Billionaires Have Bad Days, TooCarl Icahn is struggling with various projects, Sharon Waxman becomes the latest media lady to start a news-aggregation Website, and — it’s official! — most City Council members pay less rent than you do, in our daily roundup of finance, media, real-estate and entertainment news.
Ikea Buses for All — Even Recovering Heroin Addicts!Stuy Town laundry thieves are being surveilled, Carroll Gardens raccoon cheerleaders speak out, Ikea bus riders forego affordable design for methadone, and much more, in our ‘Ruby Tuesday’ boroughs roundup.
Can Regina Spektor Make Murray Hill Cool?Regina Spektor moves into Murray Hill, Carroll Gardens’ Ivy League hipster types strike back against last week’s maudlin anti-yuppie video, and a celeb hip-hop stylist’s body turns up in the Bronx. Plus, news from Red Hook, Long Island City, Dumbo, and Coney in today’s boroughs roundup.
neighborhood watch
The G Train: Helping Greenpoint Keep It RealThey’re not too gentrified in Greenpoint to transcend the crummy G train, not too Ikea-fied in Red Hook to alienate Santogold, and not too cranky in Brooklyn Heights to bitch about smaller OJ cartons. So we’re not too proud to say this: that and more in today’s boroughs report!
‘The View’ Darkly Celebrates Red Hook IkeaOn this morning’s show, everyone in the audience got free $200 gift cards — but the audience didn’t seem thrilled. And Whoopi was downright ominous: “Don’t forget, you’ll be putting it together, too.”
Amy Sedaris Kills Roaches With Her Bare HandsLast night, comedian and cupcake maker Amy Sedaris hosted a party for Ikea Home and told New York all about her own domestic life. “I have Pergo floors you can only get at Ikea,” she explained, adding that she didn’t install them herself. “My friend Todd Oldham, who is a designer, put them in. I laid on the couch and smoked pot and was like, ‘That one looks crooked.’” Likewise, she admits, when she got a Weber Grill, she made her brother (humorist David Sedaris) put it together for her. “He put the wheels on backward and literally had a pile of leftover screws. I said, ‘What is that?’ and he said, ‘Well, that’s, you know, the leftover screws they give you,’” the Strangers With Candy star said. “It literally didn’t even roll around.” On household pests, Sedaris is a true expert. “There’s never just a mouse. You have to find the hole! I’m telling you! I had a cheese-ball business in my apartment, and I had a huge mouse problem,” she says. “I have cockroaches too! I kill those with my hand.” No doubt everyone who buys Sedaris’s famous homemade cupcakes will be delighted to hear it. —Jocelyn Guest
the morning line
39 More at Ground Zero
• The most recent search for human remains at Ground Zero has yielded 39 more bones — as well as computer parts and other World Trade Center debris. Most were hidden under a service road that was hastily constructed in 2002 after the original cleanup. [amNY]
• Two girls were stabbed — one in the back — in the course of a teenage rumble at Landmark High School, a block away from Carnegie Hall. According to the police, the girls, with their boyfriends, were settling a beef. Both are in stable condition; the stabbers remain at large. [NYP]
• Add this to the bizarre scrapbook of factoids from the Freak Winter of 2007: Dolphins have been splashing around in Sag Harbor. It has happened before — but, you know, in the summer. [Newsday]
• Two people — a moving contractor and his mother-in-law — are under arrest for stealing two Picassos from a late collector’s house they were hired to clean out. Ironically, the collector in question was the infamous William Kingsland, most of whose art was “hot” in the first place. [NYT]
• And a theft at once far more and far less impressive: someone swiped 500,000 pounds of concrete and brick from the future Ikea site in Red Hook. The stuff is valued at about $2,000. Cheap and hard to assemble — it’s like we have an Ikea already. [NYDN]
