Posted by Leonard Steinberg on December 14th, 2013

Today is indeed a day of ironies and contradictions:  We learned that Desmond Tutu was snubbed from the Mandela funeral for being possibly the only true un-biased, genuinely honest critic of all things bad, including both the disgraceful Apartheid regime as well as the equally corrupted ANC regime. We read the POST in awe as they mourned the evil, cruel loss of jobs at Martha Stewart (PS: its called capitalism), yet in another column they deride Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio for being a Socialist.

The Times ran an article today about some developers greater focus on ‘more affordable’ condominiums including the conversion of the spectacular 140 West Street building designed by the same architect as Walker Tower, most famous this week for Cameron Diaz’s purchase and a re-sale around $ 4,000/sf (asking). “More affordable” is now around $ 2,000/sf? YIKES!  When did that happen? Almost a year ago $ 1,500/sf seemed high. Is affordable housing even possible with rising union labor costs, city worker entitlements and land costs, not to mention excessive real estate taxes? Another contradiction I’d say…