Paris

With apartments fetching an average price of $7,500 per square foot, Fifth Avenue ranked third place in a new survey of the top 10 most expensive residential streets in the world from Barclay’s Wealth Bulletin. But if you thought top-tier residential prices in Manhattan were stratospheric, take a look at the two most expensive streets on the survey.

Avenue Princess Grace in Monaco ranked No. 1 in the survey with homes fetching an average of $17,750 a foot.

“Properties on the avenue change hands for up to $41 million – and many of them are fairly modest four-bedroom apartments,” the report said.  read more »

Wowza! Apparently they buy buildings in Paris too.

Naturally, it's a bunch of burly American I-bankers who made the biggest single-asset deal in European history.

Lehman Brothers has purchased Coeur Defense, a series of five buildings, from Goldman Sachs for 2.11 billion euros, or $2.8 billion U.S. dollars. It's a record for the overseas bunch.

Cushman & Wakefield, which also advised the biggest single-building sale ever in U.S. history at 666 Fifth Avenue for $1.8 billion, advised Lehman Brothers in this deal.  read more »

Full release after the jump.

- John Koblin

As he did with Balthazar, Keith McNally has once again set a stage where the play is about eating an  read more »

Going Dutch: Basic Instinct Director Plumbs His Homeland’s Past     read more »

Going Dutch: Basic Instinct Director Plumbs His Homeland’s Past     read more »

• In the ongoing quest to find the city's scariest bar, the NY Press heads to the Navy Yard Cocktail Lounge, where ice-less $3 cocktails and Tupperware Cheez Doodles are a reminder of what Brooklyn was like before Hollywood came. [NYP]
• Who knew Canadian real estate had become so exceedingly ritzy? In Ontario, for example, a "legacy home" on the market for $45 million comes with 14 acres--not to mention a baseball diamond and private pebble beach. [Forbes]
• But the real French speakers have the real real estate prices: The average price per square foot of Paris' apartments is around $2,250*. (In other news: France says "non!" to non-chic megastores.) [Matrix]
*UPDATE: Our math was corrected (we kid you not) in an email from a former Goldman Sachs executive director: "Please note that 1 square meter = 10.76 square feet. Based on the correct conversion ratio, prices per square foot in Paris seem to be in line with New York." Is that true? Can any Francophile mathematicians set us straight?
• Rendering of the Week: Frank Gehry's plan for the future United Arab Emirate Guggenheim is not your mother's Upper East Side museum. Does the photo above look like haute, techy, post-post-modern glory--or a pile of rubble? [Dezeen]
- Max Abelson
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A relaxed local restaurant, the sort of place you can drop into without a reservation, where you cou  read more »

Miss Potter may have the cinematic punch of a wet vanilla wafer, but the cynics who have dismissed i  read more »

Today, New York Times' staffers received an email from Deputy Managing Editor Jonathan Landman and Standards Editor Craig Whitney, outlining ethical concerns about posting to the new Travel web site.

Righ now, readers--and Times reporters--can comment on London, Paris and Los Angeles.  read more »

After the jump is the full memo with guidelines, such as no anonymous posting in the comments section. Take that "sprezzatura!"

Who would have thought that a tap-dancing penguin would outpoint James Bond at the box office?  read more »

Janet Malcolm is one of my idols, I'd read her shopping lists if someone would print them. Her book The Journalist and the Murderer is a cultural landmark, it changed the relationship of journalists and their sources, giving more power to the sources. So when The New Yorker ran her piece on Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas last week, I couldn't wait to curl up on the couch and go into Malcolm's looking-glass world, this time of occupied Paris, Jewish identity, old age, writerly friendship and abandonment. It's a fine fine piece, I recommend it.

That said, I question the casual use, twice, of the word "goyim," without ital, without quotation marks, to refer to non-Jews. In a piece that shows some sensitivity on the issue of Christians' misunderstanding of Jews (they say we're not forgiving, and that's antisemitic), the use of "goyim" evinces a lack of understanding by Jews of their own situation. The word means "the nation," the gentile world, and has a dash of Boratish wariness and hostility. It is Yiddish, and is not like shlep or chutzpah, that is, an assimilated neutral word. It's a signal to other Jews, Let's talk as landsmen. I think it's arrogant and exclusionary. Jews have large cultural power in America; acting as if we're still some persecuted subgroup is way way beneath us. I gather from one gentile friend that he has friends who feel themselves to be outside the cultural establishment and have appropriated the word "goyim" to refer to themselves, in something of the proud/resentful way that blacks took on the n-word. I know, the cultural valences aren't the same. But it's loaded—why make half your audience feel excluded?

[I note that Wikipedia agrees with me here...]

Grégoire Bouillier is a writer from Paris, and on Monday, Oct.  read more »

Grégoire Bouillier is a writer from Paris, and on Monday, Oct.  read more »

Back before Tribeca became the sun-dappled playground of New York’s Hollywood-on-the-Hudson se  read more »

Back before Tribeca became the sun-dappled playground of New York’s Hollywood-on-the-Hudson set, M  read more »

Among the many masterpieces regularly on the walls at the Frick Collection, there’s an inconsp  read more »

Among the many masterpieces regularly on the walls at the Frick Collection, there’s an inconspicuo  read more »

A.B.T.  read more »

Supernatural gifts—like communicating with the dead or powers of prophecy—aren’t t  read more »

Papers around the world are covering Day 2 of the Materazzi insult. The Times includes the leading favorite, promoted by Zidane's brother, that Materazzi called Zidane, who is Algerian by descent, "the son of Harkis"—a slur, referring to Algerians who fought on the French side in the war of independence. But Gazzetta in Italy undermines this claim. Quoted in the IHT, the paper reports that Materazzi called his insult an "insult of the kind you will hear dozens of times and that just slips out on the ground."

"I certainly didn't call him a terrorist," he added. "I am ignorant. I don't even know what an Islamic terrorist is; my only terrorist is her," he said, pointing to his 10-month-old daughter, who was sleeping next to him on the plane that took the Italian team back to Italy.

The best story is from the Guardian, which does not hold back on its language in reporting:

Materazzi has not elaborated on what he did say, but one report suggested he responded [to Zidan'es challenge to take his shirt later] with: "I'd rather take the shirt off your wife." He has, however, denied that he insulted Zidane's mother or called the son of Algerian immigrants a terrorist. A lip reader employed by the BBC claimed Materazzi said: "I wish an ugly death to you and all your family," and then told Zidane to "go fuck yourself". Paris-based anti-racism group, SOS-Racism, had earlier said that "several very well informed sources" suggested Zidane was called a "dirty terrorist". "I did not call him a terrorist," responded the Italian World Cup winner. "I am not a cultured person and I don't even know what an Islamist terrorist is. For me the mother is sacred, you know that."

Journalists should take a cue from the Guardian and not censor themselves. The story deserves linguistic candor. (C.f., Earl Butz, Agriculture Secretary under Nixon, who lost his job for a racist joke that none of the MSM would repeat in full...)

Today, Columbia University professor Barry Bergdoll was named as MoMA's chief curator of architecture and design, as reported in the New York Times. He takes over from Terence Riley, who is currently director of the Miami Art Museum. The department was founded by Philip Johnson in 1932.

This morning, the MoMA sent out a release announcing the move. Full release is after the jump.  read more »

• Zaha Hadid plays nice, pleasantly conversing about the future of architecture. Eventually she cracks and says things like: Paris is "beautiful, but it has no energy." At the grand finale she somehow acknowledges the possibility of seeing her work in twenty years and gasping: "Oh, my goodness, this is really irritating." (New York Magazine)
• The FBI informs us that New York City's crime rate fell while the nation's numbers rose. But prospective New Yorkers beware: our robbery stats don't look so good--plus, we turn out to be the second-least generous folks in the country. (AP, via Crane's)
• New York lawmakers try their very best to get generous: a $1 billion property tax relief plan is passed, although it happens to be similar to the one "scuttled" by George "Prez" Pataki earlier this year. (The New York Times)
• Listen to William Zeckendorf talk about his billion dollar baby: 15 Central Park West. And there's more: he even chats about the overall NY condo market. (The Real Deal Podcast)
• Billy Joel and his eighteenth wife visit the Brooklyn Heights townhouse that first went on the market for a borough record-setting $20 million. Luckily the price has since fallen to $16 and then $12.9 million. ("We are not coming down from here," swears Corcoran broker Deanna Kory.) (New York Daily News)
• Over at the Freedom Tower construction site, so far things are going just perfectly (seismologically speaking). (The New York Times)
- Max Abelson
• 0 comments

Throughout his elegant and compact sequence of espionage novels set in the Europe of the 1930’s an  read more »

Throughout his elegant and compact sequence of espionage novels set in the Europe of the 1930’  read more »

Emmanuel Carrère’s La Moustache, based on a screenplay by Jérôme Beaujour  read more »

Emmanuel Carrère’s La Moustache, based on a screenplay by Jérôme Beaujour and Mr.  read more »

What hath Annie (Proulx) wrought? The gay Vito subplot on The Sopranos, now concluded with his beating death, seems an homage to Proulx's landmark New Yorker story of 1997—and the Ang Lee movie that was based on it. How many Brokeback quotes did you catch? I noticed the rear mounting in golden light in bed on the last episode, and the sad, no-closure interstate phone call between the doomed gay lovers in the latest. But really it was the storyline: Vito's delusion about having a family life ending with a savage homophobic beating. That's what happened to Jack Twist, 'way down in Texas in the Proulx story.

The borrowing's fine. But it's symptomatic of a problem with The Sopranos. The writers and producers are straining at the form. It's not enough to have a Jersey Mafia story anymore, they have to have shafts of otherworldly literary light pouring in from out of nowhere at every turn. I mean the Lorraine Bracco shrink—abruptly, finally—challenging Tony about the violence in his job. "We've been dancing around how you live for years." Sugar, why now? And ethically, are you allowed to bring up stuff the analysand doesn't? I found it intrusive. Then there were Carmela's art-inspired epiphanies about the brevity of life in Paris. Paris—on the Sopranos. They should leave that stuff to Merchant and Ivory, and just let the Sopranos be the Sopranos.

Spike Lee’s Inside Man, from a screenplay by Russell Gewirtz, has been so exhaustively excoriated  read more »

Spike Lee’s Inside Man, from a screenplay by Russell Gewirtz, has been so exhaustively excoria  read more »

From today's Rush & Molloy:

We're assured there is no news just yet, but we're "expecting" to hear an announcement from Lizzie Grubman and new hubby Chris Stern after they return from their Paris honeymoon this weekend.

Plans for a cultural center in Hong Kong that would have included space for MoMA and Guggenheim museums have been scratched. The Times says:

The decision is a setback for several major museums. The Georges Pompidou Center in Paris and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the Museum of Modern Art in New York had been vying for the right to run museums at the cultural center, which was to be several times the size of Lincoln Center.

The proximate cause was the pull-out of local real-estate interests from the project, which is why officials are saying the project just needs to be tweaked out a bit to get back on track. But the Times cites longstanding objections to the project by Hong Kong artists, who felt too much control was being ceded to foreign arts institutions, and the public, which saw the project as a developers' boondoggle.

Tom Krens, whom we like to think of as a sort-of 21st Century Fitzcarraldo, had called the project "the most exciting opportunity in the world because of the scale and the location."

Sorry, guys.

Meanwhile, the Asia Society's frontman, former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke, is having more luck: tomorrow, Robin Pogrebin reports, he'll announce plans to build a $52 million satellite in Hong Kong, at a Waldorf gala for the society. The designers are Tod Williams and Billie Tsien.  read more »

- Tom McGeveran

The Javits Center expansion seems likely not to be "dazzling," according to Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff.

It's not that the plan isn't great; it's just that, like the original (which might have resembled the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris but ... didn't), politics inevitably gets in the way of good design:  read more »

Embarrassed by the rejection of a Jets stadium for the West Side and the endless squabbling about the design for a Freedom Tower at ground zero, city and state officials overseeing the Javits project seem to be in a mad rush to push it through. With shadowy political maneuvering, they have stifled the kind of public debate that could have led to a more ambitious vision for the convention center and the decrepit neighborhoods next to it.

- Tom McGeveran

Don't miss this survey of the battle for the soul of the East River waterfront--both sides of the river, and of the argument--in Gotham Gazette.

A bit of context:

It has happened in many of the great old cities of the world. In London, a power station along the Thames River became the Tate Modern Museum. In Paris, a train station on the Seine became the Musee d’Orsay. In San Francisco, an old chocolate factory became Ghirardelli Square, an essential tourist stop.

Kent Barwick of the Municipal Arts Society probably has the right idea:

"It's not like all other rivers. It's a gritty, workingman's river. That's where the energy is. That's where the action is."

But what does that mean for development?  read more »

- Tom McGeveran

“I think I’ve a terrible defect,” said Robert B.  read more »

Yesterday, The Real Estate called attention to Christopher Caldwell's criticism of the architecture of Le Corbusier as being responsible for the Paris riots, in The Times magazine.

Today, Clay Risen responds to the blame-Le Corbusier-first crowd on the New Republic's website.

He concludes his defense with the following:

"The idea that architecture alone can cause--and solve--social problems is a mistake. Even Le Corbusier knew that."  read more »

-Michael Calderone

Woody Allen’s Match Point, from his own screenplay, was reportedly well received in Cannes ear  read more »

Woody Allen’s Match Point, from his own screenplay, was reportedly well received in Cannes earlier  read more »

Dear Paris,    read more »

Dear Paris,  read more »

At last, a life and an album about Lee Miller, one of the most beautiful women who ever lived—an a  read more »

Americans should not take unseemly unsatisfaction from the spectacle of France’s riots.  read more »

The New York Times is in settlement talks with the Newspaper Guild over the case of Susan Sachs, the Times correspondent fired by the the paper this past April, according to a source familiar with the proceedings.

Sachs, a former Baghdad bureau chief, and the Guild had been scheduled to challenge her termination at arbitration proceedings beginning today. Those proceedings have been put off in favor of settlement discussions.

Sachs' dismissal was accompanied by accusations she had sent anonymous e-mails and/or letters to the wives of Times reporters Dexter Filkins and John Burns, alerting them to alleged marital infidelity in the war zone.

Denouncing co-workers for philandering may be an uncollegial move, but it's not necessarily a firable offense. In August, the Guild described Sachs' case as "strictly one of credibility. The Times has accused her of doing something she insists she didn't do."

The Guild also said that the Times did not pay Sachs any severance, and that company officials said "she was being dishonest with them when they questioned her about the incident in question, an accusation she denies."

Under the Times' contract with the Guild, a source familiar with the terms explained, any type of dishonesty--lying, stealing, etc.--can be cause for termination.

But when she was dismissed, Sachs publicly disputed the charges and said she had taken a polygraph test and passed. Last month, Sachs traveled to New York from Paris, where she now lives, and took a second polygraph test, which she also passed, according to a source familiar with her case.

The Times is also facing an arbitration session on Nov. 15, that of former Times photographer Nancy Siesel, who was fired in March 2005 for performance reasons. Both Siesel and Sachs are being represented, along with the Guild, by Barry Peek, an labor lawyer with Meyer, Suozzi, English and Klein. Mr. Peek declined to comment on Sachs' case.

In an e-mail from Paris, Sachs wrote that charges brought against her by "some people at the New York Times" were "totally false."

Sachs joined the Times in 1998 from Newsday, where she had been both a Moscow and Middle East correspondent. She became the Times' Baghdad bureau chief in September 2003. After a troubled five-month tenure there--during which press reports had her in a turf war with both Burns and Filkins--she returned to New York, then became the Istanbul bureau chief in March 2004. She remained in that post till her firing.

More recently, she has lived in Paris, freelancing for the Globe and Mail. Her husband, Claude Lorieux, who covered the Middle East for Le Figaro, died in April, and she has been working to complete a book on the Arab world he had been writing. In the spring, she plans to start teaching at the journalism school at Sciences Po in Paris.

It remains unclear what, exactly, happened in the centrifuge that was the Times' Baghdad bureau during Sachs' tumultuous time there.

An acquaintance of Sachs said that some people who know her felt that the missives that led to her downfall may have been a setup by someone who wished her ill. Asked whether that reflected her own feelings on the matter, Sachs said, via e-mail from Paris, "No, it's not."

In another e-mail, Sachs wrote. "I hope you understand that I certainly enjoyed my job at the Times. The Istanbul bureau, where I was last, was my dream job, one I wanted for many years."  read more »

--Sheelah Kolhatkar

Last month was bittersweet for me: My Yankees were eliminated from another postseason, while, just d  read more »

Last month was bittersweet for me: My Yankees were eliminated from another postseason, while, just d  read more »

Question: What’s an hour and a half long (without intermission), driven by Concept and set to  read more »

Question: What’s an hour and a half long (without intermission), driven by Concept and set to Viva  read more »

Reading Mary Gaitskill is like having a flock of birds fly straight at your face: You register the b  read more »

Let’s get the kudos out of the way: Prague, The Crown of Bohemia, 1347-1437, on display at the  read more »

The Municipal Arts Society and Brooklyn Heights Association have identified 28 landmark-able buildings (PDF) within the boundaries of the city’s redevelopment plan for the neighborhood, including the old Brooklyn HQ of The New York Times. Ignore the garish store awnings ("Young World Kidz Clothes") and you could be in ... Paris--or at least St. Paul.  read more »

Skip the Rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré for shopping, and New York, too.  read more »