Simple. The tenant is a close relative or friend of the owner, or someone was. Legally the apartment has to remain at the regulated rent, but landlords move heaven and earth to use means fair and foul to get rid of people like the tenant. Have you ever been in a rent-controlled or rent-stabilized NYC apartment?…

Tanden seems to be a nut job. She should be studied, not so much for “mean tweets,” but why she does what she does and how she got so close to the Dem political establishment, especially Hillary Clinton in particular. Now it’s 2021. Head of OMB under Biden? Why? Why her? Doesn’t the job...?

Have you ever taken the subway to Penn Station? There’s one small staircase, I think it’s on the west side of 8th Avenue, southern side of W. 35th Street, the downtown side, and as you exited during the morning rush hour you used to be almost guaranteed to see dinosaur volumes of shit on the stairs. Only that…

Not overnight they’re not. For the first time in its history, including during WWII, the depths of the Depression, the aftermath of the WTC attacks, New York doesn’t have 24-hour subway service.

Multiple stars for the Rihanna video. That song is now (gasp) 11 years old!

I’m a gay man and I thought she looked incredibly sexy on that cover. Harper’s Bazaar has always sold sex appeal, although traditionally a little more subtly. If you can find issues from the late 1940s or the 1950s the models are far more covered up but with enhanced chests, pinched waists, and acres and acres of…

You joke but Cruz is even worse: he’s a Randian (as in Ayn Rand.) In 2013 he spoke for 21 hours in opposition to funding Obamacare and read passages from “Atlas Shrugged” into the Congressional Record. This is an old filibuster trick, reading at length from some source to lengthen your filibuster, but “Atlas Shrugged”…

Have you ever been to the Detroit area, specifically Dearborn? For some reason they have a very large Arabic-speaking population but most are Christians, Chaldeans and Maronites. When you go there you think, how exotic, all this Arabic being spoken and advertised everywhere, but most of them have jobs at Ford and…

It’s coming up in a couple of weeks. It’s a really good birth date to have because people are bored and crawling out of February, and a friend/fellow Piscean and I used to throw a huge party every year and everyone always showed up because people were so starved of anything interesting to do.

Lucky you. My high school proms were held at this incredibly cheesy event space that’s still going strong. It was built in the late 60s and never really updated. I bet I would love it now for the kitsch value. I’m not sure if it’s a restaurant with walk-in service or just an event space for weddings and proms but I…

I do not but I should really get one because I’ve been cooking A LOT and we don’t really order takeout, my repertoire is wide-ranging enough, although it’s usually “Italian” or something mothers would have fed their families anywhere from 1930 to 1980. I only started cooking in the mid-80s so I don’t know why I’m…

Opa (the German grandfather) was a draft dodger, just like his grandson, who ran at least one brothel during the Alaska gold rush, but I can’t remember if it was in the Alaskan territory or maybe across the border in the Canadian Yukon. I bet his, Opa’s, story is fascinating. Trump’s father has an interesting story…

BLT Prime is a mini-chain. It would be like the Trump hotel having a Ruth’s Chris or a Morton’s Steakhouse. BLT stands for Bistro Laurent Tourondel, the original, which opened not too far from the Trump building in Manhattan almost 20 years ago.

I don’t think it’s selfish at all. I come from a large, happy family. I’m quite a bit older than you, I think. Long ago I coupled off with another guy, who’s Black to boot (I’m white) but my family welcomed him with open arms. My father died when he was fairly young so he never got to meet The Better Half but my mother…

Whatever you used to do for a living, could you do something similar remotely? Say you did something administrative, like hospital billing or something. Could you maybe find a hospital that would allow you into their database remotely and do a little work for them? I think you might have to check with Panamanian…

Do you have a million nicknames for him, like we do for our dogs? Just the Churchill associations with bulldogs alone would provide a couple of dozen. 

I, an American, will miss Prince Philip’s wit and wisdom. Surely you know one of his most famous lines. He was dispatched from some reason to a driving school in Scotland. He said to the instructor, “How do you keep the Scots sober long enough to teach them how to drive?” And I don’t think he was joking. And this was…

The small Central Park Zoo here in NYC has a Penguin House and the most fun to be had in all of Manhattan is when it’s feeding time for them. An employee will enter the enclosure will pails of fish and chum and the penguins get so excited they stand and shake with excitement and squeal. You observe this from behind…

You went to Mystic, I take it? That’s a fantastic one. Albuquerque, of all places, has a small museum complex and their aquarium is the standout star. The one in Boston is very good, too, and it’s right on the Harbor, so even if you don’t go in (it’s quite expensive) you can lounge around and enjoy the seaside views.…

As always you are an inspiration to us all. I am a total failure at breadmaking. When the pandemic first hit the country was beset with yeast and flour shortages, because suddenly everyone wanted to make their own bread, a cheap and easily found grocery store staple. Even I got sucked in. I told the Better Half to…