Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more.
Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more
27 Linwood Avenue, on the corner of Lockwood, has sold for $3.215 million to a couple from NYC’s 10021 Zip Code area. The sellers paid $2.5 for it in July 2021, so at least one party will be enjoying this sale.
The buyers were represented by an out-of-town agent, curiously enough, although she was not, from all accounts, a descendant of P.T. Barnum.
7 Gilliam Lane, asked $2.395 million and closed today at $2,500, 500. I wrote about it when it first came on, and to reduce my carbon footprint, I’ll just reproduce that post here, rather than use up our precious electrons by coming up with something new.
7 Gilliam Lane, Riverside, asking $2.395 million. This 1931 house has certainly seen some renovations since an English family owned it in the early-mid 60s (the English do so love dark, gloomy homes); various owners have even added air conditioning, central heating, and a pool, so that’s all good. Not a bad price to get onto a street that’s soared in value since the last of the Fountain boys was driven off.
From a historical perspective, this was once the home of an early pioneer in the gender wars, “Mark”, who, when his peers were playing with G.I. Joe dolls and shooting BB guns at each other’s eyes, insisted on bringing his own Honey West doll into the action, and playing with her while dressed in an appropriate costume.
I was a few years older than Mark and made fun of him, but his peers, including the two younger Fountains, accepted him as he was, so good on them.
Still, a weird kid, you ask me.
634 North Street, that bank-owned mausoleum wedged against the shoulder of the Merritt Parkway has finally sold, and for the incredible sum of $4,436,250 — I would have guessed far less. We laughed (and shuddered) at this house when it first hit the market in 2007 for $7.850 million, chuckled when the price was raised to $8.950 that same year, and thoroughly enjoyed a robust, hearty guffaw when it tried for $10.750 million in 2018. So it’s provided a wonderful source of amusement these past 16 years and we’ll all be sorry not to have the old hag to kick around anymore.
1 Knollwood Drive, $3.995 million, has gone from listing to pending, do not stop at ‘‘contingent contract”, in just seven days, which suggests multiple bidders and an above-ask selling price, but we’ll see.
It’s certainly an attractive house: 1929 Tudor on one acre; close to town, and an Impressive improvements list that should put it in immediate move-in condition. Buyers like that.
1 Knollwood Drive, Greenwich, Connecticut
Improvements and Description
• 2022
o Installed new 100-gallon water heater.
o Painted the house exterior.
o Installed new cedar shingle roof (southern exposure ~ 60% of roof)
o Full cedar shingle treatment (northern exposure ~ 40% of roof)
o New brick pathway to front door, kitchen door (heated) and side paths. o Installed new stone wall and replaced external stairs to basement.
o Installed recessed lights in wood paneled library.
• 2018
o Renovated full bath in Bedroom #3
o Renovated full bath in Bedroom #4
o Renovated full bath in Bedroom #5
• 2016
o Installed new Buderus Logano G334 boiler and heating system.
o Major work done on the HVAC system on floors 2 and 3.
• 2013
o Addition - Professional 600 + sq. ft. art studio with museum lighting, Sonos sound
system, full bath, slop sink, radiant heat, and wide plank wood flooring
• 2006
o Raised the ceiling and installed custom woodwork in pub (Kitchens by Deane) with full 4 seat bar counter, ice machine, sink, wine fridge and glass shelving
• 2005
o Complete kitchen renovation with new butler pantry, half bath, breakfast nook, French doors to terrace, large center island with prep sink, and china cabinet (Kitchens by Deane)
o Custom built desk, bookshelves, and drawers in Bedroom #2
o Renovated full bath in Bedroom #2 [Kitchen by Deane]
• 2004
o Renovated blue stone terrace, circular driveway and stone wall.
o Installed complete irrigation system (Summer Rain)
• 2003
o Complete renovation of living room, dining room, great room, 5 bedrooms, main bath [Kitchens by Deane], 3 walk-in closets in main bedroom, in-wall speakers in dining and living rooms,
o Installed small business Panasonic Digital Telephone System with Control Unit, 7 phone sets, 1 cordless and Intercom access on all phone units. [It’s still astonishing to see how quickly the iPhone’s introduction in 2007 made all existing teecommunication setups obsolete — ED]
o Installed Regency Model 2615 Security System combination burglar /fire alarm system with 80 zones, 4 interior pushbutton on / off full control stations, all doors, basement windows, first floor windows and second floor windows connected, 3 motion detectors, 4 photo-electric smoke / heat detectors.
The owners paid $3.275 million for the house in 2002, so with the costs of all of the improvements added, there’s no particular windfall here, but they also had twenty years of enjoyment and use of it, so that seems like a good deal, to me.
barney and fish struggle to find their inner muse
Looking for a good read? Don’t miss the Kenya police blotter.
NAIROBI—As a young teen, Mike Mugo would surreptitiously read crime novels from his father’s collection, lured by tales of tough-talking detectives and ruthless crooks and the gorgeous women whose pictures graced the paperback covers.
Which explains why Kenyan police crime reports read like 1940s pulp fiction.
Inspector Mugo, now 38 years old and head of communications for the Directorate of Criminal Investigations, is trying to soften the branch’s image by publicizing its successes in the style of his father’s detective novels.
The DCI, Kenya’s equivalent of the FBI, publishes daily reports on “undercover sleuths” engaging in gunfights with “armed thugs” in “dimly lit alleys” and how “our boys,” hot on the trail of a murderer, “smoked him out of his hideout at a lodging in the city.”
Such language—in tweets, Facebook posts and weekly cartoons—is the unit’s attempt to connect primarily with young people in rough neighborhoods of Nairobi and other cities, both criminals and victims who often see security forces as brutal and corrupt.
“It gives us a human face in the eyes of the public,” Mr. Mugo said.
“Our main targets are the audience who don’t have access to a newspaper, who don’t have TV, who don’t have radio, but they do have a smartphone,” Mr. Mugo said. “We decided to speak and communicate in a language these people understand.”
There’s this recent account of a shootout with a gang of robbers: “Sounds of deafening gunfire reverberated in the air, rat-a-tat-tat-tat!!! as the undercover sleuths silenced the armed thugs in retaliation, after they defied orders to surrender and turned against our men.”
The suspects “slipped into the dimly lit alleys of Mariguini slums, their bodies riddled with bullet holes.”
There’s the tragic story of “a village Casanova” who carried on a torrid affair with his neighbor’s wife.
Late one night, the lover knocked on the woman’s door and shouted, “It’s me, your babe”—unaware that her husband had returned home earlier than expected. “A deafening silence followed as the man who was now seated on the bed digested the words in shock, looking down beside him where his wife lay without making a move,” the police recounted.
The Casanova knocked yet again, “with the impatience of a stallion,” the police said.
The cuckolded husband rushed to the door “with the rage of a wounded lion” and “crushed him like pounded fufu,” a starchy West African staple. The Casanova died from the beating; police arrested the husband.
A farmer who caught someone stealing his corn exacted “sweet revenge as he descended on the thug without consideration like a rented mule,” in the DCI’s telling. (Not to be confused with a different thief caught and beaten by neighbors “like a government mule.”)
Our men in blue used to put out a decent police blotter, full of details, if not color, but, like others around the country, it’s been pared down to a dull, limited recital of arrests, with nothing left of the content that used to make police blotters, along with obituaries, the most read sections of the daily newspapers, including Greenwich Times’.
I think we should drag GPD Folks out of retirement and put him at a typewriter, but if he won’t leave Florida, I’m tempted to take on the task myself.
97 Pecksland Road, the listing for which expired yesterday, is back, same broker, same price, $33.8 million. 19.5 acres, including two building lots. It offers a zillion-square feet (not including the basement and garage), 10 bedrooms, 14.5 baths, and “garaging for 30” — which refers to cars, presumably, not servants.
A ferrari near the door rates a Bokhara on the floor
Now this is a modern library: a sparse collection of unread, interior decorator-supplied books which she’s organized by color, lots of gewgaws and gimcracks, and notice the ladder, conveniently placed in case the butler needs to climb up and adjust the big screen TV
Oregon bill would pay street bums $1,000 a month “to just be you”.
The bill, introduced last month, would establish a People’s Housing Assistance Fund Demonstration Program to give 12 monthly thousand-dollar payments to those suffering from homelessness or who are on the brink of becoming homeless.
“Payments may be used for rent, emergency expenses, food, child care or other goods or services of the participant’s choosing,” the bill states.
“So far, we’ve only attracted 700 squatter camps to Portland”, State Senator Winsvey Campos told FWIW, “so there is obviously a need for more, and this bill will accomplish that. Property is a cisgender, white racist concept, founded on oppression and enslavement, so it has to go. We’re working on burning out the last few neighborhoods of homeowners, but we need to speed up the process if we are to achieve perfect equity and a 100% zero-carbon medal from the WEO. My bill will attract more bums to the Beaver State from away, fund our drug dealers so they can expand to meet the needs of The People, and free up houses presently being occupied by the bourgeoisie — it’ll be a win for all progressive thinkers, and I’m so very excited to put this in motion.”
And how’s that drug legalization program doing? Just fine, if you ask the addicts, 99% of whom have refused treatment for their chosen lifestyle.
Oregon’s decriminalization of hard drugs has “failed,” with less than one percent of users eligible for state-funded treatment admitted to rehab, according to figures from its Health Authority.
The state has plunged $302 million into treatment services since measures reducing personal possession of drugs including heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, LSD and others to a fine in February 2021.
Since then fatal overdoses have skyrocketed, with unintentional opioid overdose deaths jumping from 472 to 739 in 2021.
Data compiled by the Oregon Health Authority showed 16,000 people accessed services for drug treatment in the first year of decriminalization, but only 0.85% of those — equivalent to 136 people — actually entered programs to get them off drugs.
… “Fewer than one percent of folks who are engaging in these harmful behaviors are electing to pursue treatment.
… The same public health report revealed it had spent its budget on buying needles to give to addicts to inject safely and Naloxone shots to reverse overdoses. The state also purchased 12 vehicles with mobile exam rooms to inspect addicts as well as distribute “harm reduction supplies” and also invested in a recovery housing motel.
see? They’re already trying to blend in
Old-time Palm Beachers bemoan the arrival of New Money New Yorkers. “So rude! So flashy!”
Well of course they are; the new arrivals bring with them their desperate insecurities, their fears that people will discover what frauds they are; their social circle will shun them, their money will be taken away, and they’ll be dragged back to Central Islip in disgrace. So they buy Maybachs and Rolexes, and put gates up at the foot of their driveways to announce that someone important lives behind them, and generally live fretful, unhappy lives. Then, after a few decades have passed, those who have managed to keep their money finally relax, learn to love Lilly Pulitzer pants, and blend in nicely with the old guard who, when they’d first arrived, were just like them.
I worry more about New Yorkers carrying along the politics that soiled their nest in Manhattan than whether their pushy, rude manners upset the Palm Beach social club regulars, who can be just as rude as the nouveau, but do it ever so politely.
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