Was chatting with one of my old NYC neighbors from Elizabeth St. the other day. Her building which was across the street from mine got turned into a low income co-op about 12 years ago. The city ended up relocated all the tenants so they could completely renovate the building. She is just moving back in this week after waiting for 8 years! She said it will be strange being back in the hood with a bunch of strangers on the block. The old street is totally gentrified now with hipster tenants and expensive shops in almost every store front. The building right next door to mine was owned by a nice old Hawaiian artist named
Robert Kobayashi. It still has the original sign out front from when it was a butcher shop. His store front was a gallery of sorts for his paintings and sculpture. He was always good for chats about when he first moved to the neighborhood when it was a drug infested wreck - and he loved talking about my crazy landlord that ended up going to jail while I lived there. Did a little digging online and found out Kobi (as he was known) died last December. His wife still owns that building and is sitting on a gold mine. Kobi bought the building in 1977 for $35,000 and it is worth well over a million now. My crazy landlord bought his building for $45,000 around the same time. It sold in 2004 near the height of the housing bubble for $1.8 million. 92,101,78,0,C
8 comments:
Wow! A million ain't what it used to be.
That's a lifetime away from where you live now. Reminds me of talking about or visiting some of the cities where I lived up north. I see he has a typical Japanese flower arrangement in the window with the basic sein, soy, hikai arrangement.
Shin, soe, and tai. Sorry. Shin, Soe, and Tai are the three basic flowere in a Japanese flower arrangement (the longest flower, the 2nd longest and 3/4 the length of the longest, and the shortest in length of 1/4 length. The rest is filled in and built around the 3 basic flowers (shin, soe, tai). Really who cares. This is one of the things a Japanese girl is supposed to know before marriage.
The arrangement I am talking about is the modernistic wood arrangement in the left of the window. The 3 flowers are on the board in the front of the base. The shin is the flower to the right, the soe is in the middle, and the tai is the small flower on the left. The rest are the fillers to make the artistic design to be admired.
Oh, why, why am I not married. I know how to do this, I could have a dowry, and I can serve green in a tea ceremony. Then I could qualify to be married. 😸
No, I think the flower in the middle is the shin, and the one on the right is the soe, and left is tai.
Oh, did I miss the point of financial dealings and nostalgia. Sorry.
Interesting story. Beautiful store front. I wonder what will become of it?
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