Ah, Photoshop!

I guess if you’re downsizing …

Byram Gardens

Reader Paul Curtis sends along this Money Magazine article comparing what you get for $499,000 in Coral Springs, Florida (pretty nice) and Greenwich, Connecticut (Byram condo).  You probably already knew this.

Let’s hope this doesn’t give the Martians any bad ideas

Coming to J House restaurant?

Or it’s curtains for Rover.

Puerto Rico fights invasive species, the iguana, by putting it on the menu.

UPDATE: Hmm – seems I wrote about this back in February.

Uh oh, Dollar Bill may want to rush back to the Vineyard and bury his head in a dune when he hears about this!

The son of a bitch moved them to Damascus – go get ‘em!

Obama admits existence of WMDs in Syria and threatens war if Assad uses them!

Forget Phyllis, here’s the death of the day

Scott Mackenzie’s dead. Okay, terrible, saccharine song, but how many kids did it inspire to leave home and hitchhike to San Francisco? I had to wait until I was 16 in 1970 and by that time, 1967 was a long way gone. But still ….

See? This is the kind of thing I’m talking about

 

The cart before the horse, looks like

Article here about Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt considering marriage (to each other, presumably, I didn’t read past the headline). Aren’t they already married, and didn’t they do that years ago? Is Phyliss Diller going to be their maid of honor?

 

Gotta love it

Under the spreading chestnut tree the union smithy stands  sleeps

Bankrupt Detroit water authority has no horses but it does have a blacksmith on the payroll. Union head says, “not possible to eliminate a single position”.

Fudcuker-types wonder why mean people like me cheer when municipal employees are tossed out on their asses by the hundreds. This is why.

Probably a good idea

Foot in mouth disease proves fatal

One day after saying that victims of “legitimate” (WTF?) rape don’t get pregnant, Todd Aiken is quitting the Missouri senate race. I was wondering how he was going to get out of that preposterous statement and know I know: he couldn’t.

Moron.

UPDATE: Oops! Proving he’s too stupid even to serve in the Senate, Aiken now says he won’t quit. The voters will just have to do that for him, then. Chalk one up for the Democrats.

Central Greenwich is still breathing, but not as heartily as it once did

75 William Street

75 William Street (parallel to Rt. One, by the hospital, not William Street in Byram or Riverside) has an accepted offer. It’s been asking $1.052 million but back in 2008 the owners wanted $2.250. Too bad for them but if they ever had a chance to get that much, which they probably didn’t, 2008 was long too late. 0.27 acre but in the R-6 zone so you can probably put two townhouses here. The listing says “do not enter house” – a pretty good indication of its condition.

As a note of historical interest, Fudrucker tells me that this area is known as the “Fourth Ward” because of the Tammany Hall Irish who came up from New York and settled here. Or something like that – if I got that wrong, blame me, not FF.

They keep announcing the passing of Hollywood stars who’ve been dead for years

Phyllis and Generalissimo Franco light up the Academy Awards

Phyllis Diller dies (again) at 95.

Uh, that statement is no longer operative

I wuz just kiddin’!

Obama, July 12, 2012: “Romney either committed a felony or lied to the American people”.

Obama, July 20, 2012: “Nobody in this campaign accused [Romney] of being a felon.”

The friggin’ liar can’t even keep track of his mendacity for eight days.

Here’s Drudge:

Adios FoodMart, hello Kings

Failed marketing idea

Porricelli’s in Old Greenwich is going. This was pretty-much announced a month ago and here at FWIW, no one seemed prepared to mourn. On the other hand, I’m not sure Kings will do anything for Old Greenwich except attract still more SUV Mommies to our section of town:

It carries organic and locally grown produce and offers hand-selected cheeses from more than 20 countries.

“Hand selected” cheese? How do other stores do it, truffle pigs? I’m not impressed.

Fortunately, college is also 1,250X better than back then

College costs have soared 12 – fold since 1978, 6X more than food and the cpi, 2X the increase in medical costs.

“I blame Cheney”, he groused.

Chairman of Sotheby’s Europe shot in the face while bird hunting on the moors. Eyes were protected by his glasses but they plucked 52 pellets from him. Now he knows how the grouses feel.

Well of course it is- they just don’t usually admit it

Former union president, now Occupy Movement coordinator Mike Golash at yesterday’s Occupy DC “Peoples’ Assembly”:

Progressive labor is a revolutionary communist organization. Its objective is to make revolution in the United States, overthrow the capitalist system and build communism.

No surprise that Obama and Pelosi support them.

Obama: “You are the reason I ran for office”.

Nancy Pelosi: “God bless them”

Sales prices reported, and some accepted offers

Two sales so far today:

203 Shore Road, part of the Lucas Point Association in Old Greenwich, sold for $2.7 million after asking $3.150.

59 S. Park, also in Old Greenwich, shows how that market has improved this year. Sold for $2.375 in 2007, it resold in February, 2012 for $2.195 and was almost immediately relisted and now sold, for $2.225.

Accepted offers:

45 Lakewood Circle N. (behind Manero’s), was asking $1.895. One acre, some swamp, but good street – the house will not survive so figure this as a land sale.

49 Shore Road sold for $2.650 million in January 2011, so when it came back on this past April at $3.795  I made a few disparaging remarks about sellers optimism. Listing agent Ann Simpson told me that the original house, new construction that ended up as a failed spec job, had every sort of problem imaginable, from FAR violations, building defects, etc. The owners are supposed to have sunk $1 million into correcting and repairing all that in which case, they’ll actually lose money. So it goes.

Just last week I asked why 14 Hearthstone Drive in Riverside was still available; now it isn’t. Asked $1.4 million.

Way up near the North Pole, 44 N. Stanwich, which sold for $6 million in 1994 and asked $8.9 million last year, is back as a “new” listing at $7.950. Its listing describes it as “close to shopping” which, if the neighbor’s kids set up a lemonade stand, I suppose it is.

Job killers – eco nuts join the trial lawyers

Who, us?

The Chiobani Yogurt company, mentioned here yesterday as just one of many food companies targeted by trial lawyers “in search of their next big payday” is also in the sights of so-called environmentalists who are furiously trying to stop the introduction of more dairy cows in New York state which would enable Chiobani to expand its milk supply and thus, its production.

The story of Chobani is amazing: four years ago a Turkish immigrant took over a shuttered Kraft yogurt factory upstate, switched it to making “Greek” yogurt, fought to win customers among the supermarket chains and now employs hundreds of workers and buys tons of milk from local farmers in what was a dying dairy industry. That success has placed the company squarely in the trial lawyers sights and the eco-nuts.

Regulations block further growth. The Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) rules force any dairy farm that wants to expand above 200 cows to get a special permit; the process includes hiring a certified cow-poop planner to come up with a strategy to deal with waste runoff. (Nitrogen from the poop can wind up in water resources, where it can be harmful to fish and plants.)

The feds also regulate cow poop, so New York farmers have to comply with those rules, too. Dean Norton, president of the state Farm Bureau, says total CAFO compliance runs $50,000 to $150,000 per farm.

Crossing the 200-cow line isn’t cheap. Kerry Adams, who owns Black Brook Farms in Shortsville, said at the summit that exceeding the 200-head limit would cost her $2,400 per cow to fund more than $400,000 in structural upgrades.

“It’s very hard on a small farm to meet those regulations,” she said.

Cuomo’s solution is to raise the limit to 300 cows per farm — which is where the federal rules already kick in. “Changing those CAFO regs, I think, is going to send a different signal that we are serious about this and we get it, and we get the role of the state,” he said at the summit.

But environmentalists will fight. “We’re not going to help them pollute,” William Cooke of the Citizens Campaign for the Environment said of raising the 200-cow limit.

And five green groups, including the Sierra Club and Environment New York, issued a joint statement worrying that “New York state will weaken state environmental protections put in place to protect public health, safety and the environment.”

Other environmentalists have hyperventilated that raising the cap amounts to “throwing away” water standards.

But the Farm Bureau says only 800 farms, max, could take advantage of the relaxed regulations. That means, at most, 80,000 more cows—when New York already has 611,000.

Chobani isn’t waiting for New Yorkers to decide whether they want deserted farms or jobs and prospering dairy farms – it’s expanding in Idaho instead, which will suit the people haters just fine.