Tuesday, January 26

Tim

Tim and I meet at a diner on Clark Street in Brooklyn and head north, crossing the Brooklyn Bridge then Canal Street and China Town before settling for lunch in the Lower East Side. The weather torrential and I am soon soaked - my umbrella useless in the wind and my down jacket worse. We observe Stuyvesant Town - one of the most successful post-war private housing communities in America - which was bought by Tishman Speyer for $5.4 billion in 2007 - at market's peak. A tenant-sponsor offer was rejected BTW. The dough boys bet on the fly boys leaving, by will or by force, taking their "rent control" with them. Everybody sued and today, by coincidence, Tishman gave up the ghost by handing Stuyvesant to the creditors and avoiding bankruptcy.


Tim and I met in London via Sonnet's cousin Bru whose father shared a partnership with Tim's dad in upstate New York. Today, Tim and his family live in Brooklyn surrounded by writers and thinkers - he tells me Brooklyn compared to Berkeley in the '60s and I believe him. A special place and the fourth largest city in America if separated from New York. We last saw Tim raising $40 million for an airport security company and today he looks into renewable energy opportunities on the west-coast. I can see him in the East Bay no problemo.

Katie has a day full of meetings and we talk a couple times on the phone. She is now downstairs stretching, after a night-jog in Central Park, and watching TV.