Robert Redford (1936-2025)

Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand on the
set of 1973's The Way We Were (Rolling Stone)

The first time I saw a Robert Redford movie was in 1967. In Barefoot in the Park the newly married couple, Paul (Redford) and Corie (Jane Fonda) Bratter, move in to an apartment in New York City, nearly break up because of their incompatible approach to life--he is organized and practical, she is flexible and free-spirited--and reconcile at the end.

Barefoot was my first exposure to a Neil Simon play. The actors showed off their chops by dashing off rapid-fire repartee as if that was how everyone spoke in New York. The humor and secondary characters lightened the seriousness of the plot, a characteristic of other Neil Simon plays like The Odd Couple and The Goodbye Girl.

But back to Robert Redford. For several decades he was everyone's ideal of the blonde, blue-eyed movie star, until the baton was handed to Brad Pitt. Some movies, e.g., the Way we Were and the Candidate, played off his good looks explicitly, but the roles grew meatier. By the '80's he took up directing and founded the Sundance Film Festival.

Redford spent the next 50 years making and appearing in some of the industry’s most expensive and most commercially successful films. As the force behind the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, he also helped create an ecosystem for the industry’s smallest. Some films that premiered at the festival became popular with mainstream audiences, such as “Reservoir Dogs” and “Napoleon Dynamite,” but far more succeeded in finding a modest audience that appreciated them thanks to the infrastructure for independent films in the U.S. that Redford and Sundance helped create...

“You make the most of what you’ve been given—that’s how I see it,” Redford said in the 2015 WSJ. Magazine interview. “And you keep pushing to make more of it. I don’t see any reason to stop. I think retirement can lead to death, and that’s not for me.”

R.I.P.

Perspective

Charlie Kirk at the 2024 Republican convention (Politico)

24 years later the significance of September 11th is receding from memory, much as December 7th already has for most Americans. Besides, many people don't feel like reminiscing (again) about 9-11; what's on their minds is yesterday's murder of Charlie Kirk.

9-11 does allow us to put some perspective on the events of yesterday, however. "Everything changed" on September 10, 2025, is something I've read repeatedly on social media. No, I'm afraid not; tragic and emotional as it was, the killing of one man pales in comparison to the death of 3,000 people and the destruction of the twin towers in 2001.

Then, as now, some identifiable groups are easy to blame for the horror. However, the principle of individual responsibility is still strongly ingrained in the culture, and most Americans are able to resist condemning entire groups for the actions of a few members.

Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) are the enemies of rational decision-making, and if we are honest with ourselves, there was a lot more FUD in 2001 about the next terrorist attack than there is today about how many people will get killed because of their politics.

We have the motivation, ability, and character to get through today's problems, if only we can see it.

If You Have to Ask, You Can't Afford It

(Photo from charity buzz)

From 2009 to 2016 I was a regular viewer of Royal Pains, USA channel's romantic dramedy about a startup concierge medical practice in the Hamptons. The show had the difficult-to-diagnose conditions that doctor shows usually have and multi-season story arcs. The millionaire inhabitants of the Hamptons were sometimes gently mocked, but there were no pure villains. When the series wrapped, the practice had become successful, and all the major characters had resolved their conflicts.

Now there are several concierge doctors in the Hamptons, and one even attributes the founding of his business to the TV show.

Along with other areas with surging centimillionaire and billionaire populations such as South Florida, the Bay Area, New York City and Los Angeles, the East End of Long Island is teeming with concierge doctors who treat patients swiftly (usually), discreetly (hopefully) and expensively (always). These doctors charge a membership fee anywhere from a few thousand dollars to six figures a year, with one-off house calls on top of that often starting around $1,000. These doctors do not typically accept insurance.

“Money is not an obstacle,” Rashid said. “Not only can concierge medicine provide fast service, it also provides advanced medicine.” Rashid, a family physician who trained in Miami and New York and has worked in the Hamptons for 15 years, opened a branch of her company in Palm Beach, Fla., in 2021 for their snowbird clients.

The Hamptons concierge-medicine boom started in 2020, when doctors saw an opportunity to test and treat the affluent community working remotely from their beach houses. Nationwide chain Sollis Health, which focuses on emergency medicine, started a center among the tony horse farms of Water Mill in 2021. Other options include Casa Health, White Glove Medicine and individual practitioners including Dr. Magdalena Swierczewski, M.D., and Dr. James Giugliano, D.O.

Dr. Golberg treats a couple aboard their yacht

Many of these doctors bill themselves as one-stop shops for all family medicine needs. Some do cosmetic services, several specialize in increasingly popular antiaging and integrative-health services, while others rush over to White Parties in the wee hours when things go awry. All of them know their way around Lyme disease and addiction issues.

[Dr. Alexander] Golberg had the idea to begin practicing concierge medicine in the Hamptons after watching “Royal Pains,” a television show that ran from 2009 to 2016 about a doctor who does just that. An entrepreneurial type, Golberg immigrated from Russia in 1989 and worked at his cousin-in-law’s cubic zirconia business after medical school. He has an M.D. from St. Petersburg Medical Academy and a D.O. from the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine, and is board-certified in family, osteopathic, antiaging and regenerative medicine.

Patients get instant, personalized service in exchange for paying annual six-figure fees, and their clients are happy to pay it,

Fight or Flight

Because of the likely election of Zohran Mamdani ("globalize the intifada") to mayor, many Jews are considering leaving New York City. Dovid Margolin, chronicler of Jewish life, points to an example from New York's history that shows that there is an alternative to flight:

What’s different today is that there’s an alternate route for the city, born in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

From the early 1900s to the mid-1960s Crown Heights was an upscale, mostly Jewish neighborhood: a mix of secular Jews and observant ones, rich and poor, American-born Dodger fans and Holocaust survivors. Then things began to change.

Migration patterns, a massive social-services infrastructure that welcomed dysfunction, and a breakdown in policing destroyed many New York neighborhoods. The newcomers were black, but race wasn’t the issue. It was the gangs, drugs, violence and a pernicious new strain of antisemitism mysteriously condoned by elites. During one three-month period in 1968, 11 Jewish institutions in New York were vandalized, set on fire or firebombed. As in other parts of the city and country, many Jews began to leave Crown Heights.

The "Rebbe" (1902-1994)

The neighborhood, however, was also home to Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, seventh leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement. The Rebbe, as he is known, charted a new course. “A phenomenon has recently spread among the Jewish people, like a plague, God forbid, of abandoning Jewish neighborhoods,” he said at a public gathering in 1969. Panic was causing people to flee, harming those left behind, especially the poor, elderly and infirm.

“People claim there’s no solution, but that’s not true,” the Rebbe said. “To start, one must stand firm and not run away.” He argued that Jews abandoning one place automatically weakened the resolve and position of communities facing similar challenges everywhere.

“I’m very concerned about Crown Heights,” Mayor John Lindsay told the Rebbe when he visited him in 1968. “It is very key to the whole community of Brooklyn.” The Rebbe saw even more: “It is a test case, not only for New York” but for the world.

Many Jews continued to leave for the greener pastures of Westchester County and Long Island, but the Hasidim stayed and planted their roots even deeper. They organized a citizen patrol, built schools, worked to head off the sale of synagogues, and created nonprofits to buy homes and resell them to community members. The Rebbe encouraged the opening of a Hasidic art gallery and a flower shop. He asked that weddings and other joyous events be held within the community to raise morale and support local kosher establishments.

It wasn’t always easy, and not everyone appreciated the Hasidim for bucking the trend. Following the 1991 riots, Al Sharpton dubbed the Crown Heights Jewish community a “Fort Apache in the black ghetto.” But they persevered, transforming the neighborhood again into a wonderful place to live, work and raise a family. In the process, they realized the Rebbe’s vision for saving the American city.

It is ironic that many of the young transplants to New York who voted for Mr. Mamdani live in such places as Crown Heights, unaware that had it not been for increased policing, government reforms they despise, and, most important, the locals who persisted during the city’s darkest days, they wouldn’t have dared enter the neighborhoods they now colonize. They know little about what came before them—and where their ideological fantasies lead.

Santayana's observation bears repeating: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it".

This Game Ain’t Worth the Candle

Joey Chestnut holds a lot of hot dogs (Gray/Getty/Mercury News)

It wouldn't be a Fourth of July without Nathan's hot dog eating contest. The victor was multiple winner Joey Chestnut:

Famed competitive eater Joey “Jaws” Chestnut reclaimed his title Friday at the Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July hot-dog eating contest after after skipping last year’s gastronomic battle in New York for the coveted Mustard Belt.

Chestnut, 41, consumed 70½ hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes, falling short of his record of 76 wieners and buns set on July 4, 2021. It marked the 17th win in 20 appearances for the Westfield, Indiana, eater at the internationally televised competition, which he missed in 2024 over a contract dispute.

“I wish I ate a couple more. Sorry guys,” a smiling Chestnut told the crowd, many chanting his name. “I’ll be back next year.”

Defending champion in the women’s division, Miki Sudo of Tampa, Florida, won her 11th title, downing 33 dogs, besting a dozen competitors. Last year, she ate a record 51 links.

Your humble blogger would feel ill if he ate more than two hot dogs, which raises the question: Is participating in Nathan’s hot dog eating contest harmful to one's health? Grok's answer:

Participating in Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest can pose health risks due to the extreme nature of competitive eating. Here’s a breakdown of potential concerns based on available information:

Short-Term Risks:

Choking and Aspiration: Consuming large quantities of food rapidly, like 60-70 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes, increases the risk of choking or inhaling food particles, which can lead to asphyxiation or aspiration pneumonia. Posts on X have mentioned concerns about choking during such events.

Gastric Distress: Overloading the stomach can cause nausea, vomiting, or even gastric rupture in rare cases. The stomach may stretch beyond its normal capacity, leading to discomfort or injury.

Electrolyte Imbalances: Rapid intake of high-sodium hot dogs (about 700-800 mg sodium per hot dog) can disrupt electrolyte balance, potentially causing hyponatremia (low sodium levels) if paired with excessive water intake, as noted in discussions about competitive eating risks.

Cardiovascular Strain: The high fat and sodium content (a typical hot dog has ~14g fat and ~500-800mg sodium) consumed in large quantities can spike blood pressure and stress the heart, especially during intense physical exertion.

Long-Term Risks:

Digestive System Damage: Repeatedly stretching the stomach and esophagus may weaken muscles or lead to conditions like gastroparesis (delayed stomach emptying) or esophageal tears. Some sources suggest competitive eaters train to expand stomach capacity, which can alter normal digestive function over time.

Metabolic Issues: Frequent consumption of high-calorie, high-fat, and high-sodium foods during training and competition may contribute to obesity, heart disease, or diabetes, especially if not balanced with a healthy lifestyle. A 2020 study on competitive eating noted elevated cholesterol levels in some participants post-event.

Nutritional Deficiencies: Focusing on contest foods can lead to poor dietary habits, lacking essential nutrients from a balanced diet.

Mitigating Factors:

Competitive eaters often train extensively, conditioning their bodies to handle large food volumes, which may reduce some risks. For example, they practice techniques to relax the stomach or manage swallowing.

Top competitors like Joey Chestnut are often in good physical health otherwise, suggesting that occasional participation by trained individuals may not always lead to severe harm.

Context from Sources:

Web sources, like posts on X, highlight public fascination with the contest but also concern about health impacts, with some calling it “gluttony” or questioning long-term effects.

No direct studies on Nathan’s contestants exist, but general research on competitive eating (e.g., a 2018 article in Gastroenterology) notes the body’s resilience but warns of potential for acute injury or chronic digestive issues.

Conclusion:

Participating in Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest carries notable short-term risks like choking, gastric distress, and electrolyte imbalances, with potential long-term effects on digestive and metabolic health. Trained competitors may mitigate some dangers, but the extreme nature of the event makes it inherently risky. For most people, the health costs likely outweigh the benefits of participation. If you’re considering competing, consulting a doctor and training carefully would be critical.Disclaimer: Grok is not a doctor; please consult one. Don't share information that can identify you.

if watching a sport where no one is injured on a play still makes me wince, then that sport is not for me.

Dodgers Win World Series

The Los Angeles Dodgers won the 2024 World Series by defeating the New York Yankees in Game 5:

The Los Angeles Dodgers won their second World Series championship in five seasons, overcoming a five-run deficit with the help of three Yankees defensive miscues and rallying on sacrifice flies from Gavin Lux and Mookie Betts in the eighth inning to beat New York 7-6 in Game 5 on Wednesday night

Personal note; A typical "homer," your humble blogger takes an interest in Major League Baseball only when the San Francisco Giants have a contending team.

But this is one World Series that any boomer sports fan had to watch. We remember when baseball was head and shoulders above the NFL and NBA, and the '50's and '60's Yankees and Dodgers had some of the most famous players ever to play the sport. In 2024 the Yankees and the Dodgers had the most glamor and the fattest payrolls--along with their storied histories--and this World Series would demonstrate whether baseball still deserved a place at the top of the sports pyramid.

This is the World Series that Major League Baseball has been dreaming about.

The New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers are the most prestigious and popular franchises in the sport, loaded with enough star power to light up a small city. Shohei Ohtani is a once-in-a-century talent, now playing on the game’s biggest stage for the first time. Network executives are betting that it will be the most-watched Fall Classic in years.

“Baseball purists probably love it. I know MLB probably loves it. Fox definitely loves it,” Yankees pitcher Carlos Rodón said ahead of Friday’s Game 1. “There’s definitely some glamor to it.”

...There are five different players in this World Series—Ohtani, Judge, Freeman, Betts and Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton—who have won an MVP award, and that doesn’t even count injured Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw. Assuming they all appear in a game, it will be an all-time record.

One of those players has been named MVP in six of the past seven seasons, a streak that is going to continue with Ohtani and Judge, the presumed MVPs for 2024. It will make this the first World Series since 2012 and just the second since 1988 to feature both MVPs from that season.

The business assessments have to wait on the viewership ratings and other financial analytics, but from this fan's standpoint the 2024 World Series had many interesting and suspenseful moments that showcased why baseball is unique and fascinating.

23 Years Later

On the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, I posted the following, now updated with minor edits, using strikethroughs and italics:

============================================================

(Reuters photo)

I saw it on TV, like almost everyone else. I shuffled to the kitchen table with my cup of coffee and pushed the remote. The TV was set to Channel 11, NBC. It was 5:45 a.m. The Today Show was on; strange, normally it doesn't start till 7 a.m. on the West Coast.

The camera was fixed on the World Trade Center. Black smoke was pouring out of one of the towers. There were no jump cuts or commercials to distract the unblinking eye. Katie Couric's voice seemed dispassionate as she described how an airplane had crashed into the building. Surely it was a small plane and a horrible accident.

Then the second jet hit, another struck the Pentagon, and the towers fell. Other images are seared into our memories--the Pennsylvania field that became hallowed ground, the throngs who lustily cheered the deaths of thousands, flames and smoke everywhere, the weeping, the exhausted searching and the death of hope.

The fear gripped us for a long time. Not knowing has that effect. Who did it and why, how powerful were they, what's next, what should we do, what can I do?

Everyone--even those who were in charge of our government--can list major mistakes in the past ten twenty years. All the criticisms have at least some plausibility: we waged war against the wrong people, maybe we shouldn't have gone to war at all, we mistreated prisoners, we had intelligence that was grossly wrong, we sacrificed too many of our civil liberties, we didn't pay the cost of the wars, and we are no farther only a little further along in being energy independent or securing the safety of Israel.

But if we are honest with ourselves, we will remember the worst of our fears:

1) we would be hit again and perhaps lose a major city; this event coupled with our response, could forever change the character of America;

2) if the attack were biological, we could lose much more than one city;

3) oil supplies would be disrupted, maybe cut off for a long time, and usher in a new Dark Ages;

4) Israel, surrounded by powerful enemies, could be destroyed.

5) A state of war would exist between the West and the Islamic world, which has over a billion people.

Ten Twenty-threeyears and trillions of dollars later none of these fears has been realized, yet victory, which we can't even define, seems as distant as it was in 2001.

I'll take it. © 2011 Stephen Yuen

The Bleakness of 1942 Wasn't So Bad

Writer Bob Greene came across a real-life reconstruction of Edward Hopper's Nighthawks on the streets of New York.

But what was this strange tableau doing on New York’s streets on a radiant midsummer afternoon? Before me stood a stage-set-like replica of the diner, its front wall and window frame constructed of wood but with no glass pane, its counter a life-size version of Hopper’s brushstroke image right down to the stools, the twin metal coffee urns, and an actor dressed in white like the counterman in the painting, poised to serve some java.

I quickly learned that this was part of a four-day off-site exhibit by the Whitney Museum of American Art to honor Hopper’s work. People lined up waiting for their chance to sit on the stools and pose as though they were part of the painting while their friends took photos of them through the make-believe window with the “Only 5¢, Phillies, America’s No. 1 Cigar” sign above it.

Edward Hopper, Nighthawks (1942), Art Institute of Chicago

Although I was familiar with the painting, it was many years after my last art-appreciation course that I began to understand why the work strikes such a chord. Bob Greene explains:

A diner late at night, with few customers and a sole employee putting in his hours, embodies a quiet drama all its own, which is what makes Hopper’s painting pack its lasting power. The dialogue—or lack of it—within the four walls is left to the imagination, rendering it somehow more profound than anything a soundtrack might reveal...

In the 1942 painting, the world outside the diner might as well not have existed. The emptiness on Hopper’s streets emphasized the closed universe within the establishment’s walls.

The characters reek of the loneliness in the urban environment (the artist said that a restaurant in Greenwich Village was its inspiration), but I would take that bleakness today, where there are no all-night diners in the big city, let alone ones with huge plate-glass windows.

Those Vagabond Shoes

(WSJ Illustration)

The ex-New York-now-Florida uber-rich are back in NYC for the summer. Conversations with their wealthy friends who stayed behind are laced with one-upmanship (one-up-personship?):

It’s summertime, and wealthy New Yorkers who moved to Florida are back North. From East Hampton to Kennebunkport, everyone’s in the same sandbox now. It’s time to compare who has the shiniest bucket: those who decamped or those who stayed.

Palm Beach: the best decision ever? Yep, or so they claim. They golf before work and take a dip on Billionaires’ Row beachfront after work. It’s only two hours by speedboat to go bonefishing in the Bahamas.

But for true Manhattanites, moving somewhere for fishing ease seems positively boneheaded. Asked if he’d ditch New York for enduring sunshine, mega-developer Aby Rosen prefers the big-boy pond. “Wow, gee whiz, how great I’m so free, swimming with kids in the middle of a workweek,” he responded facetiously. “I mean, who does that? I don’t want to putz around. Midweek, I’d rather go to Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center or hear good jazz downtown. Kill me if I have to jump on a boat on a Wednesday evening!”

F. Scott Fitzgerald said the rich "are different from you and me." Nothing distinguishes a person more than language, and what the rich talk about is very different from normal people, too.

Still Second Place

A problem that concerns approximately zero percent of the American population: some Manhattan Ivy League social clubs can't attract new members and are shutting down: [bold added]

New York’s storied Ivy League club circuit dates back to the 19th century. For years, these membership organizations were considered among the most prestigious in the country.

These days, say alumni and former members, the clubs have fallen out of fashion. The venues are victims of dated decor, mediocre food and in some cases lingering dress codes—for most of their histories, these clubs have required men to wear coats and ties—out of step with young alums.

It appears that the Yale Club will do almost anything to stay in business:

The Yale Club changed its admission process to accept members without an affiliation to the university. Most anyone can now apply to the club if she or he has the endorsement of at least two members, according to a club document.

...Still, the clubs have loosened their rules to some degree over the past several years. For decades, dress codes have been a fault line between older and younger alumni. In 1999, the Yale Club became the first of Manhattan’s Ivy clubs to allow casual dress on Friday in an attempt to attract younger members and creatives.

The Yale Club today allows jeans throughout the clubhouse, and the Harvard Club now permits “casual attire”—except in two of its main halls after 5 p.m.

The Harvard Club:  inviting guests is a good way
to let them know you went there.

Harvard has the oldest (1865) and wealthiest social club, and its membership is one of the few that appears to be growing. Yale's social club, as the New Haven university does in other areas of endeavor, is trying to keep up with Harvard's.

Your humble blogger thinks that Yale's strategy of letting anyone in is misguided. If the price of membership growth is the loss of exclusivity, the price is too high.

"I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member."--Groucho Marx

Illegal Bookkeeping

Donald Trump, as is his wont, sucked all the air out of the news room tonight when he was found guilty of 34 felony counts by a Manhattan jury earlier today. (Mercury News early Friday edition front page, right.) If you need a summary, dear reader, here's a link to the Wall Street Journal.

Since everyone's pontificating on the story, your humble non-lawyer blogger will add a few observations.

Improper bookkeeping was the first crime on which the entire case hinges, and the Manhattan D.A. got to 34 felonies by counting individual checks as separate crimes all related to the same subject. From the D.A.'s summary: [bold added]

After winning the election, TRUMP reimbursed the Special Counsel [blogger's note: Michael Cohen] through a series of monthly checks, first from the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust – created in New York to hold the Trump Organization’s assets during TRUMP’s presidency – and later from TRUMP’s bank account. In total, 11 checks were issued for a phony purpose. Nine of those checks were signed by TRUMP. Each check was processed by the Trump Organization and illegally disguised as a payment for legal services rendered pursuant to a non-existent retainer agreement. In total, 34 false entries were made in New York business records to conceal the initial covert $130,000 payment. Further, participants in the scheme took steps that mischaracterized, for tax purposes, the true nature of the reimbursements.

Were I a bookkeeper in the Trump organization I would have routinely classified all payments to lawyers as "legal expenses." That satisfies both accounting and tax requirements, while protecting my employer because the payments, the invoices, and supporting documents would fall under attorney-client privilege. So far there's been no assertion by anyone that a Trump accountant below the level of CFO would know that this was wrong.

The Manhattan D.A. asserted that the CEO (Donald Trump) and the CFO (Allen Weisselberg) knew that the payments to Michael Cohen should have been called "campaign contributions" but purposefully misclassified (or let the accounting system misclassify) them as legal expenses. This is the first crime that led to another unspecified crime (there had to be two crimes in order to make this a felony, else the purported legal-expense misclassification was at worst a misdemeanor on which the statute of limitations ran out years ago).

I'm a humble retired accountant who thinks it's crazy that an alleged accounting mistake on $130,000 could cause me to be thrown in prison seven years later, but again I'm no lawyer.

Sentencing is on July 11th, so this story will recede in a few days, then come back in early July. Meanwhlle we have a debate to look forward to, and possibly the naming of Donald Trump's running mate.

I Want to be Part of It, New York, New York

New York still retains its allure (Chron photo).

Back in my day every MBA who majored in finance dreamt of going to New York, the financial capital of the world. The big banks and the investment banks were all headquartered there, and the latter paid by far the highest salaries, double and triple what other employers were offering. The sights, sounds, and cultural attractions were an added bonus, and the only major drawback was the high income that was required to live in NYC.

50 years later technology has eclipsed finance as the largest and most glamorous industry. Silicon Valley is the Mecca for techies, but after a few years of enduring the high cost of housing, traffic, and California taxes, many of them are leaving for other hubs that are far more amenable to buying a house and raising a family.

It may come as a surprise that a sizable contingent of Bay Area tech workers are leaving for a city that's even more expensive than San Francisco. Yes, NYC still appeals to young dreamers. [bold added]

many early career Silicon Valley professionals have migrated east despite a higher cost of living there. A recent study found that tech workers who leave the Bay Area are most likely to move to New York, where apartment rents have reached record levels, meals out are among the country’s most expensive, and the average income is lower than in San Francisco.

Until now, New York hasn’t figured as highly in the tech exodus narrative. Austin, where there are no state income taxes and four-bedroom houses often have mortgages the same as a one-bedroom apartment rental in San Francisco, was touted as a hot destination for Silicon Valley expats during the pandemic. For a bit, Miami was also talked up as a relocation option.

Now flush with wealthy investors, companies big and small, and thousands of Bay Area defectors, New York has cemented itself as the nation’s No. 2 tech hub. Its $29.5 billion in venture-capital investment in 2022 ranked second only to Silicon Valley’s $74.9 billion.

...With offices shuttered throughout the country during the pandemic, reports surfaced about Silicon Valley tech workers fleeing to Austin, Denver, Atlanta, even Puerto Rico — anywhere their money could stretch further. Why, then, would more tech employees leaving the Bay Area now choose New York over any other city?

...Aaron Sines — director of technical recruiting for Edison & Black, a New York IT consulting firm — has seen a surprising amount of tech people who can work remotely, yet still choose to move to New York. Not so shocking: Almost all those employees are in their 20s.

“A lot of it is just the overall idea of wanting to live in New York,” Sines said. “A lot of people just want that experience before they get married and have kids.”

It's not one of my major regrets, but we had our chances to move to or nearby NYC before settling down. That door has long since closed, but sometimes I wonder....

Gross Over-Reach

A property that could be seized by New York (Le Monde)

At one of my previous employers my job was to price loans, leases, and equity to corporations who were our customers. The corporations always put the best face on the assets we were advancing money on, and one of my department's jobs was to ascertain those assets' realistic value in the event of a default and ultimate liquidation of the property.

Another task was to price the risk we were taking. In addition to the value of the assets we had to look at the financial strength of the borrower and assess the likelihood of being repaid if the business functioned under stress. The higher the risk, the higher the rate we would charge.

Often we would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars analyzing and negotiating terms that were acceptable to both parties. Larger deals, such as the loans made to Donald Trump's businesses, would go to senior management committees for their approval, and hundreds of thousands of dollars would be spent on legal documents that captured the nuances of the deal.

It's possible for financiers to lose a lot of money on loans, of course. None of them put the coronavirus lockdown in their models, or the permanent shift to working from home, or the cessation of downtown foot traffic, or the inability of cities to protect properties because of police defunding. And it's still possible to defraud sophisticated lenders with the inclusion of fake properties or fake financial statements.

Judge Arthur Engeron ruled that sophisticated lenders were fooled by fraudulent Trump financial statements and calculated the fine based on the additional rate the Trump organization would have paid had the lenders not been misled. For example, Deutsche Bank would have charged 400 basis points more:

The memo indicated that for Trump Chicago, the Commercial Investment Bank Division would be willing to provide a loan on a non-recourse basis (i.e., no personal guarantee) at LIBOR plus 8%, and that the private wealth division would be willing to provide a loan on a full recourse basis (with an unconditional personal guarantee) at LIBOR plus 4%.

Judge Engeron misunderstands, perhaps wilfully, the give-and-take of commercial real estate finance. If Deutsche Bank had smelled a rat, it would have priced the loan, say 100 bp higher at LIBOR plus 5%. If it had regarded a Trump guarantee as worthless, it would have reverted to LIBOR plus 8%, which is extraordinarily expensive given the collateral, and Trump would have gone elsewhere. All these dynamics are familiar in business-to-business finance, which is not the same as business-to-consumer where one party has a distinct knowledge advantage. The bottom line: Trump would never have paid the LIBOR plus 8% on which Judge Engeron based his penalty calculation.

Today the appeals court reduced Trump's fine:

Donald Trump needs to pay just $175 million to put his $454 million civil fraud judgment on hold during his appeal, a New York appellate court ruled, giving the former president a crucial win on the cusp of a financial deadline.

From the point of view of fair dealing, especially since neither borrower or lender were harmed, there should have been no fine. But New York Attorney General Letitia James found a unique New York law that allowed her to impose a financial death penalty on Donald Trump's organization. To this humble blogger it's a gross over-reach of prosecutorial power, but then again I'm no lawyer.

Jeepers Creepers where'd ya get those peepers

(Nan Knighton / WSJ)

I missed this lighthearted animal story from America's biggest city last year:

Flaco the Famous New York City Owl Has Become a Peeping Tom

...her feathered visitor was Flaco, an orange-eyed Eurasian eagle-owl who became a New York celebrity after he escaped a zoo in February and turned leafy Central Park into his home. He’s drawn binocular-toting crowds who couldn’t help but root for a creature, like them, trying to make it in the big city.

Over time, though, Flaco’s behavior has shifted. He’s become a true nosy New Yorker, a bit of a hoot and a real owl about town.

Flaco is a gawker, flying out of Central Park and around Manhattan, sometimes standing outside windows with his beak to the glass, and his large round eyes peering inside.

With a large fan base keeping an eye on his movements, Flaco seems to be fine. Animal authorities will leave him alone unless he shows signs of distress.

Speaking of movements, examination of his droppings shows that his diet includes rats. A win-win for the city that never sleeps.

I wanna wake up in that city, that doesn't sleep
And find I'm king of the hill, top of the list
You're that a number one, king of the hill
Oh, little town blues, they have all melted away
And I'm gonna make a brand-new start of it, right there in old New York
You better believe it, bro
You always make it there, you make it anywhere
Come on, come through, New York, New York

Ministering in Manhattan

Conservative ministers adhere more closely to traditional morality and do not find much fertile soil in California and New York. However, one such pastor has attracted followers in Manhattan: [bold added]

Dr. [Timothy] Keller, 71, has earned a wide following for his erudite and engaging teaching of the Gospel. Since he founded Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan in 1989, his appeal to young, educated professionals has helped it grow from a few dozen members to more than 5,000 weekly attendees across three locations. His sermons, which address believers and nonbelievers alike, are available on a podcast that over 2.5 million people download each month. He has also written more than two dozen books on subjects such as God, death, marriage and meaning; his new book “Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I?” will be published in November.

Dr. Keller’s model of evangelism is often described as “winsome.” He avoids talk of fire and brimstone and never raises his voice. Instead he uses logic and the occasional joke to make a case for the Christian worldview: “You can’t prove it but you can reason for it,” he says.

He likes to point out that both theists and atheists operate in the absence of proof, and that all values and worldviews demand some faith. For example, Dr. Keller argues that the secular concept of human rights makes little sense “in a universe in which there’s nothing but the material, everything is a product of evolution and all morality is relative.” Why, he asks, should we care if someone else suffers? How do we know the difference between right and wrong? The view that all human beings are “precious and equal in dignity,” he argues, comes from the idea of “a personal God who made us all in his image.” Dr. Keller therefore worries about the fate of morality in a world without God.

Though he is theologically conservative, Dr. Keller is wary of calling himself “evangelical,” largely owing to the term’s political implications. “It creates images in people’s minds that don’t fit me,” he explains. Although the Bible teaches that we should welcome immigrants and help the poor, he notes that it doesn’t specify whether government should be big or small, or whether taxes should be high or low. Thus Christians shouldn’t feel they are obligated to vote for either Democrats or Republicans. He adds that politics are creating serious fissures within the church. “People are walking away from each other,” he says. “It’s quite painful.”

For at least 15 years the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of which I am a member has espoused political positions indistinguishable from the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Now that the bishop has announced his retirement, my hope is not that his successor's politics will be closer to mine but that we will find a bishop who is less concerned with preaching about politics at all.

Outside the walls of the church the airwaves are filled with opinions about Caesar and who the next Caesar will be. Dr. Keller, who by the way is a registered Democrat, and 5,000 Manhattanites prefer to talk about God instead.

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We are Marching

(WSJ photo)

Christian processions are commonplace....inside the walls of Catholic and Anglican churches; rarely are they seen on the streets of secular America. When Catholics marched down Sixth Avenue on Columbus Day

Confusion filled the faces of virtually everyone we passed. Phones came out to record us. More than one person stopped to ask questions.

Thanks to a police escort, we constantly kept moving. As people saw us coming, they crowded on corners. Some stayed there after we passed, wondering what they’d just seen.

Far from being a novelty, the Catholics' walk in the heart of Manhattan was in America's time-honored tradition of processions, parades, and marches to celebrate events, individuals, and groups.

the Democratic Republic was embodied in countless civic ceremonies during which frequent parades of various types were undertaken—marches by local militias, firefighters and trade bodies, election parades, funeral marches upon the death of a significant person or a president, parties at events considered worthy of celebration such as the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, regional or local anniversaries such as Admission Day in San Francisco or St. Patrick's Day in New York, national holidays such as July 4, the anniversary of the birth of George Washington or the parade for the Centennial of the Revolution, and so on.

So what functions did these parades fulfill? In the early decades of the nineteenth century, cities were inhabited by a heterogeneous population of newcomers largely of foreign origin—English, Irish, and German—who were in constant movement and whose social status was often uncertain. Marches, which proliferated in the period 1830–1840, enabled people to show and represent their diversity but also to publicly assign a place to each group. Residents marked their membership of particular trades, social, political or ethnic groups...

Today marches favoring or opposing political movements are much more common than religious processions, but perhaps the rarity of the latter will appeal to a younger generation looking for something new, then finding it something very old.

Related: in his homily today the priest said some of his younger acquaintances would ask if they could borrow his vestments for a Halloween costume. His too-kind response was that they were "sanctified," that is, set apart for God and were not to be used for profane purposes. But the interesting point to this story is that a younger person, despite his ignorance, might find the formal trappings of Christianity to be cool.

Maybe one or two people will stop to inquire what we're doing the next time we march around the block on Palm Sunday.

20 Years Later

On the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, I posted the following, now updated with minor edits, using strikethroughs and italics:

============================================================

(Reuters photo)

I saw it on TV, like almost everyone else. I shuffled to the kitchen table with my cup of coffee and pushed the remote. The TV was set to Channel 11, NBC. It was 5:45 a.m. The Today Show was on; strange, normally it doesn't start till 7 a.m. on the West Coast.

The camera was fixed on the World Trade Center. Black smoke was pouring out of one of the towers. There were no jump cuts or commercials to distract the unblinking eye. Katie Couric's voice seemed dispassionate as she described how an airplane had crashed into the building. Surely it was a small plane and a horrible accident.

Then the second jet hit, another struck the Pentagon, and the towers fell. Other images are seared into our memories--the Pennsylvania field that became hallowed ground, the throngs who lustily cheered the deaths of thousands, flames and smoke everywhere, the weeping, the exhausted searching and the death of hope.

The fear gripped us for a long time. Not knowing has that effect. Who did it and why, how powerful were they, what's next, what should we do, what can I do?

Everyone--even those who were in charge of our government--can list major mistakes in the past ten twenty years. All the criticisms have at least some plausibility: we waged war against the wrong people, maybe we shouldn't have gone to war at all, we mistreated prisoners, we had intelligence that was grossly wrong, we sacrificed too many of our civil liberties, we didn't pay the cost of the wars, and we are no farther only a little further along in being energy independent or securing the safety of Israel.

But if we are honest with ourselves, we will remember the worst of our fears:

1) we would be hit again and perhaps lose a major city; this event coupled with our response, could forever change the character of America;

2) if the attack were biological, we could lose much more than one city;

3) oil supplies would be disrupted, maybe cut off for a long time, and usher in a new Dark Ages;

4) Israel, surrounded by powerful enemies, could be destroyed.

5) A state of war would exist between the West and the Islamic world, which has over a billion people.

Ten Twenty years and trillions of dollars later none of these fears has been realized, yet victory, which we can't even define, seems as distant as it was in 2001.

I'll take it. © 2011 Stephen Yuen

The Mean Streets of San Francisco

The man lay in the median-strip shrubbery
on Webster (Google street view)

Hundreds of people drove or walked by the prone figure on February 4th.

Payal Gupta noticed from her second-floor window that the man hadn't moved for seven hours, and called 911.

Emergency units declared the man dead and cleared the scene at 2:49 a.m., 5½ hours after Ms. Gupta's 911 call.

The medical examiner’s office later identified the man as Dustin Walker. He was 37 and homeless. His cause of death is under investigation...

Scores of neighbors responded, several of them saying they’d seen people appearing to be asleep or unconscious on the street many times and had not known what to do.

Amid San Francisco’s triple crisis of homelessness, mental illness and drug addiction, it’s common to see people in distress or simply passed out on the sidewalk. It’s such a familiar sight that many of us just walk on by.

This incident is partly an example of the bystander effect made famous by the murder of Kitty Genovese in New York in 1964:

The phenomenon, called the Bystander Effect or the Genovese Syndrome, attempts to explain why someone witnessing a crime would not help the victim.

Psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley made their careers studying the Bystander Effect and have shown in clinical experiments that witnesses are less likely to help a crime victim if there are other witnesses. The more witnesses, the less likely any one person will intervene.

It's easy to deplore San Franciscans' lack of compassion, but I don't believe that attribution is justified. There's too much risk of being infected or provoking a violent reaction from attempting to rouse a person lying on a sidewalk (some social workers advise tapping the soles of the subject's shoes).

The mean streets make everyone meaner.

A Time Gone By

I've slowly been making my way through the pile of books on the nightstand and have gotten to Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957), which I bought in Portland 2½ years ago. Jack Kerouac's writing is consistent with the language and style of half a century ago, and one easily gets a sense of how rapidly cultural references are changing. It's unlikely that younger, educated readers will understand all four of the highlighted terms below (I didn't know "pulled wrists").

I went to the cold-water flat with the boys, and Dean came to the door in his shorts. Marylou was jumping off the couch; Dean had dispatched the occupant of the apartment to the kitchen, probably to make coffee, while he proceeded with his love-problems, for to him sex was the one and only holy and important thing in life, although he had to sweat and curse to make a living and so on.

You saw that in the way he stood bobbing his head, always looking down, nodding, like a young boxer to instructions, to make you think he was listening to every word, throwing in a thousand “Yeses” and “That’s rights.” My first impression of Dean was of a young Gene Autry—trim, thin-hipped, blue-eyed, with a real Oklahoma accent—a sideburned hero of the snowy West. In fact he’d just been working on a ranch, Ed Wall’s in Colorado, before marrying Marylou and coming East. Marylou was a pretty blonde with immense ringlets of hair like a sea of golden tresses; she sat there on the edge of the couch with her hands hanging in her lap and her smoky blue country eyes fixed in a wide stare because she was in an evil gray New York pad that she’d heard about back West, and waiting like a longbodied emaciated Modigliani surrealist woman in a serious room. But, outside of being a sweet little girl, she was awfully dumb and capable of doing horrible things. That night we all drank beer and pulled wrists and talked till dawn, and in the morning, while we sat around dumbly smoking butts from ashtrays in the gray light of a gloomy day, Dean got up nervously, paced around, thinking, and decided the thing to do was to have Marylou make breakfast and sweep the floor. “In other words we’ve got to get on the ball, darling, what I’m saying, otherwise it’ll be fluctuating and lack of true knowledge or crystallization of our plans.” Then I went away.

cold-water flat: early-to-mid 20th-century apartments had running water, but real luxury was having water heaters and separate pipes for hot water. Perhaps the last cold-water flat in New York City was being rented for $28 per month in 2018.

Gene Autry (1907-1998): popular Oklahoma singer, movie star, TV actor and producer, and owner of the California Angels, Gene Autry "is the only entertainer to have all five stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one each for Radio, Recording, Motion Pictures, Television, and Live Theatre/performance."

Seated Nude (1918)

longbodied emaciated Modigliani surrealist woman: Amedeo Modigliani was "a painter and sculptor known for his simplified and elongated forms." Like Vincent Van Gogh, Modigliani (1884-1920) died destitute and was not highly regarded in his lifetime; one of his paintings sold for $157 million in 2018.

pulled wrists: arm-wrestling.

His prose has a kinetic energy, and I do admire his descriptions, so I'll read a few pages of Jack Kerouac every day.