Great week (in our opinion), despite the fact that the overall theme is a rather melancholy emphasis on crowding and small spaces. Our all time favorite quote is in this issue as well.
From As Views Disappear, Rumblings of Resistance: After Ernest Beck clearly establishes that Trump's Upper West Side towers have had many detractors due to the terrible siting and agressive view-stealing (all in keeping with Trump's general rape-the-city approach to developing), The Donald replies with signature tortured logic and pure blather:
[They] fought me on everything. I won because I had the proper case. Everybody loves the job I did there.
Just, which "everybody" is he talking about?
TOP STORIES

- Bricked In? Lighten Up: Many in NYC have lost their views due to an unparalleled building boom in the past year. Here's what a few have done about it.
- And Boyfriend Makes Three: Eva Hagberg writes about her friends - it's a post-Friends, post-Sex And The City world and everyone's living together but no one's having fun.

- Questions:
For a starter apartment, is there starter art?
How difficult is it to paint textured walls? Is there a shortcut?

- A Wall, and Peace: Great story about a home in Brooklyn that had a laundromat go up next door, creating a huge, prisonlike wall onto their backyard. They got help, landscaped and painted - and they still love their home.

- The Headboard Without the Headache: Marianne Rohrlich gives a nice rundown on upholstered beds with headboards. Eight choices, from $350 to $14,000.

- Two Vertical Commuters, in Horizontal City: Must read fun and long. In short, this LA couple bought an old warehouse for their office and hoisted an old Airstream-type camper onto the roof for a sweet little overnight home, when working late.
CURRENTS

- Interior designs for a homeless shelter on the Bowery by Rafi Elbaz, Kathy Chang and Aaron Gabriel.

- Yes, it's our very own Prague Kolektiv, with the two cuties, Barton Quillen and Giovanni Negrisin

- William Lee of Modernlink on Bond, introduces a new line of bamboo furniture called Modernlink Design.
- Handblocked wallpaper by Amy Mills of Mills Paper, Brooklyn
- Flowers! Magnolia has opened a little kiosk in Bryant Park
- Flameout is a handy new aerosol extinguisher for use in small spaces. Even better, it's environmentally safe.










Her dress a vivid example of "crowding in small spaces."
Re: "Starter Art"
Anyone who starts a story on art with "cut up a book" should be shot. Or cut up and framed. Even after that, that whole art "tip" was really weak.
The Ligne Roset "Cineline" bed is seriously sexy. It screams carnality.
The architect who bricked over a window 17 years ago because he knew he'd eventually lose the view -- and is just now losing it?
Proof positive one can be too ahead of one's time....
Doug--
Ha! Too funny.
I can understand if a new building literally abuts yours, or a neighboring window is only inches away from yours, but I find it hard to believe in the typical New York apartment you don't get SOME sense of relief from even a window whose vista is only an airshaft...
I'm with patrick. The advice that there are three pieces of starter art from which to chose is heinous.