"In the mid-1980s, Mr. Wheeler helped oversee the construction of 40 luxury condominiums overlooking Charlotte’s 1.5-mile oval track — a first for a NASCAR track."

"While the idea was widely mocked, these aeries for gearheads sold out in seven months, according to a 1995 article in The New York Times, despite the fact that 'cars with 700-horsepower engines running at nearly 200 miles per hour produce a sound somewhere between a roar and a howl, sometimes until 11 o’clock at night.'"

From "Humpy Wheeler, NASCAR’s Greatest Showman, Dies at 86/With fire-breathing robots and death-defying school-bus stunts, he brought spectacle to stock-car racing as the sport boomed in the 1970s and beyond" (NYT).

"It’s a weird, decades-long fixation for a president who wanted a White House ballroom years before he became president..."

"... although he hosted just two state dinners during his first term. But majestic spaces are where the political and social elite — kings, aristocrats, tycoons — have traditionally asserted and cemented their power. 'It was a place where these structures of society were reiterated and brought into being, ... a kind of social, political, dynastic space of performance,' said Robert Wellington, author of the forthcoming book 'Versailles Mirrored: The Power of Luxury from Louis XIV to Donald Trump.' The modern ballroom — the one most of the American bourgeoisie have come into contact with — is a staid, multimodal, commercial space: a cavernous hotel room with collapsible wall panels in aggressively beige tones, a perfectly adequate place for hosting weddings, charity dinners and professional conferences. Ask anyone to describe a 'ballroom,' though, and most will conjure something from HBO’s 'The Gilded Age'...."

From "Trump loves a swanky ballroom. So did the Gilded Age elite. The president’s vision for a palatial addition to 'the People’s House' showcases the historical ties between architecture and power" (WaPo).

That's a free-access link, because there's much more about the history of ballrooms, with plenty of interesting photographs, interspersed with the anti-Trumpism you've got to expect.

But it could be way more anti-Trump than it is. I know when I hear the theme "architecture and power," I think of the Nazis, but there's no mention of Nazi architecture in this article. Why not? The easiest answer is that Trump's aesthetic is not like the Nazis'. It's gold leaf and chandeliers. French. The Nazis wanted "an impression of simplicity, uniformity, monumentality, solidity and eternity." Ironically, it's the absence of that sort of thing in Trump's ballroom that seems to be bothering The Washington Post. 

Of course, Mamdani takes advantage of the existing law, living in rent-stabilized apartment, paying a mere $2,300 a month for a 1-bedroom in Queens.

But Andrew Cuomo is challenging him. "[M]ove out immediately," he wrote on X. "[G]ive your affordable housing back to an unhoused family who need it. Leaders must show moral clarity. Time to move out."

Where is Cuomo, in his "moral clarity," living these days? And would he be forefronting this issue if he had scored the nomination, as he'd expected? I think it's only because Mamdani got the nomination that Cuomo talking about rent-stabilization, which is a problem, but not one that could be solved by trying to guilt-trip the beneficiaries of it to move out of their apartments.

This reminds me of the time Hillary Clinton tried to shame Donald Trump out of using the tax advantages that are written into the law:

Trump talks about the "land swapping" that he says will take place in ending the war in Ukraine.

 

From the transcript of his press briefing yesterday, Trump talks about the "land swapping" that he says will take place in ending the war in Ukraine:

We're going to change the lines, the battle lines. Russia's occupied a big portion of Ukraine. They've occupied some very prime territory. We're going to try and get some of that territory back for Ukraine. But they've taken some very prime territory. They've taken largely, in real estate we call it oceanfront property.

The most powerful man in the world — attempting to manage what he's just called "by far the worst that's happened since World War II" — seems comfortable reverting to real-estate mogul mode.

That's always the most valuable property. If you're on a lake, a river or an ocean, it's always the best property. Well, Ukraine, a lot of people don't know that Ukraine was largely a thousand miles of ocean. That's gone, other than one small area, Odessa, it's a small area. There's just a little bit of water left. So I'm going to go and see the parameters. Now, I may leave and say good luck, and that'll be the end. I may say this is not going to be settled. I mean, there are those that believe that Putin wanted all of Ukraine. I happen to be one of them, by the way. I think if it weren't for me, he would not be even talking to anybody else right now. But I'm going to meet with him. We're going to see what the parameters are, and then I'm going to call up President Zelensky and the European leaders.

ADDED: The very next headline I read was: "For Trump, Cities Like Washington Are Real Estate in Need of Fixing Up/'It’s a natural instinct as a real estate person,' he said in announcing his federal takeover of the capital’s police, despite falling crime" (NYT).

"You convince him to come marry you, move here and have babies. This is where your future should be, if you like him enough for that."

Said Leslie Aberlin, owner of a development called Aberlin Springs, to a "prospective resident, the girlfriend of a local banker."

Aberlin is quoted in "This Ohio Farm Community Is a Mecca for the ‘MAHA Mom’/In a neighborhood that appeals to people from both the right and the left, residents strive for a finely tuned state of political harmony" (NYT)(gift link).

Ms. Aberlin loves that so many “traditional wives,” as she calls stay-at-home moms, are raising their children in her community. While she brought up her two kids as a single mother, divorcing her ex-husband soon after her second baby was born, she calls herself a “boss woman by accident.” She believes women have been “sold a bag of goods” about the importance of a career, and are usually more fulfilled when they focus on their kids full time.

1. What's wrong with buying a bag of goods?  She means sold a bill of goods. With a bag of goods, you've got the goods. They're in the bag. A bill of goods is a document that merely lists the goods. You just bought the piece of paper. 

2. The real estate is real, but what about the mystique of the MAHA Mom? Buying a personal residence always comes with something intangible, the life you imagine for yourself in that house."

3. It's not a house, it's a home — Bob Dylan quote.

4. The home is never in the bag.

"The stereotype is of young men perpetually playing video games in their parents’ basements, too depressed and shut in to ask women out."

"But such exaggeration shouldn’t eclipse the broader and more subtle reality. You don’t have to be an incel to believe that the 'system' is fundamentally broken and rigged against your success... specifically homeownership.... This is, of course, a problem for all Americans — men and women alike. But, unpopular as it may be to say in some quarters of my party, the crisis affects one gender with particular potency. Like it or not, American men are still raised to believe that their role is to act as providers and protectors. And when men whose self-worth is tied up in that aspiration realize they’ll never be able to buy a home, they’re bound to feel shame and anger.... It’s not just a matter of Democrats finding our own Joe Rogan, or making better use of TikTok, or using more 'authentic' language.... [I]f Democrats want to save our democracy... we should treat first-time home buyers as their own class.... [W]e should reinstitute the Obama administration’s $8,000 homebuyer’s tax credit, triple it to reflect present market conditions and index the benefit to inflation.... [T]he Democratic Party’s success hinges on our ability to enable men, in particular, to realize that hope and ensure their own success."

Writes Rahm Emanuel, in "What’s really depressing America’s young men/The U.S. has two overlapping problems: the housing crisis and despondency in young men" (WaPo)(gift link).

Is this a special appeal to men? Clearly, Democrats want to appeal to men, but this hardly seems to crack the code. Men would feel more manly if they owned a house? Did someone give Rahm Emanuel the assignment to connect the housing shortage issue to the problem known as men?

Let's talk about the home page of The New York Times.

As it looks right now:

1. I had thought the Jeffrey Epstein story was running out of energy, but here it is back on the front page and in the top spot. But it's a real estate story: "A Look Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan Lair." As if we're into his mystique!

2. Sharing the top of the page is "How to Break Free From Your Phone" — a generic self-help topic, not news at all. The pretty blue of the sky in the illustration lines up with the blue sky in Jeffrey Epstein's stairwell. The legs of the phoneless woman in the grass chime with the legs of the stairwell woman. Both women grip something tubular — one, a flower stem and the other, a rope. We are reminded that Jeffrey hanged himself — reminded whether he did it or not. 

3. 2 things to angst over: declining school enrollment and a nuclear reactor on the moon.

4. Something that isn't even vaguely surprising — an old bookshelf contained a particular old book. It might be worth $20,000. Who cares!? This is like the news that somebody won the lottery. The winning ticket is rare, but you know it's in the great mass of tickets, and somebody found it.

5. Suddenly, it's time to talk about your intestines. That seems to scream: slow news day.

6. At last, the name Trump appears. Tariff business. The ongoing story. The photo is of immigrants — caption (outside of my screen shot): "Trump’s New Tactic to Separate Immigrant Families."

7. And then, there's Thomas Friedman, supplying the overarching and very high-level-abstract theme: "The America We Knew Is Rapidly Slipping Away." It begins: "Of all the terrible things Donald Trump has said and done as president, the most dangerous one just happened...."

***

Strangely low-level anxiety wafts up from the usual jumble of well-worn topics.

"And so this judge just now denied him bail — on what ground? This guy's not going to run anywhere. It's absurd."

"[Sean Combs] has one of the nicest houses. I pass it by all the time. It's right near, not far from my little tiny condo in in Miami, Florida. He lives on Star Island. His  property is probably worth 40 or 50 million. I think he has two properties on the most expensive island, one of the most expensive islands in in the world. He's one of the most recognizable people. This decision by this judge was just vindictive. He didn't like the verdict. He thought there should be a conviction. And so, he's going to probably sentence him to a little bit of time in prison. He can't sentence him to a lot of time, but he'll probably sentence him to a little bit of time in prison in excess of the year he's already spent for having had bail denied.... He's going to come up with some pretense...."

Said Alan Dershowitz, on his podcast last night. 

"[Combs] was acquitted of anything involving violence, anything involving racketeering, anything involving, you know, sexual trafficking, all of that. He was acquitted!...  People don't go to jail for transactional sex for voluntary consensual sex based on the hope of getting an advantage. There is no such law.... Adult women should not be treated like children.

"Slowly, he attracted followers, like-minded individuals interested in living sustainably, outside traditional supports, who were captivated by his thrifty ways and homesteading solution..."

"... and by the lovely short videos he posted: of desert cottontails eating off his mother’s Limoges plates; of dung beetles rolling a cow patty like a stone; of bees drinking from a pan of water. Within a few years, nearly a million people had visited his blog — more recently, the number was well over four million — and he had a core group of 1,000 or so regulars who followed his daily struggles and small triumphs...."

I'm reading "John Wells, 64, Who Fled New York for the Solitude of the Desert, Dies/A fashion photographer, he built a do-it-yourself life on 40 lonely acres in West Texas, living like a modern-day Thoreau and telling millions of his experience on a blog" (NYT).

Is it good to see the word "blog" in an obituary? Yes. 

It's also good to see someone memorialized for his frugality: "[H]e sold his house for $600,000 to a family of five, winnowed his possessions down to what he could fit in a rented truck and set off to build a new life. He paid $8,000 in cash for his 40-acre parcel. His property taxes that first year were $86.... He started with a tiny shack, where he could live, and equipped it with a bunk bed, a galley kitchen and a desk...."

"But there was also strong social fabric in his Harlem neighborhood. It wasn’t just Ms. Brown but his downstairs neighbor, Teddy, a retired seaman..."

"... who had moved into the building in 1936, who stridently guarded Mr. Levy’s parking spot while he was at work. 'He was retired and sat in the window. When people tried to park in front of the building, he would scream at them, "No, no, no. That’s Mr. Levy’s place."'"

I'm reading "A Long Life in Harlem, Made Possible by an Affordable Apartment/Owen Levy says the social fabric has remained strong in the often-tumultuous 46 years he has lived in the neighborhood" (NYT).

Times have changed. You can't get a big apartment near Central Park for $300. And anyone who thinks they can enforce a moral right to a public parking spot is going to become a figure of fun on TikTok:

"In what is now the guest bedroom, original lath and plaster smoothed over a rough brick insulation called nogging, had decayed in sections..."

"... and was coated in five layers of paint. Gentle application of a scraper revealed a floral lattice wallpaper, which he left as is, creating a distressed cottage-core atmosphere."

From "A 'Romantic Idealist' Renovates a Derelict House on an Artist’s Budget/A street artist had to depend on patrons to help him buy a 19th century house and had to depend on himself to restore it" (NYT)(free-access link, because it's a great story with great photos).

"This house is healing medicine to me,' he said of the 1897 three-story vernacular just steps from the Hudson River. 'It is my deliverance from the darkest of nights and it’s my phoenix rising.'"

(Gift link working now.)

"At a moment when the creation of art at such a scale feels impossible without a corporate sponsor, when most visual stunts are shallow cries for publicity..."

"... the preservation of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s legacy feels urgent. And a crucial part of their oeuvre is that the inception of their grand, internationally known works happened humbly, in an unglamorous, gritty industrial building.... At first, only Christo was recognized as the artist behind the pieces, but in the mid ’90s, he started sharing equal credit for outdoor works with Jeanne-Claude. She also acted as his publicist and began hosting dinner parties, inviting influential dealers and gallerists. 'She was notorious for being a terrible cook.... They had no money at all, so she would cook flank steak and canned potatoes. That was it.' ... [T]he dealer Ivan Karp described one of the gatherings as 'a disastrous, bleak evening with some of the worst food served in a private home, ever!' Still, some people returned — two frequent dinner guests were Marcel Duchamp and his wife, Teeny.'"

From "Where Christo and Jeanne-Claude Cast Their Spells/The couple’s lives are preserved in a SoHo building where for decades they plotted their monumental projects" (NYT)(free-access link).

Lots of cool pictures of the Christo real estate, so go check them out at that link, but I want to show you this picture of Teeny, by Henri Matisse (who was her father-in-law during her first marriage):

Duchamp was her second husband. He said: "Everything important that I have done can be put into a little suitcase." Christo went colossal, but Duchamp went small. And he was married to a woman named Teeny.

Is there some idea that you should either go very big or very small? What springs to mind is the related idea of hot or cold: "I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth." File that under: Things Jesus Said In Someone Else's Dream.

Looking for quotes that credit the very small and shun the medium-sized:

"Neighbors soon grew frustrated with the constant hubbub at the house. They saw people coming and going carrying gun holsters..."

"... as the security team ballooned along with Mr. Musk’s safety concerns. Though Texas has permissive gun laws, the activity stood out. 'I call that place Fort Knox,' said Mr. Hemmer, a retired real estate agent who lives across the street and is president of the neighborhood homeowners association.... Mr. Hemmer, who has long owned a Tesla, grew so frustrated with his neighbor that he began flying a drone over the house to check for city violations, and he keeps a video camera trained on the property around the clock. Last year, he complained to West Lake Hills officials about Mr. Musk’s fence, the traffic and how he thought the owner was operating a security business from the property. Mr. Musk’s security team also contacted the West Lake Hills Police Department about Mr. Hemmer, according to city records. One security official accused Mr. Hemmer last year of standing naked in the street, according to the records. Mr. Hemmer denied that he was naked and said he was on his property wearing black underwear. On another night, he said, he was walking his dog fully clothed and stopped when he suddenly needed to urinate — which Mr. Musk’s camera captured. 'The cameras got me,' Mr. Hemmer said. 'It’s scary they have guys sitting and watching me pee.'"

I'm reading "Won’t You Be My Neighbor? No Thanks, Elon Musk. Residents of an upscale enclave outside Austin, Texas, learned the hard way what it’s like when a multibillionaire moves into the mansion next door. Some of them have started a ruckus over it" (NYT).

Some screwy details in that story — Texans bothered by holstered guns, flying a spy drone into your neighbor's airspace then complaining that he's got cameras aimed out at the street where you took the liberty to pee, that whole nakedness-or-black-underwear conundrum....

In any case, doesn't Elon have his own city now? I'm reading "Voters Approve Incorporation of SpaceX Hub as Starbase, Texas/A South Texas community, mostly made up of SpaceX employees, voted 212 to 6 in favor of establishing a new city called Starbase" (NYT).

"A bothy is a basic shelter, usually left unlocked and available for anyone to use free of charge."

"It was also a term for basic accommodation, usually for gardeners or other workers on an estate. Bothies are found in remote mountainous areas of Scotland, Northern England, Ulster and Wales. They are particularly common in the Scottish Highlands, but related buildings can be found around the world...."

I'm reading the Wikipedia article "Bothy," after encountering this word, which I don't remember ever seeing before, in the London Times article "Have William and Kate fallen for ‘west coast bothy frenzy’?It’s never been more fashionable to hole up in the Scottish isles like the Waleses, says Victoria Brzezinski."

Ben Pentreath, head of the architectural and interior design studio of the same name, is widely reported to have assisted the Prince and Princess of Wales... has had a connection with the Scottish west coast since he was a teen.... In 2018 Pentreath and his gardener husband, Charlie McCormick, bought a teeny pair of buildings (a Victorian two-roomed cottage and a much earlier stone bothy) on a sea pink-covered estuary in the far west coast of Scotland. “It really does feel a long way away,” Pentreath says. “Bothies really can’t be more than one or two rooms. And I think we all find romance in living in small places — for a while!”

"As Jolie moved through the rooms of her gallery with a cup of tea, she paused to take in the unlikely scene. 'Sometimes I think, what are we doing?'..."

"A clutch of women had found their place beside her, urgently wanting to talk about art and activism. 'And then I think, no, this is everything.'"

From "Angelina Jolie Wants to Pick Up Where Warhol and Basquiat Left Off/The actress is building a community of artists, thinkers and doers of all kinds, in a storied building in downtown Manhattan" (NYT)(free-access link, so you can see the art, the artists, and the artsy spaces).

Jolie listened intently to Neshat, the Iranian visual artist and filmmaker, a striking figure with kohled eyes. “Art doesn’t come from intuition,” Neshat said. “It has to come from the life you have led. It has to relate to the world.”

Meanwhile, Jolie's ex, Brad Pitt, is running into trouble with his real-estate-based humanitarianism: "Brad Pitt Suffers Major Setback In $20M Legal Battle Over Defective Homes For Hurricane Katrina Victims" (Yahoo).

The actor had built homes for these individuals in the wake of the natural disaster, but the homes reportedly developed dangerous mold, leading to the class action they filed.... Pitt had spent $12 million through his Make It Right Project to build these homes, which were designed to be ecologically sustainable....

"All this gray — it’s so dark, it’s so gloomy, so ugly. It’s like seeing creativity and art and the colors of my community disappear right in front of my eyes."

Said Richard Segovia, 71, a longtime resident of the Mission District of San Francisco, quoted in "The house color that tells you when a neighborhood is gentrifying/A Washington Post color analysis of D.C. found shades of gray permeate neighborhoods where the White population has increased and the Black population has decreased" (WaPo)(free-access link).

But what does gray mean?

A white woman who owns a home decor company asserts: "It all comes down to this perception of wealth and luxury, this idea that neutrals indicate status.... Black homeownership in D.C. has been shrinking for years, which means the very culture of these neighborhoods has been changing. When we see house flippers try to take color out of a house, or a neighborhood, they’re making it more palatable to mostly White people."

But what's behind all this gray?

"Wealthy residents of the Hamptons demand perfection"... and live in fear of Trump's deportation agenda.

The NYT drums up sympathy for completely unsympathetic rich people who've been relying on illegal immigration to serve their various needs!

The rich are not the "They" in the headline, "They Help Make the Hamptons the Hamptons, and Now They’re Living in Fear/Latino immigrants care for some of America’s most lavish beachside mansions. Their disappearance would affect the wealthy, too."

Heavens! Affecting the wealthy too. Oh, my!

Maybe the NYT is mocking these people? Nope! The article is well larded with empathy for the migrants who face deportation, but the travails of the rich are presented soberly:

""For his part, Libeskind has no patience with housing advocates’ frequently articulated belief that, in an extreme crisis, developers should churn out affordable homes as quickly as possible..."

"... without worrying too much about design. 'That’s propaganda!' he protests. 'It says that poorer people should live in lower-quality environments: "Don’t waste your time on innovation." But it’s the other way around! I would love all my colleagues to concentrate on this kind of housing because it needs the same kind of passion as an iconic skyscraper.'"

From "Daniel Libeskind Tries His Hand at Affordable Housing/The Atrium, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, is a fine proof-of-concept, but does it scale?" (NY Magazine).

Meanwhile, in North Carolina... how architectually interesting does housing need to be to inspire someone?

Governor Newsom's seesawing shoulders inject horror into the phrase "some ideas around some land use concerns... around speculators coming in."

NO FU*KING WAY.

"I was just talking to Josh Green, the governor down in Hawaii, who had some ideas around some land use concerns he has around speculators coming in, buying up properties.

So we're already working with our legal teams to to move those things forward and we'll… pic.twitter.com/ed1Msb8O0v

— HustleBitch (@HustleBitch_) January 13, 2025

Discussed at X, here.

How do you read that body language (and facial expression)? I'm seeing knowledge that speculators have already outrun him and cannot be stopped. What do you think?

That shoulder action seems to say: Everyone has always found me so cute, so I'll try being extra cute. It's all I've got.

ADDED: If Newsom had controlled his body language, I would have been inclined to think that he was getting ahead of the problem and that talking to the Governor of Hawaii — who dealt with the aftermath of the Maui fires — made a lot of sense.

"Write another version with the focus on the Trump character, fictionalized. He's old, too old for the burdens of the presidency, and weary of the usual politicians, and sad..."

"... to have his last campaign over, and he latches on to the Musk character, who is complicated and highly energetic and realizes he can override the preferences of those who voted for Trump and reenergize and redirect the man into something that will be absolutely brilliant for the country and the world."

I wrote, prompting A.I., in the midst of a conversation that began with a reading of the NYT article "How Elon Musk Has Planted Himself Almost Literally at Trump’s Doorstep/For much of the period since Election Day, the billionaire has been staying at a $2,000-a-night cottage at Mar-a-Lago, giving him easy access to the president-elect."

I'm expending my last free access link of the month — of the year! — on that so you can begin where "we" — A.I. and I — began. My original prompt was: "Does Elon Musk avoid buying a house for himself and if so, why?"