The Uncertain Fate of Trump’s Chicago Skyscraper

The Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago, one of the few projects in recent memory that the Trump Organization has undertaken without partners, was done with traditional Trump bravado. When the condo and condo-hotel project tops out at 92 stories, it will be the tallest new building in the United States.

But oh! The Read More

Flyover Country or Bust

We all know one—that friend or relative who split New York City recently for the common cascade of reasons: high home prices, high rents, high living costs, high noise, high stress, high, high, high.

And when these people exit our five boroughs, they really exit: City Comptroller Bill Thompson’s office analyzed the Census Bureau’s Read More

Barack Attack

CHICAGO—The field-operations office for Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign is cramped into a small corner room overlooking downtown Chicago and the river that is dyed green for St. Patrick’s Day. The walls are papered in maps and yellow strips of oversized legal pads, one of which listed more than 20 states.

“All these states are thinking Read More

Countdown to Bliss

Tina Balazs and Michael Ferreter

Met: December 2000

Engaged: Aug. 15, 2006

Projected Wedding Date: Feb. 10, 2007

Michael Ferreter, 32, a production manager for ABC News, is marrying Tina Balazs, 29, an associate project manager for the Publicist Medical Education Group, who is no relation to the boutique hotelier (and Uma Thurman’s boyfriend) Andre—we Read More

Martin Amis’ Gulag: Accurate, Harrowing, Not Quite Plausible

Five years ago, Martin Amis published a peculiar little book about Stalin called Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million. Part memoir, part polemic, part history lesson, it seemed a misuse of the novelist’s considerable talents (one eminent historian complained of “basic factual errors on almost every other page”). Why couldn’t clever Mr. Amis, Read More

Barack Obama Disappoints Re Israel/Palestine

I heard a report that Sen. Barack Obama’s position on Israel/Palestine is no different from the Democratic mainstream, that in fact he abandoned a more progressive view—which you might expect given his multicultural/international backstory—to get there.

I asked someone who would know, Ali Abunimah (of electronic intifada), who lives in Chicago. Abunimah wrote Read More

Manhattan Rental Market Not as Tough as They Say

You wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy. Yet it’s something that has to be done many times a month in Manhattan: the hunt for an apartment to rent.

But the hunt’s no worse here than in L.A. or even Boston. Really.

It just seems that way because of the grim news often batted around Read More

Dreamgirls Wakes Up

“She killed it!” excitedly exclaimed a male audience member, filing out of the Loews theater on 34th Street on Nov. 21, after an early screening of Dreamgirls, the $70 million–plus joint release from Paramount/DreamWorks.

He was referring to Jennifer Hudson’s rendition of the iconic Broadway torch song “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going,” Read More

The Afternoon Wrap: Tuesday


Richard Meier, starchitect

  • Is there anything more fascinating than mutinous discontent among the biggest (and smallest) power brokers in Manhattan? Probably not. There’s a petition going around protesting the new REBNY portal–which The Observer reported on earlier this month. Back then, REBNY’s Fred Peters joked: “We’re trying to negotiate toward the point of Read More

  • New York’s Pot of Gold in DC

    For years, the city’s congressional delegation repeated like Buddhist mantra the fact that New York sends more money to Washington than it gets back in federal aid.

    Now, New York’s congressional delegation is in the majority, and presumably, a flood of money will be heading to New York to right this wrong.

    Not so says Read More