Dick Tracy: Not on My Watch

The wristwatch was meant to be the device of the future. Dick Tracy, a man ahead of his time, used his two-way wristwatch as a radio to communicate with police and capture villains.

Futurists with high hopes knew this would be a reality one day. In the early 80s, one such futurist proudly showed me his watch that could store phone numbers. G wore a similar geek watch when I met him late last century.

The futurists got the mobile device part right. Nearly all of us --across all generations --carry at least a cell phone. Or a cell phone and iPod.

Still, I was surprised to hear that people of a certain generation have stopped wearing wristwatches. This new breed just checks the time on their phone, or their Blackberry, or whatever device they carry.

I don't consider myself slow to adopt new technology and abandon outdated hardware. But this, I must ponder.

Does this phenomenon applies to girls, who more often have purses than pockets? Will it ever be as easy to find my phone in my purse as it is to twist my wrist? Will everyone wear clothes with pockets now? (Cargo Pant Heaven!)

Like typewriters and land lines, the wristwatch will disappear, I guess. But not until all the people who can't break the habit of looking at their wrist when someone asks, "do you have the time?" have disappeared too.

(And who says "wristwatch" anymore? It's been a hundred years since the device had to be distinguished from the alternative "pocketwatch.")

Who is the Charlie Browniest?

A fat biography of Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, fuels the long-standing hypothesis that Charles Schulz is Charlie Brown.

Schulz is indeed Charlie Brown with all Charlie's insecurities, fears and loneliness. How could this old hypothesis not be true? Don't all artists draw their characters from themselves and their own lives? Aren't all the characters in our dreams really us?

In detailing Schulz's childhood, author David Michaelis tries too hard to fault the parents. Schulz's parents were not your average PTA parents, but they seemed better than average. Schulz was an awkward kid, humble to the point of annoying and clean-living to the point of boring.

The Schulz offspring cooperated with the biographer but were miffed at the resulting portrait he paints. I can see why. For a different point of view, read the New York Times review.

The author over-emphasizes events and statements that demonstrate Schulz's low self worth and glosses over Schulz's many triumphs. Schulz's army service gave him a lot of confidence and pulled him from his sheltered St. Paul environment. His job at Art Instruction, Inc provided him with camaraderie and status. Those periods were two big chunks of his early adult life.

Draw Me!

Kudos to Schulz for seeking out employment and companionship with fellow artists, albeit at an unusual artistic venue. (Remember Art Instruction, Inc aka the "Draw Me! school? In the back of magazines, the school advertised, "Can you draw Binky the Skunk?")

Schulz's singular determination to become a cartoonist, his persistent submission of his work demonstrated atypical self confidence, not the reverse. Schulz impressed me when he turned down a job offer to work at Disney, because he did not want to become just a part of a pool of animators. (I might have taken that job.)

The biography is well-written, well-researched and sprinkled with strips illustrating how he used incidents in his own life as material. The strips bring the point home, helping the reader recognize or remember the simple brilliance of Peanuts.

Watch David Michaelis speak about Charles Schulz

Michaelis may be a Charlie Brown himself, always positioning what seems like normal events into a negative framework. As I rounded the corner into the second half of the book, the theme of "Charles is Charlie" turned into "Success does not make Schulz happy."

Around this point, I started to feel depressed myself. Maybe I had a few tough days, but I suspected the book itself might be making me feel very Charlie Brownie. I intend to finish the book, but for now, I have set it aside for a sunny day.

Chelsea One Bedroom

How great would it be to live just blocks from work?

This Chelsea one bedroom, priced well for a hot neighborhood, fulfills this Manhattanite's dream--walking to work in five minutes. At $685,000 and 725 square feet, it costs $945 per square foot in a neighborhood where $1,000 per sq ft is the bottom of the market.

Layout

A few oddities about the floor plan may explain the price. I am not a fan of apartment foyers--usually wasted space. You're lucky to be able to stick a bookcase against a wall, unless your bookcase is as narrow as the one in the photo. The foyer is pretty, but also pretty useless with a doorway on two of the walls and a door opening into the other two.

Can you really put a table in the "dining room"? Maybe if you stick it in the center and manuever around it every time you walk from one room to another.

The kitchen is only 4 foot, 6 inches deep. How deep is a refrigerator? At least two and a half, three feet, right? So you have eighteen inches of space between the appliances and the wall? With no photos of the dining room or kitchen, I am suspicious.

Bedroom and bathroom are a decent size and there seem to be enough closets for the average couple (but probably not for us). The apartment has a lot of character with archways and wrought iron railings, but does that compensate for the layout flaws?

Amenities

The building scores well on amenities.

You don't really need a doorman if you have a super who takes packages. Private storage is an amenity that doesn't occur to me to look for, it's so rare. Extra points for that.

I like a low floor (4th) and windows in both bath and kitchen score points. A roof deck and good light help as well. The description in the listing copy says "no view", so I suspect it's pretty hideous. I've had great views in New York, but I'd give it up in an instant for the right space.

Location

The location of this apartment is unbeatable. I'll give up my monthly Metro Card and I won't even need comfortable shoes. Chelsea rocks.

Price

Price ($685,000) is good for the square footage and location, but still out of my reach, so it can't rank more than three moons. $811 monthly maintenance is low for the area, but it should be low without a real doorman.

Open House Tuesday night, anyone?

George Carlin: Seven Words Ain't Enough

George Carlin's passing is getting a lot of well-deserved media attention.

Surprised me, because as a kid of the 70s, I think of him as the anti-establishment comedian, the type whose passing might only get a brief mention on the mainstream nightly news. But Carlin had a long career and the clips I saw of his early stuff is funny too. The early stuff is funny; the later stuff, great.

Despite my narrow scope of who's who in the world, Carlin is a fixture in the minds of several generations. The anti-establishment audience he began speaking to in the 70s is running the media now.

I don't know who this thought is attributed to, but I've heard good comedians are all angry inside. Carlin was crazy, funny and very angry.

In recent years, George put his anger in front of the humor rather than behind it. Anger behind humor is what makes us able to laugh at absurdities and stupidities. Anger is front of the humor pisses people off. (Thanks to George, I can say "piss.")

G and I saw Carlin in Las Vegas in 2001. He told the audience at the outset of the show that they were not the type of audience to appreciate his humor. He was there testing material for an HBO Special. Granted, I could see a lot of blue-haireds in the red velvet seats, but give them a chance, George I thought. But George Carlin still had it.

G reminds me of the bit Carlin did that culminated in "fuck the police!; fuck the police!; FUCK the police." Now that was funny and very angry.

Goodbye, George. We'll miss you.

The Strain of New York City Cranes

It's not unusual for New Yorkers to keep a narrow focus when moving around the city.

But since the recent deadly crane collapses in the city, I woke up and started counting the number of construction cranes I see daily.

G and I have been surrounded by construction for years. When we lived in Brooklyn, we watched the Brooklyn Law School dormitory go up a few feet behind us, stopping just short of blocking our Verrazano Bridge view from our 11th floor apartment. (Residents on lower floors weren't so lucky.)

An apartment building rose across the street and another one was built on the next block, on the corner of Atlantic and Court. A new courthouse three blocks away and a number of other projects surrounded us. Just as construction was wrapping up, we sold our apartment.

Fast forward to Battery Park City and watch the amount of construction increase exponentially. The towering monstrosity going up on the other side of the World Financial Center was the site of two accidents. A white dinosaur of a crane sticks far out of the big hole in the ground that was the World Trade Center. I walk by a half-built building and its crane companion, rising taller every day behind the Marriott Hotel.

Yesterday, a new ferry terminal floated into place on Vesey Street and now there is a tall crane lodged in the view from my living room window.

Suddenly I notice the cranes, more and more, taller and taller. Have they been there all along?

Big Brown, No Triple Crown

Not all Triple Crown winners get postage stamps, but the legendary Secretariat did.

Secretariat won the Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes in 1973, but, like everyone else, he didn't get his commemorative stamp until after his death. (If Secretariat had gotten his first class stamp in 1973, it would have been an 8-cent stamp. Stamps cost 29 cents between 1991 and 1994.)

Secretariat was a more legendary horse than his TC successors, Seattle Slew and Affirmed. Or so it seemed to me, hanging around with a best friend who was a horse nut.

Dee Dee plastered posters of Secretariat all over her bedroom. She also had a collection of plastic horses that sat on a sacred shelf. We lived across the street from the Laurel Race Track in Maryland and sometimes you could hear the track announcers from our apartment building.

By 1978 when Affirmed won, the Triple Crown may have lost some cachet. After all, the Triple Crown saw three winners in five years. But only eight other horses took the Triple Crown since the first winner in 1919.

Odds were a drought was ahead.

Thirty years later, Big Brown seemed destined to take the Crown. The media positioned it as a foregone conclusion. Yet, something was awry and Big Brown came in last. The drought continues.

Apartment Watch Update

June 1 is a good day to check in on the apartments I have been watching. It's a new month, a new home-buying season and change is in the air. (But I flip-flop on which way the change is headed.)

The lead in Wednesday's New York Times article sounds good for buyers:

"America’s home-buying season, when for-sale signs sprout like dandelions, is shaping up to be even worse than expected this year, with prices falling, sales slowing and few signs of a turnaround emerging."

The article talks a lot about the housing slowdown finally hitting Seattle, a market stronghold. But what about New York City?

Nationally, housing prices have dropped 14%. But the New York Times isn't much of a local paper when it comes to reporting the pricing trends in the city.

So I must rely on my own observations:

• The Prospect Heights apartment on Plaza Street remains in contract.

• Since I last checked, the Union Street apartment has gone into contract. It's a shame there's no way to tell if the accepted offer is above, at, or below the asking price.

• The status of Washington Heights apartment status remains unchanged: no contract, no price change, no open house scheduled. G and I should really visit this one.
  

• The apartment with the crazy floor plan also remains on the market at the original price. Surprised no one has snatched it up?

• Brooke Astor's $46 million apartment is still listed unchanged.

• One bright spot: an apartment I have been watching (but yet to profile) has cut its price by $50K. But when you're over $1 million, what's $50K?