Hello Again

Hello. I'm back, after a long break. I'd like to say I was on vacation at my villa on Lake Como, or at least that I'd passed out and coudn't remember my name. But I can't truthfully say any more than I suddenly got busy with non-blog real work. (Of course, all real work is non-blog, really.) But, never fear! Guilt has brought me back. It always brings me back.

This is not to say that New York trends haven't continued to suck since I last communicated. They suck more than ever, as shown in yesterday's City Section article about the Landmark Preservations Board that doesn't really protect New York City landmarks but rather gives developers the go-ahead to knock 'em on down. The latest is the squat, relatively unknown New York City Department of Purchase Storehouse, known as the Purchase Building, which sits hidden below the Brooklyn Bridge. I've actually passed this thing a couple times when playing with my kid in the nearby waterfront playground, and wondered why they didn't take that ugly fence out from around that cute, art deco structure. Well, know I know: Because the City wants to make it disappear, so Brooklyn Bridge Park can have plenty of elbow room.

This is the same uninspired commission of dunderheads that last year "undesignated" the 1915 Cass Gilbert-designed Austin, Nichols & Company building on the Brooklyn waterfront and the 1968 Jamaica Savings Bank, which kind of looks like those cool Kennedy Airport terminals that vandals trashed last year at an unveiling party gone amok. So, not only are they not protected worthy older building, they're agressively unprotecting them. Gosh: Think they understand they job much?