is very good and the prices are obscene,” said the lede of Joanne Starkey’s 2005 New York Times review of Nello Summertime, “Long Island’s most expensive restaurant.” She reported choking over the $17 price tag on a dish of mixed berries. On viewing the wine list, one in her party said a cardiologist should be on the staff. And many online commenters note that while the food tends to be excellent, Nello is really about being somebody, being glam and being seen.
So, again: Greenport?
The restaurant is actually part of a two-building project envisioned and bankrolled by Manhattan real estate player Khedouri Ezair and art gallerist Marijana Bego. Adding to the degree of difficulty is the fact that the two buildings are separated by Greenport’s Main Street.
To the east is the restaurant, in the white clapboard building that formerly housed the crêperie Ile de Beauté. To the west is a long-vacant building that’s being gutted to become a nine-room hotel, an art gallery and a Japanese-style cafe also to be run by Balan.
Ambitious? That it is, said Greenport Village Administrator Dave Abatelli. “The hotel they’re virtually rebuilding stick by stick.” Over the two-year planning process, parking issues nearly derailed the whole thing, but now all is go. “They could make it by Memorial Day,” Abatelli ventured.
Ezair went one better. “I assume April or so,” he said.
Ezair is Nello’s landlord in Manhattan, Southampton and now in Greenport. And like the other two locations, Greenport will also host a gallery headed up by Bego. In fact, Ezair credits Bego as the catalyst behind the Greenport venture. She’s excited about it? “Very much so,” he said. “Basically it was her idea. She saw the buildings sitting there empty and said, why not do something?”
It’s all part of a new orientation for the couple.
“I’m a city kid,” Ezair said, having grown up in Queens. And so, he didn’t really know much about the North Fork even after they opened the Southampton location and established a residence there. Now, smitten by the North, the couple has bought the 90-acre former Whitmore Tree Farm in Orient and set up a beachhead there too. “It’s a beautiful place,” Ezair said.
But still hangs the question of restaurant impresario Nello Balan, who’s comfortable offering pasta at $100 a plate, fitting in on the less glitzy North Fork stage. “I don’t think he’ll do what he does in New York and Southampton,” Ezair guessed. “I think he’ll tone it down a little bit.”
On the other hand, noting the rise of upmarket restaurants like Greenport’s Frisky Oyster and Southold’s North Fork Table & Inn, he thinks the North Fork and especially Greenport are becoming serious destinations.
The project’s architect, Peter Wilson of Bridgehampton, agrees. “I think Greenport could eclipse Sag Harbor,” he told me. But still, is it ready for Nello, who is perhaps New York’s most eccentric restaurateur and describes himself as a descendant of Vlad the Impaler?
“Being totally outrageous is part of the cachet,” Wilson said.
Maybe, gulp, we could use a helping of that.
Long Island Business News / November 17, 2009
The Hamptons are feeling empty
Economically, I’m beginning to get a sense of what it must have felt like for the original East Enders who worked hard and saved up big piles of wampum only to see everything change when those tall masts appeared on the horizon.
Now, it seems, everything is changing just about as fast. Venerable stores like the Hamptons’ Long Island Sound are perishing at the hand of the Internet revolution. Death by download. Newspapers, of all bedrock institutions, are locked in the same desperate digital struggle. Restaurants have been ravished by the recession, with 43 percent of diners recently telling Zagat that they’re eating out less, 36 percent saying they’re ordering cheaper and 22 percent saying they’re skipping appetizers and/or dessert. On the other hand, Scotts Miracle-Gro has announced record sales for 2009, so maybe people are creating their own salads again.
Now yet another trend is causing concern out east: nomad merchants.
“We’re kind of following our customers,” Stephanie Goureau recently told The East Hampton Star. “As we close East Hampton we’re opening up Palm Beach.”
Goureau was speaking of her family’s women’s fashion store, Courage. b, which opened on East Hampton’s Main Street in June and has now closed to concentrate on more populous locations. Back in June she told The Star, “We’re not sure what’s going to happen. Right now it’s sort of up in the air, but we’d love to see what the results are and create some sort of permanent presence there.”
Or maybe not.
The Star included Courage. b in a story about the pop-up shop phenomenon – stores that pop up for the season and then vanish as the crowds do. Already gone along with Courage. b are Intermix, Hermes and Jill Stuart, and some others, like Brooks Brothers and Gucci, were expected to “follow suit in the pop-up, pop-down phenomenon.”
Nomadic life apparently makes sense for some merchants in the recession era, when landlords are hungry for tenants, even fleeting ones. But it represents a fundamental shift in our traditional understanding of a shop if, instead of a steady presence in our midst, it’s only as solid as a piece of paper, and a short-term one at that.
Then there’s the impact of all those empty storefronts on year-round residents. “It concerns me, honestly,” Judi Desiderio of Town and Country Real Estate told The Star. “Last winter was eye-popping, with the amount of vacancies we had, then the seasonal leases kind of stuck their finger in the dam.” The reporter, Kate Maier, possibly tipped her feelings about the phenomenon by writing that those stores popped up “like weeds” this spring.
It’s also a paradigm shift that some corporate stores, although seen as having less emotional attachment to village life, might be the ones that stick around.
Marina Van, director of the East Hampton Chamber of Commerce, told The East Hampton Press that the big-name shops can be good for the village because they have the backing to survive the dark months. “So when people staying at the hotels call the chamber to ask which stores are open, I have something to tell them,” she said. Among them, Tommy Hilfiger, which debuted this spring, J. Crew and the Hamptons’ five Ralph Lauren shops are expected to keep the lights on this winter.
It’s not enough, some feel. “I don’t know what the answer is,” former village merchant Ronald Eisenberg told The Press. “But I can tell you that business is declining so badly in East Hampton because landlords are dealing with pop-up stores like Hermes and Michael Kors.” He feels that the annual pop-up immigration inflates rents across the board, aggravating the situation.
On yet another hand, it’s fundamental capitalism that opportunities must be pounced upon. “I can’t say that we planned on going from one store to five in the last six months,” Goureau told The Star back in June, but those recessionary rents virtually compelled them.
What’s the long-term impact? While the ground’s still shifting in the midst of all this economic evolution it’s hard to say. But for East Enders it definitely feels like something important is being lost when shops simply pack up and leave town to follow the caribou consumers.
Long Island Business News / November 11, 2009
Now, it seems, everything is changing just about as fast. Venerable stores like the Hamptons’ Long Island Sound are perishing at the hand of the Internet revolution. Death by download. Newspapers, of all bedrock institutions, are locked in the same desperate digital struggle. Restaurants have been ravished by the recession, with 43 percent of diners recently telling Zagat that they’re eating out less, 36 percent saying they’re ordering cheaper and 22 percent saying they’re skipping appetizers and/or dessert. On the other hand, Scotts Miracle-Gro has announced record sales for 2009, so maybe people are creating their own salads again.
Now yet another trend is causing concern out east: nomad merchants.
“We’re kind of following our customers,” Stephanie Goureau recently told The East Hampton Star. “As we close East Hampton we’re opening up Palm Beach.”
Goureau was speaking of her family’s women’s fashion store, Courage. b, which opened on East Hampton’s Main Street in June and has now closed to concentrate on more populous locations. Back in June she told The Star, “We’re not sure what’s going to happen. Right now it’s sort of up in the air, but we’d love to see what the results are and create some sort of permanent presence there.”
Or maybe not.
The Star included Courage. b in a story about the pop-up shop phenomenon – stores that pop up for the season and then vanish as the crowds do. Already gone along with Courage. b are Intermix, Hermes and Jill Stuart, and some others, like Brooks Brothers and Gucci, were expected to “follow suit in the pop-up, pop-down phenomenon.”
Nomadic life apparently makes sense for some merchants in the recession era, when landlords are hungry for tenants, even fleeting ones. But it represents a fundamental shift in our traditional understanding of a shop if, instead of a steady presence in our midst, it’s only as solid as a piece of paper, and a short-term one at that.
Then there’s the impact of all those empty storefronts on year-round residents. “It concerns me, honestly,” Judi Desiderio of Town and Country Real Estate told The Star. “Last winter was eye-popping, with the amount of vacancies we had, then the seasonal leases kind of stuck their finger in the dam.” The reporter, Kate Maier, possibly tipped her feelings about the phenomenon by writing that those stores popped up “like weeds” this spring.
It’s also a paradigm shift that some corporate stores, although seen as having less emotional attachment to village life, might be the ones that stick around.
Marina Van, director of the East Hampton Chamber of Commerce, told The East Hampton Press that the big-name shops can be good for the village because they have the backing to survive the dark months. “So when people staying at the hotels call the chamber to ask which stores are open, I have something to tell them,” she said. Among them, Tommy Hilfiger, which debuted this spring, J. Crew and the Hamptons’ five Ralph Lauren shops are expected to keep the lights on this winter.
It’s not enough, some feel. “I don’t know what the answer is,” former village merchant Ronald Eisenberg told The Press. “But I can tell you that business is declining so badly in East Hampton because landlords are dealing with pop-up stores like Hermes and Michael Kors.” He feels that the annual pop-up immigration inflates rents across the board, aggravating the situation.
On yet another hand, it’s fundamental capitalism that opportunities must be pounced upon. “I can’t say that we planned on going from one store to five in the last six months,” Goureau told The Star back in June, but those recessionary rents virtually compelled them.
What’s the long-term impact? While the ground’s still shifting in the midst of all this economic evolution it’s hard to say. But for East Enders it definitely feels like something important is being lost when shops simply pack up and leave town to follow the caribou consumers.
Long Island Business News / November 11, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
November: The Horror
Dave’s nights are haunted, knowing that the evil ones are busy plotting out there in the dark. He listens at the doors, at the windows, and can’t hear much of anything, but he knows they’re out there. Massing.
It’s November. Hell yes they’re out there, the creeps.
Dave lives in the woods. Not the woods woods, but the Long Island exurban version – three-quarters of an acre and a terrible lot of trees. Every November they return, wave after wave, parachuting in and lying there all innocent like, the way they do. Then they start sneaking in.
There’s one now. He hadn’t even been outside yet this morning, so it’s no good pretending that the leaf had accidentally gotten snagged on his pants cuff or something. No, he’d specifically swept the entryway last night. Or maybe it was the day before. Who knows anymore, he’s so groggy from lack of sleep. He strolls casually around behind it then pounces, grabs the hideous thing by its stem, opens the door just five inches, hurls it out and slams the door fast, before the others can attack.
Two days ago Dave walked out like the guy in the movie about the birds, stepping gingerly through them all. He opened the car door and there, above the hinge, in the little space no bigger than his hand, for god’s sake, was a sleeper cell. Six or eight leaves just crammed in there, probably hoping to hitch a ride to one of their secret meetings. He cleaned them out but good. Then, yesterday morning, he opened the car door again and there was another gang of them wedged in there. “Don’t you guys get it?” he screamed. “I’m on to your tricks!” His neighbor, Mrs. Rappaport, shot him a worried look, dropped her rake and scurried inside.
Dave considers trying to slow his breathing. That’s what his therapist advised. “This November, Dave, why not try meditating?” he said. “Close your eyes and think peaceful thoughts.”
Dave said he would but he knew he wouldn’t because as soon as he closes his eyes they start trying to work their way into the house again. He’d found one in his jacket pocket that very morning. In his jacket pocket. The fiend.
“Dave, they’re leaves,” the therapist said. “They’re dead.”
Undead, Dave thought.
“They’re not out to get you.”
Then why do they keep coming, Dave wanted to ask. He gets them all raked up and things are okay for a while and then they come for him again. He was about to say that but then he looked down and saw one clinging to his therapist’s sock. Oh god, he thought. It heard everything. Or maybe ... maybe they’re working together. Mind control. The creeps never stop. Dave hadn’t been back to the therapist since then.
Dave goes into the kitchen to make a soothing cup of tea. He’s about to put the kettle under the faucet when he sees it – a leaf floating in the little space between the storm window and the inside window. There was no leaf there last night. It’s fluttering – taunting him. No, wait – it’s stuck! Somehow it had breached the outer window and was on its way in but had gotten caught on a spider web. “Ha!” Dave howls. “Got you, you bastard!” Dave never kills spiders for this purpose; they’re a key part of his border guard. In fact, when he finds one in the garage, he transplants it to the windows.
Dave opens the kitchen window and carefully clasps the leaf with a pair of salad tongs, trying to damage the web as little as possible. He carries it toward the front door to throw it out but stops dead. Blood drains from his face. Impossible. There. Right there. Another leaf on the floor. He’d just cleared that sector, for god’s sake. Dave takes off his slipper and begins pounding the leaf but it’s fairly fresh and keeps springing back instead of crumbling. Dave gives it grudging respect; this zombie can take a lick.
That’s how Dave’s wife finds him when she comes down the stairs: on his knees, one hand slamming a leaf on the floor with a slipper, the other hand clutching a leaf with a pair of salad tongs.
“Hi honey,” she says, stopping and pirouetting so he can check her for stowaways. They’d been through many Novembers together.
It’s November. Hell yes they’re out there, the creeps.
Dave lives in the woods. Not the woods woods, but the Long Island exurban version – three-quarters of an acre and a terrible lot of trees. Every November they return, wave after wave, parachuting in and lying there all innocent like, the way they do. Then they start sneaking in.
There’s one now. He hadn’t even been outside yet this morning, so it’s no good pretending that the leaf had accidentally gotten snagged on his pants cuff or something. No, he’d specifically swept the entryway last night. Or maybe it was the day before. Who knows anymore, he’s so groggy from lack of sleep. He strolls casually around behind it then pounces, grabs the hideous thing by its stem, opens the door just five inches, hurls it out and slams the door fast, before the others can attack.
Two days ago Dave walked out like the guy in the movie about the birds, stepping gingerly through them all. He opened the car door and there, above the hinge, in the little space no bigger than his hand, for god’s sake, was a sleeper cell. Six or eight leaves just crammed in there, probably hoping to hitch a ride to one of their secret meetings. He cleaned them out but good. Then, yesterday morning, he opened the car door again and there was another gang of them wedged in there. “Don’t you guys get it?” he screamed. “I’m on to your tricks!” His neighbor, Mrs. Rappaport, shot him a worried look, dropped her rake and scurried inside.
Dave considers trying to slow his breathing. That’s what his therapist advised. “This November, Dave, why not try meditating?” he said. “Close your eyes and think peaceful thoughts.”
Dave said he would but he knew he wouldn’t because as soon as he closes his eyes they start trying to work their way into the house again. He’d found one in his jacket pocket that very morning. In his jacket pocket. The fiend.
“Dave, they’re leaves,” the therapist said. “They’re dead.”
Undead, Dave thought.
“They’re not out to get you.”
Then why do they keep coming, Dave wanted to ask. He gets them all raked up and things are okay for a while and then they come for him again. He was about to say that but then he looked down and saw one clinging to his therapist’s sock. Oh god, he thought. It heard everything. Or maybe ... maybe they’re working together. Mind control. The creeps never stop. Dave hadn’t been back to the therapist since then.
Dave goes into the kitchen to make a soothing cup of tea. He’s about to put the kettle under the faucet when he sees it – a leaf floating in the little space between the storm window and the inside window. There was no leaf there last night. It’s fluttering – taunting him. No, wait – it’s stuck! Somehow it had breached the outer window and was on its way in but had gotten caught on a spider web. “Ha!” Dave howls. “Got you, you bastard!” Dave never kills spiders for this purpose; they’re a key part of his border guard. In fact, when he finds one in the garage, he transplants it to the windows.
Dave opens the kitchen window and carefully clasps the leaf with a pair of salad tongs, trying to damage the web as little as possible. He carries it toward the front door to throw it out but stops dead. Blood drains from his face. Impossible. There. Right there. Another leaf on the floor. He’d just cleared that sector, for god’s sake. Dave takes off his slipper and begins pounding the leaf but it’s fairly fresh and keeps springing back instead of crumbling. Dave gives it grudging respect; this zombie can take a lick.
That’s how Dave’s wife finds him when she comes down the stairs: on his knees, one hand slamming a leaf on the floor with a slipper, the other hand clutching a leaf with a pair of salad tongs.
“Hi honey,” she says, stopping and pirouetting so he can check her for stowaways. They’d been through many Novembers together.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Kapell's up-tempo idea to foil foreclosure
My old songwriting buddy W.T. Davidson has a great heartbreak song that contains the hook, “Two people who need each other / are sittin’ alone tonight.”
He might be surprised to find that his lyric crystallizes a possible solution to the housing-mortgage crisis that’s hobbling our economy.
The idea is basically a way around the stark negativity of foreclosure. As it stands, millions of Americans, unable to afford their mortgages, are being forced out of their homes, which then creates two problems: homeless former occupants and unoccupied houses generating no income. In other words, people and homes who need each other are sittin’ all alone tonight.
Into this dilemma recently stepped David Kapell of Greenport, the village’s former mayor and, by the way, a musician himself, having learned bass from Sly Stone. Kapell is known around the North Fork as a problem solver who’s not afraid of bold moves, such as disbanding his village’s police force and court. Moves like that created major stirs in Greenport but ended up slashing the tax rate 60 percent, making possible the creation of Mitchell Park, with its carousel, etc., another controversial matter but one that even detractors agree was an economic catapult.
A while ago Kapell, a realtor by trade, came up with a way to do something about the dysfunction of foreclosure. “The theory is this,” he said by phone. “There’s a large percentage of people in foreclosure or at risk who arguably could never afford the houses they’re in. What do you do with them? If you put them out on the street they just have to look for someplace to rent while their house ends up blighting the neighborhood. Why not turn them into tenants?” Tenants in their own homes, that is.
In addition to sparing the owners the misery of eviction, it would also keep at least some money coming to the lender. A third big benefit would be the creation, through rent levels, of a way of evaluating properties.
That conversion of unpaid mortgages to paid rent, Kapell said, “would have a profound effect [by establishing] values of the so-called toxic debt underlying these properties,” the lack of which continues to hobble the economy.
Kapell has always been comfortable on the wonk side of politics. He started his government career as Greenport’s community development director and became locally famous for success in grant writing. In 2003, while still serving as mayor, he completed a one-year master’s program in public administration at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Among those he contacted about the “foreclosure-leaseback solution,” as it’s being called, was Noam Chomsky, under whom he took a course at MIT in 2003 and with whom he’s kept in touch.
Word also reached Dean Baker of the Center for Economic Policy Research in Washington, who, it turned out, had been working on the same idea. They exchanged e-mails, Baker’s ending with the remark, “We’ll see if this goes anywhere.”
The anywhere they’re hoping for is a new federal policy, and in fact there’s a chance. “U.S. government officials are weighing a plan that would let borrowers who have fallen behind on their mortgage payments avoid eviction by renting their homes instead,” began a recent Reuters story.
“The idea is so simple, I was afraid it wasn’t real,” Kapell told me the other day. “But I’ve learned that many times the most complicated problems have very simple answers.”
Baker offered a similar thought in the Reuters story. “It is a very simple, clean way to help these people,” he said. The story noted that he had discussed the idea with White House officials.
Reached in Washington, Baker said his idea and Kapell’s are aligned, and he harbors some hope that the Obama administration might put a version into play. Like Kapell, he thinks a major selling point is the valuation via rentals component.
“It’s why I was able to recognize the housing bubble,” Baker said. While house prices were soaring in the buildup to the smackdown, rents were not. If lenders had based their thinking on the reality of the rental market vs. the cotton candy of puffed-up purchase prices, “this wouldn’t have happened,” he said.
Jeff Miller / Long Island Business News / July 31, 2009
He might be surprised to find that his lyric crystallizes a possible solution to the housing-mortgage crisis that’s hobbling our economy.
The idea is basically a way around the stark negativity of foreclosure. As it stands, millions of Americans, unable to afford their mortgages, are being forced out of their homes, which then creates two problems: homeless former occupants and unoccupied houses generating no income. In other words, people and homes who need each other are sittin’ all alone tonight.
Into this dilemma recently stepped David Kapell of Greenport, the village’s former mayor and, by the way, a musician himself, having learned bass from Sly Stone. Kapell is known around the North Fork as a problem solver who’s not afraid of bold moves, such as disbanding his village’s police force and court. Moves like that created major stirs in Greenport but ended up slashing the tax rate 60 percent, making possible the creation of Mitchell Park, with its carousel, etc., another controversial matter but one that even detractors agree was an economic catapult.
A while ago Kapell, a realtor by trade, came up with a way to do something about the dysfunction of foreclosure. “The theory is this,” he said by phone. “There’s a large percentage of people in foreclosure or at risk who arguably could never afford the houses they’re in. What do you do with them? If you put them out on the street they just have to look for someplace to rent while their house ends up blighting the neighborhood. Why not turn them into tenants?” Tenants in their own homes, that is.
In addition to sparing the owners the misery of eviction, it would also keep at least some money coming to the lender. A third big benefit would be the creation, through rent levels, of a way of evaluating properties.
That conversion of unpaid mortgages to paid rent, Kapell said, “would have a profound effect [by establishing] values of the so-called toxic debt underlying these properties,” the lack of which continues to hobble the economy.
Kapell has always been comfortable on the wonk side of politics. He started his government career as Greenport’s community development director and became locally famous for success in grant writing. In 2003, while still serving as mayor, he completed a one-year master’s program in public administration at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Among those he contacted about the “foreclosure-leaseback solution,” as it’s being called, was Noam Chomsky, under whom he took a course at MIT in 2003 and with whom he’s kept in touch.
Word also reached Dean Baker of the Center for Economic Policy Research in Washington, who, it turned out, had been working on the same idea. They exchanged e-mails, Baker’s ending with the remark, “We’ll see if this goes anywhere.”
The anywhere they’re hoping for is a new federal policy, and in fact there’s a chance. “U.S. government officials are weighing a plan that would let borrowers who have fallen behind on their mortgage payments avoid eviction by renting their homes instead,” began a recent Reuters story.
“The idea is so simple, I was afraid it wasn’t real,” Kapell told me the other day. “But I’ve learned that many times the most complicated problems have very simple answers.”
Baker offered a similar thought in the Reuters story. “It is a very simple, clean way to help these people,” he said. The story noted that he had discussed the idea with White House officials.
Reached in Washington, Baker said his idea and Kapell’s are aligned, and he harbors some hope that the Obama administration might put a version into play. Like Kapell, he thinks a major selling point is the valuation via rentals component.
“It’s why I was able to recognize the housing bubble,” Baker said. While house prices were soaring in the buildup to the smackdown, rents were not. If lenders had based their thinking on the reality of the rental market vs. the cotton candy of puffed-up purchase prices, “this wouldn’t have happened,” he said.
Jeff Miller / Long Island Business News / July 31, 2009
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Pizza-maker joins convoy of mobile merchants
Property taxes are high. Rents are brutal. In cold months shopkeepers have to pay both when many of their customers are away or snowed in. Grr.
Wouldn’t it be nice if your company could shed all that brick and mortar and simply roll free to where the business is?
Some people are doing just that.
Trucks and vans are bringing beauty parlors to your parlor. Pet groomers make the rounds with spas on wheels. Massage went mobile years ago. Auto detailers are also, fittingly, on the road.
In the Hamptons, Dr. Seth Gordon realized a while back that lots of East End vacationers didn’t have local care for their kids. “In the summer you get an influx of 200,000 kids out here, and the pediatric centers don’t have the capacity to handle them,” said the part-time East Hampton resident in a New York Times story.
“Seeing a niche,” he created a practice that has no office. Instead, he supplies something your elders might remember: house calls. His only trappings: a cell phone, a medical bag and his car. Starting small, “soon he was inundated with calls for his services,” said the Times story, and his fame and portability went viral.
What’s next? Pizza, of course.
But not just any pizza. Gourmet, wood-oven pizza baked fresh at your backyard party on the back of a fire-engine red 1943 International Harvester truck. It’s the creation of 26-year-old Matthew Michel of Greenport, and the name of his new business tells it all: “Rolling in Dough.”
Michel came to the North Fork from West Haven, Conn., and went into partnership with Barbara Michelson, then of Cutchogue, a well-known caterer and Cordon Bleu chef. “She’s brilliant,” he said. “I learned a lot from her.” Their two-year collaboration ended recently when she moved to New Hampshire.
Looking for his next venture, Michel remembered seeing a catering truck in New Haven, Conn., and, with the help of its owner, went to work on his own version. The 1943 farm truck, found on the Internet, came from Maryland. A $10,000 pizza oven was shipped from Florence, Italy. Wheeler’s Garage in Southold got the motor cranking and Ted’s Auto Body in Peconic applied the flaming paint. Michel built tables. An awning, refrigeration and a freezer were added, along with a cappuccino machine and gelato trays, and already the oven on wheels is firing up people’s imaginations.
“I’ve got 10 parties booked,” Michel said last week. And that was before the photo spread came out in Vogue. That’s right, Vogue, whose editor, Anna Wintour, saw the truck at a function, “fell in love with it and wanted to do a spread,” Michel said.
With such boosts, the young entrepreneur hopes that someday his business really will be rolling in dough. “If I had 100 parties per summer, I’d really be doing well,” he mused.
But first he had to take the leap, and it was a big one, an investment of more than $100,000 on a style of catering new to the East End. Was it scary? “Very much so,” he said. “But I’d rather do something than nothing. You’ve got to take a little risk.”
Some advisers were leery of the idea. “They thought people wouldn’t catch onto the idea of just pizza,” Michel recalled. “I disagreed.” He’d seen a similar venture succeed in Connecticut. “It works,” he said. “It’s definitely gimmicky, but it’s fun and people like to have it at a party.”
What would Michelson, his Cordon Bleu mentor, think of it all? “I think she’d be very proud of me,” he said.
A big plus for him was the minus factor – no property taxes or rent. His only overhead is gas, maintenance and permits, plus a marginal outlay for small amounts of time in earthbound kitchens doing prep work. “I skip a lot of expenses,” Michel confirmed. Finding help hasn’t been too hard, since he was able to call on friends and friends of friends who like the quirky, outdoorsy spin on the catering business.
And when the weather turns bleak and customers go south, he might migrate with them. He’s also weighing the idea of trying a season at a ski resort. When your catering hall has wheels, why not?
Jeff Miller / Long Island Business News / July 24, 2009
Wouldn’t it be nice if your company could shed all that brick and mortar and simply roll free to where the business is?
Some people are doing just that.
Trucks and vans are bringing beauty parlors to your parlor. Pet groomers make the rounds with spas on wheels. Massage went mobile years ago. Auto detailers are also, fittingly, on the road.
In the Hamptons, Dr. Seth Gordon realized a while back that lots of East End vacationers didn’t have local care for their kids. “In the summer you get an influx of 200,000 kids out here, and the pediatric centers don’t have the capacity to handle them,” said the part-time East Hampton resident in a New York Times story.
“Seeing a niche,” he created a practice that has no office. Instead, he supplies something your elders might remember: house calls. His only trappings: a cell phone, a medical bag and his car. Starting small, “soon he was inundated with calls for his services,” said the Times story, and his fame and portability went viral.
What’s next? Pizza, of course.
But not just any pizza. Gourmet, wood-oven pizza baked fresh at your backyard party on the back of a fire-engine red 1943 International Harvester truck. It’s the creation of 26-year-old Matthew Michel of Greenport, and the name of his new business tells it all: “Rolling in Dough.”
Michel came to the North Fork from West Haven, Conn., and went into partnership with Barbara Michelson, then of Cutchogue, a well-known caterer and Cordon Bleu chef. “She’s brilliant,” he said. “I learned a lot from her.” Their two-year collaboration ended recently when she moved to New Hampshire.
Looking for his next venture, Michel remembered seeing a catering truck in New Haven, Conn., and, with the help of its owner, went to work on his own version. The 1943 farm truck, found on the Internet, came from Maryland. A $10,000 pizza oven was shipped from Florence, Italy. Wheeler’s Garage in Southold got the motor cranking and Ted’s Auto Body in Peconic applied the flaming paint. Michel built tables. An awning, refrigeration and a freezer were added, along with a cappuccino machine and gelato trays, and already the oven on wheels is firing up people’s imaginations.
“I’ve got 10 parties booked,” Michel said last week. And that was before the photo spread came out in Vogue. That’s right, Vogue, whose editor, Anna Wintour, saw the truck at a function, “fell in love with it and wanted to do a spread,” Michel said.
With such boosts, the young entrepreneur hopes that someday his business really will be rolling in dough. “If I had 100 parties per summer, I’d really be doing well,” he mused.
But first he had to take the leap, and it was a big one, an investment of more than $100,000 on a style of catering new to the East End. Was it scary? “Very much so,” he said. “But I’d rather do something than nothing. You’ve got to take a little risk.”
Some advisers were leery of the idea. “They thought people wouldn’t catch onto the idea of just pizza,” Michel recalled. “I disagreed.” He’d seen a similar venture succeed in Connecticut. “It works,” he said. “It’s definitely gimmicky, but it’s fun and people like to have it at a party.”
What would Michelson, his Cordon Bleu mentor, think of it all? “I think she’d be very proud of me,” he said.
A big plus for him was the minus factor – no property taxes or rent. His only overhead is gas, maintenance and permits, plus a marginal outlay for small amounts of time in earthbound kitchens doing prep work. “I skip a lot of expenses,” Michel confirmed. Finding help hasn’t been too hard, since he was able to call on friends and friends of friends who like the quirky, outdoorsy spin on the catering business.
And when the weather turns bleak and customers go south, he might migrate with them. He’s also weighing the idea of trying a season at a ski resort. When your catering hall has wheels, why not?
Jeff Miller / Long Island Business News / July 24, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Forget the black buffaloes; there are signs of life in the bays
Pardon my paranoia, but it seems that signs and omens are everywhere abounding these days. I know people always say things like that, especially when the sky simply won’t quit raining, but it’s getting a bit overt of late.
Consider the bison. Among many Native American tribes, the birth of a white buffalo is considered an omen of peace and good fortune ahead. So what are we to make of the recent birth of not one but two extremely rare black buffaloes at North Quarter Farm in Riverhead? Will the crops fail? Is recession bound for depression? Could the Shinnecock Indian casino create a quagmire of urban blight and pestilence?
On the positive portent side, hundreds of bottlenose dolphins were recently observed frolicking in the Sound. At the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation, that’s being seen as a sign of hope for the health of the Sound.
Of course, doomsayers could attribute the dolphins’ return to warming waters. People are already bewailing the Sound’s infesting plague of sea squirts, bottom-clogging filter-feeders who eat their own brains. Anybody see a Wall Street augury there?
Those attuned to aquatic signs of the apocalypse might have been struck by last week’s letter to The Suffolk Times about a supposed sheepshead caught in Southold. The writer, part-time Florida resident John Glaessgen, said it was actually a black drum, a fish much more at home in warmer waters. Glaessgen finished with a fine summation: “Nature remains mysterious.”
Gene Kelly at Montauk Sport Fishing would agree. All kinds of southern swimmers, like triggerfish and red snappers, have been turning up in East End nets, but they’ve been doing so for a long time. “Guys started catching tarpon over 30 years ago,” he said. Rod-and-reel anglers reported catching cobia and even bonefish in Great South Bay five years ago, he said.
To those who say it’s all about global warming, Kelly tends to side with Glaessgen’s “mysterious nature” position. As Exhibit A he points to the 178-pound porbeagle shark caught off Montauk a few weeks ago. This is a very northern fish, ranging up into Arctic waters. “The weather’s been colder this year, but still, it’s very, very strange.” So, based on the porbeagle portent, should we be on the lookout for global cooling?
In the end, perhaps it’s best if we do as Kim Tetrault does.
Tetrault manages (take a deep breath) the Cornell Cooperative Extension Shellfish Hatchery at the Suffolk County Marine Environmental Learning Center in Southold. On the subject of sea squirts, for instance, he said, “I’ve never seen so many.” Then he adds quickly, “But if I worry about everything, I couldn’t sleep at night.”
Tetrault and others started reseeding East End bays 15 years ago. “Nothing happened,” he said last week. Clam, scallop and oyster seedlings by the millions were sowed every year, only to die. One of the richest bays in the world had become a wet desert.
To many onlookers it started to feel like a lost cause. The seeders began to seem like a mapless army slogging along to a dismal fate. Tetrault recalls banishing that thought, saying, “We’ve just got to keep with it. One year nature will play ball.”
And then, about three years ago, he was paddling around Broadwater Cove in Cutchogue. “I looked on the banks and they were covered with oyster set,” he said. “That was the first time I’d really seen a set take hold well.”
Since then they’ve spread out, to the point where the words “Peconic Bay oysters” aren’t just sadly nostalgic anymore. More good news: “Last year’s scallop crop was the best since the brown tide.” That dark date, 1985, will be forever etched in East End minds.
But this is now, and Tetrault sees a return of “good, fresh bio film,” a kind of “slimy marine coating” that suggests life. There could also be more plankton around. And maybe the bigger bivalve broodstock has finally reached a positive tipping point. “It could just be cyclical,” he said, “but it seems to have taken hold. Nature,” Tetrault concluded with some wonderment, “seems to have rebounded.”
From all this, perhaps we can distill something called the Tetrault doctrine. It is this: Damn the omens (and frustration, and logic) – full steam ahead.
Jeff Miller / Long Island Business News / July 17, 2009
Consider the bison. Among many Native American tribes, the birth of a white buffalo is considered an omen of peace and good fortune ahead. So what are we to make of the recent birth of not one but two extremely rare black buffaloes at North Quarter Farm in Riverhead? Will the crops fail? Is recession bound for depression? Could the Shinnecock Indian casino create a quagmire of urban blight and pestilence?
On the positive portent side, hundreds of bottlenose dolphins were recently observed frolicking in the Sound. At the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation, that’s being seen as a sign of hope for the health of the Sound.
Of course, doomsayers could attribute the dolphins’ return to warming waters. People are already bewailing the Sound’s infesting plague of sea squirts, bottom-clogging filter-feeders who eat their own brains. Anybody see a Wall Street augury there?
Those attuned to aquatic signs of the apocalypse might have been struck by last week’s letter to The Suffolk Times about a supposed sheepshead caught in Southold. The writer, part-time Florida resident John Glaessgen, said it was actually a black drum, a fish much more at home in warmer waters. Glaessgen finished with a fine summation: “Nature remains mysterious.”
Gene Kelly at Montauk Sport Fishing would agree. All kinds of southern swimmers, like triggerfish and red snappers, have been turning up in East End nets, but they’ve been doing so for a long time. “Guys started catching tarpon over 30 years ago,” he said. Rod-and-reel anglers reported catching cobia and even bonefish in Great South Bay five years ago, he said.
To those who say it’s all about global warming, Kelly tends to side with Glaessgen’s “mysterious nature” position. As Exhibit A he points to the 178-pound porbeagle shark caught off Montauk a few weeks ago. This is a very northern fish, ranging up into Arctic waters. “The weather’s been colder this year, but still, it’s very, very strange.” So, based on the porbeagle portent, should we be on the lookout for global cooling?
In the end, perhaps it’s best if we do as Kim Tetrault does.
Tetrault manages (take a deep breath) the Cornell Cooperative Extension Shellfish Hatchery at the Suffolk County Marine Environmental Learning Center in Southold. On the subject of sea squirts, for instance, he said, “I’ve never seen so many.” Then he adds quickly, “But if I worry about everything, I couldn’t sleep at night.”
Tetrault and others started reseeding East End bays 15 years ago. “Nothing happened,” he said last week. Clam, scallop and oyster seedlings by the millions were sowed every year, only to die. One of the richest bays in the world had become a wet desert.
To many onlookers it started to feel like a lost cause. The seeders began to seem like a mapless army slogging along to a dismal fate. Tetrault recalls banishing that thought, saying, “We’ve just got to keep with it. One year nature will play ball.”
And then, about three years ago, he was paddling around Broadwater Cove in Cutchogue. “I looked on the banks and they were covered with oyster set,” he said. “That was the first time I’d really seen a set take hold well.”
Since then they’ve spread out, to the point where the words “Peconic Bay oysters” aren’t just sadly nostalgic anymore. More good news: “Last year’s scallop crop was the best since the brown tide.” That dark date, 1985, will be forever etched in East End minds.
But this is now, and Tetrault sees a return of “good, fresh bio film,” a kind of “slimy marine coating” that suggests life. There could also be more plankton around. And maybe the bigger bivalve broodstock has finally reached a positive tipping point. “It could just be cyclical,” he said, “but it seems to have taken hold. Nature,” Tetrault concluded with some wonderment, “seems to have rebounded.”
From all this, perhaps we can distill something called the Tetrault doctrine. It is this: Damn the omens (and frustration, and logic) – full steam ahead.
Jeff Miller / Long Island Business News / July 17, 2009
Monday, July 6, 2009
East End wineries face the music
You’re in the tasting room of an East End winery, sampling a corpulent, jammy cabernet. Life is good. It gets even better when the guitarists in the corner start playing your favorite song, “Unchained Melody.”
But wait. A guy at the next table is writing something in a little black book.
Uh oh. You’ve just unwittingly participated in something that could end up costing the vineyard thousands of dollars. Why? Because “Unchained Melody” isn’t unchained at all.
In fact, it’s one of some 8.5 million copyrighted songs whose use is protected by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, better known as ASCAP.
In recent weeks ASCAP has been cracking down all along the East End’s wine trail. Chris Baiz of Old Field Vineyard in Southold said it began for him with a few letters offering a license that would cover use of all ASCAP songs for the one-year fee of $446. The number, based on such factors as size of venue and number of performances per week, is at the low end; some other vineyards are being charged more than double that.
Those first messages were followed last week with a mailed package noting that Old Field’s payment had not been received. To achieve harmony, the enclosed forms should be filled out and a check sent. Otherwise, unlicensed use of copyrighted material could result in damages of $750 to $30,000 per infringed-upon song, plus attorney fees and court costs.
As of last week Baiz had not written the check for a number of reasons. One is the assumption that Old Field hosts as many as three musical acts per week. “We do zero,” Baiz said.
But other vineyards do plenty. And so, in Baiz’s role as president of the Long Island Wine Council, he was planning to consult with the council’s executive director, Steve Bate.
Bate told me it all began with the Winterfest jazz series, created to help fill East End tasting rooms during the last two off-seasons. “It’s been very successful,” he said. Enough so, apparently, to catch the attention of Wendy Campbell, ASCAP’s area licensing manager.
After hearing of her stops at regional vineyards, Bate called Campbell to seek a compromise and preserve Winterfest. Perhaps a “festival fee” could cover all vineyards at a more reasonable cost. Or maybe a governmental umbrella could be created, since the event has county and state support.
So far, no luck. Meanwhile, the crackdown has stretched to winery music of all seasons, and vintners have begun trumpeting their displeasure.
“Are they trying to put us out of business?” asked the events manager at one area vineyard. “How can they control all the music played in the world? It’s going to cost more to patrol than they can collect. It’s absurd.”
Intellectual property lawyer Betty Tufariello of Mt. Sinai, who has worked for the Wine Council before, had some thoughts on that. “ASCAP is very aggressive in promoting and protecting its members,” she said. By throwing its net hard and wide, covering even small vineyards, the company seeks to protect its turf. “It’s not so much the money,” she said. “Principally, they don’t want to open a door and create a slippery slope. If they let one vineyard do it, where do they draw the line?”
She expressed sympathy for ASCAP’s herculean task of protecting its writers, but also concern for the struggles of vineyards and musicians.
To her the key question is: Do vineyards use music in a commercial nature? In her opinion, no. “They’re not selling tickets,” Tufariello said. “They’re selling wine and using the music as background.”
Yes, but they’re using something that doesn’t belong to them, said Vincent Candilora, ASCAP’s senior vice president of licensing. That can be remedied with a license, which he considers cheap for what it affords: access to 8.5 million songs. “I never understand the type of resistance we get sometimes over what is essentially such a low-cost item,” he said. “On a day-to-day basis, it’s probably less than a dollar a day.”
That’s not quite true for vineyards, which tend to offer music twice a week or so, and only during tourist seasons. But Candilora is unmoved when people lament about the struggles of the small-business person. His response: “You want to talk small-business person? Become a songwriter.”
Jeff Miller / Long Island Business News / July 3, 2009
But wait. A guy at the next table is writing something in a little black book.
Uh oh. You’ve just unwittingly participated in something that could end up costing the vineyard thousands of dollars. Why? Because “Unchained Melody” isn’t unchained at all.
In fact, it’s one of some 8.5 million copyrighted songs whose use is protected by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, better known as ASCAP.
In recent weeks ASCAP has been cracking down all along the East End’s wine trail. Chris Baiz of Old Field Vineyard in Southold said it began for him with a few letters offering a license that would cover use of all ASCAP songs for the one-year fee of $446. The number, based on such factors as size of venue and number of performances per week, is at the low end; some other vineyards are being charged more than double that.
Those first messages were followed last week with a mailed package noting that Old Field’s payment had not been received. To achieve harmony, the enclosed forms should be filled out and a check sent. Otherwise, unlicensed use of copyrighted material could result in damages of $750 to $30,000 per infringed-upon song, plus attorney fees and court costs.
As of last week Baiz had not written the check for a number of reasons. One is the assumption that Old Field hosts as many as three musical acts per week. “We do zero,” Baiz said.
But other vineyards do plenty. And so, in Baiz’s role as president of the Long Island Wine Council, he was planning to consult with the council’s executive director, Steve Bate.
Bate told me it all began with the Winterfest jazz series, created to help fill East End tasting rooms during the last two off-seasons. “It’s been very successful,” he said. Enough so, apparently, to catch the attention of Wendy Campbell, ASCAP’s area licensing manager.
After hearing of her stops at regional vineyards, Bate called Campbell to seek a compromise and preserve Winterfest. Perhaps a “festival fee” could cover all vineyards at a more reasonable cost. Or maybe a governmental umbrella could be created, since the event has county and state support.
So far, no luck. Meanwhile, the crackdown has stretched to winery music of all seasons, and vintners have begun trumpeting their displeasure.
“Are they trying to put us out of business?” asked the events manager at one area vineyard. “How can they control all the music played in the world? It’s going to cost more to patrol than they can collect. It’s absurd.”
Intellectual property lawyer Betty Tufariello of Mt. Sinai, who has worked for the Wine Council before, had some thoughts on that. “ASCAP is very aggressive in promoting and protecting its members,” she said. By throwing its net hard and wide, covering even small vineyards, the company seeks to protect its turf. “It’s not so much the money,” she said. “Principally, they don’t want to open a door and create a slippery slope. If they let one vineyard do it, where do they draw the line?”
She expressed sympathy for ASCAP’s herculean task of protecting its writers, but also concern for the struggles of vineyards and musicians.
To her the key question is: Do vineyards use music in a commercial nature? In her opinion, no. “They’re not selling tickets,” Tufariello said. “They’re selling wine and using the music as background.”
Yes, but they’re using something that doesn’t belong to them, said Vincent Candilora, ASCAP’s senior vice president of licensing. That can be remedied with a license, which he considers cheap for what it affords: access to 8.5 million songs. “I never understand the type of resistance we get sometimes over what is essentially such a low-cost item,” he said. “On a day-to-day basis, it’s probably less than a dollar a day.”
That’s not quite true for vineyards, which tend to offer music twice a week or so, and only during tourist seasons. But Candilora is unmoved when people lament about the struggles of the small-business person. His response: “You want to talk small-business person? Become a songwriter.”
Jeff Miller / Long Island Business News / July 3, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Building a better bass lure in Cutchogue
The East End has long been a proving ground for marine innovations. I guess that would make it a proving water.
One of the most notable was the USS Holland, the Navy’s first commissioned submarine, which was tested and refined in New Suffolk in the 1890s.
More recently, Chris Pickerell of Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Southold Marine Center developed “seed buoys” to promote the return of eelgrass (and thus scallops) to the bays. And not just our bays. The innovative mesh bags have been used all over the place, from the Chesapeake to San Francisco.
Now another creation is surfacing, often bringing a striped bass with it. It’s called the Bottle Darter.
“I’ve been making lures all my life,” said Larry Welcome of Cutchogue. He was 10 and living in Long Beach when he created his first by snipping a tuft of hair from his sleeping sister’s head. “[Almost] 50 years later she hasn’t forgiven me yet,” he said. On the other hand, the lure worked “worked great.”
Welcome is 58 now, retired in 2005 after 27 years as a tech specialist for Brookhaven National Lab, helping build its superconducting accelerator. When not at work through all those years, he was usually fishing.
And designing lures. The best yet is the Bottle Darter. So good that he spent six months and $5,000 patenting it, and three years and $50,000 developing it as a commercial product.
He needed a hand to make that happen. Though he built about 5,000 of the lures in his shop out of wood over the last 15 years, it took an engineer to help him make the commercial leap. As it happened, he knew one.
After church one Sunday about 15 years ago, Welcome was talking to somebody about, you guessed it, fishing, and a young man intruded. “I heard the word and I perked right up,” said Rob Koch, now 29, of Mattituck. The two would go on to become the best of fishing buddies. Along the way, as luck and fate would have it, Koch decided to become an engineer, graduating in 2002 from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Three years ago, after catching “tons and tons of fish” with Welcome’s homemade Bottle Darters, the duo decided to take the lure to market. They formed Northbar Tackle LLC, named for the famed fishing reef off Montauk, and went to work on computer modeling, eventually leading to an injection-molded plastic product.
Three weeks ago they took the prototypes to an undisclosed Sound shore location for field tests. Fifty casts with the yellow model and nothing, so Koch switched to black and purple and something very big happened. “The first cast a fish came up and just inhaled it,” he said.
Welcome, who was fishing a bit downdrift, saw the striped bass swim by. “It looked like a submarine going past me,” he said. “I never saw a fish that big landed in the surf.”
It turned out to be a 63-pounder, a personal record for Koch and a roaring debut for the new Bottle Darter.
(What’s different about it? It combines the shape and action of two great lures, Welcome said: the Montauk Darter and the Bottle Swimmer. So instead of one lure that zig-zags and another that wiggles, you one that zigs, zags and wiggles. “It really works,” said the inventor.)
“Three years of prototyping and we finally got it right,” Koch said. They took a photo of the fish, “did a high-five and said, let’s go.” Since then, 2,500 have been turned out by their manufacturer and are now in tackle shops all over the Northeast for about $18.
What struck me about this story is the blend of belief, stubbornness and good fortune that attends the birth of so many innovations.
“When I started getting into this, I was meeting guys in tackle shops and every one of them said I wouldn’t last three years,” Welcome recalled. “It was so discouraging.” But it was also “one of things just makes you dig in and say, yeah, we’ll see.”
He conceded, however, that “99 percent of the time, guys who start building lures bail out. It’s too difficult, there’s not enough money,” etc.
Welcome and Koch appear to be among the one percenters.
TOP PHOTO: Rob Koch with the 63-pound striped bass caught on the Bottle Darter prototype.
INSET: A Bottle Darter.
Jeff Miller / Long Island Business News / June 25, 2009
Friday, June 19, 2009
Recession ends at Hamptons wine auction
If, like me, you're sick of The Recession, you’re desperate enough to look anywhere for signs of The Recovery. So how about this: Somebody recently paid $11,400 for some old wine.
It happened at Christie’s Fine and Rare Wine auction in Westhampton Beach earlier this month. A case of 1989 Chateau Haut-Brion brought $11,400.
Impressive, but pale compared to the top draw, a 1982 Chateau Lafite-Rothschild, which went for $20,400.
And that was for eight bottles.
Not even a case.
It was the first time Christie’s ever held a wine auction out east. “This unique auction will be held in the Hamptons at the historic Atwater Estate, built between 1900 and 1903 for coal baron William C. Atwater,” said a Christie’s promotion. Over 700 lots from around the world were offered.
“The Hamptons Sale offers several collections befitting such a regal estate,” said the announcement, “including a magnum of 1929 Moët consigned directly from the winery, large format Domaine de la Romanée-Conti [DRC], and smaller lots from boutique domaines on the Côte d’Or.”
That “extremely rare magnum” of 1929 Moet was described as “the star lot,” just released this year “to commemorate the 81st anniversary of the Academy Awards ceremony,” reported Fine Wine Journal. “The bottle’s wooden case has been autographed by Hollywood celebrities and Oscar attendees Tina Fey, Robert Downey Jr., Matthew Broderick and host Hugh Jackman.” That single bottle went for $6,000, which was donated to the Motion Picture & Television Fund.
If, as suggested above, you’re desperate for signs of The Recovery, this kind of extravagance could serve. Unemployment’s up, spending’s down, big-ticket spending’s way down, blah blah. The famed Napa Valley Vintners’ wine auction, held recently in St. Helena, pulled in about half of last year’s record amount ($5.6 million, compared to $10.3 million).
By contrast, the Atwater auction “achieved $1,199,994 and was 86 percent sold and 91 percent by value,” reported Christie’s.
“We are particularly encouraged by prices that continue to rise for the classics of the fine wine trade,” Christie’s Charles Curtis said in the announcement. “This is true of lots such as the 1982 Lafite and 1959 Margaux that led the sale, but also for wines such as the 1982 Mouton that sold near the top of the estimate, and the many lots of Burgundy from DRC that surpassed the high estimate.”
Curtis added via e-mail: “After a slight correction in prices last fall, the global wine market has been trending back upward throughout the spring auction season. At our recent Hamptons sale, we saw active participation from New York-area wine collectors, including a good number of local Hamptons residents...”
This comes in the wake of a January New York Times story, “Hard times hit auction houses,” which reported significant downsizing by both Sotheby’s and Christie’s, and consolidation of various departments to save money.
So it’s possible that I’m wearing rosé-colored glasses, but could we squint hard and see the Atwater auction as a sign of hope? I asked Kathleen Coumou, vice president of Christie’s Great Estates.
“I think so,” she said. “We handle a lot of great estates in the Northeast, and I really think we’ve seen the bottom. I think Americans are extremely optimistic, and want to see things begin to move again. We’re beginning to see things trade on the high end. We’re starting to come back.”
In addition to wine, the Atwater estate itself was offered in “an unprecedented cooperation between Christie’s Wine Department and Christie’s Great Estates,” according to the company’s Web site. Despite Coumou’s positive outlook, the property didn’t sell that day, but she didn’t expect it to find a buyer as easily as the wine did.
“It’s a glorious estate,” she said, mentioning the 10 acres, the boathouse, dock, carriage house and four subdivided acres, all on the market for $29 million.
It would have been nice if somebody had bought the place and simply moved some of the Chateau Rothschild to the wine cellar, Coumou agreed. It didn’t happen, but she’s confident a buyer will come along.
Meanwhile, the auction “was a wonderful opportunity to promote the property internationally,” she said, adding that it was also a nice day for a glass of wine in the Hamptons.
Jeff Miller / Long Island Business News / June 18, 2009
It happened at Christie’s Fine and Rare Wine auction in Westhampton Beach earlier this month. A case of 1989 Chateau Haut-Brion brought $11,400.
Impressive, but pale compared to the top draw, a 1982 Chateau Lafite-Rothschild, which went for $20,400.
And that was for eight bottles.
Not even a case.
It was the first time Christie’s ever held a wine auction out east. “This unique auction will be held in the Hamptons at the historic Atwater Estate, built between 1900 and 1903 for coal baron William C. Atwater,” said a Christie’s promotion. Over 700 lots from around the world were offered.
“The Hamptons Sale offers several collections befitting such a regal estate,” said the announcement, “including a magnum of 1929 Moët consigned directly from the winery, large format Domaine de la Romanée-Conti [DRC], and smaller lots from boutique domaines on the Côte d’Or.”
That “extremely rare magnum” of 1929 Moet was described as “the star lot,” just released this year “to commemorate the 81st anniversary of the Academy Awards ceremony,” reported Fine Wine Journal. “The bottle’s wooden case has been autographed by Hollywood celebrities and Oscar attendees Tina Fey, Robert Downey Jr., Matthew Broderick and host Hugh Jackman.” That single bottle went for $6,000, which was donated to the Motion Picture & Television Fund.
If, as suggested above, you’re desperate for signs of The Recovery, this kind of extravagance could serve. Unemployment’s up, spending’s down, big-ticket spending’s way down, blah blah. The famed Napa Valley Vintners’ wine auction, held recently in St. Helena, pulled in about half of last year’s record amount ($5.6 million, compared to $10.3 million).
By contrast, the Atwater auction “achieved $1,199,994 and was 86 percent sold and 91 percent by value,” reported Christie’s.
“We are particularly encouraged by prices that continue to rise for the classics of the fine wine trade,” Christie’s Charles Curtis said in the announcement. “This is true of lots such as the 1982 Lafite and 1959 Margaux that led the sale, but also for wines such as the 1982 Mouton that sold near the top of the estimate, and the many lots of Burgundy from DRC that surpassed the high estimate.”
Curtis added via e-mail: “After a slight correction in prices last fall, the global wine market has been trending back upward throughout the spring auction season. At our recent Hamptons sale, we saw active participation from New York-area wine collectors, including a good number of local Hamptons residents...”
This comes in the wake of a January New York Times story, “Hard times hit auction houses,” which reported significant downsizing by both Sotheby’s and Christie’s, and consolidation of various departments to save money.
So it’s possible that I’m wearing rosé-colored glasses, but could we squint hard and see the Atwater auction as a sign of hope? I asked Kathleen Coumou, vice president of Christie’s Great Estates.
“I think so,” she said. “We handle a lot of great estates in the Northeast, and I really think we’ve seen the bottom. I think Americans are extremely optimistic, and want to see things begin to move again. We’re beginning to see things trade on the high end. We’re starting to come back.”
In addition to wine, the Atwater estate itself was offered in “an unprecedented cooperation between Christie’s Wine Department and Christie’s Great Estates,” according to the company’s Web site. Despite Coumou’s positive outlook, the property didn’t sell that day, but she didn’t expect it to find a buyer as easily as the wine did.
“It’s a glorious estate,” she said, mentioning the 10 acres, the boathouse, dock, carriage house and four subdivided acres, all on the market for $29 million.
It would have been nice if somebody had bought the place and simply moved some of the Chateau Rothschild to the wine cellar, Coumou agreed. It didn’t happen, but she’s confident a buyer will come along.
Meanwhile, the auction “was a wonderful opportunity to promote the property internationally,” she said, adding that it was also a nice day for a glass of wine in the Hamptons.
Jeff Miller / Long Island Business News / June 18, 2009
Friday, April 24, 2009
‘Free Blithering Society’ to meet
A new organization recently formed here in the village, dedicated to freeing the word “blithering” from its doltish partner.
According to a Free Blithering Society press release, the members are “saddened by blithering’s long forced servitude to, you know, that other word.”
Not only is it bondage most cruel, organizers say, but it’s also illogical. “It is possible, after all, to blither and not be an idiot,” says the release. “Isaac Newton, for instance, was one of the smartest people ever and yet spent half his career trying to turn lead into gold. One never hears ‘blithering genius,’ though, does one? We thought not.”
It’s also aggressively noted that people of many stripes constantly say and do supremely stupid things but are never said to blither. “How often have Madonna and Plaxico Burress and George Bush issued idiotic remarks?” asserted the release. “And yet we never hear ‘blithering diva,’ or ‘blithering football star” or ‘blithering president.’ Well, maybe the latter.”
In a telephone interview, FBS founder Edgar Smoot was asked if a case could also be made for “blithering writer.” Smoot replied, “That would be redundant.”
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
There! On the ground! It's ... it's ... CABBAGE MAN!!
At base, all of life on Earth is “a competition among species for the solar energy captured by green plants and stored in the form of complex carbon molecules.” So writes Michael Pollan in his excellent book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” A food chain, therefore, is “a system for passing those calories on to species that lack the plant’s unique ability to synthesize them from sunlight.”
That’s the problem in a nutshell. If people and other animals could be cross-bred with, say, cabbages, then we could synthesize our own sunlight, stop the killing and just sit around, basking in food.
Scientists, get to work on this, would you?
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Breakthroughs in Domesticity
Do you or does somebody in your house resist having people over because “the place is a mess”? Does this cause domestic strife and make your friends think you hate them?
No more. Introducing the Pledge Party®.
Here’s how it works:
From now on, when we visit somebody’s home, the first thing we should do is clean a small part of that home. Say four square feet.
Benefits:
*Eliminates pressure on hosts.
*Puts guests at ease and lets them feel like an integral part of the party.
*Great ice-breaker. (“Hey, I think I dropped this cufflink last time I was here.”)
*Quick. It will only take each visitor roughly two minutes to do the work. Then, let the fun begin!
This is such a good and sane idea that I think we should immediately make it part of our culture. Currently the custom calls for visitors to bring a bottle of wine or a six-pack of beer. Just add some Pledge or Lysol and a sponge and we’re good to go.
No more. Introducing the Pledge Party®.
Here’s how it works:
From now on, when we visit somebody’s home, the first thing we should do is clean a small part of that home. Say four square feet.
Benefits:
*Eliminates pressure on hosts.
*Puts guests at ease and lets them feel like an integral part of the party.
*Great ice-breaker. (“Hey, I think I dropped this cufflink last time I was here.”)
*Quick. It will only take each visitor roughly two minutes to do the work. Then, let the fun begin!
This is such a good and sane idea that I think we should immediately make it part of our culture. Currently the custom calls for visitors to bring a bottle of wine or a six-pack of beer. Just add some Pledge or Lysol and a sponge and we’re good to go.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Listening to 'Reading Lolita in Tehran' on I-95
When coincidences start coming fast, it means you’re near the hub.
An Eastern religion major once told me that, crediting me with tacitly understanding what he meant by “hub.” Something to do with truth, I guessed, nodding sagely.
I reflected on that the other day while leaving a Marriott motel in Emporia, Va., heading home to Long Island. It was 3:30 a.m. on April Fool’s Day. I’d snapped awake 15 minutes earlier because my body for some reason thinks I need to witness that time almost every morning. Sometimes I can work my way back to sleep, but that morning I figured, what the hell, get a really early start and maybe you’ll beat the D.C. rush hour.
Part of being near the hub, I was told by that long-ago Eastern religion major, is being attuned to signs and omens whirling around you. Ever since then, I sometimes find myself scrutinizing billboards and snippets of overheard conversations for messages, like a spy on a pretty humdrum mission.
That morning in Emporia my receptors were turned on, and as I walked through the lobby I received a message loud and clear. It came from Elton John, cleverly delivered through the Muzak system. “And I think it’s gonna be a long, long time,” he sang to me.
Uh oh.
Two hours later I learned that D.C.’s arteries are actually in full thrombosis by 5:30 a.m.
At that point another stray bit of Eastern wisdom drifted through my head. It was Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha, whispering, “I can think, fast and wait.” It clearly being a day for such things, I decided to follow his lead. It helped that I had no choice, being stuck in a giant river of Western traffic without breakfast.
The point of all this preamble is that I was completely receptive to the book on CD that was accompanying me on the long, long drive home. It was “Reading Lolita in Tehran,” by Azar Nafisi.
Good books need friction to get traction with readers, and this one has plenty. Imagine trying to teach English literature in Tehran while Iran was going through its 1978-1981 revolution, perfecting its hatred of all things Western and therefore decadent. Imagine teaching, for instance, “The Great Gatsby” in that climate -- a perfect cultural flashpoint.
Nafisi’s memoir debuted six years ago, but still generates a lot of heat. Much comes from scholars who feel that it’s a piece of anti-Iranian, anti-Islam, pro-Western propaganda. Of course we only know what we read, but we do read a lot about torture and execution of those accused of deviating from Iran’s revolutionary lockstep. Many of them were children. Many were students. Some were Nafisi’s. That part, at least, seems beyond propaganda.
The core of the book, I felt, was the time her class conducted a mock trial. The case: Islam v. “The Great Gatsby.” To me it neatly summed up the struggle between our two cultures as follows:
Western culture contains many ills, such as avarice, adultery, murder. Those ills exist because we are free to make those choices. We are also free to critique them in our books and movies. If you want to prevent such choices, you could start a totalitarian regime that requires all to uphold an ideal. In the Iranian revolution, that meant, for instance, not allowing a wisp of hair to slip into view from beneath a burqa, because it would constitute sexual provocation. Punishment for such a transgression could be, ironically, rape, as well as torture and murder.
So it comes down a choice. People, being human, can either be free to commit their mistakes and crimes or the people who run the state can be free to commit crimes in order to prevent them. Either way, people sometimes end up hurt or dead.
Which one is preferable? That’s the friction that makes East vs. West so flammable.
By that point I’d made it through the D.C. mess and was cruising toward Baltimore. But first, breakfast. I pulled off and found a McDonald’s. You can’t get more Western than that.
Everyone in the crowded place was black except for one elderly couple just ahead of me in line. Something about them suggested bigotry to me. I don’t know what it was; some peevishness in their expressions, maybe. Anyway, halfway through my breakfast I detected a lively conversation (see signs and omens overheard, above) and looked up. It was the elderly white couple arguing with a young black man, a McDonald’s employee. But wait, it turned out to be a mock argument. It was actually good-natured ribbing. In a second all three of them were smiling and laughing.
Then the woman suddenly pointed to the young man’s chest and said, “Oh, too bad! You ripped your shirt.”
He looked down, startled and upset.
“April Fool’s!” shouted the woman.
This completely broke them up, all three of them, and everyone in the tables nearby.
It was a nice moment in America.
I decided to exact vengeance. I wrote the magic words on a small pad I had with me and approached their table on my way to the men’s room.
Striking a waiter’s pose, I leaned over and asked, “Will there be anything else?”
They looked up, confused.
“Uh, no,” said the woman. The man simply glowered.
I ripped the sheet of paper off and slapped it down on their table. “Thanks,” I said.
A full fifteen seconds later, through the bathroom door, I heard their howls of laughter.
Back in the car, Nafisi’s students were now struggling with “Pride and Prejudice,” in addition to the ayatollah’s morality squads. Needing a break from it all, I turned off the CD for a while. News came on the radio. More wrangling over the AIG bonuses. A possible “controlled bankruptcy” for General Motors. More deaths in Iraq. Lots of grist for anti-Westerners.
My mind wandered to some other recent news items in the same vein. California’s bid to bail itself out by legalizing marijuana. Suffolk County’s probable move to do the same by changing course and supporting a tribal casino. Once upon a time, officials argued against these moves on moral grounds.
I wondered what Nafisi’s conservative students would say, most notably the one who served as prosecutor in Islam v. “The Great Gatsby.” No doubt he would have righteously lambasted it as more evidence of the West’s conveniently flexible morality, especially when money is involved.
He’d be tougher to beat this time, I think. “The Great Gatsby” is starting to look pretty mild compared to The Great Recession.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Recent evidence that God might not hate us after all
Red wine, chocolate and walnuts turn out to be good for us.
Eggs too.
Some fat isn’t bad.
The Internet still works.
Madoff is pronounced “made off.”
The Obamas.
Those yellow things appear to be daffodils.
More?
Eggs too.
Some fat isn’t bad.
The Internet still works.
Madoff is pronounced “made off.”
The Obamas.
Those yellow things appear to be daffodils.
More?
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