Chicagoania

Angie Pontani, The Brooklyn Slide

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Please note the video below, which provides important information for ChicagoBoyz readers. It contains go-go dance instruction from Angie Pontani, of the World Famous Pontani Sisters, previously mentioned here and here.

The Pontani Sisters are now touring with Los Straitjackets, including three Chicago area shows this weekend. I hope to be at one of these shows. The video shows you how to do their new dance number, the Brooklyn Slide.

Please practice at home and attain basic proficiency before trying these steps in public.


The Next Bubble

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I know a lot of people who rent and recently overheard how difficult it is to find an apartment. This is anecdotal but they said that you needed to sign a multi-year lease and / or offer MORE than the requested rent to guarantee that you get one as soon as it is open.

The New York Times today had an article titled “The Lease is up, and now so is the Rent” describing the situation in New York City:

Across New York, rents have not only rebounded from the depths of two years ago, but are also surpassing the record high of 2007 during the real estate boom, according to figures from Citi Habitats, a large rental brokerage, and other surveys. That means a perennially frustrating process has become almost frenzied. Brokers say prospective renters need to come prepared to close a deal on the same day — ready to write a check for thousands of dollars to cover the first and last month’s rent, and the broker’s fee. For desirable apartments, forget about open houses — the best places are snapped up within a few days, or less, through private showings by brokers.

In the comments section on that post they mention what the article (typically) fails to do; New York’s problems are exacerbated by their ludicrous rent-control laws, which distorts developers’ behavior and forces some renters to subsidize their neighbors and creates a “shadow economy” of sublets.

In Chicago it is (comparatively) easy to build new rental stock to take advantage of the situation; in my River North area there are giant new rental only buildings going up everywhere. At this site where a bank used to be there is another hole for a 20+ story apartment building at 501 N Clark.

I remember back in an economics class in college a professor discussed the real estate boom in Arizona in the ’80s… he said that since the builders were all small, they didn’t know when to exit the market. Individually they weren’t large enough to have market intelligence (such as in an industry with a few large players, like chemicals) so they just kept overbuilding and doubling-down their chips until they were wiped out. Only a few were smart enough to take their cards off the table rather than try to chase the last win, only to fall short and get caught when the market tanked.

It will be interesting to see who will take the brunt of the collapse in the higher-end rental market that is likely to occur in a few years. Someone is financing these rental projects; while they are not as subject to failing as a similar condo project (since sales are binary while you can adjust rents in a falling economy) they are still risky and require lots of up front debt financing as well as being hostage to rising real estate taxes (especially in Chicago, where we are in dire financial straits). A lot of the banks that funded the condo buildings went under and were taken down by the FDIC; perhaps the banks that are financing these new buildings will take the brunt, too.

As these buildings get constructed downtown, expect the more marginal rental units in the outskirts to take a big hit later when the number of renters falters. I anticipate that the big buildings would cut rents rather than remain empty (since it is essentially a fixed-cost operation, like an airplane, so getting any tenant is better than letting it sit vacant), and then they would prove to be tough competition for the less-modern rental buildings. Watch and see it all unfold.

Cross posted at LITGM

Occupy Chicago “General Assembly” (Outdoor Meeting, Michigan and Van Buren)

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I went to the Occupy Chicago meeting, which I mentioned in this earlier post.

It was a magnificent night in Chicago. You could not have picked a better night for an outdoor gathering.

I arrived promptly at 7:00. There were only a few people there, six at first, with others trickling in. Apparently the main body of the group had been involved in a march somewhere. I got a chance to chat with some of them. They were generally dressed in the style I think of as “collegiate leftist” which has apparently not changed much since about 1969. I was wearing a suit, tie and black shoes. No one seemed to have any response to my attire. Their hygiene seemed fine, though I was prepared for the worst.

The kids I spoke to — and I use the term because that is what people in their early twenties seem like to me — were nice, and reasonably intelligent. Two were recent college graduates who were not able to get jobs. They seemed to be sincere and sensible young people.

One girl had a printout of the “proposed grievances.” (I got the list off their site and put it below the fold, since it is apparently a work in progress and subject to change.) It is an interesting mix. I agree with some of it, as noted in square brackets. I was surprised that it was not more Left boilerplate. It seems to reflect an accurate understanding of the seriousness of crony capitalism as the heart of the problem we face.

These conversations I found enjoyable, though I was as usual saddened by the combination of earnestness and ignorance of this rising generation.

My hatred of the Boomers, who have brainwashed and wasted these kids is boundless. There is nothing wrong with them. They have just never been taught anything but bullshit. They have been betrayed by their parents and their teachers. It is very depressing. The country has been shamefully dumbed down.

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Occupy Chicago

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Occupy Chicago is going on near my office.

I could hear them chanting this afternoon.

It sounded like standard issue chanting, which we have all the time in Chicago in decent weather.

Here’s their site.

These activities sound interesting:

7:00pm General Assembly (Congress/Michigan in front of Horse Statue)
9:00pm Occupation/Police Legal Training (Congress/Michigan Horse Statue)

I plan to walk over to check it out.

Who knows?

If it turns into something big I can say in the decades to come that I was at one of the earliest Occupy events.

Conversation Ender

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A friend of mine posted the above on her Facebook page today. She is an extremely nice person, but believes in nonsense like accupuncture, and the vaccinations are bad for you woo-woo, and other things like that. She is also into all natural foods.

The above reminded me of my grandparents (my father’s parents), who I loved very much and had many great times with when I was a young boy. My Grandmother grew up in squalor in Munich, and my Grandfather did the same in Riga, Latvia. They met in Chicago. I have some photos of my Grandmother and her family in front of their rabbit cages – they raised them for meat. They had no indoor plumbing, of course. This was just after the turn of the century. I don’t have any photos of my grandfather when he was growing up. His father was killed in WW1 and he was shifted from relative to relative. I can only assume that a camera and photos were the last thing on his mind.

I was treated to the way that my grandparents ate when I spent summer weeks at their house in northern Wisconsin (Birchwood, for those who may be interested). We ate all sorts of shit that my friend of today would simply puke on if presented to her. Processed meats, fortified grains, you name it. Coming from the places they did, although they lived a comfortable retirement, they still wasted nothing. If we had chicken for dinner, we would make soup that night or the next day out of the carcass. It wasn’t even a question, we just did it. All the leftovers went into the soup.

I think my favorite was when after a roast or something was cooked, my grandmother would take the rendered fat and wait until it solidified, then scraped it up, put it in the fridge, and hauled it out for a lunch the next day. She would simply spread it on rye bread and that was it. Take it or leave it. My grandpa would wash that down with a beer or two.

This is what people, when they were poor, had to do to scratch it out every day. My comment, which ended all of the “hell yeas!” and “I agrees” in the Facebook thread above was:

I admit I miss the lard and rye bread sandwiches my grandmother used to feed us.

Lack of perspective cracks me up at times.