Monthly Archives: October 2008

How do you make your vote count in a region where your vote doesn’t really count? That’s the topic for today.

The Problems:

1) I don’t really care for either candidate
2) I live in a state in which Obama is up by 31 POINTS, according to fivethirtyeight.com
3) That number is even more lopsided in New York City
4) Neither party feels the need to cater to NYC, except to raise funds from wealthy donors. Booo!

The Goals:

1) Show the GOP that not everyone in NYC is liberal
2) Show the GOP that even non-liberals disagree with the party’s current ideals and direction
3) Show the Dems that not everyone in NYC is liberal
4) Vote for the candidate that I’d most like to win

The Possible Methods:

1) Vote for McCain to send a message to Dems
2) Vote for Obama to send a message to GOP
3) Don’t vote at all
4) Write in Bloomberg, who would be my REAL choice.

I would have been fine voting for McCain two months ago, but his choice of Palin as VP represents reckless endangerment of the United States, and the old (REALLY OLD) man should be tried for treason for potentially sacrificing the well-being of our country to up his approval rating with the GOP base. (What does he care if Palin were to take over? He’d be dead!) At the very least, I would take great satisfaction in helping him lose the election for making a choice like that.

And yet, I don’t support many of Obama’s policies, and I don’t like the idea of contributing my vote to a huge-majority mandate that will let him run wild.

Not voting at all is a bad option. When voter turnout is low, it’s attributed to “voter apathy.” Well, apathy is a passive word, and I’m neither passive nor apathetic, I’m actively let down by my options. It’s too bad there isn’t a way to demonstrate this via ballot, for instance by going to the polls and indicating abstention on the ballot somehow (like how congress members can vote “present” instead of yea or nay). We should have a method of protest vote.

Also, if I don’t vote, I run the risk that P. Diddy will show up with his posse and bust a cap.

Writing in Bloomberg would be fun and satisfying, but pointless in the end.

I think the thing to do might be to actually register as a Republican (gag), and then vote for Obama. That sends a message to everyone, right? This is also the honorable thing to do, because I pledged to a coworker that if she voted for Obama in the primaries, I’d vote for him in the general election. Hillary sux, lol.

Your thoughts?

(BTW, my good friend Jeff posted a plea to swing-state voters to vote GOP, mainly to avoid a filibuster-proof supermajority in Congress. I don’t agree with all of it, but it’s interesting).

“It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times.”

If there are “two Americas” right now, there are at least three Manhattans. You can see proof of this by searching for an apartment in this city, or just come on down to our block on Beaver Street.

A golf tee-shot north from our building’s front door is the NY Stock Exchange and the federal courthouse where Washington was sworn in as president. Hit a golf ball in any other direction and you can hit the buildings of AIG, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and others.

There’s an international crisis being played out in Manhattan in general and in my neighborhood in particular, but my block has it’s own weird little drama.

My building is a 9-story apartment building, capped at 9 stories because it’s a landmark or protected historical site or something. There’s a very famous, old, and expensive steakhouse on the ground floor, but the apartments and corridors above aren’t much, and don’t cost much, relatively speaking. The tenants are mostly young couples and immigrants (and perhaps a pimp) who like the affordable rent and the good subway access.

Two doors down on Beaver Street is the Heuss House, a homeless outreach center run by Trinity Church, the ancient church on Broadway and Wall St. There are typically a handful of loiterers on the sidewalk outside the Heuss House, some of them mentally ill, some of them just outside for a smoke. Every night a white bus pulls up in front of the Starbucks across the street, and the Heuss House patrons pile into the bus to be taken, I assume, to a place that has beds for them. Some don’t get on the bus, preferring instead to sleep on cardboard in a doorway or in front of the Starbucks.

The Heuss House patrons on the sidewalk don’t really interact with the other Beaver Street residents, aside from the occasional remark to pretty girls walking down the street (like Corinne). I don’t really see the presence of the Heuss House as an annoyance, but I suspect the new Beaver Street residents might.

You see, there’s a “third Manhattan” moving onto our block, right across the street from my building and the homeless shelter. It’s an apartment building called the William Beaver House, and it’s almost complete after three years of construction. We’ve watched its progress since it was a hole in the ground until it grew up into a monstrous, ugly blight on the downtown skyline. Compare the sparkling promo image on the web site to the actual building pictured below.

People are in a state of disbelief at the design of this monstrosity—especially the random yellow blotches of paint—but the marketing pitch is even worse. Basically, this apartment building is custom made for horny Wall Street douchebags, for lack of a more graceful term. The New Yorker discussed the steps WBH is taking to attract the promiscuously-single-investment-banker set, but I’ll pull a quote to summarize:

Recalling a coed dorm or the stew zoos of the nineteen-sixties, Beaver House is meant to be a place you can bring someone (or someones—many units include showers big enough for three). If not, pickup opportunities are part of the floor plan. See you at the sunken conversation pit!

In other words, it’s a building where bankers and traders can spend their $2 million bonuses on a tacky apartment in a tacky building with the expectation of getting laid frequently. In still other words, it’s the yellow Hummer of apartment buildings (and visually evokes a yellow Hummer as well). Word to the wise: If the name of an apartment building sounds like the punchline of a dirty limerick on purpose, steer clear.

But you can’t beat the location, and that’s the key. William Beaver House is meant to be within blocks of a tenant’s office, and it’s a block north of Stone Street, a row of bars catering to after-work bankers and the overdressed girls who come to flirt with them.

Anyway, I’ve spent three years wondering how the new William Beaver House residents would get along with the old Heuss House residents. After all, buses full of homeless people are a bit of a buzzkill when you just dropped $2M on an 800-sq-foot bachelor pad. Would the nü-money frat bankers ignore them or petition to get the house shut down? Would the bums respond by setting their bus on fire and driving it into the WBH lobby? So many possibilities.

Fortunately, we may never learn the answer. The William Beaver House was built on the promise of wealthy Wall Street suits using their 6- or 7-figure bonuses for downpayments. Only—oops!—just as the William Beaver House is completed, the suits aren’t so wealthy anymore and there ARE no bonuses! Welcome to the new real estate market.

Maybe William Beaver House will sit empty for a few years. Maybe it will fill up with wealthy Russians and Middle Easterners. Or maybe it will drop its asking prices enough to entice Corinne and me to move across the street. Heck, the building’s movie theater is equipped with “cinema beds” and there’s reportedly a glass-bottomed hot tub visible from the lobby…what’s not to like??