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It's time to play "Which snippet from the Times Real Estate section makes you most want to assault the person in the story?" There are two entrants this week, and it should be a tight race. First, imagine living next door to a pair of bastard attorneys who slip a note under your door saying, "As you may not be aware, we are both lawyers and both litigators, for whom the usual barriers to litigation are minimal." The crime? Purported secondhand smoke, which was purportedly "endangering" the bastards' four-year-old son, who I imagine is named Jebediah. The kicker: "The neighbor, a chain smoker, said she had tried to respond to their complaints and had even bought air purifiers to reduce the amount of smoke. But the lawyers complained that she had failed to provide them with receipts proving that she had made the purchases." I feel some serious assault coming on. But damn, how about this one:

Dude working for a marketing agency gets a transfer to NYC, paid for by the company. But he finds the city is arduous, necessitating a heroic growing process in which he learns about the dirty heart of the Rotten Apple:


A colleague told him that $2,300 was a cutoff point. Below that, he would find only cramped apartments in bad neighborhoods. It seemed to be true. He saw a few tiny places on the Lower East Side, where the streets felt raucous. "Seamy is the wrong word," Mr. Rahman said, "but you can imagine coming back every night and having to pick your way through punk bars and tattoo shops."