Sheara Wilensky . com

At one point or another, everyone who lives in Manhattan has to deal with the extreme frustration of finding an apartment. Especially for 20-somethings on a budget looking for shares. For those of you who are not aware, it is virtually impossible to find a deal and avoid paying a broker fee. Let me explain briefly how it works:

The system in Manhattan is like no other anywhere in the country. Anywhere else, a rental agent is hired to save you the time and leg work, and you pay them a fee for their hard-work and service. In the City, however, a rental agent gets a fee for having a listing, in most cases 15% of the annual rent. You can spend hours every day for weeks looking for a place, you find a broker with access to a good apartment, and voila, you owe him thousands of dollars. I don’t know how the system came to be in the first place; it’s really screwed up. Now, in some cases, you can find a “no fee” apartment, where landlords and managers boast that there are no broker fees involved. But - the rent is typically listed at several hundred dollars a month more than the unit itself is worth. It’s like the landlord is doing us a favor by not charging a fee! I have even seen cases where one apartment is rented with at least 3 different real estate brokers, all for different rental amounts and different broker fees - listed for whichever sucker is willing to pay the most.

There is good logic behind the system: landlords in Manhattan typically own hundreds or thousands of units, and with the high-turnover in the City, they simply do not have the capability to run credit checks, collect paperwork, and qualify applicants all day long. So, they list the unit with the broker, and the agents do the rest. Simple as that. But over the past decade or so the rental vacancy rate in Manhattan has become so low (under 1%) that the brokerage system has become corrupt. I know Bloomberg is busy dealing with Wall Street and all, but maybe we’d all be better off and less bitter if the rental system is Manhattan was more efficient. Sure, agents need to make a living too, but let them work for it like everyone else and not just get paid for hanging their license. And I’m not blaming the agents – I’m blaming the system.

I am helping my sister find an apartment on the Upper West Side. Her budget for a 2-bedroom share is $2,800, no fee. This might sound like a lot of money for a two bedroom, but believe me this is nothing. For $2,800 she will probably not even get a dishwasher and laundry.  And for this price, no fee, we are looking at apartments the size of closets that are worth maybe $2,200 per month. Maybe. There is a building on the Upper West Side in a great location, with 10 rental units available. Ten! They are listing the 2-bedrooms at $3,500 no fee.  The units have a few appliances against the wall as the kitchen (no dishwasher!), and maybe 600 square feet of living space to share between 2 people. The nerve.

This past week I saw another 2-bedroom for $2,750, listed by the current tenants who need to break their lease. The ad mentioned a small possible third bedroom. The apartment was small but cute, maybe 650 square feet, and the “third bedroom” was nothing more than a walk-in closet or storage area. The current tenant informed me that there was an error in the listing, and the rent is actually $3,100 per month and not $2,750. And, it was just submitted to a broker. So, a 650 square foot apartment, that 3 people are supposed to live in, and each pay over $1,000 a month in rent, and pay a broker fee.

Now, a lot of rental agents are advertising apartments on Craigslist that they themselves have not even seen! This is something else that infuriates me; yesterday when I contacted an agent about a listing, he told me about this $3,100 small 3-bedroom that I mentioned above, and when I told him I had seen it and it was a closet, his answer was “Yeah, I figured”. So, we are living in a city where the brokers themselves don’t even believe in their product. And it doesn’t matter! Someone out there who doesn’t know better will end up paying.

One more scenario I will quickly mention. I saw a 2-bedroom listing for $2,800 in the West 80’s advertised in the “no fee” section of Craigslist. Sure enough, when I contacted the agent, she a) said she had not seen the apartment but heard it was big; b) said their was in fact a one-month fee and c) said the unit requires a first and last month’s security deposit. So, to get this straight, I need to be prepared with $8,400 up front, to deal with someone who has not even seen the apartment? Incredible.

My advice is that if you plan on staying in your new apartment for a few years, it is worthwhile to pay the broker fee, because you save money in the long run. But - who plans anything in New York City? At this point, how do you even know if you are still going to have a job next year? If you end up paying a fee and move out in a year, well, you just got screwed out of several thousand dollars.

So what’s the solution? There really is no solution. You need to be patient and keep your options open as far as neighborhoods and building types. If you have a budget of $2600-$3000 for a 2-bedroom, you are better off in a converted-two in a doorman building, because the layouts of those units lend themselves to convert well. I have lived in a doorman building and a walk-up building, and it’s all the same to me.

And be very cognizant of “no-fee” listings; most likely the rents are a lot more than the unit is worth ($3,700 a month for shitty 2-bedrooms with one bathroom in a walk-up), or the agent pulls the old bait-n-switch.

Some sites to take a look at are NY Bits and Urban Sherpa which are good New York City guides to landlords and no-fee listings.

Opened just this past Thursday on Rivington between Essex and Norfolk is Neighburrito, a tiny restaurant featuring homemade Mexican food. Menu items include burritos made with chicken, steak, pork or tilapia, and they even feature an “all vegan” burrito made with lime-marinated tofu, soy cheese and soy sour cream. I tried it, it was quite good. I felt healthy eating it, and the flavor was not compromised. It was smothered with a home-made sauce. For a $6.50-$7.50 burrito, they throw in free chips with salsa (your choice of mild, medium and hot), which is a nice little freebie. They also have a make your own burrito menu, quesadillas, salads, and specialty fruit drinks. I actually watched as my burrito was being made behind the counter and the ingredients did in fact look fresh and homemade. Definitely not your typical take-out burrito joint.

Neighburrito stays open until 2am from Tuesday to Saturday nights, which should be popular with the Lower East Side late night bar crowd. It’s a welcome new addition to the hood.

127 Rivington Street (between Essex and Norfolk)
New York, NY 10002
212-260-2277

My friends at Pocket Change have just discovered the most expensive Hamburger in New York at the Wall Street Burger Shoppe, on Water Street in the Financial District. For $175, you too can enjoy this juicy Kobe beef burger, topped with foie gras, black truffles and eatable gold flakes. Just wanted to say thanks to Pocket Change. We don’t know what we’d do if we hadn’t found out about the delectable piece of meat.

Check out some coverage at the Daily News and The Street.

In celebration of Israel’s 60th birthday, a fabulous display of celebrities, politicians and musicians entertained a sold-out audience last night at Radio City Music Hall in Rockefeller Center.

The night began with speeches from various political figures, including Israeli ambassadors and consuls, Governor David Paterson and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. We even heard video messages from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and President George Bush, which was actually pretty cool. Natalie Portman then came on stage, as she was introduced as the host of the evening…what a cutie! Never heard her speak Hebrew before.

Rami Kleinstein and his orchestra opened the musical portion of the show, followed by a beat-boxing Matisyahu, who sang his hits “I Will Be Light” and “Jerusalem”. Matisyahu was surprisingly mellow, he usually jumps around like a Chasid and I expected him to be more crazy in celebration of Yom Ha’atzmaut. He became a bit more lively upon joining Idan Raichel for a duet. Idan Raichel gave a great performance, as usual. When David Broza came on (I love him - amazing guitarist) he made the right choice performing his two most well-known songs, “Banu Lechan Mitachat LaShamayim” and “Yihieh Tov”.

David Broza was followed by Paul Shaffer of David Letterman fame, who came on together with Richard Belzer, aka “Munch” from Law and Order SVU. They did some sort of odd Yiddish musical shtick, not quite sure what that was…it was strange humor which maybe we could have done without, but hey, more Jewish celebs showing their support of Israel we’ll take.

The highlight of the evening for me was Yael Naim. You probably know her song “New Soul” from the MacBook Air commercial. She has a stunning voice and can really perform! Yael sat down at the piano, and gave a rendition of Britney Spears’ Toxic. It was awesome, a slow, sensual version of the song. I guess she was making fun of Britney (?) but her version was pretty excellent. Very unexpected from a poor-English speaking Israeli Frenchwoman. Hopefully someone was able to record that performance. I did however catch the second half of “New Soul”, check it out.

If you have ever been to Le Souk at Avenue B and 4th in the East Village, you have undoubtedly experienced the same thing I have: lines that don’t move, ridiculous waits, and horrible, horrible service. And yet, Friday night after Friday night, Saturday night after Saturday night, the restaurant/lounge continues to draw such large crowds to the point where it takes 20 minutes to get from one end of the bar to the bathroom. I myself have gone a few times despite all of this. But the last time I went was about 3 years ago, and I have stopped going ever since. Here’s what happened:

A couple of friends from Chicago are visiting New York City, and I think it would be fun to have dinner and smoke Hookah at Le Souk on Saturday night. I make a reservation at 10 PM for dinner for five. We get there, the place is so packed that we can hardly get through the front door. After several attempts at locating the hostess and a long wait - apparently reservations mean nothing here - we finally get seated for dinner at close to midnight! We are starving. We order drinks and Hookah, and place a food order as well. Close to 1AM, we have our drinks and Hookah but still no food. We are making the best of the wait time, a belly dancer comes out which is entertaining. But still no food after several polite inquiries from the waitress.

We are fed up and decide to leave money on the table for the drinks and Hookah and get up to leave. As we are leaving, of course the food comes out. We tell the waitress we don’t want it, we have been waiting an hour and it’s one o’clock in the morning and we can’t eat the heavy Middle Eastern dishes.

Now the manager comes out. We are so upset and frustrated, and I feel terrible for having chosen the place. My friends from Chicago don’t deserve this kind of treatment. My friend who is with me just graduated from law school and chooses this particular night to show off what he learned. He is arguing with the manager and the waitress, explains how we had a 10PM reservation and we are now receiving food at 1AM. One of the bouncers/security is grabbing my lawyer friend by the arm and won’t let him go! The manager brings our party to the alley behind the restaurant - holding us against our will - and tells us the owner will come meet us shortly. They simply won’t let us go.

The owner comes out and he is DRUNK. Drink in hand, slurring, can barely stand still. Anyway, more arguing occurs. Finally, we settle the bill for the drinks we ordered and we leave.

What an awful, horrible night out.

Now, I am no stranger to the Manhattan restaurant and nightlife scene. The service industry in New York City pales in comparison with other cities, because well, if you don’t go back, it doesn’t matter! There are hordes of people who will! The shitty service at Le Souk, well, maybe they were understaffed that night and they were too crowded. That’s forgivable. But a drunken management? Holding us against our will? That’s just unacceptable.

I wish I could say that Le Souk is closing because people stopped going. That’s not the case though. They simply lost their liquor license. Check out this post from NY Mag about the closing of the restaurant. Another Manhattan establishment bites the dust. Good riddance.

So today is the last day of the Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo which has been going on since Monday at the New York Hilton. I’m not there today, because, well, I stayed out too late last night and have work to catch up on from this week. But — Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were awesome!

I was live blogging five of the sessions for my new friend Barry Schwartz of SE Roundtable - so check out the site to read my transcripts. I especially liked the Orion Panel on Tuesday because it was a lot of fun watching John Batelle bash Jack Menzel from Google (the attacks were meant for Google, not Jack). John “suggested” that Google is manipulating algorithms so You Tube and Google Finance appear in the number one spots for video and stock searches (remember when Yahoo Finance used to be number one?). That Google has turned into a media company and is shying away from their original focus which was purely on search. That Google is “capturing a second click” according to John, monetizing still after the search result is clicked. Jack defended Google by saying that they are just trying to give the most relevant stuff, if that happens to be You Tube, it will be up there, and there is nothing biasing the algorithms.

Anyway, it was a highly entertaining panel. What are all your thoughts on this?

Another session I enjoyed was called Search Engine Friendly Design. A lot of back-to-the-basic stuff for SEOs, like alt tagging and breadcrumb navigation structures. But it served as a good reminder of best practices that we sometimes tend to forget, and the panelists all held the attention of the audience.

Last night was fun! We went to the SearchBash party at Spotlight in Times Square. It was my first time at Spotlight, though I had been wanting to go since they opened last year. A karaoke bar that provides backup singers! Brilliant. The naked singing cowboy was there! My brother Avi Wilensky of Promediacorp and a few others were great singing Violent Femme’s Blister in the Sun. Equal shout outs to the woman singing Like a Virgin, and the guy singing Journey at the end. Anyone know who they were? They were fabulous. Thanks to the sponsors of the party, Webmaster Radio, Bruce Clay, Cranberry, ABC Search, Lyris and PR Web.

You can check out more SES coverage on some other blogs:

• Top Rank Blog
• Greywolf’s SEO Blog
• Just Searching

To those of you responsible ones who made it today to the sessions, enjoy. Great week, and we’ll see everyone at the next conference.

The Search Engine Strategies conference and expo will be hosted in New York City this week, from March 17th to March 20th, at the Hilton New York. SES will feature presentations and discussions on all aspects of search engine optimization and search marketing. This year’s workshops will be covering the typical topics such as Link Building Campaigns and Social Media Marketing. But look out for the interesting new workshops, such as “How to Build Investment Interest in Your SEO/SEM” and “Igniting Viral Campaigns”.

Speakers include John Batelle, Founder of Federated Media, Andrew Tompkins of Yahoo! Search, Gordon McLeod of the WSJ Digital Network, and several others.

The expo hall on Tuesday and Wednesday is free if you register online. It’s great for networking and for scoring great schwag.

I’ll be busy live blogging the sessions so look for me and say hi!

And of course, don’t forget about all the great after-parties, such as the IMNY/Best of the Web Charity Party which will be taking place at Black Finn on Tuesday night, March 18th. All proceeds from the event will be donated to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

The Studio School is a private elementary school that has been relocated to two adjoining brownstones on West 95^th Street. The school began construction on these sites in 2005 when the pre-existing buildings had been demolished and major excavation ensued.

We are now in March 2008 and I am still privy to the lovely noises of construction outside my bedroom window.

For the past 2 and a half years that I have been living in my apartment, I have been graciously woken up before 7AM, Monday through Saturday, from drilling, sawing, workers yelling, Hispanic music blaring from radios. And incessant banging.

This morning it was a strange wooshing sound - torching! - that sounded as if an airplane was taking off in my backyard. And as I write this blog post, the wooshing has evolved into more drilling.

There have been neighborhood complaints over the years, even building petitions, but to no avail. The school opened to students this past fall, and work is still being done outside! Three years to construct a building the size of a brownstone? It’s really incomprehensible. The work over the past few months has been to the terrace where apparently the students are to have recess.

Anyone out there like to express their shared pain? Does anyone out there know if this is ever going to end???

Now I hear torching AND drilling.

Bye-bye metal trees. Roxy Paine’s three stainless steel sculptures were taken down today after nearly 11 months on display at Madison Square Park.

The two 40-foot metal trees - Conjoined and Defunct - and a 7-foot high metal boulder - Erratic - have been up since last May as part of the Park’s ongoing modern art displays. They were supposed to have been taken down in December. I guess the public responded well to the display, or the Park department got lazy to take them down. I’m interested in seeing what crazy sculptures will be featured next.

New Yorker Roxy Paine is an internationally recognized conceptual artist who’s sculptures are on display in public parks across the nation. For more information on the three sculptures check out the Madison Square Park website.

Blind Melon gave the second performance of their 5-month nationwide tour last night, March 1, 2008, at the sold out Hiro Ballroom at the Maritime Hotel in Chelsea. Shannon Hoon’s replacement, lead vocalist Travis Warren, surprisingly rocked the audience. I was unsure how they would perform with the new lead, given Shannon’s unique and easily distinguishable voice, but they did a great job. The sounds were familiar, the hits were all there. Many songs were dedicated to Shannon, such as “Change” Shannon’s favorite (and mine). The playlist included Soup, Galaxie, Toes Across the Floor, and of course No Rain. They also played new songs from their new album which will be out on April 22nd. Travis’ mother came out to join the vocals on Cheatem Street.

The sound quality was fantastic and the venue was small and intimate, only 250-300 tickets were sold. A lot of true fans were in the house. I was able to get pretty close to the stage. Check out a clip of No Rain.