This year's MacArthur "genius" grants were announced today — $500,000 over five years, with no strings attached — and six New Yorkers are among the 25 winners. Our geniuses (well, our official geniuses — our mother convinced us at a young age, as we're sure yours did for you, that we're geniuses, too) are:
This week's New York mag cover story is a brilliant study in class envy: It's the salary issue, in which the projected payoffs of various Manhattanites are presented in a handy listicle, ready for your shock and ire.
We were initially lured by the squiggly lines and pretty colors, but apparently this graph has a greater meaning: Someday, you might be able to own property in New York.
New York Gas Prices has been dilligently tracking the best and worst places to fuel up your Hummer as the cost of oil continues to rise in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Take a quick glance at the highest prices in the region; suddenly it's rather clear who are the true victims of this national tragedy.
For the record, NYU's Water Street Residence is at 200 Water Street, off Fulton Street, immediately adjacent to the South Street Seaport.
Today in Martha Stewart's Media Campaign 2005, MSO chief executive Susan Lyne and company chairman Charles Koppelman sat down to discuss Stewart's sweeping return to mass-market ubiquity. Naturally, the head puppeteer herself was present:
Because you're too lazy to buy your loved one a thoughtful gift, One Share allows you to buy — you guessed it — one share of any popular stock, complete with a charming commemorative certificate and frame. (It reminds us of the trend when people would "buy" and "name" a star as a perfectly stupid, useless gift. Nice to know that symbols of equity have reached a similar level of kitsch.) And wouldn't you know it, the share of the month is Martha Stewart Omnimedia! It's a back-handed honor, however: The shares are being sold at 10% off. Much to the chagrin of real investors, were sure.
A Census Bureau study released yesterday shows that New York County, New York — which is to say, Manhattan — has the highest average salary in the Unites States, at$73,032 per year. In the No. 2 county, Santa Clara, California, salaries are about 15 percent lower, averaging $63,704.
Yesterday was Teen Vogue sales assistant Lauren Blitzer's last day on the job, as she and her writing partner Lauren Levin have sold a book proposal to Simon Spotlight Entertainment for an "undisclosed sum." And they're not even bloggers!
Keith "The Body" Kelly reports today that American Media Inc.'s celebrity-eating Canadian of Doom, editorial director and on-again, off-again Gawker mascot Bonnie Fuller might have to tighten her purse strings and downgrade her whip to a more frugal, pleather blend. Thus far, under her current contract, she's been sitting pretty:
• Dammit, we're just minutes too late, as it seems someone has already rented out Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's $35,000-a-month, never-inhabited Morton Square PleasureDome. And to think, we were so close to vomiting with the stars! [The Real Estate]
• The NYPD Safe List: If you're white, you win. [Muk Report]
• We, too, have wondered where the jock straps have gone. Just when we were old enough to touch a warm one, they went out of style. Life is so unfair. [Slate]
• CNN explores the "gay side" of Desperate Housewives, as if there were any other kind. [CNN]
• It's the Gray Lady Gone Wild, Ozarks Edition.[NYT]
You gotta hand it to the old man. NewsCorp numen Rupert Murdoch wouldn't go and buy some internet company if he weren't already very familiar with it, now would he? Of course not. So we don't understand why everyone's assuming that Murdoch's profile for his newly-acquired online network MySpace is just the work of some prankster. From his profile:
On Monday we made mention of mega-realtor Barbara Corcoran — who we hold singlehandedly responsible for everything wrong in the world — and her latest attempt to destroy the world with the Sexiest Suburbs rankings. She'll be announcing her latest targets* for real estate diamond mining on today's episode of the View, but we've finally got the whole list (in no particular order):
You know how you or someone you know moves to the suburbs because, ultimately, they can't afford the absolute financial bullshittery of living in a city where it costs $20 just to leave your 200-sq-ft studio apartment? Pity the metropolitan ex-pat, however, who dares move to a suburb that's actually a bit fun, because real estate's enfant terrible, Barbara Corcoran, is about to rape and pillage those quietly cool enclaves.
And apparently it's quite popular.
When paramedics dug through the rubble of the collapsed building on the Upper West Side last Thursday, they found 7-month-old Abby Lurensky. Lurensky was initially "unresponsive," but quickly determined to be in good health because of her stroller, which folded around her and protected her from the debris:
