The exact same staircase used in Apple stores!

Frank Sinatra's old duplex at 530 East 72nd Street finally got under someone's skin. And this despite a "meticulous" renovation in recent years that included the installation of the exact same staircase as the one in the Apple stores and some other rather hideous unique design choices.

The New York Post reports that the "glittering grotto in the sky"—as Andy Warhol once referred to the Sinatra-era party pad—is in contract to the daughter of a Chinese technology tycoon. Maybe she found the Apple staircase homey?

The price cut that the four-bedroom co-op took—dropping from $7.7 million to $5.49 million since being listed with Rubicon Property founder Jason Haber and broker Gregory Spock last August—was no doubt another appealing feature. Other swanky touches include 18-foot ceilings and massive, wrap-around terraces with a putting green and solar panels. (There's nothing like a putting green on your terrace for when you want to throw a really classy party.)

And seller Penny Hart, who paid just $2.3 million for the pad in 2010, should also be pleased despite getting less than she'd initially hoped. There is, after all, a price to be paid for really doing a renovation your way.

At least if the buyer closes soon they'll be an opportunity to enjoy the summer wind from those terraces. The apartment overlooks both the East River and the FDR—supposedly Sammy Davis Jr.'s favorite place to throw his empty champagne glasses (we're sure the passing motorists loved that).

Photo Illo: Ed Johnson

Like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives. Is that show even on TV anymore? And if it is, are Bo and Hope still together? (Note to self: ask Mom.) Meanwhile, on to another long-running melodrama, the madcap saga we call the market. Where will the Street lead us in 2013? One thing seems certain: it’s going to be a bumpy ride. It always is. Herewith, a few predictions for the year ahead.

Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, will retire and be replaced by Gary Cohn.

You heard it here first. Actually, no you didn’t.But let’s put a date on it just to show that the Up and Down the Street team has predictive powers that go beyond the norm: the firm’s annual meeting will be in May, so Mr. Blankfein will announce the succession on April 15. Any questions?

Steve Cohen, overlord of SAC Capital, will take his leave too.

He knows the Feds are coming for him. He also knows that SAC’s code of employee omertà is beginning to crumble. It won’t take too many 10-year jail sentences to make those canaries start singing. If Mathew Martoma wants to go down as a martyr, that’s his choice, but as more indictments come out of the U.S. Attorney’s office, as seems likely, you can be sure that someone is going to find a plea bargain mighty attractive. Time to claim victory and retire, Stevie. (He also hates that journalists use the name “Stevie,” another motivation to hang up his spurs. My brother Steve, on the other hand, likes the name Stevie. More from him later.)

One who will hang on: Jamie Dimon.

The naive among us thought that whole “London Whale” episode might signal the end of Mr. Dimon’s grip on JPMorgan Chase. Not a chance. He’s a charming guy, that’s for sure, but Mr. Dimon can still throw underlings overboard with the best of them. Happy retirement, Ina Drew! There was a time when he wanted to be Treasury secretary. That time has passed. He’s going to stick around JPMorgan Chase for a while. Did I mention that my 2009 book about Mr. Dimon was called Last Man Standing? And that once Lloyd retires, he will be exactly that? Just saying. (I was informed by my periodontist the other week that his favorite teacher was Ina Drew’s husband. I promised to send him a copy of the book if he took it easy on my gums. No such luck for me. And no book for him.)

Wall Street and corporate America will finally get over their pouting and get back to the business of making money.

There is perhaps nothing I am looking forward to more in 2013 than a quieting of all the whining and moaning from the some of the richest people in this country about Barack Obama’s willingness to throw them under the rhetorical bus whenever it came time to rally the faithful. (Chrystia Freeland said it best.) It’s almost as if they’d never experienced a campaign season before! What’s more, his actions belied the strongest of his words. The president backed unprecedented government bailouts, which kept both Wall Street and the economy itself in business. He also kept global bond investors calm enough about the state of corporate hegemony in the U.S. that borrowing money on a large scale has never been cheaper. And the IPO market remains open, if not necessarily robust. So what’s the problem? Nothing but the hurt feelings of a bunch of people whose self-pity is nothing short of grotesque. I mean, seriously, Leon Cooperman. WTF? I hereby predict that everyone is going to take it down a notch over the next 12 months. Obama doesn’t need to demonize them anymore, and fractional tax hikes won’t take away their hard-earned piles of money. (Bonus prediction: the term “job creators” will be retired forever. Actually, that’s not a prediction but a wish. Pretty please?)

Gun control will go nowhere in Congress, but the market will speak.

As demonstrated incontrovertibly by the batshit-crazy Wayne LaPierre, the NRA will spend 2013 using its lobbying power to keep ridiculous weapons on the streets of America. And Obama will chicken out on serious gun control. But I see some cause for optimism. Although capitalism has showed more than enough of its dirty underside in the last half-decade, the market can also be a force for good. Consider this: With the surprising news that private equity powerhouse Cerberus Capital Group intends to unload its stake in gun maker Freedom Group (a wonderfully exasperating name), there is hope that a more powerful force than the NRA—i.e., the profit motive—could turn against our out-of-control gun culture. If big money shuns big gun makers, those gun makers will find their cost of capital on the rise. Investments in future production will drop, and maybe the next generation of schoolkids will be a little safer. Sure, somebody will fund the Masters of War. But it’s still going to be more expensive for them to do business. Which is change on the margin—probably all we can ask for.

Walmart and the Justice Department will collide for real.

I don’t know about you, but I find the sestoriesabout Walmart and the bribing of Mexican officials pretty shocking. And I don’t shock easy, especially when it comes to the morality of the Beast from Bentonville. According to recent news reports, both the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are looking into whether the company violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Here’s my guess: yes, they did. But I’m no lawyer. Walmart has been reassigning various lawyers internally to show that it’s taking the investigations seriously. But things won’t get really interesting until some actual charges are filed ... this year.

The value of Facebook will remain a matter of hot debate, along with the value of you and me.

Remember the Instagram scandal in December? When everyone lost their minds over the possibility that Instagram was considering using their photos as advertisements—and usage droppedby 25 percent? While I do understand the outrage from a pure privacy standpoint, I think people really do need to get a grip. Did you really think that your photos were going to be sold as ads? Sorry, Fabio. At some point, delusional technology investors are going to realize that the fact that every aspect of our lives is being collected bit by bit doesn’t necessarily mean there’s any value in your status update or the number of “likes” elicited by some picture of a baby. Because really, people, what’s a digital life worth anyway? I asked my brother, an artist who lives in rural Ontario, what price he’d place on his own. “Anyone can have everything I have ever posted or will ever post on Facebook for $5,000,” he offered. (Ping me for his contact information.) Sure, I get the whole targeted advertising thing. And yes, I get that some people actually do click on banner ads, although I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who didn’t do so by mistake. But at some point people will realize that the value of Facebook and its ilk has been one big digital hustle.

Apple will do something in 2013. And the stock market will do something else.

What? You want more specifics? Please. Despite my own recent rantings on the subject, Apple is a hothouse of creativity and market power, it has an almost unsurprising ability to surprise us. It will do it again. And the stock will rise as a result. And then it will fall for some other reason. Or something like that. Given the company’s bellwether status, that means that the stock market itself will also rise at points during the year and fall at others. I can’t offer you more details than that, because I save those for my $2,500-a-year investment newsletter, which I send out right after I finish this column. Actually, no I don’t. But if you really want a stranger’s advice, there are plenty of those newsletters eager for your business. (Ancillary prediction: investment newsletter sales will remain robust despite an utter lack of value within.)

The money will start flowing again.

There is more than a trillion dollars of cash sitting unused on the balance sheets of U.S. companies. If you don’t believe me, believe Lloyd Blankfein, who wrote about it in a November Wall Street Journal editorial. But the election is over. The time for whining has passed. Our swan dive over the fiscal cliff will have a surprisingly soft landing. Corporate paymasters are going to start spending again in 2013, if only for the simple reason that they’re bored with not doing so. Well, that and the fear that everyone else will, which is the greatest motivator of all. (Only don’t expect Mr. Blankfein to be around to help Goldman’s clients figure out how to spend their money. He’s retiring on April 15, remember?) So things are going to pick up this coming year, both for employment and the economy as a whole. Call me crazy, but I say I’m just an optimist. Happy New Year!

editorial@observer.com

“What actual reporting can you possibly do that delivers anything of value more than the infomercial—light on the info, heavy on the ’mercial—that the conventions have become?” he asked haughtily. To Mr. Jarvis, sending so many reporters to cover an event—one that nominated a major contender for the President of the United States of America—was a self-indulgent waste. He marveled at the many other, more meaningful things they could have covered instead. His question: “Can we in the strapped news business afford this luxury?”

No, I suppose we can’t. And if we can’t, perhaps we should also strike a far more egregious expense from our news budgets: covering Apple press events. You know, the twice or often thrice yearly events that bring everyone out to Cupertino, where they stand in line and contribute a few licks to the collective rim job the press loves to give Apple. This three-decade-long media mainstay has reached its frenzied apogee in recent years. That may explain why Apple’s Wikipedia page is now tattooed with well over 50 variants of “announced” and “introduced” (compared to Microsoft’s 7, and Dell’s 19).

Which is why I find it so funny that Mr. Jarvis—a technology enthusiast to put it mildly—is critical of the “commercial” coverage of politics. When you look at how many words the tech-savvy media pours out in honor of every new Apple product launch you can almost be forgiven for forgetting what really happens at them: nothing. At the company’s breathlessly covered conference last week, Apple announced that it, a corporation that sells smartphones, would be selling a new version of its smartphone in a few weeks time.

Wow!

What is an Apple press conference really? It’s a staged pseudo-event where the lazy media and a powerful corporation conspire to pad each other’s coffers. Which is what makes it so hypocritical when bloggers and critics like Mr. Jarvis complain about the kabuki nature of political conventions—because they seem to have no problem with the actual commercials that pass for news content. It’s as if Apple says to reporters: If you promise to cover it with endless credulity, we’ll stage a party you’ll never forget. And the media says: Hey, could we do it a few times a year? It’s great for pageviews.

 And, goddamn if its not incredibly lucrative for all concerned. Apple, for its part, is able to spend a fraction of what its competitors spend on advertising each year because it’s granted so much free press. For instance, Microsoft spent more than $1.9 billion dollars in 2011 on advertising, and Coca Cola spent more than $3 billion. Apple? They made billions more than both, with an ad budget of just $933 million—or less than 1 percent of the company’s revenue.

Apple doesn’t have to pay to tell people about its products, because the media dresses up the company’s product messages and presents them to the public as “news.” As the Huffington Post properly described it, Apple’s marketing strategy these days is essentially “hold off on the advertising, just sit back and let the media go hog wild.”

Meanwhile blogs and newspapers make no secret of the fact that Apple announcements are responsible for some of their biggest traffic days. Ars Technica, owned by Conde Nast, put out a press release last week bragging that its liveblog of the iPhone 5 launch "shattered traffic records.” In fact, Technica developed a proprietary blogging platform just to handle this spike (more than 15 million pageviews, or 500 percent greater than an average day). And when traffic, tweets and searches jump, every other publisher rushes to ride what an editor at the Christian Science Monitor once called the “Google wave.”

The result is fawning, marketing schlock that passes for news, online and off. And nobody, particularly blogs, wants to point it out because it’s all too lucrative. Democrats or Republicans look too rehearsed on stage? Let’s pounce. Apple? Let’s sweep it under the rug. Of course readers click posts about shiny new technology—these days it’s the only game in town.

The recent book Millennials, News, and Social Media: Is News Engagement a Thing of the Past? by University of Texas-Austin journalism professor Paula Poindexter studies how millennials perceive the news today. The words they used most often: “useless,” “boring,” “biased,” “propaganda,” “lies,” “garbage,” “crappy.” I can’t think of a better set of adjectives to describe the type of coverage we see each time Apple calls in a chit and the media rushes out to do the the company’s bidding.

To be fair, this doesn’t begin or end with Apple. We see the same fawning, online news-manufacturing over commercial events each year with CES, SXSW, and a host of other sponsored conferences put on by everyone from TechCrunch to the Wall Street Journal’s AllThingsDigital.

Why do reporters love these commercial dog-and-pony shows? Why do they inflate the significance of such events through excessive coverage? Because attending a two-day conference might rack up a few weeks worth of easy stories about sexy new gadgets, plus with every investor, celebrity, brand and executive temporarily in one place, bloggers can grab interviews or prep puff pieces without having to do any legwork. (Plus who doesn’t want a free trip outside the office?) In other words, reporters know full well that everything has been staged for their benefit, but since they have traffic and post quotas to meet, they gladly accept the subsidy

The media and the public are supposed to be on the same side. The media, when it’s functioning properly, should protect the public from marketers and their ceaseless attempts to trick people into buying things.

But that’s not true today. As a marketer, I can tell you, the media is working with and for people like me—not against us. PR flacks and journalists are generally on the same team—when the reader is tricked into giving up their attention we both win. What’s worse is that most readers hardly even know what’s going on because the content they get has been dressed up and fed to them as news.

So before critics follow Mr. Jarvis’ lead and jump on political reporters for spending precious resources actually covering political events that include real nominations and real voting and that have a real impact on our democracy—and for having the gall to do it in person—we should reconsider how much time their colleagues spend covering trivial product announcements the same way. We should consider how much free advertising press outlets give to corporations in exchange for photogenic stunts. And ask ourselves: which is the more insidious and damaging to our culture?

Because look, I like Apple as much as the next guy. I wrote this article on a Mac and I researched it using my iPhone, but as far as I’m concerned, Apple and its multi-billion dollar cohorts should have to pay to market those products. They can afford it.

Ryan Holiday is the bestselling author of Trust Me I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator and a PR strategist for brands and writers.

A shady deal! (Getty)

Apple has been one of the hottest companies on the planet for going on a decade now, and that includes its retail stores. That glass cube on Fifth Avenue is perhaps the architectural icon of the city this century.

When The Observer learned that Apple was thinking of bringing its biggest iStore to Grand Central Terminal last year, it was viewed as a coup for both the company and the MTA—could there be a more desirable shop in a more desirable location? The fanfare that greeted the store's opening rivaled that of an Apple product launch, with lines for days.

But then it was revealed that Apple was not paying a share of its profits to the MTA, as every other retailer at Grand Central does. The MTA insisted it was a good deal, but State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli promised an investigation last fall, and he has concluded in a new audit [PDF] that Apple got a sweetheart deal that is rotten for the MTA and tax payers.

The audit found that as far back as November 2008, nearly three years before an official RFP was released for the project, the MTA's real estate department (MTA RED in the words of the audit) had begun negotiating with the Cupertino-based tech giant. There were a number of negotiations between that period, not only with the MTA but also Metazur, the Mediterranean restaurant that occupied the concourse Apple would later take over for a $5 million buyout.

"Our analysis shows that the playing field was not level and fair for all vendors," the audit reads. "We conclude that the competitive process reported by MTA RED in this instance was significantly slanted in Apple’s favor."

Among the more damning passages in the audit is the fact that Apple agreed to front $2 million to Metazur five days before the RFP was released, suggesting it already had a lock on the space. It also suggests that there were no other respondents to the RFP besides Apple in part because it was tailored expressly for the company.

According to the audit: "One vendor’s correspondence to the MTA dated June 17, 2011 stated that the upfront cost of $5 million was too great of an investment and precluded the vendor from submitting a formal bid on the space. The vendor further indicated that only an entity with a lot of liquid capital would be able to afford the lease under these terms."

In a fiery statement, MTA chairman and CEO Joe Lhota said that the agency followed the letter of the law in issuing its RFP and the comptroller's report demonstrates an ignorance of real estate negotiations.

“The Comptroller's audit staff clearly has no understanding of how high-profile commercial real estate works, given the shockingly inaccurate and clearly biased audit they issued," Mr. Lhota said. "Remember Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's old adage, 'You have the right to your opinion, you don’t have the right to your own facts'?  This audit is not fact-based, and accordingly, the auditors’ opinion is worthless."

It is true that the RFP process presents its own problems for finding a tenant in a market-based way closer to what private landlords can undertake, but that means the RPF process needs reform, not subversion.

There is a political dimension to the audit in that the comptroller is now seeking authority to oversee similar RFPs in the future. Currently, that authority only extends to non-competitive contracts. While this one was deemed competitive, the comptroller is arguing that was merely a sugar coating—the MTA spent two years negotiating with Apple, then essentially used the agreed upon terms to issue the RFP.

Yet the comptroller is not saying this is necessarily a bad deal for the agency so much as a matter of bad practice—what if next time the insider is not Apple but someone less impressive? Had the process been a single-source contract, which would have been reviewable, so be it.

“While Apple may turn out to be a good tenant, the MTA set a troubling precedent when it played favorites and gave Apple a competitive edge over others for the Grand Central space,” Mr. DiNapoli said in a release. “Apple was directly involved in setting the terms of the lease and given exclusive access to information more than a year before any other vendor knew the Grand Central location was available."

In fact, the comptroller is quite fond of Apple: the state pension fund owns more than 3.1 million shares of the company's stock worth $1.9 billion.

Early Whale sighting: Bank of England noticed in 2010 that JPMorgan's chief investment office was taking outsized positions in certain markets, but didn't share the observation with regulators responsible for supervising the bank, The Wall Street Journal reports. The trades noted in two years ago were not the same bets on corporate credit derivatives that led to $5.8 billion in losses associated with the London Whale.

Whither Europe: Greece is "hugely off track" from the cost-cutting terms of its most recent bailout package, making it likely that the country will require a further restructuring of its debt, European officials told Reuters. Meanwhile, Spain's borrowing costs are making a sovereign bailout increasingly likely.

What will Libor cost? Investors would like British banks to estimate expected costs of settling investigationsinto the manipulation of interbank lending rates. Barclays paid about $450 million to settle inquiries into its role in the unfolding Libor-rigging scandal; Bloomberg cites one report estimating that civil lawsuits relating to the matter could cost the bank twice as much.

For sale: Former Lehman Brothers chief operating officer Joe Gregory is selling his 15,000 sq. ft. North Shore home, Business Insider reports. The asking price is $22 million.

On second thought... Fun lead in Dealbook: "A technology research analyst who gained notoriety for taunting the federal government over its pursuit of insider trading is expected to plead guilty in United States District Court in Manhattan on Wednesday."

Rare miss: Apple missed Wall Street's estimates for the company's earnings for the second time in nearly 10 years, as iPhone sales fell from the previous quarter.

Bharara sued: The New York Post reports that Yeshiva law student Benula Bensam is suing U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, the U.S. Marshals and the Department of Justice for unreasonable search and seizure after marshals took her cell phone during the insider trading trial of former McKinsey & Co. CEO Rajat Gupta. Ms. Bensam was pulled from the Southern District courtroom in which the trial was taking place and asked to stop writing letters to the judge.

Daisey, performing "The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs"

PRI's This American Life has retracted its most popular broadcast ever, "Mr. Daisey Goes to the Apple Factory," because it contains "significant fabrications," host and executive producer Ira Glass announced today. An excerpt of Mike Daisey's one-man show The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, it has been downloaded 888,000 times and streamed another 206,000.

Mr. Daisey said he regretted allowing his one-man show--a combination of "fact, memoir, and dramatic license" --to be billed as journalism.

"My mistake, the mistake I truly regret, is that I had it on your show as journalism, and it's not journalism. It's theater," he wrote.

In the play, Mr. Daisey talks about visiting the FoxConn iPhone and iPad factory in Shenzen, China. Upon hearing the segment, Marketplace China correspondent Rob Schmitz, who had already done quite a bit of reporting on Apple's supply chain, doubted the veracity of Mr. Dasiey's experiences. Mr. Schmitz tracked down Mr. Daisey's interpreter in Shenzen, and she disputed much of the material in the play.

The fabrications include one of its most dramatic moments, involving an injured factory worker operating an iPad for the first time (Mr. Daisey's iPad) with his mangled hand, and the allegation that he met many underage factory workers. (That one also snuck by this paper.)

"Daisey lied to me and to This American Life producer Brian Reed during the fact checking we did on the story, before it was broadcast," Mr. Glass wrote. "That doesn't excuse the fact that we never should've put this on the air. In the end, this was our mistake."

When This American Life fact-checkers asked for his interpreter's contact information, Mr. Daisey said her cell phone number no longer worked and he had no way of reaching her.

"At that point, we should've killed the story," Mr. Glass said. "But other things Daisey told us about Apple's operations in China checked out, and we saw no reason to doubt him. We didn't think that he was lying to us and to audiences about the details of his story. That was a mistake."

This American Life has dedicated this weekend's program to correcting the errors in the piece, including interviews with Mr. Schmitz, Mr. Daisey and his interpreter, Cathy Lee. Which actually sounds kind of like your typical, things-are-never-what-they-seem This American Life tale of ambition, human fallibility, and the vagaries of truth and art. The show's home station, WBEZ Chicago, has also cancelled Mr. Daisey's live performance at the Chicago Theatre on April 7 and is refunding tickets.

Mr. Daisey responded on his blog, in the style of John D'Agata in The Lifespan of a Fact:

I stand by my work. My show is a theatrical piece whose goal is to create a human connection between our gorgeous devices and the brutal circumstances from which they emerge. It uses a combination of fact, memoir, and dramatic license to tell its story, and I believe it does so with integrity. Certainly, the comprehensive investigations undertaken by The New York Times and a number of labor rights groups to document conditions in electronics manufacturing would seem to bear this out.

What I do is not journalism. The tools of the theater are not the same as the tools of journalism. For this reason, I regret that I allowed THIS AMERICAN LIFE to air an excerpt from my monologue. THIS AMERICAN LIFE is essentially a journalistic ­- not a theatrical ­- enterprise, and as such it operates under a different set of rules and expectations. But this is my only regret. I am proud that my work seems to have sparked a growing storm of attention and concern over the often appalling conditions under which many of the high-tech products we love so much are assembled in China.

And the show must go on, according to Cult of Mac, which got this statement of support from The Public Theater, where Agony is currently running.

In the theater, our job is to create fictions that reveal truth — that’s what a storyteller does, that’s what a dramatist does. THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS reveals, as Mike’s other monologues have, human truths in story form.

In this work, Mike uses a story to frame and lead debate about an important issue in a deeply compelling way. He has illuminated how our actions affect people half-a-world away and, in doing so, has spurred action to address a troubling situation. This is a powerful work of art and exactly the kind of storytelling that The Public Theater has supported, and will continue to support in the future.

Mike is an artist, not a journalist. Nevertheless, we wish he had been more precise with us and our audiences about what was and wasn’t his personal experience in the piece.

Update: An earlier version of this post said NPR's This American Life, it's in fact PRI's.

Dig in!

The new Apple store in Grand Central Terminal is a lovely, understated project in one of the city's premier public spaces.

All the same, some sour apples have been complaining that the Cult of Steve has been paying below market rents for its space, leading to an investigation by the state. The M.T.A. counters that Apple is still paying more than the previous tenant, and its arrival means bigger revenues across Grand Central, given Apple's appeal. This latter bet appears to be paying off.

According to Crain's, that culinary slam dunk, The Michael Jordan Steakhouse, has seen a 7 percent jump in sales since Apple opened. And this is not simply because a competing restaurant was closed—while the new store was under construction, there was no commensurate rise in receipts. The M.T.A. says this proves the success of the Apple strategy, as do the dribbling meat eaters.

“We know their customers are coming here,” Matthew Glazier, an owner of the steakhouse, told Crain's. “I'm always looking for the little white bags."

Another perfect accompaniment? Maybe a Junior's cheesecake or some of Mendy's signature matzah ball soup. Just imagine the synergies when Shake Shack opens. Between there and Apple, a giant Möbius strip of lines will form, with no escape.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Cornering Queens? (Apple)

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz has been stamping his feet for years over his desire to land the holy grail of retailers: an Apple Store. After all, the M.T.A. bent over backwards to bringing a glowing Temple of Jobs into Grand Central. But it looks like Marty can forget about it, as Apple may be opening its next outer borough outlet in Queens County, not Kings County.

A developer in Forest Hills has told The Daily News he is in talks with Apple about opening a store in Queens.

Heskel Group Chairman Yeheskel Elias said if a deal is reached, the sleek store could open in as little as a year. It would be only the second Apple location in the city outside Manhattan. A Staten Island store opened in 2005.

“I will do anything I can to bring Apple in,” Elias said. “Queens has to have an Apple store.”

Apple spokeswoman Michaela Wilkinson said the company has “made no announcements” on new stores outside Manhattan.

But Elias said a broker for Apple reached out to him several months ago to discuss potential store locations in Forest Hills.

This could all be a ploy to simply make Mr. Elias' current retail developments look more appealing, but this also would not be the first time an Apple rumor turned out to be true.

Still, Queens is looking more and more tech savvy of late. With the creation of the Roosevelt Island tech campus, city officials are talking about transforming Long Island City into the city's second Silicon Alley. Not exactly Forest Hills—the Grand Central store would be closer—but could this quiet corner of New York become the new geeky gold coast.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

But simply boasting a Soho address isn’t always enough for some retailers.To M.A.C. Cosmetics, which operated a storefront on 113 Spring Street for more than 15 years, foot traffic appeared enviously higher throughout the nearby Broadway corridor.

“They were definitely leaving some money on the table by not having all the footfall that Broadway provides,” said Robert Cohen, 39, a Robert K. Futterman & Associates retail broker who represented M.A.C. Cosmetics in its move earlier this year to Broadway.

Robert Cohen.

The New York-bred broker, who carved a niche by bringing luxury brands and big-name designers to Soho, said he spent two years canvassing Broadway on behalf of M.A.C.

“We probably exhausted five or six other opportunities along the street over the last two years.”

Among the buildings Mr. Cohen and the Estée Lauder brokerage team looked at were 496 Broadway and 518 Broadway. Given the pride M.A.C. Cosmetic takes by offering customers an interactive shopping experience—its sales people double as make-up artists—Mr. Cohen sought space boasting a minimum width of 20 feet, “to really lay out the store.”

The new Soho space also had to be interactive: The ability for potential customers to peer through the store’s Broadway window from the sidewalk—“like an open kitchen,” said Mr. Cohen—was a high-priority throughout the two-year scavenger hunt.

In the end, M.A.C. chose a three-story ground-floor space on 506 Broadway totaling nearly 3,000 square feet that abuts Bloomingdale’s Soho, among the neighborhood’s most trafficked clothing stores.

Currently, 506 Broadway is under construction and set to open in 2012, two years after M.A.C. Cosmetics opened its flagship New York City store in Times Square.

“We felt like we got just an amazing three-story building,” said Mr. Cohen, who divides his time between New York City and Los Angeles, where he lives.

“We got the entire building.”Since launching his retail brokerage career, Mr. Cohen’s list of clients has rapidly grown to read like the first 40 pages of advertisements in Vogue: Polo Ralph Lauren, Swarovski, Diesel, Montblanc, and Giorgio Armani, to name a few of his most prestigious retailers.

Still, he has a soft spot for Soho, a neighborhood he first began exploring in the 1980s and 1990s after landing assignments from designers like Todd Oldham, Cynthia Rowley and Isaac Mizrahi. After all these years, he remains bullish on Soho and its retailers.

“Right now, Soho is cycling back big time,” he said. “Soho is nothing short of amazing.”

Indeed, from a landlord’s perspective the neighborhood has been performing well.  Availability rates have continued to drop to 4.2 percent, down 1.7 percentage points from the previous quarter, according to a recent Manhattan retail report by Cushman & Wakefield.  Average asking rents, meanwhile, jumped by $33 to $301 per square foot.

The recent additions of Tiffany & Co., which signed a 7,000-square-foot lease that will combine 97 Greene Street and 106 Wooster Street into a unified space, and Lacoste’s new storefront on 541 Broadway also helped boost the area’s allure.

The Soho of today is a far cry of the Soho of yore. When he began his career at Edward S. Gordon, and later when he was at Helmsley-Spear, the ground-floor spaces across Soho were often used as apartments for artists, and often illegally, as the spaces were not zoned for residential use. There was also a good deal of manufacturing in the area.

“I remember walking into some of my first stores back in the mid-’80s and seeing steel plates in a lot of the hardwood floors to support the floor load for a lot of these machines that were there,” said Mr. Cohen.

But peeling back the metal floor plates and the industrial facade revealed beautiful Corinthian columns and 18-foot ceilings—even skylights that seemed ideal for commercial use.

His first clients shared his enthusiasm for the neighborhood: They were either Soho-based or wanted to relocate south of Houston Street. When he first started at Helmsley-Spear, he set out to learn that market inside out. Around that time, a wave of up-and-coming designers who considered themselves artists showed interest in basing their showrooms and stores in Soho, itself an artists colony.

Mr. Cohen said he cut his teeth learning the real estate business by working with these designers and helping them find new spaces.

“That’s what got me started, and 27 years later I have done over 75 deals in the Soho market as well,” said Mr. Cohen. “I have worked all over the city and all over the country, but I have such a great sense of pride for Soho and love that market and any chance I get to work there is very exciting.”

From Soho, Mr. Cohen graduated to bigger deals, like helping Old Navy land in all three of its city locations, putting Diesel in its largest flagship store on Fifth Avenue, and leasing 25,000-square-feet to Prada for its Rem Koolhaas-designed Soho store.

He’s worked with Ralph Lauren Polo for 20 years, the Gap for the past 18 years, and Estée Lauder for the past 15 years.  He worked with John Varvatos in the designer’s first deal, and helped bring the designer to the former CBGB club space on the Bowery.

Last year he estimates that up to 40 percent of his deals were done in Los Angeles, where Mr. Cohen has lived with his family since 2002. But the deals are not as lucrative as the average New York City deal.

“In L.A., you need to make twice as many deals—three times as many deals—to make nearly what you make in New York,” he said.

Mr. Cohen is now focused on helping Robert K. Futterman, a chairman at the eponymously named RKF & Associates, increase the firm’s reach throughout the United States.

“We feel there is a lot of legs with our brand to help it grow across the country,” said Mr. Cohen.

drosen@observer.com

Five of the big six publishing houses forced Amazon to adopt the agency model in 2010, ending the era of the $9.99 new release e-book. Back then, Amazon claimed that publishers have "a monopoly over their own titles."

The pricing of e-books in Europe is also under investigation by the European commission, reports the Guardian.