The Jersey hyperlocal blog was launched at the same time as another one in Brooklyn. That blog still appears to run.

When The Times started these hyperlocal blogs — dubbed in-house as the "microblogs" — they did so by committing two full-time Metro reporters and a Metro editor. They also did it without any business model in mind. 

"As this venture grows, we're hoping that a business model will emerge from it," wrote Andy Newman, The Times' Brooklyn blogger. "If you're a fledgling Internet entrepreneur and you have an idea — well, you can contribute to The Local, too."

At least in New Jersey, it appears that no model emerged. The Times launched the two blogs at a time when all Web and newspaper people were talking about the importance of local, local, local news, and how Old Media had to begin to incorporate citizen journalists. The Times blog was also an attempt to cover New Jersey, after it virtually gave up on it once it closed its Trenton and Newark bureaus two years ago.

Tina Kelley, who was the gatekeeper of The Times' Local blog, took a buyout at the end of last year.

In its farewell post, The Times left a sort-of endorsement to its readers to go read the Northern Jersey local blog Baristanet.com, which will now cover the towns that The Times had covered.

“Local remains one of the most disaggregated experiences on the Web today -- there’s a lot of information out there but simply no way for consumers to find it quickly and easily,” said Tim Armstrong, AOL’s Chairman and CEO. “It’s a space that’s prime for innovation and an area where AOL has a significant audience and a valuable mapping service in MapQuest. Going forward, local will be a core area of focus and investment for AOL. The acquisitions of Patch and Going will help us build out our local network further with excellent local services that enable people to stay better informed about what’s going on in their neighborhood.”

But local isn't just "a core area of focus and investment" for online companies. It's a storied Times issue—and now their zoom level is getting even smaller. 

NYTimes.com's The Local news Web sites (which cover, in part, Patch's territory in New Jersey) just debuted a new feature that will take the community cue and allow readers to cover meetings, write articles and contribute photos and videos to the Clinton Hill and Fort Greene blog. They might even get some decent writing in there—these neighborhoods are the heart of the Brooklyn Literary 100, after all!

Last week, The Local published a post about "Be the Journalist."

Through this mechanism, you will ask us to cover things and we will do it. We will ask you to cover things on a regular basis and, we hope, you will do it. More and more important neighborhood things will get covered. The blog will grow. It will be beautiful.

Here is your first assignment: We’re looking for someone to go to the 88th Precinct Community Council meeting next Wednesday, the 10th.

Another post provided the date, time, location, and even outlined the issues of an upcoming community board meeting and asked readers to attend, on a volunteer basis.

"We’re looking for someone to go, take notes, take a photo and write up the festivities. Get exact quotes and names of the people you’re quoting. And send the results to us by early Thursday morning. We can explain the details and give you basic training."

Today, The Local is looking for users to submit "Yucky Weather Photos."

Certainly, The Times is catching on to "user engagement," not just on their Local blogs, but with features like TimesPeople. The Observer recently reported on a discussion with The Times' magazine writer and Wired columnist Clive Thompson on games and the news. He said newspapers should consider integrating gamelike “leaderboards” into their sites—giving the best commenters, bloggers and participants incentives, whether they be shoutouts or high rankings on the site. “You could regard The New York Times as its prime value is it’s a fantastic leaderboard, right?” Mr. Thompson said at the talk. “It is a great place to create variety and rewards for people.”

So what's the reward for The Local's community journalists who suffer through those community board meetings? They'll get their bylines on a NYTimes.com blog, which doesn't look too shabby on a résumé these days.

“If your local newspaper shuts down, what will take the place of its coverage? Perhaps a package of information about your neighborhood, or even your block, assembled by a computer,” the piece begins. “A number of Web start-up companies are creating so-called hyperlocal news sites that let people zoom in on what is happening closest to them, often without involving traditional journalists.”

Blogs like EveryBlock, Outside.in and Patch are starting up in small towns and doing news from the ground-up.

The story of hyperlocal blogs is a familiar one recently, particularly to people at The Times: They started their own, The Local, to cover three suburban towns in New Jersey and Fort Greene and Clinton Hill in Brooklyn.

And yet, in a story where The Times very much has a horse in the race, it did not include any disclosure about how it runs and operates The Local (though it did mention how it does have a relationship with one of the profiled blogs, EveryBlock).

Damon Darlin, the technology editor of The Times, told The Observer that the disclosure wasn’t necessary because this story is about fledgling blogs that didn’t have a journalistic parent to support it.

“The sites we talk about are bottom-up start-ups that use streams of government information and links to local blogs and news sources,” he said. “They are very different models than what The Times or the Seattle paper is doing.”

Mary Ann Giordano, the editor of The Local, said she was on vacation last week and didn’t know about the story.

The blogs were started at the end of February, with Times reporters encouraging locals to participate in it as much as possible. It's an experiment, and there's no business model, but The Times is hoping it can find its way to one with these blogs. In-house they have been calling the project "the microblogs."

“It’s not like we’re hiding the fact we have a hyperlocal blog,” said Mr. Darlin. “That’s pretty obvious for anyone who sees it. It wouldn’t have hurt to put another sentence in there, but it’s not like we’re playing hide the ball here because we publish it every day. This [story] was about things that people didn’t know about.”

One buyer who agreed to pay $5.75 million for an Upper East Side penthouse last year is now trying to break the contract because, among other reasons, the rooftop fitness center with a full-time attendant that he was promised was scrapped for a basement gym, according to the buyer’s lawyer currently negotiating a settlement.

Others suffering from condo-buyers’ remorse have launched similar escrow disputes this year because developers failed to deliver amenities like Bosch kitchen appliances or a common room with a high-definition television.

Real estate lawyers have been inundated with clients looking to break or renegotiate the condo contracts signed before the recession reached Manhattan, according to seven local attorneys. Some buyers are trying to get out of deals altogether without forfeiting the deposits they made on apartments they can no longer afford. Others are looking for partial refunds, price-reductions or concessions from developers based on material differences between a finished unit and the one described in initial offering plans.

“In a good market, it was not always in the buyers’ interest to exercise their rights under a contract,” said attorney David C. Wrobel. “If the apartment was a little smaller, it was a defect that was overlooked. Now people are being more aggressive with pursuing their rights. When you are talking about $2 million down, that’s real money, it damn well should be what was promised.”

Most of these disputes have been settled before they are filed with the state attorney general’s office, which under state law determines which party to award the deposit to if a sale falls through; still, the attorney general’s office has had a surge in the number of escrow disputes filed this year. Of the 133 logged in New York State in 2008 as of Dec. 5, 31 of them were logged in November alone, more than in any other month (the majority of the 133 were in New York City). The statewide number for 2008 was also been significantly higher than in 2007, according to attorneys familiar with the filings.

Attorney Sandor D. Krauss said he has never been more ambushed with condo rescission cases. He has settled three in the past six months—he said he was able to recover the full deposit in two of them—and is about to file three more suits with the attorney general in which clients are asking for at least a 10 percent reduction in the contract price.

“In disposition filings,” Mr. Krauss said, “we made claims that range from clients losing their jobs and not being able to afford it, to structural changes to changes in the financing provision.”

Attorney Adam Leitman Bailey said he recently got a client out of a contract for a condo in Brooklyn based on a material deviation from the offering plan.

“[The purchaser] signed a contract for a certain unit and then they amended the offering plan and now she has a big pole in the middle of her living room,” he said. “I called up [the developer] and told them and they cursed. They said ‘f-u' when we first spoke to them and then we wrote them a letter listing 20 reasons why they breached the terms of the contract of sale, the offering plan and New York law. They called us back and said, 'We got your letter and looked you up, so we’ll let you out.'”

Mr. Bailey refused to discuss specifics about any of the cases he’s currently mediating, but said his firm has at least 17 or 18 suits on behalf of individuals or homeowners associations pending at the attorney general’s office and many others that never made it that far. Last week, for instance, he negotiated a deal for a group of Russian investors who had agreed to pay $1.15 million for a unit in a new Manhattan condo development. Mr. Bailey said he expected the case to go through litigation, but at the last minute the developers agreed to knock off 40 percent from the contract price. The Russian investors closed on Thursday, he said.

MANY OF THE NEW York buyers trying to break their contracts are not institutional investors or small-time speculators, though, and, for them, sweeteners are often not enough, said Tony Abraham, an attorney who has negotiated deposit-refund disputes for condo buyers in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

One of his clients just forfeited the deposit on a $700,000 condo in Battery Park City that had depreciated since he signed the contract in 2007. “We got the developer to agree to pay the real property transfer tax, but then the buyer did not want to go forward anyway because he got cold feet,” Mr. Abraham said. “He lost $70,000.”

Buyers started contacting Mr. Abraham in 2007 to recover their deposits, he said. Many were middle-class people who had put down $60,000 to $80,000 for Brooklyn condos. “The buyer says, ‘I want my deposit back’,” Mr. Abraham said of a typical negotiation. “The developer says, ‘No, this is Stalingrad, we will stand and die.’ The buyer says, ‘We will run away.’”

Usually, they reach a compromise. Though Mr. Abraham has managed to recover as much as 50 percent of the deposit for buyers in some cases, the goal is to shift as much of the closing costs to the developer as possible. He has two proposals on the desks of New York developers right now asking them to pay the real estate property transfer tax to induce the buyer to go forward with the sale.

MORE STRINGENT LENDING REQUIREMENTS are driving contract breaches on both sides as developers fail to finish building within the specified construction window—usually two years—and buyers find themselves unable to secure mortgages they expected.

An artist and a photographer who put down a $180,000 deposit on a $1.8 million Manhattan condo remain in an escrow dispute with their sponsor over construction delays, said the lawyer representing them. He declined to be named in this story since negotiations are ongoing. The scheduled March closing was held up until November, but by then the couple’s bank could no longer give them a mortgage. They have yet to reach a settlement, but the attorney said the developer has agreed to come down $400,000 from the contract price.

Even in cases where buyers can still receive a mortgage, delaying the closing six months can mean hundreds of dollars more in out-of-pocket expenses, according to attorney Jonathan Davidoff.

“The problem on the buyer side is, if they were supposed to close six months ago, they could put 10 percent down on a unit; now you have to put 20 or 25 percent,” he said. Meanwhile, most banks will only lend buyers 70 or 80 percent of a condo’s assessed value, and Mr. Davidoff says his clients’ properties are worth about 10 to 25 percent less then the appraisals in the contract.

He has usually been able to get the developer to come down 20 to 25 percent from the closing price in the contract when the purchaser has been able to get a mortgage, and in some circumstances the sponsor has agreed to a 50 percent reduction. He expects property values to fall as much as 30 to 35 percent in the near future, making developers even more pliant.

“We suspect that this is going to blossom,” Mr. Davidoff said. “This is basically the perfect storm, what’s happening on Wall Street, the layoffs, and the residential condo boom… Without Wall Street bonuses, the market is going to soften.”

The neighborhood that was once the hub of the American music-publishing industry in the early 20th century has undergone many transformations since it became known as Tin Pan Alley. Between 1893 and 1910, nearly 20 music-publishing companies moved to West 28th Street, according to the Historic Districts Council. Over the years, they have been replaced by furriers, florists and, lately, mass-market wholesalers, but the five-story, 1852 rowhouses at 49-51 still exist in much the same condition today as when the first songwriters, M. Whitmark and Sons, first moved there.

In October, however, it looked like the last remnants of Tin Pan Alley could be demolished to make way for a condo, when the Lost City blog broke the news that all five buildings were on the market for $44 million.

As public opinion moves further against the plan and the economy plunges deeper into recession, a deal is looking increasingly unlikely. The five, mixed-use contiguous properties would yield over 111,000-square feet of “prime Chelsea Property” after demolition, according to the listing that first appeared on the real estate Web site LoopNet in the early fall, along with renderings of a 16-story residential building with 24 retail spaces proposed for the site. Though it remains up, the site says the “property is no longer available.”

Whether the buildings' owner Jo-Fra Properties bowed to public pressure or to the limitations of the credit markets is unclear, but the buildings no longer seem to be on the market, at least officially. As of Sunday, the HDC had amassed 414 signatures on its petition to the Landmarks Preservation Commission to put the Tin Pan Alley buildings on track for landmark status and, earlier this month, a LPC spokeswoman said the commission was “researching the history of the buildings and reviewing whether they'd be eligible for landmark designation.”

The Coldwell Banker agent marketing the buildings did not respond to a request for comment, and Jo-Fra Properties could not be reached.

Simeon Bankoff, director of the HDC, was unsure whether the buildings were still for sale. Regardless, he said they are still “very much under threat."

“When we last had contact with [brokers at] Coldwell Banker and Helmsley-Spear in mid-October, we got contradictory information,” Mr. Bankoff said. “The buildings still need work and we would feel much more comfortable with the LPC overseeing that work.”

Most Tin Pan Alley tenants and neighboring business owners on 28th Street have heard rumors about the sale, but they believe that a low appetite for real estate should keep developers at bay for the time being. One ground-floor retail tenant of one of the buildings said existing apartment tenants are one of the biggest obstacles for potential investors.

“The problem is whoever is going to buy it has to deal with the rent-stabilized tenants," he said, but did not want to risk his relationship with his landlord by having his name published. “If you want them out to raze the building and put up a luxury apartment you have to buy them out and they all want a lot of money. It’s time-consuming. That’s a trial, that’s long litigation. So whoever buys the building buys it with that in mind.”

Meanwhile, Jo-Fra has to meet its obligations to the tenants of 51, 53 and 55 West 28th Street who won a suit to get their homes zoned for residential usage in August 2007, according to one of the tenants involved in the case, Leland Bobbe. Though he had not been surprised to learn the buildings were up for sale, he expected it to be a “long process.”

Mr. Bobbe pays less than $1,000 per month for the 1,000-square-foot apartment he has lived in since 1975—when he first arrived his rent was just $160. The landlords have begun work to bring 55 West 28th Street up to code, Mr. Bobbe said, but plans have yet to be approved for the six other units slated for renovations under the case. Before a potential buyer can even submit a demolition application, all the apartments need to be brought up to code and then the tenants need to be offered new two-year leases. “So it’s going to be a while, at least five or six years [until the demolition becomes a possibility]. Plus, now the buildings come with tenants,” Mr. Bobbe said. “So the value of the buildings is lower ‘cause they would have to buy us out. I don’t think it’s imminent.

“It kind of got people going because of the history, but they are asking $44 million in a lousy economy. I can’t imagine anyone outside a Shah from the Middle East or some Japanese businessman would buy the building for that.”

“Every time you come here you have to,” she said, while browsing the handbag section of Bergdorf Goodman on Saturday with her husband in tow. “You can’t help yourself.”

The Limas and another couple got “the best deal ever” on a weekend at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Battery Park City, she said: $250 a night on a deluxe suite overlooking the park, with a cook-to-order breakfast and free drinks during cocktail hour included in the rate. “Can you stand it?” Ms. Lima asked in a hushed, conspiratorial tone.

Though she said she is a bargain-hunter by nature—Ms. Lima bought the black cashmere, fur-collared coat she wore Saturday, for instance, for $75—this year one does not need to be a particularly discerning shopper to find deals. Ironically, she purchased a vintage leather clutch-sized wallet “with the cutest snaps you’ve ever seen” from Delfino for $100.

“You just have a budget,” Ms. Lima said of how the economic downturn has influenced her shopping habits. “You stick to your budget and have a good time within the budget.”

Other consumers appear to be abiding by similar recession-spending rules as the biggest shopping day of the year, Black Friday, approaches.

“Things are a little slow,” said wardrobe consultant Julie Biandi while hunting for clients at Barneys with a friend. “A lot of them are relying on me to shop more methodically. Before, people would call me to shop for them at stores, but now they are doing more shopping in their closet.”

Rather then buy a new party dress this season, she is helping clients scour their wardrobes for a great black dress and accessorizing it with costume jewelry, like a Vera Wang bangle.

Though the current fourth quarter of 2008 is supposedly one of the worst in retail since the Great Depression, elite Manhattan department stores were packed with shoppers over the weekend; Fifth Avenue was aglow with holiday lights; and the city issued its first gridlock alert of the season.

“I’ve never seen it like this with so many sales and the department stores are in shambles,” said Betsy Reynolds, a visitor from Alabama who strolled through Barneys with the air of a native New Yorker. Ms. Reynolds, 57, makes two trips a year to Manhattan with her 19-year-old daughter, Lauren.

Both mother and daughter agreed that this has been their most “frustrating” retail expedition yet and they prefer to shop when “everything in the world is [not] on sale.” “Going to Bergdorf, which to me is the classic department store that there ever was, you know we went up there and the whole store was in shambles like a low-class department store.”

“I would rather buy at regular price than to go through all this,” her daughter chimed in.

LUXURY BRANDS THAT A year ago would never deign to put “Sale” signs in their windows before the New Year are now in “survival mode,” according to Renee Kopel, the marketing director for the 122-year-old William Barthman Jewelers in the Financial District. Walk-in traffic has plummeted since September and, for the second year in a row, their corporate gift gallery is competing against an iconic blue box: Tiffany’s opened an 11,000-square-foot Wall Street branch in October 2007.

Ms. Kopel began circulating an e-mail urging longtime clients—many of them from the shrinking financial services sector—to buy gifts from William Barthman during what will likely be the most ascetic winter in years and advertising 20 to 40 percent off most merchandise. “We are extremely mindful of the state of the economy and we want to try and help,” Ms. Kopel wrote in the e-mail. “Gift giving will be inevitable regardless of the state of the economy, so it might as well be as affordable and as painless as possible.”

Last Wednesday, Ms. Kopel had successfully wooed back the head of a Lower Manhattan dental practice who defected to Tiffany’s last year, and was busy preparing the order. “I called him and said, ‘[Tiffany’s] is a big chain and they don’t need your help. I do,’” she said. “And he came back.”

For good measure, Ms. Kopel also offered to cut the price of 18 Orrefor crystal ornaments from $40 to $15 each. She will have to keep up the pace through the New Year if William Barthman is to avoid laying off employees or further cutting back their hours.

A corporate employee at Gucci, who was shopping at their Fifth Avenue branch, said bargains were drawing customers to department stores in droves. “I was just at Saks the other day and it was incredible,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s a madhouse, because you know their sales haven’t been doing that well so there is that extra 50 percent off.”

She insisted that though people are being a little bit more cautious this year, they are still willing to pay for that “little bit of Gucci.” “Everyone’s still buying,” she said, but when pressed for details about the merchandise being sold she slashed her finger across her throat to get me to turn off the recorder.

THERE ARE A FEW stalwarts in the luxury sector who refuse to cut prices. Eugene Venanzi, a bespoke tailor who owns the eponymous boutique on West 56th Street, believes in “holding true to your standard” whatever the climate.

“We never do a sale,” Mr. Venanzi said from what he called the Swedish, neo-classical boutique he opened three years ago. “You have to look at things from your focus. If you open a shop like this, you’re saying your long range is based on quality and exclusivity and the classicism of exclusivity. Our approach is classic. We’re not a Prada. We’re not coming out with a new design every four to six months. … For me to take a navy pinstripe suit that, let’s say, is $4,000 and make it available for $2,500, then replace it two months later and put it out for $4,500, doesn’t prove anything.”

So far, the “buy less, buy better” philosophy has “not been too bad,” he said. Venanzi’s ready-to-wear suits start at $2,700 and a custom-made one can run from $15,000 to $20,000. “It sounds vulgar,” Mr. Venanzi said, “but it’s true.”

Though their midrange clients who earn between $250,000 to $500,000 per year are being more cautious lately, plenty of longtime customers are still willing to splurge on a suit. About three weeks ago, for instance, an American who lives outside the city placed an $80,000 order that included a $45,000 topcoat made of the highest classification of refined wool, Vecunia.

The bursting of the tech bubble in the beginning of the decade barely made a dent in the lending or retail side of what is formally known as the “collateralized loan brokerage” industry—though Mr. Gross’ personal portfolio took a hit. The late 1970s was a “disastrous” time because the cost of lending went up, he said, but it, too, was short-lived. S&G Gross Co. has been making an average of 10 percent more loans since the current crisis on Wall Street began, Mr. Gross estimated.

“I can’t say we’re feeling it dramatically,” he said at his pawnshop last week. “I wasn’t here in 1929, when people literally did not have anything to pawn, but generally we do well in bad times and good. People always want a little more than they can afford.”

Like the other pawnshops in Manhattan and the Bronx that I spoke with, S & G Gross Co. relies on interest payments from repeat customers, rather than sales of pawned items. About 90 percent of Mr. Gross’ clients are “municipal workers, Post Office workers, people that maybe work in hotels, hospitals, the transit authority,” who repeatedly take loans out against the same item.

No “Lehman Brothers brokers” have come through the door to pawn their Rolexes yet, he said, but the clientele is “not as down and out as you might think.”

“A Post Office worker gets paid every month,” Mr. Gross offered of a typical loan. “He might drop something off a week before he gets paid and pick it up afterwards. We have people who pawn the same thing over and over again. One week they’ll come in and ask for $300. One week for $400. One week they’ll say ‘I just need $100.'"

As long as regulars continue to pawn their valuables, and more importantly redeem them within four months before they are sold, S&G Gross Co. and the pawnbroker industry should continue to be recession proof. Some may even benefit.

Gary Popilevsky, the manager of Century Pawn Brokers Inc. at 725 Eighth Avenue, said pawning has gone well since the recession kicked in, while retail sales are only “O.K.”

“It hasn’t been crazy, but it hasn’t’ been slow,” he said from behind the protective plastic barrier in the back of the shop. “We’ve maybe had a couple of new customers, but nothing really, yet. This business has been good when the economy is doing well, and it’s steady now.”

On the Upper East Side, where investment bankers are plentiful but pawnshops few and far between, the Provident Loan Society branch on East 72nd Street has seen loans increase 30 percent or more since economic turmoil beset the city.

“Business has definitely been improving since we started hearing about problems with the economy,” said manager Sarah Wirnik. “Retail has not changed, but they are making a lot of new loans.”

The Provident Loan Society makes loans of between $25 and $50,000 per person against jewelry and sterling silver flatware and hollow ware.

Even though a person can redeem each item on a ticket separately, said Ms. Wirnik, a customer will usually come in over the course of a week and make four loans of $12,000 each. “They don’t tell me [what they do] because they are embarrassed to come here,” Ms. Wirnik said over the phone. “They say ‘there’s a money crunch and that they will be back to redeem it in a few weeks,’ which is not always the case.”

But the “high-end” items they are hawking—last week, for instance, a $40,000 silver sculpture and a $50,000 diamond bracelet were pawned—indicate that a higher-profile clientele are turning to pawnshops now than did during the boom years.

New York Pawnbrokers, which has one location in the South Bronx and two in Manhattan on the Lower East Side and at 207th and Broadway, has had more action over the past year at all three branches, said manager Blaine Messenger. The upturn is due partly to the PR the pawn industry has received lately, he said, as well as the increased price of gold, which has allowed pawn brokers to boost interest rates on gold jewelry.

But aside from a few new clients, their customer base remains the same.

“Clientele is anybody and everybody,” Mr. Messenger said. “Our customers know us for many years. The people that do pawn are regulars. We have the same people coming in at all the stores, but the demographics of each location are different. The Lower East Side is sort of a yuppie, artist group, but we’re not on Fifth Avenue in the 60s or anything like that.”

"This is just the beginning of our movement," Mr. Twyman said as a camera crew lingered impatiently for an interview. "We are going to do all we can to alert these Wall Street executives that God is watching them. God is over all of this. He is the one that can destroy them if they keep doing this. They are destroying lives.”

Tourists and the press were enthralled, but none of the Wall Street workers that walked by heeded Mr. Twyman's call to pray to "the God of their choice" at 3 p.m. to restore the country's economy. Though the financial markets continue to expose the limits of laissez-faire capitalism on a nearly daily basis, Wall Street still seems to have maintained its faith in the invisible hand's guidance.

More than half of the 20 investment-banker types I approached on a two-block strip of Wall Street last Thursday and Friday said they were planning to vote for Senator John McCain, while only two said they would cast a ballot for Senator Barack Obama, and two others said they were not going to vote. The rest refused to be interviewed, even with their identities kept anonymous, because their companies had forbade employees from speaking to the press.

“I strongly disagree with most of Obama’s economic and foreign policies,” a middle-aged smoker outside the Deutsche Bank building said of why he intends to vote for Senator McCain. “Higher taxes, increased government regulation, increased nationalization of health-care policies,” he said, shaking his head. “He’s a socialist.” Nonetheless, he begrudgingly admitted that Senator Obama has more support than any other Democratic candidate in decades. “I’d say it’s split fifty-fifty.”

Nearby, a twenty-something Republican sharing a cigarette with a Democratic colleague summed up the prevailing sentiment shared by the majority of the Republicans on Wall Street when it comes to why they're voting for Senator McCain: “Because I’m a Republican and I always have been." He declined to elaborate because he did not want to talk to the media so close to his office. His co-worker was similarly terse. “I am voting for Obama because I want to see a change,” he said. “But I am in the minority.”

Most Wall Streeters said their decision to vote for John McCain had less to do with his merits as a candidate than with party affiliation or the perceived deficiencies of his opponent.

A young man eating lunch inside the public atrium at 60 Wall Street said he does not find either candidate appealing but is so turned-off by the Chicago senator’s proposed economic policies that he is going to vote Republican. “I will say I don’t really like either one of them that much,” he said. “But philosophically, I believe more in [Mr. McCain’s] public and economic and foreign policy. I just believe in laissez-faire economics.

“Plus, I don’t know where he’s going to be getting all this money, especially because we have such a huge deficit right now,” he added of Senator Obama’s proposals. “So to be saying he’s going to be spending all this money and giving tax cuts to so many people, it just doesn’t seem to add up to me.”

A victory for Senator Obama would “hurt big business,” he said, though he does not expect either candidate to have a profound effect on the economy or the financial services industry since the bailout plan is already in place.

Another young, suited man in the atrium worried that “there would be a lot of sell-offs” before Senator Obama takes office, should he win.

“If his plan does go through and he raises capital gains, a lot of the older people, like the baby boomers who want their money in the next four years might pull their money out sooner than if McCain was in office,” he said. While his decision to vote Republican is “more of a tax thing,” some of Senator Obama’s alleged relationships with a handful of shady public figures also concern him. “I go to Wall Street.com and Google News and just kind of pull from a lot of different sources and my personal opinion is that McCain would run the country better. Listening to a lot of commercials and reading online about some of the connections Obama has had...,” he trailed off, shaking his head.

According to a vendor of Obama paraphernalia at Wall Street and Broadway, both camps have cheerleaders lurking in the ranks of the financial services industry. Most of his customers are tourists, but occasionally Wall Street workers do ask him for Senator McCain merchandise.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for some,” the vendor said hopelessly. “But I can’t find McCain stuff anywhere.”

Even if the vendor had a ready supply, its buyers might not be the most enthusiastic customers.

“I’m voting for McCain because I’m a Republican,” said one man smoking outside of 40 Wall Street--even though, he added, a Democratic victory would mean “nothing” to the economy. “He’s not going to do a thing and neither is McCain,” he chuckled. “What are they going to do? It’s going to be the way it’s going to be for the next couple years.”

He shrugged, and waved his hand dismissively when asked about Senator Obama’s plan to increase the capital gains tax. “I don’t know what that is. I’m hungover.”

They believe, grimly enough, their business will only boom as the bust reverberates.

"This is multi-level stress in that it is financial, political, [and] social, and rocks the foundations, or perhaps the myth, that this country rests upon," said addiction recovery specialist Bob Lynne, who managed the state of New Jersey's therapeutic response to the September 11 attacks. "It is more like a major disaster than a plane crash. We recover from the crash, but many folks do not believe they will recover from this crisis."

Ironically, just as more New Yorkers may need therapy fewer will be able to afford it because of the very thing driving them to it-financial uncertainty.

Upper West Side psychiatrist Harold Bronheim said all his patients, from those moored directly to Wall Street's gyrations to the ones who still have healthy bank accounts, are "cutting back on the goodies," though he has yet to see a drop at his practice.

Some patients are coping with financial anxiety by taking more pills, sleeping less, or "being avoidant of others who are doing well compared to themselves," Dr. Bronheim said, while others are just "talking about it."

"What happens is that people bundle their fears and anxieties together in bad economic times, and displace it on a person or group of people," he explained. "Sort of like in Germany after World War I, when the Nazis blamed the Jews for all the ills of Germany.

"In my practice, the backlash seems to be most actively directed at Sarah Palin," Dr. Bronheim added. "She has become a particular object of ridicule, sort of a hot button for peoples' concerns and anxieties. The issue [is] that you can hire someone who's unqualified for a crisis, based on gender. She represents the old system, keeping up with the same economic nonsense, no matter what the results."

If the markets keep fluctuating wildly and unemployment continues to rise, Dr. Bronheim worries that the anxiety may spark depression, especially among people predisposed to it.

"I have a patient who works for Lehman Brothers, and there is a lot of depression there," Dr. Bronheim said. "Losing a job is similar to losing a love relationship."

Men in particular often deal with emotional strain poorly, according to Robert Klitzman, an associate professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center and the author of When Doctors Become Patients.

More drinking as well as prescription drug abuse are common reactions to "white-collar financial stress," he said, and can trigger a further downward spiral and more destructive behaviors personally and professionally.

Financial changes, especially of the sudden variety, only exacerbate money issues. "If there is less money in a family there are difficult choices that have to be made that impact autonomy, like let's say I want to go on a vacation and my wife wants to buy a car," Dr. Klitzman said. "Now we can only do one."

Meanwhile, financial problems can alter the "golden rule" that Dr. Klitzman says governs most relationships: whoever has the gold rules. "If the traditional bread-winner is no longer bringing home the bread, he or she may lose power in the relationship, and the breadwinner may feel angry because he... is used to having power and having his way.

"And I say he because it is usually a he. [When] he no longer has his power and his way he could become angry; he could become verbally abusive and there is a potential for other kinds of violence.

"I'm not saying financial stress leads to affairs [or domestic violence]," Dr. Klitzman said. "but it can spiral so it's best to catch things early."

Lynne Spevack, a licensed clinical social worker and psychotherapist with offices in the Financial District, said her practice has grown, particularly in the past few months, though she does not attribute the rise to the economy.

"Initially [after the September 11 attacks] there was not an increase in clients," she said. "Over time it brought people in sideways ways. Even today, there are clients who come in all these years later and don't realize the concerns bringing them in are somewhat related to [9/11]."

Ms. Spevack's current roster of clients are plagued by "anticipatory anxiety" over the economy as they wait for the other shoe to drop, and the degree of turmoil is similar to what she saw after September 11. Much of the advice she gives patients today is similar to what she told them then.

"There are some people who are going to feel inclined to drink or drug, or drink or drug more, and that is certainly going to make things worse because then you have two problems to deal with," she said. "But the inclination to escape from things so you don't feel so bad makes sense."

Though people often feel the need to be glued to media in crisis situations, Ms. Spevack added, monitoring the amount of news consumed remains key to managing financial stress. "The idea not to worry alone but worry in pairs and groups is one of the most important things people can do," Ms. Spevack said.

But reaching out to people for help is not usually the first thing on peoples' minds when a crisis strikes, said Linda Furst, the education director at the Mental Health Association of NYC. The organization's suicide hotline Lifenet has yet to see a spike in calls, but they do expect an increase "at a future date," she said.

"Usually, when people are in immediate eye of the storm," Ms. Furst said, "they are marshalling all their emotional strength to get themselves through it."

After a slow first night, traffic had picked up by the end of the third day of business.

"Stocks may be down, but cocks are up," Tyrone, the manager, said deviously as a few older men and a gay couple perused the merchandise on Oct. 2. "I would have expected to get mostly homosexuals, but we get a fair amount of heterosexual men, too. They always leave blushing."

Not all city sex retailers are as upbeat as Tyrone. Most of the dozen interviewed for this story said that while customers were still buying the basics, they were cutting down on high-end toys, adult movies, and costumes as the financial crisis seeps into the most primal of New York's retail outlets.

At least half of the stores visited have introduced specials to spur more shopping.

The Blue on Eighth Avenue between 21st and 22nd streets is offering a buy-two-get-one-free DVD special, said salesman Assaf. "We are trying to listen to customers and give them deals," he said. "Other than that there hasn't been a change. Everyone still needs condoms and lube. It's like food. You can't stop buying milk."

One of The Blue's competitors on 18th Street and Eighth Avenue--the adult video store formerly known as Passion--is also offering a buy-two-get-one-free DVD deal. "It just looks better," said the store's manager Danny, of whether the promotion has boosted film sales.

He began to notice customers scaling back around the same time the government bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and sales of adult movies and toys slowed, but demand for "things that are needed on a daily basis," like "lubricant, condoms, and cock-rings," remains strong.

"Don't forget, this is the gay community," Danny said. "Most of them have different lifestyles, two incomes and no kids. So they are still going to spend."

EVEN IN THE CITY'S TRADITIONAL family neighborhoods, retailers said that contraceptives--along with cigarettes and beer--are among the only items that continue to sell at the same levels of a few months ago.

Sam's Market on 103rd between Broadway and Amsterdam avenues was one of many bodegas and small grocers that has seen sales plummet almost across the board since well before the Wall Street crisis, as customers cut back on everything from candy bars to lottery tickets.

"Business is so sad right now," said Sam's Market manager Sebastian. "We always thought the candy and grocery store business was recession proof, but even coffee and soda people are spending less on. The only thing people are buying more of are condoms and vitamin supplements," he said, pointing to a $2 package of Stamina RX, a "maximum sexual stimulant." "Guess people are staying home more."

If so, they are most likely making due with last season's accessories, because high-end adult boutiques appear to be feeling the drop in consumer spending more than their porn-and-prophylactic-centered counterparts.

"Business is booming because everyone is having sex because they're unemployed," deadpanned Hilton, the owner of the upscale Chelsea boutique Purple Passion. "No, actually, business is down. About a year ago sales slowed down, and in the past three months things have really dropped."

Customers are still buying vibrators and toys, Hilton said, but he could not remember the last time he sold one of the elaborate corsets that run $500 to $600, or one of Vanson's custom-made, leather motorcycle jackets that retail for around $800.

He attributes the decline more to a drop-off in Euro-wielding tourists than to the tumult a couple of miles away on Wall Street--though Purple Passion still saw a fair amount of British visitors over the summer because "their money is worth three times as much here," Hilton said.

IT APPEARS THE SEX services industry, including escorts and dominatrix trainers, has been hit hardest of all by the economy's collapse, according to Master R (the name on a business card), the owner of La Domaine Esemar, the world's oldest BDSM (an acronym for Bondage and Discipline, Dominance and Submission, and Sadism and Masochism) training "chateaux," located in upstate New York.

La Domain Esemar has trained at least 250 couples and about 2,000 individuals from across the socioeconomic spectrum over the past 15 years, Master R said. A basic, 60- to 90-minute session with a domatrix or master at La Domaine costs $300, but, depending on a client's particular "needs and wants," training can cost "thousands." La Domaine has never been "a paradigm of capitalism," Master R admitted, and will often give free training to customers who cannot afford it.

Clients include "tons of CEO's," and "local people, everyone from the truck driver to the governor," Master R said, before quickly explaining he was speaking metaphorically and not about former Governor Eliot Spitzer. Though La Domaine has not felt the immediate fall-out from Wall Street's collapse, locals have been slowly trickling away for the past two or three years, as higher gas prices and living costs force them to forgo non-"necessities."

"We see a lot of uppercrust from our region, and powerful business people from around the country," Master R said. "The real uppercrust [is] still coming. It's the school teachers, correctional officers, city employees that have really slowed down."