Mark Brucker

Commerce

Casinos offer chance to win hybrid

This is in California, sorry. The casinos that used to offer a chance to win a sports car now offer hybrids, instead!

1740 Walnut St. #6

Adrian C

Commerce

Underground Entertainment

I live in New Brunswick NJ which is small, and the home of Rutgers (so lots of students live there) .I noted the proliferation of student Basement Shows. There is no admission fee ... a few years back one rarely heard about them because the NB police dept. had controlled them, but now they are everywhere!!

New Brunswick, NJ, 08903

Katie

Employment

Entrepreneur/Designer

I work at home (upper west side), and took the 1 from W. 103 to W. 21, at 9am Monday morning 2-9-09 for a PR shoot, and noticed that the subway car was not shoulder to shoulder full. In fact, by the time we got to W. 21, my car was well below half full. Normal for the 1 in the morning? Hopefully more and more people are just working from home like me?

W. 103 and Broadway

Richard Pine

Commerce

(Home) improvement wanted

My local Home Depot in New Rochelle has easy parking, unoccupied staff, and short check-out lines. I never saw any of those things in years past.

55 Weyman Ave, New Rochelle, NY 10805

Mark Kalan

Housing

Snow

We've stopped paying to have our driveway plowed. If our Honda CRV can't get up the driveway we leave it at the bottom and hike up to the house. Luckily we have a set of concrete steps that we can shovel by hand.

413 Storms Rd., Valley Cottage, NY 10989

S. Michaels

Bright

Better Butter

Ordinary own-label store butter (Key Food, Costco) seems now to be equal to the best imported butters. And the milk from the bodega is no longer thin & watery, but seems to be of a higher quality.

Jeff H

Employment

The anecdotal unemployment rate

Statistics can be hard to get your head around. What does 7.6 percent look like? Two digits and a decimal point. I suspect the unemployment rate in the NYC metro area is significantly higher. I attend 12-step meetings, and the primary topic of conversation every day has become layoffs and how people spend their suddenly empty days without engaging in illicit behavior. Perhaps people in recovery are especially suceptible to the pink slip? I doubt it. I think the official unemployment rate somehow fails to pick up many of the people who have actually lost their jobs.

4 Times Square, New York, NY 10036

Alexis Kraft

Behavior

Cooking all the time

I love to cook. I used to limit this elaborate weekend specials, but these days my wife and I eat out exactly once a week. So, since work is a little slow these days (different but related story for an architect running a small design studio), I have been making more dinners (and lunches from leftovers) than ever before.
I suppose that the irony is that we've had fewer dinner parties than ever before. Maybe I'll start a Dining Club, and make $ off my hobby!

Scott

Behavior

Suit Tension

Construction workers taunting the suits as they walk by on their way to the World Financial Center.

The ferry terminal at vesey st.

Jacqueline

Employment

Moving back in with parents

My mom and her friends (all baby boomers with adult children) have been experiencing a unique phenomenon during these hard times: adult, college graduate children (even ones with advanced degrees and impressive work histories) are moving back in with their parents because they cannot afford to live on their own due to lack of employment or underemployment. What 30 year old wants to move back in with mom? I know if I do not find some form of employment soon, at 25, I will also be moving back in with my mother.

drew

Employment

under the bridge

quickly- i saw more guys standing on the corner of bedford and broadway in williamsburg than i've ever seen before. i'm sorry i didn't take a picture. there was a whole crowd. maybe it's just because it was warm out...

bedford and broadway, 11211

Jordan

Housing

Are people fleeing the city?

I live in a great 2 bedroom in Carroll Gardens, large rooms, high ceilings, low rent, the works. The kind of place people would kill for in the past. But it's almost impossible to find someone to move in. My posts on craigslist are buried under 20-30 similar or cheaper posts within the hour and get only 2-3 replies, many of whom never show up to look. Those that do tell me there are countless options to chose from. Friends have no leads. 4 people I know are moving out of NY to somewhere cheaper (including my brother, a commodities trader). This is not the competitive, seller's market I remember. I wonder when I can head over to my landlord's and renegotiate my rent.

Court St. and President St. Brooklyn

Gina D'Adamo

Bright

consignment is cool

My name is Gina and I am a single mom of a 10 year old girl. I live in Princeton NJ. I own a Children's Consignment shop called Milk Money. There are a few of us - one in Maplewood, Montclair, Morristown, and one in Hastings - on- Hudson.

I thought my store would be just another consignment store for the locals who just couldn't afford what Princeton has to offer, Boy, was I wrong. I have bags of brand new clothes - brands like Oilily, Lily Pulitzer, and many European brands. The used clothing has barely been worn. I can no longer take most "common" brands like the Gap and Gymboree because I don't have the room. Even the tweens are beginning to come in with their own money and shop.
People that I never thought would come into "this kind of store" are bringing in their clothing by the bins - and shopping too!
My salary has gone UP. I am not happy about what is going on - but I also see this as a reality check.
We can't keep taking from the world and expect to go on forever.
Consignment is COOL

51 N Tulane St, Princeton NJ, 08540

Sharon Mast

Commerce

Skimping on Shoe Repair

When I brought my boots to my shoe repairman for new heels, I remarked that his business must be increasing as people are loath to buy new shoes. "No", he said - "When people bring in shoes for new heels and I point out a hole in the sole that needs fixing, they say, 'Maybe next time'."

West 236th Street, Riverdale, the Bronx

Kurt Rieke

Commerce

Solar ambivalence

I am in a partnership that markets solar electric generation systems to residential co-ops. While the residents and Boards are enthusiastic about the concept, and there are several generous state and federal subsidies or tax credits available. Nevertheless, the need to assess, borrow, or tap reserve funds for the initial capital cost pose additional costs to resident shareholders in the buildings that gives them pause in the current environment. The subsidies that encourage green energy development require additional expenditures when everyone is looking to control and minimize their exposure.

215 W 92 St

Martin Fishman

Behavior

13th Street and Third Avenue, NYC

Martin Fishman

Behavior

40 Street and Fifth Avenue, NYC

Marcos Dinnerstein

Commerce

As Cheese Goes, So Goes the Nation?

On the corner of 22nd and 6th Ave. is Maffei Pizza. Last week Dominick, their most loquacious worker there, told me that the price of cheese had gone down and that Maffei would pass this along by reducing the price by 50 cents per slice. What's caused this price decline and does it portend deflation?

688 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10010

TerribleTim

Behavior

Homeless Bob

I am a songwriter who, so far, has not been able to break through. It is nearly impossible to get any air. I have a song that is pertinent, given these harsh economic conditions we find ourselves in.

Me and my friend Joe Periera manufactured a tune entitled "Homeless Bob". I wrote the tune a few years ago because my dear departed friend named "Brotherman Bill" tried to help out Homeless Bob. Now, more than ever we need a whole bunch of Brotherman Bill's to help out the massive number of people who are becoming economically distressed, if not homeless. We have got to help each other because the government is giving away all of our tax money to the rich people and leaving the average working guy in the lurch.

Thank you my brother. TerribleTim
TerribleTim.com TerribleTim nation. Spread love.

[Editor's Note: we have received the audio file and will review shortly.]

10301

Justin

Employment

New Work Opportunity

After the markets crashed there were so many more subway musicians: fifty-something men whose close-cropped hair had disappeared under fezzes or down the drains of their showers. Not only were there more of them, but the collective mood of these "buskers" had changed to suit the times. For every cheery trio of Mexicans on guitar and accordion, blitzing the commuters from Queens with their syncopated, sped-up waltzes, there appeared four of five lone keyboardists or tenor sax players, instruments liberated from rec room closets in Scarsdale, who provided the definitive soundtrack to this special moment in New York. No one will ever forget the guitarist at Astor Place who played "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" all day long. Or the guy with the theramin at South Ferry.

They'd decided to give up--or forgo entirely--the demeaning hunt for potential sources of (diminished) income or jobs whose own expiration dates were approaching ever closer. The presence of each new musician in the subway was an invitation out of the house to the others: he exerted a camaradic pull, irresistible as a game of tennis, and contributed to a positive feedback loop predicated on the lure of performing. The insistent, daring therapy of it. The mental calculus must have gone something along the lines of: "After risking so much of others' and my own money unawares, why not? What is the big deal? At least I'd be aware of the stakes were I to take my tenor down onto the platform."

The danger of the platform! The horizontal, subterranean equivalent of a leap from 22 stories up rumbled by every seven or so minutes. Even more often during rush hour. Only the most erratic, the most demented of these new buskers dared position himself at the dangerous end of the platform, the one near the tunnel mouth from which the trains entered the station. These were the guys who didn't wear shades, whose eyes locked onto a magic ceramic tile across the tracks visible only to themselves. Not surprisingly, these men, some of whom were the best musicians, drew not quarters or dollar bills but rather a five-yard buffer zone of sideways glances. No one stood between them and the yellow line.