Great Neck

Firefighters, Not Rudy, Are Heroes of 9/11   To the Editor:    read more »

Last Sunday sixty people were evacuated from a couple of buildings at 345 and 347 West 16th Street because of a fire. And then, after the FDNY extinguished the blaze, they discovered that sections of the buildings were crumbling. Now the tenants have to wait till the building's shored up before they can move back in. (What about the pets?!)

Now residents are telling the local news that the landlord--Benedict Properties of Great Neck, N.Y., according to PropertyShark--hasn't been providing adequate heat nor hot water. Most tenants won't even speak on the record, fearing retribution from the landlord.

According to PropertyShark, there are literally hundreds of building violations for these two properties. Granted, some of them date to 1977, but recent ones include failure to provide hot water, faulty smoke detectors and fire escapes, and "vermin mice" and "vermin roaches."

Ah, Chelsea! Good to know you're not totally going yuppie.  read more »

(Via BlogChelsea, CBS 2)

-Matthew Grace

The New York Times today has a piece about wealthy immigrants moving to the U.S. to take advantage of our sub-par schools.

Meet the Shins: 40's, married with children, well-off and well-established back home in Seoul. But the problem was the academic grind their kids would face if they stayed.

Mrs. Shin tells Times reporter Paul Vitello a few things you didn't know about Great Neck:

"Here are many Asians. And here my children have more ... more ... chance to live normal." The chance to live normal is a relative value and might mean many different things to different people. But among a growing group of monied Chinese and South Korean newcomers arriving in this community of 40,000 in Nassau County, there is a strong feeling of what it means: the chance to spare their children the grinding competition and unrelieved pressure of scholastic life in their homelands.

- Tom McGeveran

Elizabeth Hayt’s I’m No Saint kicks off with the author going down on her bridesmaid the  read more »

Great Neck , by Jay Cantor. Alfred A.  read more »

Jonathan Harooni, 23, and David Matalon, 22, two bright and eager New York guys, are looking for som  read more »

As he prepared for the crucible of a New York Mayoralcampaign, Public Advocate Mark Green gathered h  read more »

Who Ivy Supersonic IsIt was Saturday night, about 9 p.m., and Ivy Supersonic, wearing a black leathe  read more »

Ever since Mozart, one of classical music's most persistent myths has been that of the child prodigy  read more »

Kaaterskill Falls , by Allegra Goodman. Dial Press, 324 pages, $23.95.Ah, the Jews. Who are we?  read more »