#duplex saga

[daffodils-and-edelweiss]

Alright. Soon I will be in a place that will have enough space for an in-ground garden, plus an actual front lawn. I figure if I go slow, I can frog-boil the actual owners of the lawn into accepting me turning the lawn into a pollinator garden, but my first step with both that and the food garden plot has to be figuring out how to get rid of the damn grass

[tnc-n3cl]

Thank you so much! Hmm... I might go with the two bows stuck together since it plays with the Duplex Bow's name. (Although the double arrow sounds cool too...)

As for the fic, It's a saga called, The Realm Walker, and as of right now there's three stories posted to AO3:

The Ballad of Kass: (106,958 words (posted anyway), 14 chapters posted (out of 20+), rated M. Kass flying around Hyrule looking for Link to fulfill his promise to his teacher, his sister Kalia following him to keep him safe, and it's chock full of Rito headcanons)

The Amnesiac Hero's Quest: (103,174 words, 14 chapters, rated T. Link leaving the Great Plateau up until a few days after freeing Vah Ruta, the only story I've finished so far)

Shifting Tides of Fate: (26,416 words (posted anyway), 5 chapters posted (out of 16 or 17), rated M. Picks up after TAHQ, with Mipha and Link setting out for Rito Village, this is the story that has the scene I was talking about, though it's a few chapters out from when I last posted).

TBoK intersects with TAHQ and SToF in several places, so you'll read the same scene, just from a different character's perspective.

Hope this isn't presumptuous of me but I have an archery question and would like to pick your brain if you don't mind.

I was writing a scene in my Breath of the Wild fanfic with Link and Mipha fighting some Yiga Clan guys. Link is watching carefully during the fight trying to figure out how the Duplex Bow fires two arrows at a time. One after another in quick succession at a single point (rather than the spread of arrows Lynel Bows or the Great Eagle Bow fires).

I couldn't come up with a plausible explanation other than the Duplex Bow has two strings, allowing the user to knock two arrows close together and then releasing them one after the other.

What are your thoughts on this?

Presumptuous? To message me about my hyperfixiation interests??

My guy I am kissing you gently on the forehead and handing you a flower.

So - you're totally right that with real world physics, firing two arrows from the same bow at the same exact point immediatly one after the other without re-drawing is unrealistic outside of video game logic. Even if you had two strings on your bow and released one and then the other, the bow tension would only release once you'd released the second and they would fire at the same time.

It is possible to shoot multiple arrows on the same bow, at the same time. Though you'll not only have far less control over where they'll hit, but the more arrows you have, the less force you'll get behind them. So they won't go very far or hit very hard. Typically, Archers don't do this. Though there's records of the more scattergun approach being used in medieval battles, usually arrows being shot into the air to try to just hit as many people as possible quickly.

The Duplex bow in BotW is....hmm. Its an odd shape, for a bow. That 3 shape doesn't reflect the shape of any bow I've ever seen in reality. (Edit: I think it is potentially based on a scythian composite bow)

My theory would be that the design works similarly to a recurve bow, with the limbs bending to provide the force, but for it to really have an impact it would make more sense of the limbs were turned backwards. I'll add a sketch here later to explain that better.

The only solutions I can come up with if we're being creative with this are;

The arrows. If you had a hollow arrow with a second arrow inside that had a wider fletching than caught the wind resistance more, it could fire as one arrow but separate mid-air into two, one flying slightly slower than the other as the wind catches the fletching.

Or it's two bows stuck together. Thing four limbs, rather than two. Perhaps it looks like a single bow until you squint and realise it's two bows designed to look like two halves of a single one. That way the two string method would work, because each string would have different limbs connecting to it.

Oooh I'd be excited to read your fic when it's done! I hope you'll share it!!

[emordnilap-fr]

oohhhhh you'd THINK shit would be fixed by now but it's not and i am so severely in kill mode

[ministar100]

Thoughts about Indie.EXE's concept...

While I was playing the event Network Domination Project, I started to think into the concept of my OC Indie.EXE...

Indie.EXE's first concept was to be an Independent Net Navi like Bass.EXE based in my MegaMan Classic OC Indie. As it's another version of a same character, this Indie'd have some changes...

First, the design should have the essence from the based character and her backstory should be more complex than the original. Those things were I've seen into the differences between Classic Bass and Bass.EXE, so I decided to make Indie follow that way too as her original version is Bass Classic's sister.

However, things started to change when I decided to introduce a "temporal Operator" who won't have a good relationship with her. That girl was who will be the actual Riley Wright.

While I was developing Indie.EXE, I ended to make a story with some "similarities" with Bass.EXE because... Well, he's my favorite character and Indie.EXE is still keeping her original concept as "Roll's Rival" like Bass Classic has with MegaMan Classic.

Indie.EXE had a good life with her creator (Dr. Wright) until something happened which ended with Dr. Wright's life without before the promise she'd have a good team with his daughter Riley Wright. Then, she was in SciLab alone and bored that she decided to explore the Net by herself without say a word. One day, Riley finds and captures her. Everything seemed Riley and Indie.EXE would be a good and powerful team. However, Indie and Riley started to argue a lot themselves and that made Riley had to let go Indie to don't continue this toxic relationship. Since then, Indie decided to go alone through the Net without being partner with any human. She has two reasons: The fear to be forgotten (Dr. Wright's death) and the fear to be trapped in the wrong hands (Riley Wright's bad relationship) - Backstory will be updated coming soon, but it won't have too many changes.

Shippings with her?

At the beginning, I didn't plan Indie.EXE being shipping with a cannon character nor another fan character. The first option was Serenade. However, everything started as a joke and it ended as a joke :'v So, I decided that shipping won't be cannon in her backstory in my headcannon (But if you want, you can ship them... There's a lot of non-cannon shippings on this fandom XD).

The next option (And the worst option I consider because it's common between "fangirls" like me) is Bass.EXE. Before to go to that way, I thought in some things: If I make "this shipping", it'll be a reference of the MegaMan.EXE and Roll.EXE shipping. In the last option, it's a reference that MegaMan (Classic) and Roll (Classic) are sibblings in the Classic Saga, but in Battle Network they aren't. Instead they are a love interest eachother. So, if Bass Classic and Indie Classic are sibblings in Classic Saga, they should have a love interest eachother in the Battle Network Saga. However, I put it more conditions there... Bass.EXE and Indie.EXE won't a couple in the Game Timeline (BN1 - BN6), but they'd be a couple in the "Future" of the Battle Network Saga... In a future made by me!! XD

Some of you know (And I mentioned it), but in my AU RockMan.EXE Duplex, Bass.EXE and Indie.EXE never will be a couple because it's a fanfic which will contain BassXSlur in some moment. Indie.EXE'll appear there too, but she won't be Bass.EXE's couple in that universe made by me...

That means... BassXIndie will be cannon if you want it in your own Headcannon/Alternative Universe/Your own mind!! XD

What kind of character I've made! It looks more complex than I expected...

PD: One thing you should know is... Indie nor Indie.EXE is a variation of my character Mini. She's another character different from me and different from Mini.

[enchufeviral]

5 Casos reales de los Warren que son más terroríficos que los de ‘El Conjuro’

Desde el instante en que comenzó la saga de películas El Conjuro nos han dejado muy en claro que las historias están basadas en hechos reales, con lo que toda vez que las miramos tenemos una sensación de escalofríos por el hecho de que tal vez alguno de esos terribles acontencimientos nos pueda suceder a nosotros o bien a alguien próximo. No obstante, los productores eligieron los casos más fáciles para reproducir en la pantalla grande, por el hecho de que si echas una ojeada a los expedientes de los Warren, vas a saber que existen historias horripilantes. Ahora te dejamos los 5 casos más horribles que los demonólogos estudiaron.

1. La maldición de los Smurl

El caso de la familia Smurl es uno de los más conocidos de los Warren, puesto que a lo largo de más de una década vivieron con un diablo en su casa, mas no fue fácil lidiar con él. El ente maligno era violento, continuamente aventaba al can contra la pared y lo más sorprendente es que abusaba sexual y físicamente de ciertos miembros de la familia. Los Smurl vivían en una vivienda en Wilkes-Barre, mas debido a los estragos que el huracán Agnes dejó a su paso, se vieron obligados a ir a vivir a un duplex que había sido construido en mil ochocientos ochenta y dos. Poquitos meses tras mudarse, apareció una mácula en la alfombra nueva, la TV reventó en llamas y las cañerías se dañaban continuamente con lo que pensaban que eran los “arañazos de un animal”. Los fenómenos siguieron a lo largo de años. A Janet Smurl, la matriarca de la familia, se le apareció una figura negra con forma humana en una habitación y después a Mary, la hija. Cansados de los sucesos, la familia contactó a los Warren en mil novecientos ochenta y seis. Si bien los demonólogos trataron de suprimir al diablo con cantos y rezos, los acontencimientos prosiguieron hasta el momento en que una noche Jack, el padre de familia, fue violado por un súcubo escamoso con semblante de anciana y cuerpo joven, y a Janet le ocurrió algo afín. Los Warren advirtieron que había 4 diablos, mas solo identificaron a dos: una anciana llamada Abigail y un hombre llamado Patrick, que había asesinado a su esposa y su amante. En mil novecientos ochenta y seis, la familia se mudó, mas los diablos los prosiguieron y en mil novecientos ochenta y ocho, la Diócesis aprobó un exorcismo que acabó con los fenómenos.

2. La casa de West Point

A lo largo de los años setenta, el matrimonio viajó a una academia militar en West Point, N. York para atender el caso de un soldado espectro. Diríase que el espíritu torturaba a los cadetes y ocasionaba diferentes estragos en el cuartel. El espíritu que pasó años atormentándolos era el soldado Lawrence Greer, quien pasó de ser militar a un asesino.

3. La posesión de Maurice Theriault

Maurice era un granjero que de un día a otro comenzó a probar cambios extraños en su personalidad, en ocasiones sangraba por los ojos y despertaba con cruces marcadas en su cuerpo. Mas su historia empieza desde el momento en que era pequeño. Maurice vivió una niñez muy dolorosa, puesto que su padre siempre y en toda circunstancia tuvo una actitud tiránica y violenta. Cuando medró y se encargó de la granja de su familia era un hombre muy afable, mas de un instante a otro se volvió desalmado. Él afirmaba que un espíritu maligno lo empujó a la violencia. En mil novecientos ochenta y cinco comenzó a presentar incomprensibles fenómenos, como que brotase sangre de sus ojos, heridas en el semblante y cruces marcadas en el cuerpo. Él y su esposa eran católicos, con lo que decidieron que era instante de llamar al sacerdote Boyer, quien al no comprender la situación, llamó a los Warren. Se le efectuaron 3 exorcismos. El último en presencia de doce testigos y, indudablemente, el peor para Maurice, puesto que daba la sensación de que su cuerpo ardía. Además de esto, en su semblante aparecieron ampollas y sus ojos comenzaron a virar. Perdió el conocimiento y tras unos minutos, cuando volvió en sí, los Warren declararon que el exorcismo había sido un éxito. En verdad, este es uno de los casos que se mienta concisamente en la película La Monja.

4. El hombre lobo de Southend

Otro de los casos en el que debieron trabajar los Warren fue el de Bill Ramsey, quien se ganó el apodo de “El hombre lobo de Southend”. Conforme lo que se cuenta, Bill tenía solo 9 años cuando comenzó a portarse como un lobo salvaje y rompió una de las rejas de su casa. Si bien con el paso del tiempo su “condición” se alivió, un día Ramsey atacó y mordió a un extraño, una enfermera y un agente de policía. Frente a los hechos, fue llevado a una corporación siquiátrica, mas a los médicos les fue imposible determinar qué enfermedad tenía. Cuando los Warren lo conocieron, hicieron un exorcismo y, por último, Bill se sintió liberado y apacible.

5. El terror de Amityville

En el mes de noviembre de mil novecientos setenta y cuatro, un hombre llamado Ronald DeFeo Jr., de veintitres años, mató a sus progenitores, sus 2 hermanos y 2 hermanas en su casa de Amityville. Los asesinatos se dieron cerca de las 3: cero a.m., todos se hallaban dormidos y no mostraban ningún signo de violencia o bien de lucha. Ronald confesó haberles disparado a todos con una escopeta. Conforme narra, unas voces en su cabeza le afirmaron que debía matarlos. Un año después, la familia Lutz, un matrimonio con 3 hijos, se mudó a esa casa. Estaban felices con su nuevo hogar, mas tras unos días comenzaron a padecer una serie de acontencimientos paranormales. El diablo fue identificado como Jodie. Conforme los demonólogos, es un ser diabólico que se manifestó en forma de cerdo, por el hecho de que en el pasado en la casa se sacrificaban animales. En El Conjuro dos se mentó escuetamente el caso, mas si los productores quisiesen, podrían hacer una película de este y no acabarían de contar la historia. Read the full article

[indiebass-exe]

Saito Hikari/ Hub Hikari Soul form... A Fan Concept that will be seen in my fanfic Alternative Universe Rockman.EXE Duplex. It was inspired in the cyber-elfs from Megaman Zero series.

*** Saito Hikari/ Hub Hikari en su forma de alma... Un Fan Concept que será visto en mi fanfic Universo Alterno Rockman.EXE Duplex. Fue inspirado en los cyber-elfs de la saga Megaman Zero.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

(The ongoing fluff! saga of Holland and Kell - now with added Danes. This is fluff. This is fluff personified. This is fluff and banter. Fluff fluff fluff.)

“I can’t believe you didn’t even try to get a costume,” Rhy said, adjusting the crown of grapes and leaves he’d spray-painted gold where it rested on top of his head as they got out of the car. The Uber driver waved at them and then pulled away, and they stood on the sidewalk in front of a small duplex that had a bunch of skeletons and ghosts on sticks stuck into the front lawn.

No other lawn had decorations like that… because it was June.

“I did,  ” Kell said, gesturing down at himself. He wasn’t wearing a flannel, because even if he had a close personal relationship with all eleven he owned, it was still  June,  after all, but the jeans and a pair of beat-up brown boots were the same. The only difference was his T-shirt, which tonight simply read SERIAL KILLER in horror-movie-style writing across the front.

“That is not a fucking costume. That’s a novelty T-shirt.”

“I’m dressed as a serial killer!” Kell said, throwing his hands up in the air. “They look like everyone else!”

“Oh my God, you’re such a douche.” Luc adjusted the headband he was wearing, two shockingly realistic goat-horns sticking up out of his light-brown, wavy hair. The blue stone above his left eyebrow caught the sun and Kell could have murdered him on the spot for A. being an asshole and B. managing to look good dressed up as an actual fucking goat.

“You are seriously the absolute worst, Kell.” Rhy had taken the Danes’ suggestion of ‘mythology’ as a theme for their Halloween party 100% seriously, right down to his carefully draped toga, the rope sandals he’d spent a  month  looking for, and the glass of wine he was currently sloshing around in one hand, a bundle of actual grapes held in the other. “How hard would it have been to just  pick something?  This party is your graduation party, too, you know! I got us an Uber here, I’m getting us an Uber home, have fun!”

“Okay, first off, it’s absolutely not. Secondly, Luc barely even dressed up, why aren’t you mad at him?”

“What the fuck ever, you ass.” Luc cheerfully punched Kell in the arm, who winced and rubbed at the spot. “I’m one of Rhy’s  followers. I’m a… goat person.”

“Pan,” Rhy said airily. “You’re a pan. Dionysus was often followed by pans, because he is the embodiment of fertility-"

"And drunkenness!" Luc sing-songed. "You said the pans are super horny, right? Does this mean I get to hit on everyone tonight?"

"You do that anyway," Kell groaned. "You both do that anyway."

"Yeah, but this time with my god's permission." Luc grabbed Rhy around the shoulders and pulled him close. "Hey, god, do the goat guys get to  sleep with Dionysus?"

"Oh, it's heavily implied," Rhy said sweetly. “Will you call me your god while we do it?”

“I’m going to fucking murder you both,” Kell said, face blazing red. 

“Oh, then you really will be a serial killer!”

“No…” Rhy trailed off. “I think you have to kill like four people at four different times for that, right? I think this would be a crime of passion, or… fratricide. Or something.”

“We should ask the Danes,” Luc said thoughtfully. “They have all those documentaries and books on serial killers, they probably know how to define it. They probably have an FBI agent on fucking speed dial.”

“They’re definitely on somebody’s watch list, and they have those books because they’re in goddamn training,  ” Kell snapped. “I’m surprised no one’s gone missing from their gigs before now. Can we just go in before I remember we’re going to a Halloween party on June 15th?” (Click here to read the rest)

[citymaus]

“At every level of government, our representatives, nearly all of them Democrats, prove inadequate and unresponsive to the challenges at hand. Witness last week’s embarrassment, when California lawmakers used a sketchy parliamentary maneuver to knife Senate Bill 50, an ambitious effort to undo restrictive local zoning rules and increase the supply of housing.

It was another chapter in a dismal saga of NIMBYist urban mismanagement that is crushing American cities. Not-in-my-backyardism is a bipartisan sentiment, but because the largest American cities are populated and run by Democrats — many in states under complete Democratic control — this sort of nakedly exclusionary urban restrictionism is a particular shame of the left.

in march, teachers went on strike for seven days in oakland, calif., arguing that their salaries were not keeping up with the region’s soaring cost of living.

“Where progressives argue for openness and inclusion as a cudgel against President Trump, they abandon it on Nob Hill and in Beverly Hills. This explains the opposition to SB 50, which aimed to address the housing shortage in a very straightforward way: by building more housing. The bill would have erased single-family zoning in populous areas near transit locations. Areas zoned for homes housing a handful of people could have been redeveloped to include duplexes and apartment buildings that housed hundreds.

What Republicans want to do with I.C.E. and border walls, wealthy progressive Democrats are doing with zoning and NIMBYism. Preserving “local character,” maintaining “local control,” keeping housing scarce and inaccessible — the goals of both sides are really the same: to keep people out.

“We’re saying we welcome immigration, we welcome refugees, we welcome outsiders — but you’ve got to have a $2 million entrance fee to live here, otherwise you can use this part of a sidewalk for a tent,” said Brian Hanlon, president of the pro-density group California YIMBY. “That to me is not being very welcoming. It’s not being very neighborly.””

read more: nytimes, 22.05.19. 

[urbangeographies]

THE $238 MILLION PENTHOUSE:  The new “gilded age”

The news media has been abuzz about the recent purchase of the most expensive home in America so far, a $238 penthouse at 220 Central Park South -- an area now called “Billionaires Row.”

Manhattan has seen dizzying prices for luxury high-rises in recent years. In 2012, a Russian oligarch bought a penthouse on Central Park West for $88 million. Then, in 2015, a mysterious buyer purchased a duplex penthouse atop One57 in Midtown for $100,471,452. 

Now hedge-fund financier Kenneth Griffin purchased the penthouse under construction on Central Park South for $238 million. Previously, the site was occupied by a nondescript 20-floor building full of rent-stabilized apartments. That building opened in 1954 and disappeared in 2013.

New York state law gives landlords the right to displace tenants of rent-stabilized apartments to demolish and redevelop a site. Residents received their first eviction notices in 2006. Tenant holdouts from the “Save Our Homes” Association eventually settled for undisclosed amounts.

New York City has a long history of redeveloping property for higher, more profitable uses. But this saga points to the growing crisis of affordable housing in the city as a result of such speculative ventures. 

At present, some 79,000 people are homeless in New York City. The city’s public housing authority struggles to maintain an aging complex of buildings, where repairs often take months or years to be completed. Still, there are hundreds of thousands of people on the waiting list for public housing.

Meanwhile, NYC Mayor de Blasio struggles to promote affordable housing in a city of such extremes of wealth and poverty. Truly, a tale of the new “gilded age.”

Source:  Nikita Stewart and David Gelles, “The $238 Million Penthouse, and the Hedge Fund Billionaire Who May Rarely Live There,” The New York Times (Jan. 24, 2019).

[daffodils-and-edelweiss]

Moving is... Exhausting. (Winding up for my 12th move in the past 6 years now!) Especially with pets. If it were just me that was moving, it'd be fine as long as I had a desk to work from and a bed, but because I know moving again is going to stress out my cat a lot, I feel like I need to get everything set up and ready for her before we can move in.

On one hand, I'm lucky that I have flexibility on when I move out of this apartment and into the duplex that I'll be renting, but I have that option because the duplex isn't really ready for tenants at all and I've got an agreement with the owners that I'll help them fix it up.

I also had a lot of hopes for this new place in terms of what it would allow me to do and unfortunately the closer we get to moving in, the more I start to realise that the biggest change for me is just going to be to increase my bills and my responsibility. Whatever, I guess. Too late now!

[dayangsofieaaa]

Studio Multitude of Sins designed a duplex in Mumbai, created "for the modern Maharaja". The space had to fit the owner who loves color and art.

Situated on the coast in one of Mumbai's wealthy high-rise residential areas, the residence is named King's Landing - after the ruling capital from George R.R. Martin's epic saga "A Song of Ice and Fire" - a city that is constantly in motion and waiting for the unknown.

[wildcat2030]

Google’s Duplex voice assistant drew applause last week at the company’s annual I/O developer conference after CEO Sundar Pichai demonstrated the artificially intelligent technology autonomously booking a hair salon appointment and a restaurant reservation, apparently fooling the people who took the calls. But enthusiasm has since been tempered with unease over the ethics of a computer making phone calls under the guise of being human. Such a mixed reception has become increasingly common for Google, Amazon, Facebook and other tech companies as they push AI’s boundaries in ways that do not always seem to consider consumer privacy or safety concerns.The Duplex saga also highlights the intricacies of human conversation, along with the difficulties of replicating real-time speech in a machine mimicking a natural voice. Google trained the voice assistant by feeding its artificial neural network data from phone conversations—including the audio itself, but also contextual information such as the time of day and purpose of the call. This machine-learning process is similar in some ways to teaching AI to recognize and reproduce images, another ability that has aroused ethical and privacy concerns. Google has made clear, however, that for now Duplex can be trained to have only very specific verbal exchanges with people; it cannot handle general, open-ended conversations. The company also claims it is “experimenting with the right approach” to inform people they are on the phone with Duplex as opposed to a real person.

[davidraudalesuk]

Rich people suffer beautifully in The Undoing, HBO's latest thriller: Review

Why eat the rich when it’s so much more fun to watch them suffer? As the latest entry in HBO’s Lifestyles of the Rich and Miserable genre, The Undoing is a starry saga blending murder, marriage, and luxurious Manhattan townhouses. Though the story feels familiar, the miniseries — written by David E. Kelley and directed by Susanne Bier — delivers enough twists, suspense and sumptuous style to pull the viewer along to the end.

The Fraser family are New York elite: Jonathan (Hugh Grant) is a revered pediatric oncologist; his wife Grace (Nicole Kidman) is a therapist who spends her downtime planning fundraising galas for the fancy private school their son Henry (Noah Jupe) attends. Grace and Jonathan have a healthy sex life and a gorgeous Upper East Side duplex; the idea of family discord is limited to refusing Henry’s repeated requests for a dog. Then one morning, a mother from Henry’s school is found dead, and Jonathan suddenly goes missing for several days. Things only get worse for Grace: She can zero in on her patients’ relationship troubles with a clinician’s calm precision, but does she really know her own husband? (Predictable spoiler: She doesn’t.)

Adapted from the 2014 novel You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz, Undoing (premiering Oct. 25 at 9 p.m.) packs an impressive amount of story into the first two episodes before things start to meander a bit… much like Jonathan and Grace, who continue to take leisurely daytime strolls along the East River promenade, even after he becomes the most famous murder suspect on the planet. This is the type of drama where characters soothe their troubled souls by playing classical piano in their spacious penthouse parlors, and Bier is fond of shooting Grace looking out of or being observed through windows, perhaps to emphasize the dangerous limits of her worldview.

Kidman is typically luminous as Grace, a preternaturally perfect one-percenter brought low; and it’s a treat to watch a grizzled Grant, handsome as ever, play true (not foppishly charming) desperation. Donald Sutherland is impeccably frosty as Franklin, Grace’s absurdly wealthy father and a self-described “c---sucker.” (Sutherland, God love him, savors the word like foie gras melting on his tongue.) Edgar Ramírez is superb and ominous as Detective Mendoza; both he and Lily Rabe, a standout as Grace’s brisk, compassionate lawyer friend, are sadly underused.

But The Undoing is beautiful — the people, the locations, the coats! — and we’re all apt to cut beautiful things a little slack. Through all of the misdirects, the characters’ dumb decisions, the dreamy detours, The Undoing kept me guessing — and, of course, gloating over everyone’s misfortune. Grade: B

[ferrybaker0-blog]

Steven Cohen relists NYC penthouse at a discounted $45 million

Poor Steven A. Cohen. The near-mythic Wall Street tycoon — on whom the Showtime series Billions was loosely based — has lost many a tear over his palatial penthouse in Midtown Manhattan. What’s the problem, you ask? He just can’t get the damn thing sold, that’s what.

The saga begins nearly six years ago, back in April 2013. It was then that Mr. Cohen first hoisted his mansion-in-the-sky (at 9,000-square-feet, it’s actually bigger than most suburban McMansions) onto the market with a scathing $115 million pricetag. The duplex unit, which spans the entire 51st and 52nd floors of the One Beacon Court skyscraper, was fully renovated and customized for Mr. Cohen by the late, great architect Charles Gwathmey.

Back in 2013, the NY trophy apartment was sizzlin’ hot. Penthouses were going like hotcakes, price records being broken all over the city. But unfortunately for our boy Mr. Cohen, his modernist abode languished — unloved, untouched and decidedly unsold.

For y’all who may not know, Mr. Cohen is one of the top 5 richest hedge fund managers in all the world, according to Forbes. In fact, in 2013 alone Mr. Cohen raked in 2.3 billion bucks. That means he earned $6.3 million dollars per day — and nearly $263,000 an hour — for one full year! Feeling poor yet?

Anyway, our point is that a $115 million apartment, pricey as it is, probably shouldn’t be more dear to Mr. Cohen than a regular person’s favorite sweatshirt. But not so! Mr. Cohen apparently cares a lot about his apartment — so much so that he was reportedly “furious“ and “freaking out” about the lack of a buyer. A snitchy snitch snitched to the New York Post that Mr. Cohen blamed his real estate agent — a high-profile lady who does a ton of business out in NYC — for failing to sell the property.

And so began the steep descent. In 2014, the pricetag tumbled to $98 million. Still no buyer. More slippage to $82 million. Nope. Any luck at $79 million? Nada. Press reports alleged the place might be “jinxed”.

During the past six years, Mr. Cohen has changed brokers numerous times. And last month, with his proverbial tail between his legs, he hired a new team of agents to relist the spread with a rather shocking $45 million ask. Yes kids, that’s $70 million less than what he wanted six years ago. Ouch!

The current pricetag also represents barely any profit for the spendy Mr. Cohen, who paid $24 million for the property way back in 2005 and allegedly spent another $18 million (or so) on his custom renovations, for a total outlay of $42 million.

Like most Gwathmey-designed homes, the interiors of this place will likely be an acquired taste to most folks. While definitely austere and not quite homey, the place is blessed with floor-to-ceiling windows and panoramic city views. The entrance foyer leads directly into a 45-foot-long combo dining/living room that will surely blow the proverbial bloomers off the new owner’s guests.

There are a total of 6 bedrooms and 6.5 baths in the apartment, including two staff rooms with private baths. The expansive master suite includes an office (with a wall of windows overlooking the living room below), a sitting room, a mega-sized bedroom, dual walk-in closets/dressing rooms and a dual bathrooms, both done up with huge slabs of marble.

According to current listing materials, the current monthly common charges and taxes total more than $35,000, or $420,000+ per year. That’s a lot of Benjamins, of course, but no more than couch change for a man of Mr. Cohen’s means.

Perhaps the biggest demerit for Mr. Cohen’s sleek spread is that there’s no outdoor space. Zero. And for $45 million, Yolanda would like a wraparound terrace, please.

But then again, how often would you actually use outdoor space at an NYC penthouse 52 stories high, way up there amid the fierce winds and nippin’ frost? Brrrr.

For the past two decades, Mr. Cohen’s primarily residence has been his colossal estate in Greenwich (CT). Old reports say he paid $14.8 million in cash for the property and spent untold millions more to expand the structure. The lavish complex now sports 32,000-square-feet of living space, golf greens, formal gardens, a tennis court and a full-size ice rink. Oh, and somewhere in the Greenwich manse is a $12 million tiger shark encased in formaldehyde, courtesy of Damien Hirst.

Some of Mr. Cohen’s other properties include (but are not limited to):

A $23 million apartment in Manhattan’s West Village

Two side-by-side townhouses, also in West Village, bought for $39 million

An $18 million “cottage” in the Hamptons

A 14,000-square-foot mansion in Delray Beach, Florida — in the swanky Stone Creek Ranch development

And in 2013, Mr. Cohen paid $62.5 million for his second compound in the Hamptons — also (like his first) located on East Hampton’s tony Further Lane. (Mr. Cohen reportedly outbid David Geffen for the 6.5-acre estate.) The property happens to sit right next door to an even larger $147 million spread that — until just recently — held the record for most expensive home ever sold in the USA.

Steven Cohen’s $62.5 million Hamptons estate

The following year (2014), real estate rumors hissed that Mr. Cohen was interested in flipping his giant new Hamptons property because — according to an anonymous attorney familiar with the transaction — East Hampton is just “too Jewish” for Mr. Cohen’s liking.

Keep in mind, y’all, that Mr. Cohen himself — if you couldn’t already tell by his last name — is definitely Jewish. And for the record, his representatives vehemently denied the anonymous attorney’s comments, calling them “false and despicable“. Oh my!

Whatever the case, our Mr. Cohen continues to own the Hamptons complex. And he will continue to encounter large Jewish populations just about anywhere he goes. Including in Beverly Hills, where the residents are 90% Jewish — or so it seems.

And yes, speaking of Beverly Hills, Mr. Cohen does indeed have a seriously swank property out yonder. A few years ago, he paid one of his friends — mega-mansion developer Gala Asher — a fierce $34,500,000 for a spec-crib that’s just a short walk to the legendary Beverly Hills Hotel.

At the time he sealed the deal, back in early 2015, Yolanda heard through the grapevine that Mr. Cohen purchased the Beverly Hills beast because his kids attend USC — and he was sick and tired of staying at five-star hotels while visiting them.

No, seriously. That’s really what we were told. (Must be nice!)

Listing agents: Richard J Steinberg, Alexander Mignogna, Emanuele Fiore and Lauren.Keegan, Douglas Elliman

Source: https://www.yolandaslittleblackbook.com/blog/2019/02/11/steven-cohen-one-beacon-court-penthouse/

[caveartfair]

Inside New York’s Last Remaining Artists’ Housing

When entering Westbeth Artists Housing, a sprawling, converted industrial complex located on the quiet and manicured Bethune Street in New York’s West Village, you’ll have to abandon all preconceived notions of what it means to “make it” as an artist. In the lobby, young students of the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance and the New School for Drama, both housed in the building, zip between shuffling senior citizens sporting brightly dyed hair and artfully disheveled, hipsterish clothes. These bohemian elders are the original residents of Westbeth, a keen, active group of people who have spent a lifetime challenging convention.

When it opened in January 1970, Westbeth became the first and largest federally subsidized artists’ colony in the country. It was born during a moment of exceptionally liberal thinking in the late 1960s, when the National Endowment for the Arts and the J.M. Kaplan Fund tasked a young, up-and-coming architect named Richard Meier—who would go on to win the prestigious Pritzker Prize—with an extraordinary creative reuse project. Meier was asked to transform the massive, abandoned Bell Telephone Laboratories—where major modern technologies like the transistor radio and color TV were invented—into flexible, affordable live-work spaces for artists working in a range of creative disciplines.

Edith Stephen, 98, a dancer, choreographer, and documentary filmmaker, moved into the complex the year that it opened, when she was 50 years old. Her 2010 film Split/Scream, A Saga of Westbeth Artist Housing turned the lens on Westbeth. Photo by Frankie Alduino.

Was the initiative a success? One need only look to the wealth of canonical works created inside Westbeth’s walls, and its roster of now-famous tenants. Merce Cunningham choreographed many of his most innovative modern dances here; video art power couple Nam June Paik and Shigeko Kubota worked side-by-side on their avant-garde projects; and Diane Arbus developed her influential, subversive street photography.

But the vast majority of residents, present and past, are not household names, or even vaguely familiar ones. Superstardom, they potently remind us, is a fate that awaits a disproportionately small number of writers, poets, musicians, actors, dancers, and visual artists. Westbeth makes it clear that it’s valuable to support artists, whether or not they achieve wealth and fame.

The project’s originators intended for artists to take advantage of the low-rent apartments for five years while they jump-started their careers, after which they would move on. But things didn’t happen that way. Today, Westbeth legally qualifies as a Naturally Occurring Retirement Community; the first class of tenants, now in their seventies, eighties, and nineties, composes an estimated 60 percent of its current residents. It was profoundly naïve to assume that artists would give up the comfort and security that Westbeth provided, especially as New York gentrified around them.

“It’s like a hive in here,” Elizabeth Gregory-Gruen said of Westbeth, a theme that recurs in the radiating fire escapes in the building’s interior courtyard. They don’t lead to the ground—in case of fire, residents are meant to crawl to a neighbor’s incombustible, concrete apartment. Photo by Frankie Alduino.

These original occupants have witnessed the West Village transform from a derelict and crime-ridden manufacturing district to a flashy “Hollywood on the Hudson,” the neighborhood’s abandoned warehouses colonized by celebrity pieds-à-terre. Westbeth’s artists have raised families who now have children of their own, and in the course of their long, creative careers, some have achieved critical and commercial acclaim, or nearly did. But many never came close.

Westbeth makes it clear that it’s valuable to support artists, whether or not they achieve wealth and fame.

Westbeth celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2020; in 2011, it was declared a New York City landmark. But in many ways, the inner workings of its hive-like interior remain a mystery. Frankie Alduino, a photographer and West Village local, first came across Westbeth in 2017 while walking to work at Annie Leibovitz’s studio, where he was a producer. It was the beginning of a fruitful project: To date, he has captured over 60 residents in their apartment studios, an ongoing effort to document this unique community.

Intrigued by these portraits, I decided to interview a number of their subjects at their homes, and they offered reflections on Westbeth and their decades working as artists in New York City. What they told me revealed the multiplicity of factors that come to bear on any artist’s prosperity and productivity.

Jack Dowling entered Westbeth in 1970 as an abstract painter, but almost immediately turned to a career in writing. These days, he has plans to finally complete his last painting, which has remained unfinished since the 1960s. Photo by Frankie Alduino.

Edith Stephen’s first Westbeth application was rejected; as a university dance teacher, she made too much money to qualify. She was later admitted while unemployed. Photo by Frankie Alduino.

Meier envisaged his utopian project as an “integrated, self-sufficient community…a total environment in which artists could pursue their work, from conception to performance or display.” He repurposed the 13 utilitarian steel-and-concrete structures that comprised Bell Labs—at one time the biggest industrial research center in America—to include 383 loft spaces ranging from studios to three-bedrooms to duplexes. The facility also has galleries, theatrical spaces, and a limited number of studios for painting, printmaking, ceramics, film, photography, and dance.

Despite all this, “in the beginning,” said writer and painter Jack Dowling, 87, “we called it ‘Art Prison.’” The place was a mess, Dowling explained; the hallways were painted in dark colors and covered in graffiti, a far cry from the clean, well-kept corridors one walks through today.

Architect Richard Meier’s blueprint of the second floor on the coffee table in Westbeth Artists Residents Council president Roger Braimon’s apartment in the complex. Photo by Frankie Alduino.

The scene outside its walls was not much better. “Gritty” was a term many of its residents used to describe it, but that doesn’t quite capture what was playing out. Trans prostitutes populated the sidewalks, and in the mornings, they crossed paths with neighborhood children on their way to school. Crime was so prevalent that women carried police whistles, and the tenants chipped in for a neighborhood watch agency to patrol the streets. To the west, displaced gays found a dangerous and illicit hangout among the crumbling piers that dotted the Hudson. Writer and artist Alison Armstrong, 75, wryly recalls commonly seeing “men from New Jersey having sex in their cars on the street corner” as she went out for groceries in the morning.

While most of Westbeth’s original tenants embody a certain spirit of 1960s bohemianism, all of the people I spoke to found reasons to dislike the area—but the degree to which these blights affected their experience varied dramatically. Bob Gruen, 74, a rock-and-roll photographer who could usually be found at equally gritty East Village haunts like Max’s Kansas City or CBGB in the 1970s, described the neighborhood around Westbeth as “West of Nowhere.” Much to his chagrin, the windows in his first apartment in the building overlooked the broken West Side Highway strewn before what should have been a picturesque view of the river.

Jack Dowling was nearly 40, broke, and essentially homeless when the Department of Cultural Affairs told him about Westbeth in 1970.

The piers and highway have long since been torn down, replaced by the exceptionally maintained Hudson River Park, frequented by residents of the area’s multi-million-dollar apartment buildings. But Gruen’s neighbor, 83-year-old puppeteer and theater artist Ralph Lee, has a different attitude toward what came before the chichi developments along the water: “There were abandoned warehouses open to the weather on the piers. You could go there and poke around and pick up all kinds of great stuff,” he lamented.

Despite the roughness of the neighborhood in the 1970s and ’80s, Westbeth had tremendously valuable offerings for artists facing an unrelenting series of struggles to make their work, even in an era where cheap loft spaces were plentiful and a part-time job could sustain you for months. This was especially true for artists with children. The initial wave into Westbeth came out of SoHo, where young families were being driven out by the surge of uptown money taking over the lofts for commercial use. At Westbeth they found space—families were offered larger apartments—and real bathrooms, as opposed to the makeshift toilets common in SoHo’s manufacturing buildings.

Lee, however, was 35, already living comfortably with his first wife and three children in a sprawling seven-room apartment on the Upper West Side when he heard about Westbeth from some friends at the Open Theater. Although he’d gotten a deal on the rent there, he found that the uptown place wasn’t always conducive to the production of his costumes and props. In the 1960s and ’70s, he was making elaborate masks and giant puppets for various theater companies in New York, as well as crafting props for Shari Lewis (“If Lamb Chop needed a snowsuit for a particular show, I’d make that”) while aligning with the nascent off-off-Broadway scene.

Theater artist Ralph Lee, 83, loves spending time in his studio located in the apartment he moved into with his wife and three children in 1970. He curates a rotating array of his fantastical puppets in an unused guard booth in the Westbeth courtyard. Photo by Frankie Alduino.

Above all, Lee had a desire to be downtown among other artists; he was “just itching for a different lifestyle,” to be more “in it,” he said. His first marriage ended not long after he moved into Westbeth, but Lee has retained the same apartment, a spacious suite inhabited by strange creatures on every surface. A fantastical, life-sized lobster costume created for Sam Shepard’s Back Bog Beast Bait (1974) and a “pig-beast” from Cowboy Mouth (1971), which Shepard co-wrote with Patti Smith, flank his entryway.

How did his kids—then 10, 9, and 4 years old—fare? Without daycare options in the building, residents made informal arrangements with one another. Lee’s son became friendly with the son of jazz musician Gil Evans. The children would hang out in Lee’s studio in the back of his apartment, where he gave them modeling clay to play with. On Saturday afternoons, he’d take all of them to the Elgin Theater (now the Joyce) to see old films. “It was just a great place, and a great place for kids,” he said.

Today, Lee shares the apartment with his second wife, Casey Compton (his children and grandchildren are frequent visitors). For the last 42 years, they’ve co-run the upstate Mettawee River Theater Company. But he became a local legend—and a Westbeth ICON awardee, an honor for senior artist residents who continue working beyond their eighties—when he created the annual Greenwich Village Halloween Parade in 1974. Lee launched the “wandering neighborhood puppet show,” which begins at Westbeth, for his children and their friends. The parade became so popular, both among the residents who pitched in and the neighborhood at large, that in 1976, it became an official nonprofit organization. It still lives on, though Lee gave up directing the parade in 1985.

The work table in Ralph Lee’s home studio is the origin of many of the puppets featured in the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade. The beloved annual event has attracted over 2 million spectators since Lee founded it at Westbeth in 1974. Photo by Frankie Alduino.

While Lee took advantage of the collaborative opportunities at Westbeth, Jack Dowling, who has also lived there since it opened, at first felt like an outsider in the community. Thoughtful and soft-spoken, Dowling is today a figure beloved by the residents; as the longest-serving visual arts director on the Westbeth Artists Residents Council (known as WARC), he’s organized countless exhibitions at the Westbeth Gallery, and he knows just about everyone. In 2017, he was named the first Westbeth ICON.

But Dowling was nearly 40, broke, and essentially homeless when the Department of Cultural Affairs told him about the newly-opened housing project in 1970. This low point followed what had seemed to be an upward career trajectory: For 12 years, Dowling had produced his abstract paintings in an 1,800-square-foot loft on 1st Avenue and East 24th Street, an out-of-the-way location that the artist cherished for its space and quiet. The legendary art dealer Ivan Karp, who worked at Leo Castelli Gallery, was championing his work. Then, suddenly, the city allowed New York University to raze Dowling’s apartment building for student housing. Despite a costly legal battle, he was evicted and forced to put his paintings in storage.

When a slot opened at Westbeth, Dowling moved into a modest, 400-square-foot space the tenants call the “starter apartment,” because “the first thing you do is put your name on the in-house move list to get out of it,” Dowling explained. Enterprising tenants took advantage of the frequent management turnover in those days, remodeling their spaces or ignoring the in-house move list, and grabbing bigger and better apartments or coveted studio spaces as they became available. Dowling has now upgraded to a tidy, gray-painted apartment nearly twice the size of the starter apartment, with a loft space he built to write and store his work. “I just moved into it, and then I went down to the office and said I moved. That would never have happened later,” he told me.

As the longest-serving visual arts director on the Westbeth Artists Residents Council, Jack Dowling, 87, is acutely aware of tenants’ broad spectrum of creativity. “You could come in here and find just about every school of art being produced by somebody,” he said. Photo by Frankie Alduino.

Still, in 1970, Dowling had “lost momentum,” and lost contacts, too. He felt the art world leaning toward Conceptualism and Minimalism. So Dowling put his abstract painting career on hold and took a job at a small publishing company, where he began to play around with writing.

But mostly, he kept to himself. Dowling’s popularity at Westbeth is relatively recent; back then, he told me, he wasn’t much of a “mixer.” He avoided the many parties he later heard had been going on. As a single gay man, he felt more comfortable in nearby Village bars than with the families in his building, who he sensed “were not happy with some of the action that was going on in the neighborhood.” But while Dowling perceived Westbeth residents with families as somewhat prudish, other tenants told a far different story. During my week of interviews, I heard countless tales of intrigue: a tangled web of relationships shaped by rampant cheating or partner-swapping, estrangement, and divorce.

When John Lennon visited his personal photographer’s Westbeth apartment, he said “Man, you’ve got some weird neighbors!”

These knotty relationships have added to Westbeth’s complicated—and not totally fair—system of allotting apartments and workspaces. Sometimes a break-up meant that the artist who was originally granted the apartment was the one who had to move out, leaving behind the partner who was not an artist. There seems to have been some bitterness about how choice units were allocated, too. The largest spaces went to the families with the most children, but dynamics shifted—couples divorced or were widowed, and children grew up, yet “there are a number of single people, some of whom have stopped being productive, who nevertheless have a huge two-bedroom,” Armstrong said.

Decades after he had settled into Westbeth, sculptor Jonathan Bauch, 78, found himself in such a tangled situation. In the 1960s, he was struggling to work on his art while balancing a full-time graphic design job. He spent his free moments demonstrating with the Art Workers Coalition and running a co-op gallery, the Museum Project of Living Artists, with Marcia Tucker. Despite his activities, Bauch wasn’t able to get his foot in the door of a commercial gallery and “wasn’t confident” about the work he was making at the time, so he quickly gave up on marketing it.

For Jonathan Bauch, “Westbeth was a savior. To afford a studio, I would have had to work full-time.” At 78, he has the freedom to work on his steel sculptures five days a week in a studio in the building that he shares with another resident. Photo by Frankie Alduino.

Bauch found refuge at Westbeth. “It was like a dream come true,” he said. “For the same amount of rent I was paying in the East Village, I tripled the space.” (When Westbeth opened in 1970, rents were $100 a month for single residents—a bit more than $650 today, factoring in inflation—and slightly more for families.) He told his girlfriend Barbara, a psychology student, about the housing complex. She immediately commanded him to “call the office and tell them you’re getting married.” Bauch demurred, but she cannily insisted. “Don’t worry about it,” she assured him. “If we don’t get married, we’ll still have a bigger apartment.” They moved in December 1969, a week before the new year, and got married not long after.

Bauch’s art practice resumed “big time,” and he was able to freelance as a graphic designer part-time to make ends meet. He found acceptance for his work at Westbeth’s co-op gallery, where he has exhibited since its second show, and was pleased to find that “everyone was young and full of piss and vinegar.” He was content there until 1990, when his marriage broke up. His lawyers advised him to leave the apartment to his wife—who still lives there today—and his daughter. So he moved to Brooklyn, where he could afford an apartment with an extra bedroom for his daughter to visit.

Bauch was down on his luck; the computer had phased him out of the graphic design field, which wasn’t as lucrative as it used to be, anyway. Instead, he said, “I compromised in order to have more time for art” by driving a taxi four days a week. A year after he moved, Bauch reapplied to Westbeth. He waited for 10 years, and in 2000, something amazing happened: He received a new apartment.

At 92 years old, Gloria Miguel, a Kuna/Rappahannock elder, continues to perform with Spiderwoman Theater. The company, which she founded with her sisters in the mid-1970s, produces plays about women’s and indigenous issues. Photo by Frankie Alduino.

Today, Bauch shares a studio space in the building with another resident, where he has his own torches and plasma cutters. He works on his sculpture there five days per week, and his apartment is practically booby-trapped with spiky, metal configurations on the floor and walls. In 2010, he finally obtained representation, from Carter Burden Gallery. “There was chemistry,” he said. He’s had several solo shows there, which was “very exciting at first. Now it’s comfortable.” Bauch frequently visits his daughter, a choreographer, and her two children, ages five and four. They moved into Westbeth six months ago from Brooklyn after a 15-year wait for an apartment to open up.

Frankly, it’s a miracle that Bauch and his daughter were both able to return to Westbeth after leaving. The competition for these spaces is unduly fierce. Clearly, the artists at Westbeth require more than a short-term housing solution to build their careers, and as the city’s real estate prices soared in the 1980s and ’90s, artists clung to their Westbeth apartments evermore tightly (plus, there were no bylaws the board could use to evict them). Some artists have handed their apartments down to children and grandchildren (though subletting to non-artists has also been known to occur). By 2006, the waitlist was officially closed due to the incredible wait times and high demand, and between 2015 and 2018, only 20 new tenants and their families were admitted.

As a society, we have an urgent, moral obligation to address how artists can live safely and thrive creatively.

Alison Armstrong, who teaches several days a week at the School of Visual Arts, briefly served on the admissions committee for visual arts residents, a harrowing task that included vetting the seriousness of an applicant’s need and artistic aspirations. WARC committees, separated by discipline—from music and performance to visual arts and writing—verify that applicants were indeed artists, a denomination determined by the portion of income derived from the sale of their work. Their rent is determined by income.

“We had a lot of people up in years who were trying to get in,” Armstrong said, “or we had people who had been on the list for 25 years and they weren’t even painting anymore,” and so were no longer eligible. “It was hard for the younger people to get on the list,” she explained, “because they were all blocked by these people who had put themselves on the list years ago and were still waiting.”

As the founder of the percussion ensemble Women of the Calabash, Madeleine Yayodele Nelson performed for eminent world leaders, including Barack Obama, in a quest to popularize music from Africa and the African diaspora. Nelson passed away last September at age 69; she joined Westbeth in 1982. Photo by Frankie Alduino.

Armstrong was a relatively late addition to Westbeth—she moved in when she was almost 40 years old, in 1981—but the unfolding events of her life allowed her to circumvent waitlist purgatory. She was working towards a master of literature degree at Oxford University when her cousin William Anthony, a painter and illustrator who has lived at Westbeth since it opened, suggested she put her name on the list. “I said, ‘I’m never coming back to America,’” Armstrong recalled, so she ignored the request. But her health and a teenage son drew her back to Ohio before she finally moved to New York to study at NYU, camping out with cousin Bill until he found her a sublet at Westbeth.

Soon after, she married an architectural historian who lived down the hall and moved into his small, one-bedroom apartment, even though, as a mother with a child of the opposite sex, she was entitled to a much bigger place. After she left her husband in the late 1980s, Armstrong squatted in her windowless basement studio for two years while he retained his space upstairs. She spent over 30 years on the in-house waitlist, biding her time on the noisy and dirty ground floor before her current one-bedroom apartment on the eighth floor became available while she was serving on the tenants’ council.

As the city’s real estate prices soared in the 1980s and ’90s, artists clung to their Westbeth apartments ever more tightly.

As someone who has spent years living in some of the most inhospitable spaces Westbeth has to offer, Armstrong has carefully considered some of the deficiencies of young Richard Meier’s design. Because he included so few studio spaces in the building, Meier conceived of the apartments as dual live-work spaces. But he didn’t account for the often hazardous realities of artmaking.

If you’re a potter or a painter living next to your cans of turpentine, Armstrong said, “you could die of toxic fumes, which has happened.” The apartments are not equipped with utility sinks, so “we have to wash our equipment where we cook our food.” She also feels that the act of writing is misunderstood by the general Westbeth population: “Some painters say, ‘You’re a writer, you don’t need any space at all,’” she griped. “But you need bookshelves, file cabinets, desks—plural—where you can have a clear mind.” Although she’s published a wide range of books and is now at work on a collection of nonfiction essays, Armstrong’s current setup sometimes makes it difficult to concentrate. ��As you can see, I have things all over the place,” she gestured, her cat Felix stirring on her lap. “I write behind the bookcase.” Still, she admits that she’s been the “happiest living here than any other time in New York City.”

Octogenarian actress-turned-writer Carol Hebald’s extensive book collection bounds her living room, which is also her office. She’s lived at Westbeth since 1991, and has published a memoir, a novella collection, a novel, and four books of poetry. Photo by Frankie Alduino.

Each resident has radically different thoughts about the nature of success, ideas that have shifted as they’ve aged. Bob Gruen, a pioneer of rock photography, is a self-proclaimed “Westbeth legend,” and agrees that he’s “a success story.” That’s a bit of an understatement. In the ’70s, Gruen cut his teeth capturing performances by Bob Dylan, the Clash, Ramones, Sex Pistols, Blondie, Led Zeppelin, the Who, David Bowie, and anyone else who wandered through downtown New York. He also served as John Lennon’s personal photographer while the former Beatle lived around the corner, on Bank Street, with Yoko Ono, and his shot of Lennon wearing a New York City T-shirt has become iconic (one of his portraits of Lennon was recently turned into a commemorative postage stamp). Okay, so Gruen’s a big, important artist—but despite his notoriety, he never made a lot of money from his work, and still relies on the rent-controlled apartment he’s lived in for almost 50 years.

Gruen applied for a Westbeth space in 1967. “There were fewer than 400 apartments, and 1,000 names on the list,” he remembered. He found out he got one on Christmas Eve in 1969 and moved in with his first wife—also an artist—and his son in January 1970, right when the building opened. Even so, there were only four units left, and none of the eight photography studios remained. He took the only one with a window, retrofitting a darkroom in the 800-square-foot apartment, which cost only $125 per month.

Although he lacked space, Gruen’s acceptance to Westbeth offered the up-and-coming artist something far more valuable: “You’re certified by the U.S. government as an artist when you sign the lease,” he explained. That confirmation “gave me the confidence and freedom to be an artist.” But it’s really the circumstances of Westbeth that allowed him to have the career he ultimately built for himself. When he first started out, Gruen paid the bills by taking baby pictures. Moving into Westbeth enabled him to quit his day job and build up his music contacts, which “took about four or five years,” he said, certainly a longer timeframe than Westbeth’s creators would have thought necessary. (He laughed thinking about a recent chance encounter with Richard Meier, who joked, “You were supposed to move out!”)

Rock photographer Bob Gruen’s famous 1974 portrait of John Lennon overlooks an apartment crammed with 50 years’ worth of negatives—an archive his wife, Elizabeth Gregory-Gruen, is painstakingly working to organize. Photo by Frankie Alduino.

The building management was also exceptionally accommodating. They understood that many artists couldn’t rely on a weekly paycheck, and were lenient about rent being late. “The only way to get kicked out of Westbeth is feet first,” Gruen said. The building’s residents also appreciated the unconventionality of an artists’ lifestyle. During the day, Gruen worked in the darkroom he built in his current apartment, which he moved into in 1975 and shares with his second wife, Elizabeth Gregory-Gruen, a fashion designer, artist, and manager of his archives. He went out to the East Village clubs all night. “No one cared,” he said appreciatively. Yet not everyone was accustomed to such a free-spirited place. Gruen remembered the first time Lennon came over for coffee. The rockstar had trouble finding the apartment, which is located down a convoluted maze of corridors, so he went around knocking on everyone’s doors. When he finally got to Gruen, Lennon couldn’t help but say, “Man, you’ve got some weird neighbors.”

Living at Westbeth is “a completely different life from the American standard, which is you get a job, and then you retire, and you play golf or something like that,” Dowling said. Most of the artists I spoke with agreed that being an artist can be taxing. It’s a “feast and famine situation,” Gruen said; a job that requires “sacrifice” in order to “love something enough to lose money,” according to Bauch. Yet every person I spoke with also cited Westbeth as a savior, especially as they age.

Latvian dancer and choreographer Vija Vetra, who will turn 96 on February 6th, stands in her front entry hall, surrounded by her artwork and posters from past performances. Vetra continues to conduct yoga and dance classes from her Westbeth studio. Photo by Frankie Alduino.

Today, the sense of community has never been stronger. These days, Westbeth offers free senior wellness classes like yoga, singing, sound healing, and improvisational acting. In the elevator, posters advertise Westbeth Movie Night and seminars on how to digitize your archives. But the greatest change is among the tenants. “I think people begin to relax a bit as they age,” Dowling opined. “The competitive thing isn’t necessary anymore.” That’s not to say residents are resting on their laurels: “No matter how old they are, everybody in this building is creative right up to the end,” he continued. “People are still working the day before they die.”

What are young artists lured by the dream of the New York art world to do without similar opportunities? While steadfastly managed by a public board of directors, this radical housing initiative remains a unique bastion, promising affordable live-work spaces to artists in perpetuity. But while Westbeth may have started as a leg-up for aspiring artists, in many ways, it now seems to be a life raft for older people in a hyper-gentrifying city. While rents are no longer as bargain-bin as they were in the 1970s, relative to the area, they remain a steal; since 2011, units are not rent-controlled, but rather rent-stabilized, and prices today range from $700 to $4,000 per month.

The failure of the board to enforce the five-year limit on Westbeth residencies has effectively squeezed a new generation out of the same kind of support. The board, however, has plans to reopen the waitlist in the near future, this time with an eye toward diversity—they’re working with organizations like the Harlem Arts Alliance—and a cap on rental periods. (Westbeth, surprisingly, does not track the demographics of its residents, but it’s safe to say that the community is not reflective of New York City’s population.)

“No matter how old they are, everybody in this building is creative right up to the end. People are still working the day before they die.”

In the meantime, it seems foolish to rely on additional solutions from the American government, which generally has never much seen the point in putting dollars behind the arts; in fact, as soon as the Nixon administration assumed office in 1968, the National Endowment of the Arts halted all financial support after the renovation was completed, and Westbeth only continued through the generosity of the Kaplan Fund. Westbeth could easily be a one-off utopian project, considered starry-eyed and impractical, at least in the limited imaginations of our politicians.

As a society, we have an urgent, moral obligation to address how artists can live safely and thrive creatively in cities that have become increasingly hostile to their survival. The deadly 2016 Ghost Ship fire—in which an Oakland warehouse co-opted by artists went up in flames, killing 36 people—was a horrific reminder that when artists can’t find affordable housing, they turn to dangerous solutions. It’s a comforting reminder that Westbeth, with its thick concrete walls, is fireproof. There’s a dedicated staff on call, and a grant-funded social worker who comes in several days a week. In times of disaster, like when elderly tenants were stranded during Hurricane Sandy, residents and staff pulled together to bring them supplies.

Ultimately, Westbeth forces us to consider why it’s so difficult to value the function of artists in society. The work of an artist isn’t always about productivity, and we don’t always see the results of this creative labor. “Imagining is something you do,” Gruen clarified, “not something that happens. It’s the job of the artist to daydream.” This might seem quaint, but Gruen knows that “being successful doesn’t necessarily mean fame or gallery representation. It is simply having the time and space to work.”

from Artsy News

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