Wouldn’t it be nice to have a thick fur coat right now? Photo by Stephen Harmon.
January 11, 2016 Weather: Sunny, with a high of 35 degrees.
Notices:
Lots of free music, readings and many more events are on our calendar.
On Tuesday from 7:15 p.m. to 9:15 p.m., there will be a fair at MS 54, 103 West 108th street, for parents to learn about options for tutoring. It’s open to all parents from all schools. Learn more here: MS54 Tutor Fair FINAL 2016.
News:
A court ruled in favor of a tenant whose Upper West Side apartment was illegally de-regulated. The result? A nearly $900,000 windfall. “An unscrupulous Upper West Side landlord routinely overcharged resident Lane Altschuler since 2000 after illegally deregulating his rent-stabilized apartment, an appellate court ruled unanimously Thursday. The judges agreed the landlord should never have jacked the monthly cost above mandated levels because the city provided owner Jobman 470/480 LLC with J-51 tax abatements.”
A feud between the owner of several kosher steakhouses, including Prime Grill, and Lincoln Square Synagogue revolves around Kosher certification. “Joseph Allaham — whose kosher restaurants draw celebrities like Madonna and Ricky Martin — says officials from the Lincoln Square Synagogue promised to yank the kosher certification from his eateries if he didn’t comply with their demand to go before their preferred Jewish arbitrator, according to court papers…Allaham has been fighting with the modern Orthodox synagogue — where US Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan had her bat mitzvah — over a catering deal that went bad.”
A teacher at the UWS’ High School for Arts, Imagination and Inquiry says she was fired because of her lessons about the Central Park Five: five men who were exonerated after spending years in jail in the Central Park jogger rape case: “after several tense exchanges with supervisors, Lee-Walker received a series of bad performance reviews over the next 18 months that ultimately led to her dismissal, the suit said.”
Estimates of the number of rent-stabilized apartments in the city may be off by as much as 20%.
A 700-foot tower could rise near Columbus Circle on 58th street.
Correction: We incorrectly identified the owner of the steakhouse feuding with the Lincoln Square Synagogue. He is not affiliated with Linco9ln Square Steakhouse.
This whole “kosher” thing is absolutely sickening – it’s nothing more than mind control – a strategy to dictate how people should eat and otherwise live their lives all the while enriching the coffers of opportunistic rabbis under the guise of “God’s Commandment.” It’s no different than cult leaders convincing their flock to send them money to fund their extravagant lifestyles, “’cause that’s what God wants.” And I’m Jewish, so no anti-Semitism here. And as an aside, animals aren’t killed humanely in kosher slaughterhouses – I’ve watched videos of both, and if anything, kosher kills are a lot more terrifying for the animals.
Does anyone FORCE you to be kosher? Anyone DICTATES your habits? Your self-hate blinds you to logic, you poor thing.
I wouldn’t want Eric to get started on how he feels about Halal!
Hard to understand–impossible, actually–what Eric means by saying the whole “kosher” thing (I’ve no idea why he puts quotation marks around “kosher”) is a strategy to dictate how people should eat and otherwise live their lives. There’s no dictating going on. People who keep kosher do so of their own volition, and it’s not uncommon for some to do so and others not even in the same family. And what Eric says about rabbis enriching themselves is a grotesque generalization insupportable by the facts. Rabbis by and large have a high order of intelligence and other qualities that would make them successes in many more lucrative professions if their chief motivation were to make lots of money.
People “choose” to eat kosher in the same way that many muslim women “choose” to cover everything but their eyes. Religion indoctrinates people at a young age to do things that would seem ludicrous as an adult. And children are very impressionable and do not have fully formed minds. Then add to that family and culture pressure, and there you go – people walking around only showing their eyes, and others only eating certain foods that were “blessed.” Luckily, the human species as a whole is moving away from these silly things, and they will hopefully die out altogether eventually. Peace.
“And I’m Jewish, so no anti-semitism here”
So you are not anti-semitic, just anti-the faith of some of your fellow Jews.
Glad you cleared that up. Oy vey.
It may be nice to be a dog with thick fur but it would be MUCH nicer not to be tied up outside a store. If you really care about your dog you don’t tie them up in the street.
Tied? Store? I just see a photo of a dog sitting in the street.
This is hilarious, you’re right, the dog is not tied up! He’s just sitting there taking a break. Now where are all of the posters complaining about an unleashed dog loose on the sidewalk? 😉
No reason a dog should be made to sit on the cold dirty sidewalk. If you can’t bring a chair for your dog you should leave the poor defenseless being at home.
Dogs have rights to some dignity, too.
And bring him/her a newspaper, or maybe an iPad, too. They like Oprah.
My dog absolutely loves it when I take him on errands and tie him up in a place that I can always see him while I am inside a store. He sits on the sidewalk and just watches people go past, calm and collected taking in the fresh air.
I do however have judgement against those that just tie their dogs up and go into a store where they leave them out of eyesight. People do take dogs.
As far as the dog being cold or uncomfortable sitting on the sidewalk that is baloney.
“Irony” is *not* the condition in which your shirts come back from the laundry.
Dogs like baloney.
So you should tie your dog up where?
You should leave your dog home if you have errands to run then you needn’t tie it up at all.
Yes, please leave your dog alone at home by themselves while you go out and enjoy the city. Dogs prefer spending hours away from their owners, and definitely do not enjoy being with the pack on the move. What they like is to have minimal contact with their family members. Better that then being tied up for a few minutes while you run into a store that doesn’t allow dogs.
This is what a woman who only owns cats told me, so it must be true.
The falling out between Lincoln Square Synagogue and its caterer certainly does not revolve around kosher certification. It’s a plain business dispute about the caterer’s performance under its contract with the synagogue. There’s nothing exotic, like kosher certification, at the core of the dispute. The report is further mistaken about the synagogue “yanking” the caterer’s kosher certification. Neither the synagogue nor its rabbi grants a kosher certification, and, so, neither is in a position to yank it. One thing the story gets right is that Justice of the Supreme Court Elana Kagan did celebrate her bat mitzvah at Lincoln Square Synagogue (though she wasn’t on the Court at the time). Kagan is the Manhattan representative on the Court. In fact, each of New York City’s boroughs except Staten Island has a homie on the Court. Ginsburg’s from Brooklyn, Scalia’s from Queens, and Sotomayor from the Bronx. Anyone hankering to be appointed to the Court would be well advised to move to Staten Island. It wouldn’t hurt to be a Protestant, either. Since Justice Stevens retired, there isn’t any Protestant among the Justices. That’s a first.
If you request a rent history for your apartment from the City, in order to validate de-regulation status, does the landlord find out about this inquiry?
The apartment we are in was likely de-regulated just two years ago, and I am curious to check the rental history simply to make sure that everything is above board.
I fear that doing this will get back to the landlord and they will punish us when lease renewal time comes. Does anybody know if landlords or managing agents are able to know when an inquiry was placed for a rental history?
No, they don’t. Call 311.
That dog is actually a kid in a costume.
That dog is actually an officer in plain clothes, getting “ruff” on crime and taking back the streets. It’s a dirty town, and in a dirty city of lawlessness there was only one dog standing between the hooligans of the Upper West Side and the rest of civilized society. Dog Wish 2, in theaters now.