BrickUnderground

A daily tour around the web through the eyes of a NYC vertical dweller:

• Gothamist reports that an air-conditioner fell from a sixth-floor apartment onto the awning of an East Village wine bar, severely lacerating the head of a 67-year-old Vietnam veteran.  “Not that we want anybody to get hit by falling air conditioners, but you'd think—statistically speaking—an a/c unit falling onto Wine Bar on Second Avenue would be more likely to land on someone a bit more scummy yuppie.”  Sociodemographic slurs aside, people, do make sure your window units are installed properly. (Gothamist)
• The senior lenders at mega-complex StuyTown have been granted approval by the appellate division to proceed with their foreclosure sale.

Some lessons are typically learned through experience (the unpleasant kind), and that is especially true of New York City real estate: When you're looking for an apartment, you often don't know what to ask unless you've already endured the thing you should be asking about.

So beyond finding out whether the electricity is included, whether pets are allowed and the probable bed bug status of your future abode, here's a tip sheet to get you started thinking about the not-so-obvious questions:

If there was a Barbarians-at-the-Gate-style suspense drama to be made about a landlease, this would be it. This past June, about 130 Upper East Side co-op owners apparently came within 24 hours of losing all the equity in their apartments and becoming renters in their own building. Their landlord wanted to raise the ground rent from $135,000 a year to $5 million, effectively quadrupling maintenance fees.

When I rented a bedroom in a Morningside Heights apartment a few years ago, I didn’t even notice the funeral home next door.  The cremation and funeral services business looked like any other neighborhood building. (In case you’re wondering, it didn't smell any differently either.)

Congratulations! Your child has just entered Dalton (or Spence, or St. Bernard's), and you have another spawn on the way. Meanwhile, the commute from your Chelsea pad to the UES is not only getting old fast, but it has also rendered your child 'geographically undesirable' to playdates.

This year's extracurricular project: Finding a place to live closer to school.

Weekend Edition! A daily tour around the web through the eyes of a NYC vertical dweller:

• We knew B’burg was hot.  But not this hot.  Jason Sheftell at the New York Daily News writes: “For style, culture, food, music and livability, Williamsburg might be the best neighborhood in the United States, surpassing the East Village, West Village and Silver Lake in Los Angeles as the place to build a young, creative life.”  Maybe it’s time for another visit.  (NYDN)
• There’s a new bed company in town, Savoir Beds, and they’re offering a mattress for the princely sum of $50,000. The New York Times reporter who took it for a test-sleep prefers its $20k downmarket sibling--but fortunately for Savoir, the NYT is not the paper of record in London, where Harrod's sells two a month. "It’s a true luxury product,” a Savoir rep explains. “Priced on two things: labor and what goes into it — more fabric, more horsehair, more springs, more cashmere. It’s something you have to experience.”  We're still waiting for the $10,000 cashmere mattress encasements to keep bed bugs out.  (NYT)

I am a low-key neighbor who believes in the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ motto of NYC-apartment living. I don’t particularly want to get involved in my neighbors’ lives and prefer they stay out of mine. Yet, I can also be a very good neighbor. I’ve climbed tall ladders to change lightbulbs not related to my light fixtures, loaned out my tv so a neighbor could watch American Idol, and let another stay in my apartment when she got locked out, giving her my key and trusting her to lock up when she was done.

But even I wouldn’t move next door to me.  Or rather, next to me and Mini me, my six-year-old, 16-lb dachshund.