December 15, 2025 • 34 mins
For the first time since 1967, a Frank Sinatra song has reached number one on the Billboard charts! Meanwhile, the NYC real estate market is booming, with a surge in new closings and rentals. Mark takes your calls! Mark interviews journalist Steve Cuozzo. Steve challenges the myth that NYC isn’t creating affordable apartments. Mark and Steve also discuss the vibrant nightlife in the city, with bars, restaurants, and nightclubs packed with patrons.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the Mark Simone Show. W Well, as
I mentioned, FBI has arrested four terrorists, a radical pro
Palestinian terrorists. They're accused of plotting New Year's Eve bombings.
Now it's La it's not New York. Identified as members
(00:24):
of the Turtle Island Liberation Front, whatever the hell that is.
But they're Muslim terrorists. They're radical pro Palestinian extremist group
plotting New Year's Eve bombings for Los Angeles. The FBI
has caught them. You know, Paris is not really Paris anymore.
They same problem, open borders, illegals flooding in and these
(00:49):
migrants have a created terror all over Paris. And every
year in Paris they have an incredible New Year's Eve
celebration on the Chanz Oflyse. It's like our Times Square
kind of celebration where like literally a million people will
show up. They've canceled this year's celebration. Usually a million
people show up. They have concerts and all this stuff.
They've canceled because of the migrant crisis in Paris. There's
(01:12):
too much crime, too much terrorism. And instead they're going
to have a pre recorded video that people can watch
from home. They don't want people showing up, so they've
had to cancel their New Year's Eve traditions in Paris.
They'll still have the fireworks over the Arcta Triumph when
it's midnight, but they don't want anybody there in person
(01:35):
enough to watch that on television as well, so it's
just not the same. The Chans of Lyse, the most
beautiful boulevard in the world, because of all the illegals,
all the illegal migrants, has been a center of violence lately.
Throngs of young Muslim migrants streaming in at night looking
(02:00):
for trouble, looting stores, brawling with Parisians and police. This
is Paris, it's not the parish you once knew. Again
illegal migrants have destroyed Paris. It's just awful. So nothing
new on Rob Reiner since the last hour. At some
point there'll be a press conference with the LA Police
(02:20):
and they'll announce things. But remember it's three hours earlier there,
so I imagine that press conference won't happen for another
hour or two. What we do know is it looks
like his son stabbed him and his wife slit their throats.
The son, who's just a very, very very troubled kid
years of drugs, alcohol, mental craziness, homeless, has been taken
(02:46):
into Custody's thirty two. Reiner has three kids with the wife,
but with his previous wife, his first wife, Penny Marshall,
he had a daughter and the daughter lived on the
property in the guest house. Well heard incredible arguing, screaming,
and at some point went over to check and found
them both dead. Called police and she said, you got
(03:09):
to look at him. She said she believed it was him.
The sun. So they've taken him into custody. We'll see
what happens there. Brown University. They did have a shooter
in custody, but they've since let him go. It's the
Providence police department. We love Providence, but it's not the
(03:30):
sharpest police department in the world. And we'll see. And
now again it may not be anti semitism. If this
could be an anti Republican shooting, it looks like this
small group of people all they were also the conservative
group on campus. One of the people shot, the student
was the head of the Republican club there. So we'll
see what it turns out to be. But the Rob
(03:53):
Reiner situation, that's Brentwood, and Brentwood is actually part of
Los Angeles, but they try to act like they're a suburb.
They don't really want to be part of Los Angeles.
They form their own town council, they have their own
little police department, but Brentwood is a part of Los Angeles,
so it's really Lapd in charge of that Brentwood. Yeah,
where Oj stabbed the wife and Ron Goldman. So it's
(04:16):
only a mile and a half from Rob Reiner's house
if you live in the middle there. Twice you've had
these awful stabbings where people's throats were slit on either
side of you. It's a terrible situation. What else Frank
Sinatra number one on the Billboard charts. How about that
(04:38):
Frank Sinatra. It's actually nineteen sixty one. He recorded I've
Got My Love to Keep Me Warm. It's a great song.
It's sort of become a Christmas song and it gets
played at Christmas time. So Pentatonics got the master tapes
where you can isolate just Sinatra's voice. His recording as
(05:00):
a beautiful big band, you know, Johnny Mandel arrangement, but
they isolated just his voice, took just his voice and
they did a whole new arrangement, a whole new single,
and it's It was number one last week on the
Adult Contemporary chart. They still have that Adult Contemporary chart.
So it's the first number one hit single for Frank
(05:23):
Sinatra since nineteen sixty seven. No, it wasn't something stupid.
That was nineteen sixty six. Sinatra's last number one was
The World We Knew. It was a hit single Forgotten
About Go back and listen. It's pretty good Sinatra single,
The World We Knew, And that was a number one
(05:46):
hit single for him September of sixty seven, so that
was his last hit single. That's I think, let me think. Yeah.
It's the all time record fifty eight years in between
number one hits. The previous this record had been Elton
John who went twenty three years between hit singles. Now
one was one of his own hits and then the
(06:06):
other one was one of those duet kind of deals
with Ed Sheeran and again a Christmas song. So Sinatra,
it's a new record fifty eight years between number one hits.
And also this has got to be the all time record.
Sinatra's first number one hit single was nineteen forty with
Tommy Dorsey I'll Never Smile Again. He was his first
(06:27):
hit single. It's kind of the song that really put
him on the map. So nineteen forty to now is
eighty five years. So that's an all time record. A
guy has a hit single number one on the chart,
and he's number one in the chart eighty five years later.
This first time that's ever happened. Sinatra, I remember, had
the longest career of anybody. When he started singing. Herbert
(06:50):
Hoover was president when he stopped singing, Bill Clinton was president.
That's a long long career. He also made let me
think about one hundred albums. That's not the record, Ella
Fitzgerald one hundred and sixty six albums, Bing Crosby two
hundred albums, or the equivalent of two hundred albums. Crosby
(07:13):
holds the record for the largest output recording wise. So
you got to hey, I forgot to mention this. You
got the Epstein photos that came out. Remember on Friday,
they tried to you know, they're always trying to get Trump,
so they put out a photo of him with six girls,
young girls, you know, with the face was blacked out. Well,
(07:35):
it turned out this is the Democrats on the House Committee.
Look at this, not only with young girls, there's six
of them surrounding him. Well, it turns out the whole
thing was fake. You can always count on Democrats MSNBC, CNN,
New York Times to fake everything because somebody came up
with the original picture without the faces blacked out. And
(07:56):
they're clearly not young girls. They're adults, all adults. And
it turns out it was a beauty pageant being held
at mar A Lago. They were all professional adult models.
It was a big promotion for Hawaiian Tropic Sun Tan lotion.
The party and the beauty pageant held at mar Alago.
(08:17):
Trump shows up, takes a picture with all the models
in the beauty pageant, the fashion show, and that's what
it was. It wasn't young girls. The picture totally fake,
ridiculous And that tells you all you need to know
about Democrats and Epstein and all this stuff. So, oh,
Saturday had the Army Navy game. President Trump tradition now
(08:41):
comes to the Army Navy game, walks on the field,
standing ovation the crowd, cheering USA USA. You never hear
that with a Democratic president. They don't like to cheer that,
but it was very upsetting. The Democrats watching this very upsetting.
They don't like any of this. They don't like football,
they don't like cheering and chanting USA, they don't like
(09:03):
any of this stuff. So it really really upset them.
Harry to trum of this last hour. Tourists are all
over in New York. If you don't think New York's
doing well, try to get a hotel room right now
in New York City. It is impossible. It's impossible. There's
no hotel rooms left in New York City. Everybody wants
to come here, even with Mom Donnie elected. Tourists are
(09:23):
coming in unbelievable numbers. Also, real estate sales are very,
very very strong. Don't listen to this. Everybody's leaving New York.
Nine hundred and seventy six closings real estate closings in
the last month. Now, if you go to the super
high end departments, there were nine closings last week, contracts closings.
(09:44):
That's a big number. That's a lot for one week.
So sales are really strong, and the rental market is
going crazy. You're gonna have a lot of trouble renting
apartment right now in New York people are moving in
like crazy. Rentals indicator to study rentals are the people
first coming to New York, first coming here, and many
(10:06):
rentals next year turn into buyers. They'll come here, rent
for a year or two and then they'll start buying.
But rentals are through the roof. It's almost impossible to
rent anything right now. So New York doing very very
well the Christmas season. Tourists are everywhere. It's Christmas, and
I remember you may be gift shopping, but for yourself.
(10:30):
Don't buy anything right now. Don't buy anything. Don't buy
any clothes right now. Don't buy anything right now, because
right after Christmas, everything's going to be half price. So
I become like Robert de Niro and Goodfellows yelling anyway,
don't buy anything. What I say, don't what I tell you.
Don't buy anything? Did I tell you? Don't buy anything
right now? It's all going to be half pricing. If
(10:51):
you wait till after New Year's it's going to be
seventy five percent off. So don't buy anything right now. Hey,
you know all the great supermarkets, Wegmans, they're all over
the place. Whole Foods. Whole Food's not so much anymore.
Quality went down there once Bezos took it over, I
think deliberately. Uh, but remember Whole Foods. All of a
(11:13):
sudden it went back to I guess it was the nineties.
All of a sudden, Whole Foods opened everywhere. It is
an unbelievable supermarket, beyond anything you'd ever seen. Now, they
were from Texas. It was a Texas supermarket. They opened
a couple, then they went national. They became huge. And Wegmans.
I forget where they're from. They're from someplace Wegmans Colorado
or something. I don't know, but Wegmans. They were very good.
(11:36):
Then they opened a couple. Next thing you know, they
went national. Now when you get a Wegman's, it's exciting.
There's one in New Jersey's had them for a while,
but you just got one couple of years ago in Westchester.
You just got one in Connecticut. So they've exploded. They're
all over America. Now. The next one to watch out
for is Uncle Giuseppees. Uncle Giuseppes is gonna just remember
(11:57):
you heard it here first. This is gonna be the
big national phenomenon. If you live in Long Island, you
don't even me to tell you about Uncle Giuseppes. There's
a bunch of them all over Long Island. There's spectacular.
It's like the Italian Wegmans. Lots of Italian stuff, but
the prepared foods everything. So there's a big article in
the paper today about Uncle Giuseppe's going all out for Christmas.
(12:19):
Not just decorations like crazy all over their stores. But
they got carolers, they got singers singing Christmas songs right
in the store. They're all over Long Island. The best
one's Melville. I think that's where the family lives. Great,
great family, very smart people that run this. So there's
one in not a big one, but there's a smaller
one in Yorktown Heights. There's a bunch of them. I
(12:42):
think they're all over Long I think there's one in
New Jersey. But watch this will be the next big
national chain. They got twelve of them already. I see
them looking for other locations. But they're phenomenal, So keep
an eye on them. They'll be the next big national
chain that explodes everywhere. So when hey, once again, I
went to a million Christmas parties yesterday, people everybody will
(13:04):
say to you, what's gonna happen to the midterms. Who's
going to win the midterms? How are we going to
do in the midterms, what's going to happen that. Don't
listen to anybody right now. This is impossible to predict.
If you said, who's going to be in the super Bowl,
maybe a good sports expert could give you a good guess.
But if you said to the greatest sports expert, who's
(13:24):
going to win the super Bowl in twenty twenty seven,
they can't tell you. There's no way to know that now.
Same thing with the midterms. Don't listen to anybody's prediction
right now. It means absolutely nothing. Everything is going to
change six months from now. You'll be in a whole
different world landscape. These predictions mean absolutely nothing. Same thing is,
(13:48):
when they tell you who's going to win in twenty
twenty eight, who's going to run? You can't tell now.
It's impossible. Now if you're watching fake news, you'll see
all these polls, all these studies that the Democrats are
definitely going to win the mid terms. Look at this
poll that pole, look at this day now. The reason
they do this on fake news show you that Democrats
are on track to win and mid The reason they
(14:11):
do that, it's for fundraising. That's the only important thing
right now, lots of fundraising. If you put out all
this nonsense showing you're going to win, you have a
much better shot at fundraising. Donors will give like crazy
if they think you're going to win. So don't fall
for all. That's just propaganda right now for fundraising purposes.
Don't take it. Don't take it too seriously. And Gavin
Newsom twenty twenty, Well, he's clearly way out in the front.
(14:35):
And you remember he's a big, big star right now
on the scene with all of his tweeting and instagram
and posting and podcasting, all that's uff. He's quite a
flamboyant guy. He's attacking Trump like crazy. He's the the
star right now. But there's an old rule in politics,
(14:56):
especially democratic politics, there's candidates you want to date, and
there's candidates you want to marry. So sometimes the flashy
guy with the outrageous comments, it's like a that's like
a woman you date, but you wouldn't marry her. So
it's the same thing with voters right now. They'll date
him because he's funny and flashy and outrageous. Doesn't mean
they want to marry. It doesn't mean they'll vote for him.
(15:16):
So just remember, hey, we'll take some calls. Next. Eight
hundred three to two one zero seven ten is the number,
eight hundred three to two, one zero seven ten, mister
New York. Here's more. Mark Simone on sevent ten wor
all right, we're learning more about the Rob Reiners situation.
The police have not yet held their press comp so
(15:39):
they not absolutely confirm. But remember we told you last
hour they have arrested the sun they did take the
son into custody. Well, now they've charged him. They've officially
charged him. Hasn't really been announce ship, but they've charged
him and there's a four million dollar bail on him. Now,
this is Sunday, yesterday, this terrible stabbing. The night before
(16:02):
Saturday night, there was a big Conan O'Brien Christmas party.
Rob Reiner and his wife were there, and somehow the son,
Nick was there, and apparently they got into a loud, loud,
vicious argument at the party that got very loud and
out of control, so much so that Rob Reiner and
his wife left the party. So that's Saturday night, and
(16:24):
it looks like the Sun came to the house Sunday
and again a loud, loud argument. And Reiner's daughter was
living in the guest house. Apparently she heard the argument
and then at some point later went over to check
on them, found them dead, called police, told police about
the Sun. So but here's the latest though. He is.
(16:47):
He has been charged apparently, and there's a four million
dollar bail. Let's take some calls. Let's go to Brian, Granwich, Connecticut. Brian,
how you doing.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Hey, Hey Mark, good morning, First first time I ever
called in here, and I love you. We've met a
few times.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Over the years.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Wait, yeah, we meet.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
We met it withal the.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Scal very fine restaurant in Granwich, Connecticut, right there on
the water. Oh yeah, David Fletcher the manager.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Excellent guy, great guy, super nice guy. I actually took
my girlfriend for for her birthday party there. But real quick.
So Wegman's is actually from Rochester, New York. Mark, Okay, yep,
Danny Danny Wegman. When I left the Waldorf in the
Tavern on the Green in twenty one club, I met
(17:35):
Danny Wegman through through a relative and we started off
premise catering business with you. You remember David Bulet, Oh god, David,
Oh my god, got the best we did.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Would the best parties.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
He was a great guy, but the great guys.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Yeah, you know what.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
He You'll admit a little nuts big time.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
I was with him for three or four years.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Very hard to have the number one highest rated New
York restaurant in New York and then be closed in
six months unless you're a little nutty.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Oh my god. But I'll leave it with this. Jim
from New Jersey is one of my best friends, and
he calls in all the time. And when I heard
you mentioned Wegman's, I said, oh god, I got a
call Mark.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
And all right from Rochester. Hey, you said you worked
at the Waldorf.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
I was director catering at the Waldorf.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Well have you seen the new Waldorf.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah, I'm I'm a member of the Distinguished Alumni and.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
I like the old war Dog walderf a little better.
What do you think?
Speaker 2 (18:38):
So they had their open party in the ballroom the
night before our dinner. So it was a little bit
of a mess. And the lobby I think's really nice, Mark,
it's beautiful.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
It's they took away a lot of stuff that I.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Didn't think they did. You know, they took away it
went from I think it went from like fifteen hundred
keys to that to like three hundred believe it or not.
So they're all private, you know, beautiful million, multimillion dollar
a year co ops and condos or whatever. But but
the ballroom is still the ballroom.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Yeah, it's not that same. It was white and gold.
Now it's silver silver. It looks like a big tin
can when you're in it. The beautiful lighting's gone. They
got those led Haligen whatever they are. They're not the same.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
They took the they took the chandelier at which is ridiculous.
I mean, how can you how can you do that?
But uh yeah, back in the days, forget about it.
I mean we had so many parties there, oh my god.
But but anyway, Danny's I think Danny's daughters are now
in charge of the company and they're great, great people
as well. And uh yeah, so's father.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
All right, Well it's a great Wegmans, great store. Thanks
for calling. Let's go to uh Stuart in South Carolina. Stuart,
how you doing?
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Hey, Mark car are.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
You two points one? You know I've been in plays
Off almost fifty years in the South in very gun
friendly states. I have never worked a home invasion, not
one ever. I've never worked at carjacking ever, because people
here know is they open up your door to your house,
they're probably going to die. If they open up the
you're a car door, they're probably.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Going to die.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
So guns, guns prevalent among people, are a real crime
to turn. And you know that criminals do not obey
gun laws. Australia and New Zealand have taken guns away
from everybody nobody.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Okay, but you live in the South South Carolina. People
know how to handle a gun. This is New York City.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Can you imagine a woman in a great neck handling
a gun?
Speaker 4 (20:33):
Well, maybe this is true, but if they may, he's
going to purse.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
You can't even find the coach check every thing. You know,
you're going to look for a gun.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
And the other point I want to make is you're
absolutely right. New York City is wonderful. South Carolina is horrible.
We have crocodiles everywhere. The humidity and the summer is
just horrible. The people are unfriendly. Please New Yorkers stay
in wonderful New York City, and please don't come to
South Carolina. It's a horrible place to live.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Nah, you've been sarcastic.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
But yeah, I'd.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Rather be in New York right now.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
It's what gas is two thirteen right now.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Hey, no, but you got nowhere to go there.
Speaker 4 (21:12):
We got the beach, the mountains, got everywhere here. I
mean I've been I grew up in Levittown, but what
I've been down South over fifty years, I would never leave.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Now it's a great place. I'll stay here. But it's
a great place. Thanks for calling, Stuart. I'll actually we
have time. We'll take some more calls tomorrow because I
want to get to a Steve Cuzo. He's the expert
on New York, on real estate, on restaurants, on what's
going on, how is New York doing? How is business?
We'll get to all of that. What's going to happen
(21:42):
under mom Donnie. We'll get to all of that. Coming
up next on seven to ten. W ind Mark on
demand by setting up preseat for his podcast on the
iHeartRadio app. Now back to Mark Simon on wor Well.
Steve Cuzo is the great columnist for the New York Post,
(22:03):
nobody better on real estate, on restaurants on New York
on what's going on? And all his columns are up
on the New York Post website. Steve Cuzo, how you doing?
Speaker 3 (22:12):
He Good morning, Mark. I always hope I can live
up to your great billing, and.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
You always do. Now when it comes to apartments, rentals, sales,
offices moving, how is New York doing? It's not true
that everybody's leaving New York.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Is it? No, sure isn't. The office market has strongest
it's been in about ten years. And you think about
what that means. Recovered from the pandemic. People are back offices.
It's hardly any space available, that's how strong the market is.
(22:51):
And housing a very interesting story, you know, right. I
wrote a piece yesterday in the Post. It's up on
our website about the whole myth, the fallacies around so
called affordable apartments. So you know, you've got the incoming mayor,
Zona Madani and many others complaining about we've got to
(23:13):
build affordable housing, you know, get people off the streets
into affordable housing. There's a number of issues here. Number one,
most of the people, many of them at least, do
not they'd rather be on the street because they are not.
They're not normal people. They're psychos, they are drug addicts,
they are dangerous homeless people. They're not people by and large,
living on the street simply because they can't afford to
(23:36):
make ends meet despite working three jobs. Okay, so let's
get that straight. Number two. There's a myth that the
city doesn't have or doesn't create affordable apartments. It's you
can look it up. This is not a matter of opinion,
but of objective truth. The City of New York, through
various meetings, rezonings, et cetera, has generated the creation of
(24:02):
over three hundred thousand new rental apartments in the last
roughly ten years. That's an extraordinary number. And of those
a significant percentage, a minority percentage, but still a meaningful percentage.
Twenty percent typically are ear marked for people with incomes
(24:27):
below average. They are intended for people who make a
certain percentage of the median area income. That is to say,
by and large, people who are working class, not middle
not up, not affluent. They have families, some of them
were of two to three jobs, and these are apartments
(24:51):
that are set aside for people with those lower incomes
and not set aside for people with no incomes, which
is of course what Mamdani and his fellow travelers in
what I call socialists the sophistry want. They're intended for
people who earn a living. They're tax paying citizens of
(25:12):
the city, and they deserve a place to live that
they can afford. And the city has delivered. Okay, let's
say three hundred thirty thousand new units altogether, and rentals
were talking about not condos, twenty percent of that, so
sixty thousand, roughly, very roughly are affordable in a meaningful sense.
(25:35):
So you read all this propaganda in Bologne. It's propagated
by the activist organizations, the New York Times and other
left leaning media that the city has failed its homeless
populations by not building or not creating affordable home to them.
It's malarkey, just not toru.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Well, sometimes you don't have affordable housing because the places booming.
You know, if you went to a garden city, Long Island,
it's very expensive, there's no affordable housing. But the next
town over, Hempstead, not so good. A lot of affordable housing.
But so is every place have to have affordable housing,
you just go to the next town.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
No. The truth is I don't Mark, I don't really
know the Garden City situation. But more to the point
is that I mean, you can't have uniform you can't
have affordable housing by any definition, distributed uniformly. Of course,
the five boroughs hundreds of different neighborhoods. Obviously some areas,
(26:36):
some neighborhoods lend themselves more to higher income residents than others.
But what's remarkable is that you look at the city now.
The city has generated entire new skylines of mostly rental
apartment buildings in the last fifteen years, and places like
(26:57):
Gowanas in Brooklyn on the Canal, in the parts of
downtown Manhattan in the South Bronx, Long Island City, and
Hunter's Point in Queens. These are success stories. These stories
help explain why we're not seeing a massive exodus of
(27:18):
people from the city. Obviously, there will always be some
people who want to go. Let them go, and they'll
quickly find The New York Times actually had a terrific
story about a week ago about how people who think
they're going to leave the city suddenly discovered that it's
not as easy as they thought. They thought they could
get the tax benefits of living in Texas or Florida,
(27:40):
just by filling out a change for transform or something,
and it turns out this is far from the case.
So nine out of ten people who say they're leaving
the city for good don't. Hey.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
So these big, big, big real estate guys, they know
their stuff. These guys are brilliant. Now I noticed they're
building a ninety story skyscraper Madison in fifty eighth Park Avenue.
Fifty second they get one hundred story skyscraper going. They
got all these skyscrapers going, one on fifty seventh coming.
They wouldn't be doing this if they didn't believe in
the future of New York, would they.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
They? Of course, they believe. They're not infallible. They often
make a lot of them make big mistakes and go,
you know, if not broke when a minimum they lose
their umpires. They'll look back to case of William Zeckendorf,
one of the famous developers of all time. He ended
up living in a I think I'm like a furnished
(28:33):
room or something in Santa Fe, New Mexico. A lot
of these characters that too much. You know, they're intoxicated
by easy money. The banks are too willing to lend
sometimes interest rates are very low. Interest rates obviously fluctuate,
but when they're very low, everybody sees they don't see
any possible downside. And yet there are buildings, rental apartment
(28:57):
buildings and condo buildings that did not do well and
had to be taken over by someone else. By and large,
I agree with you that generally speaking, real estate developers
have a greater you know, they're more attached to the
reality the pulse of the city's economy than journalists are,
and they wouldn't be making taking the kinds of gambles
(29:20):
that they take if they weren't confident. So the buildings
you mentioned Madison Avenue, there are two of them. One
is being developed by related companies at fifty eighth Street
and Extel I think, two blocks north. They're both putting
up giant you know, the buildings. Not even certain exactly
what the mix will be of apartments or offices, perhaps
(29:41):
a hotel. But yeah, of course they have confidence and
they those buildings are going to do fun.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Also, the big new restaurants opening all over the place, right,
and you covered a lot of big restaurants that opened recently.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
Yeah, well, the one I wrote about last week. Is
called Palladinos and it's in Grand Central Terminal. It's on
the you know.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
The the.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
The mezzanie. The balcony is overlooking the main concourse. I
never heard of this guy, Joe Palladino. He's from New York,
but he made a career in Texas, Uh, opening steakhouses.
Now he's come to New York. And it's magnificent. It's
absolutely beautiful. It's a great place to sit, even if
you didn't eat or drink anything. Not that, not that
(30:25):
they're promoting asking people to come and not spend any
money because the setting is so magnificent over the you know,
the main floor of the terminal, and the food's great.
And I had a story in my real estate column
today that there's another steakhouse coming and it's called something
like Jay. I'm sorry, I just can't remember the Jack
(30:47):
Jack D's Jack D's it going to Yeah, and it's
going to be on in the building known as seventy
five Rockefeller Plaza. Now it's really the restaurant will actually
be on the West fifty second Street side.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
The space is currently vacant. That's another big one. So
over two hundred seats, and the two guys doing it
are professionals. One of them is the son of Jack Dorian,
who is creative Dorian's Red Hand on the East Side.
And uh, it's there's New York City has an unlimited appetite,
(31:23):
it seems for steakhouses. I often think there are too
damn many of them, But there you go, that's what
that's what the public wants. They don't want, you know,
eight seat counters where you just need you know, vegan
weird stuff.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
All right, So bottom line, New York is booming, right,
it's doing very well.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
Yeah, I mean, there's nothing is permanent. And in terms
of the real estate aspect of it, people forget that
it's a cyclical industry. It goes up, it goes down.
Everybody nobody knows what's really coming. Everybody is old saying
fighting the last war. Yeah, and so god knows where
(32:05):
we're had it. But a couple of weeks ago, you know,
I sat down with Mark Holliday, who's the CEO of
sl Green, the city's largest commercial landlord, and he's very optimistic.
I said to him, Mark, this, you know, vacancy rates
are down, prints are up, and blah blah, blah, you know,
am I missing something? Is there is there a weak
(32:27):
link here in this picture? And he said, well basically
not all right, good good news now for now.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Excellent news everybody. If you want to read Steve Cuzo's columns,
they're all up on the New York Post website. You
can find all his columns there and make sure you
read them regularly in The New York Post. Steve Cuzo,
thanks for being with us.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Thanks Mark, always fun.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
All right, take care, hey, don't forget. Buck and Clay
will be here at noon today with a great show
for you. And then you got the most listened to
radio show in America, Sean Hannity at three, Jesse Kelly
at six. And you'll love our new Jimmy Faylish show,
Jimmy Fayala, great talk show. It's very funny. It's every
night at nine here on seven to ten WR.
Speaker 4 (33:07):
The Marlow on seven ten WR.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
A lot's going to happen today. They'll be press conferences today.
As far as the Rob Reiner murder, I never thought
he'd be saying that. Police. Remember it's three hours earlier
in Los Angeles, so it's only nine o'clock there. But
at some point pretty soon they'll hold a press conference,
they'll announce things. They've not officially announced anything yet, but
what we know unofficially the son Nick has been charged.
(33:36):
They arrested him. He was taken into custody. Apparently they've
got enough evidence or whatever they need, they've actually charged him.
He's being held on four million dollars bail right now
and apparently had vicious fights all weekend with the Sun.
It looks like he stabbed both of them. But Joe,
you'll hear more today. So we'll be back tomorrow and
I'll be covering the whole thing for you. Don't go away.
(33:58):
Buck and Clay are coming up next. I'll see tomorrow
at ten right here on seven ten wo
Welcome back to the Mark Simone Show. W Well, as
I mentioned, FBI has arrested four terrorists, a radical pro
Palestinian terrorists. They're accused of plotting New Year's Eve bombings.
Now it's La it's not New York. Identified as members
(00:24):
of the Turtle Island Liberation Front, whatever the hell that is.
But they're Muslim terrorists. They're radical pro Palestinian extremist group
plotting New Year's Eve bombings for Los Angeles. The FBI
has caught them. You know, Paris is not really Paris anymore.
They same problem, open borders, illegals flooding in and these
(00:49):
migrants have a created terror all over Paris. And every
year in Paris they have an incredible New Year's Eve
celebration on the Chanz Oflyse. It's like our Times Square
kind of celebration where like literally a million people will
show up. They've canceled this year's celebration. Usually a million
people show up. They have concerts and all this stuff.
They've canceled because of the migrant crisis in Paris. There's
(01:12):
too much crime, too much terrorism. And instead they're going
to have a pre recorded video that people can watch
from home. They don't want people showing up, so they've
had to cancel their New Year's Eve traditions in Paris.
They'll still have the fireworks over the Arcta Triumph when
it's midnight, but they don't want anybody there in person
(01:35):
enough to watch that on television as well, so it's
just not the same. The Chans of Lyse, the most
beautiful boulevard in the world, because of all the illegals,
all the illegal migrants, has been a center of violence lately.
Throngs of young Muslim migrants streaming in at night looking
(02:00):
for trouble, looting stores, brawling with Parisians and police. This
is Paris, it's not the parish you once knew. Again
illegal migrants have destroyed Paris. It's just awful. So nothing
new on Rob Reiner since the last hour. At some
point there'll be a press conference with the LA Police
(02:20):
and they'll announce things. But remember it's three hours earlier there,
so I imagine that press conference won't happen for another
hour or two. What we do know is it looks
like his son stabbed him and his wife slit their throats.
The son, who's just a very, very very troubled kid
years of drugs, alcohol, mental craziness, homeless, has been taken
(02:46):
into Custody's thirty two. Reiner has three kids with the wife,
but with his previous wife, his first wife, Penny Marshall,
he had a daughter and the daughter lived on the
property in the guest house. Well heard incredible arguing, screaming,
and at some point went over to check and found
them both dead. Called police and she said, you got
(03:09):
to look at him. She said she believed it was him.
The sun. So they've taken him into custody. We'll see
what happens there. Brown University. They did have a shooter
in custody, but they've since let him go. It's the
Providence police department. We love Providence, but it's not the
(03:30):
sharpest police department in the world. And we'll see. And
now again it may not be anti semitism. If this
could be an anti Republican shooting, it looks like this
small group of people all they were also the conservative
group on campus. One of the people shot, the student
was the head of the Republican club there. So we'll
see what it turns out to be. But the Rob
(03:53):
Reiner situation, that's Brentwood, and Brentwood is actually part of
Los Angeles, but they try to act like they're a suburb.
They don't really want to be part of Los Angeles.
They form their own town council, they have their own
little police department, but Brentwood is a part of Los Angeles,
so it's really Lapd in charge of that Brentwood. Yeah,
where Oj stabbed the wife and Ron Goldman. So it's
(04:16):
only a mile and a half from Rob Reiner's house
if you live in the middle there. Twice you've had
these awful stabbings where people's throats were slit on either
side of you. It's a terrible situation. What else Frank
Sinatra number one on the Billboard charts. How about that
(04:38):
Frank Sinatra. It's actually nineteen sixty one. He recorded I've
Got My Love to Keep Me Warm. It's a great song.
It's sort of become a Christmas song and it gets
played at Christmas time. So Pentatonics got the master tapes
where you can isolate just Sinatra's voice. His recording as
(05:00):
a beautiful big band, you know, Johnny Mandel arrangement, but
they isolated just his voice, took just his voice and
they did a whole new arrangement, a whole new single,
and it's It was number one last week on the
Adult Contemporary chart. They still have that Adult Contemporary chart.
So it's the first number one hit single for Frank
(05:23):
Sinatra since nineteen sixty seven. No, it wasn't something stupid.
That was nineteen sixty six. Sinatra's last number one was
The World We Knew. It was a hit single Forgotten
About Go back and listen. It's pretty good Sinatra single,
The World We Knew, And that was a number one
(05:46):
hit single for him September of sixty seven, so that
was his last hit single. That's I think, let me think. Yeah.
It's the all time record fifty eight years in between
number one hits. The previous this record had been Elton
John who went twenty three years between hit singles. Now
one was one of his own hits and then the
(06:06):
other one was one of those duet kind of deals
with Ed Sheeran and again a Christmas song. So Sinatra,
it's a new record fifty eight years between number one hits.
And also this has got to be the all time record.
Sinatra's first number one hit single was nineteen forty with
Tommy Dorsey I'll Never Smile Again. He was his first
(06:27):
hit single. It's kind of the song that really put
him on the map. So nineteen forty to now is
eighty five years. So that's an all time record. A
guy has a hit single number one on the chart,
and he's number one in the chart eighty five years later.
This first time that's ever happened. Sinatra, I remember, had
the longest career of anybody. When he started singing. Herbert
(06:50):
Hoover was president when he stopped singing, Bill Clinton was president.
That's a long long career. He also made let me
think about one hundred albums. That's not the record, Ella
Fitzgerald one hundred and sixty six albums, Bing Crosby two
hundred albums, or the equivalent of two hundred albums. Crosby
(07:13):
holds the record for the largest output recording wise. So
you got to hey, I forgot to mention this. You
got the Epstein photos that came out. Remember on Friday,
they tried to you know, they're always trying to get Trump,
so they put out a photo of him with six girls,
young girls, you know, with the face was blacked out. Well,
(07:35):
it turned out this is the Democrats on the House Committee.
Look at this, not only with young girls, there's six
of them surrounding him. Well, it turns out the whole
thing was fake. You can always count on Democrats MSNBC, CNN,
New York Times to fake everything because somebody came up
with the original picture without the faces blacked out. And
(07:56):
they're clearly not young girls. They're adults, all adults. And
it turns out it was a beauty pageant being held
at mar A Lago. They were all professional adult models.
It was a big promotion for Hawaiian Tropic Sun Tan lotion.
The party and the beauty pageant held at mar Alago.
(08:17):
Trump shows up, takes a picture with all the models
in the beauty pageant, the fashion show, and that's what
it was. It wasn't young girls. The picture totally fake,
ridiculous And that tells you all you need to know
about Democrats and Epstein and all this stuff. So, oh,
Saturday had the Army Navy game. President Trump tradition now
(08:41):
comes to the Army Navy game, walks on the field,
standing ovation the crowd, cheering USA USA. You never hear
that with a Democratic president. They don't like to cheer that,
but it was very upsetting. The Democrats watching this very upsetting.
They don't like any of this. They don't like football,
they don't like cheering and chanting USA, they don't like
(09:03):
any of this stuff. So it really really upset them.
Harry to trum of this last hour. Tourists are all
over in New York. If you don't think New York's
doing well, try to get a hotel room right now
in New York City. It is impossible. It's impossible. There's
no hotel rooms left in New York City. Everybody wants
to come here, even with Mom Donnie elected. Tourists are
(09:23):
coming in unbelievable numbers. Also, real estate sales are very,
very very strong. Don't listen to this. Everybody's leaving New York.
Nine hundred and seventy six closings real estate closings in
the last month. Now, if you go to the super
high end departments, there were nine closings last week, contracts closings.
(09:44):
That's a big number. That's a lot for one week.
So sales are really strong, and the rental market is
going crazy. You're gonna have a lot of trouble renting
apartment right now in New York people are moving in
like crazy. Rentals indicator to study rentals are the people
first coming to New York, first coming here, and many
(10:06):
rentals next year turn into buyers. They'll come here, rent
for a year or two and then they'll start buying.
But rentals are through the roof. It's almost impossible to
rent anything right now. So New York doing very very
well the Christmas season. Tourists are everywhere. It's Christmas, and
I remember you may be gift shopping, but for yourself.
(10:30):
Don't buy anything right now. Don't buy anything. Don't buy
any clothes right now. Don't buy anything right now, because
right after Christmas, everything's going to be half price. So
I become like Robert de Niro and Goodfellows yelling anyway,
don't buy anything. What I say, don't what I tell you.
Don't buy anything? Did I tell you? Don't buy anything
right now? It's all going to be half pricing. If
(10:51):
you wait till after New Year's it's going to be
seventy five percent off. So don't buy anything right now. Hey,
you know all the great supermarkets, Wegmans, they're all over
the place. Whole Foods. Whole Food's not so much anymore.
Quality went down there once Bezos took it over, I
think deliberately. Uh, but remember Whole Foods. All of a
(11:13):
sudden it went back to I guess it was the nineties.
All of a sudden, Whole Foods opened everywhere. It is
an unbelievable supermarket, beyond anything you'd ever seen. Now, they
were from Texas. It was a Texas supermarket. They opened
a couple, then they went national. They became huge. And Wegmans.
I forget where they're from. They're from someplace Wegmans Colorado
or something. I don't know, but Wegmans. They were very good.
(11:36):
Then they opened a couple. Next thing you know, they
went national. Now when you get a Wegman's, it's exciting.
There's one in New Jersey's had them for a while,
but you just got one couple of years ago in Westchester.
You just got one in Connecticut. So they've exploded. They're
all over America. Now. The next one to watch out
for is Uncle Giuseppees. Uncle Giuseppes is gonna just remember
(11:57):
you heard it here first. This is gonna be the
big national phenomenon. If you live in Long Island, you
don't even me to tell you about Uncle Giuseppes. There's
a bunch of them all over Long Island. There's spectacular.
It's like the Italian Wegmans. Lots of Italian stuff, but
the prepared foods everything. So there's a big article in
the paper today about Uncle Giuseppe's going all out for Christmas.
(12:19):
Not just decorations like crazy all over their stores. But
they got carolers, they got singers singing Christmas songs right
in the store. They're all over Long Island. The best
one's Melville. I think that's where the family lives. Great,
great family, very smart people that run this. So there's
one in not a big one, but there's a smaller
one in Yorktown Heights. There's a bunch of them. I
(12:42):
think they're all over Long I think there's one in
New Jersey. But watch this will be the next big
national chain. They got twelve of them already. I see
them looking for other locations. But they're phenomenal, So keep
an eye on them. They'll be the next big national
chain that explodes everywhere. So when hey, once again, I
went to a million Christmas parties yesterday, people everybody will
(13:04):
say to you, what's gonna happen to the midterms. Who's
going to win the midterms? How are we going to
do in the midterms, what's going to happen that. Don't
listen to anybody right now. This is impossible to predict.
If you said, who's going to be in the super Bowl,
maybe a good sports expert could give you a good guess.
But if you said to the greatest sports expert, who's
(13:24):
going to win the super Bowl in twenty twenty seven,
they can't tell you. There's no way to know that now.
Same thing with the midterms. Don't listen to anybody's prediction
right now. It means absolutely nothing. Everything is going to
change six months from now. You'll be in a whole
different world landscape. These predictions mean absolutely nothing. Same thing is,
(13:48):
when they tell you who's going to win in twenty
twenty eight, who's going to run? You can't tell now.
It's impossible. Now if you're watching fake news, you'll see
all these polls, all these studies that the Democrats are
definitely going to win the mid terms. Look at this
poll that pole, look at this day now. The reason
they do this on fake news show you that Democrats
are on track to win and mid The reason they
(14:11):
do that, it's for fundraising. That's the only important thing
right now, lots of fundraising. If you put out all
this nonsense showing you're going to win, you have a
much better shot at fundraising. Donors will give like crazy
if they think you're going to win. So don't fall
for all. That's just propaganda right now for fundraising purposes.
Don't take it. Don't take it too seriously. And Gavin
Newsom twenty twenty, Well, he's clearly way out in the front.
(14:35):
And you remember he's a big, big star right now
on the scene with all of his tweeting and instagram
and posting and podcasting, all that's uff. He's quite a
flamboyant guy. He's attacking Trump like crazy. He's the the
star right now. But there's an old rule in politics,
(14:56):
especially democratic politics, there's candidates you want to date, and
there's candidates you want to marry. So sometimes the flashy
guy with the outrageous comments, it's like a that's like
a woman you date, but you wouldn't marry her. So
it's the same thing with voters right now. They'll date
him because he's funny and flashy and outrageous. Doesn't mean
they want to marry. It doesn't mean they'll vote for him.
(15:16):
So just remember, hey, we'll take some calls. Next. Eight
hundred three to two one zero seven ten is the number,
eight hundred three to two, one zero seven ten, mister
New York. Here's more. Mark Simone on sevent ten wor
all right, we're learning more about the Rob Reiners situation.
The police have not yet held their press comp so
(15:39):
they not absolutely confirm. But remember we told you last
hour they have arrested the sun they did take the
son into custody. Well, now they've charged him. They've officially
charged him. Hasn't really been announce ship, but they've charged
him and there's a four million dollar bail on him. Now,
this is Sunday, yesterday, this terrible stabbing. The night before
(16:02):
Saturday night, there was a big Conan O'Brien Christmas party.
Rob Reiner and his wife were there, and somehow the son,
Nick was there, and apparently they got into a loud, loud,
vicious argument at the party that got very loud and
out of control, so much so that Rob Reiner and
his wife left the party. So that's Saturday night, and
(16:24):
it looks like the Sun came to the house Sunday
and again a loud, loud argument. And Reiner's daughter was
living in the guest house. Apparently she heard the argument
and then at some point later went over to check
on them, found them dead, called police, told police about
the Sun. So but here's the latest though. He is.
(16:47):
He has been charged apparently, and there's a four million
dollar bail. Let's take some calls. Let's go to Brian, Granwich, Connecticut. Brian,
how you doing.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Hey, Hey Mark, good morning, First first time I ever
called in here, and I love you. We've met a
few times.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Over the years.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Wait, yeah, we meet.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
We met it withal the.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Scal very fine restaurant in Granwich, Connecticut, right there on
the water. Oh yeah, David Fletcher the manager.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Excellent guy, great guy, super nice guy. I actually took
my girlfriend for for her birthday party there. But real quick.
So Wegman's is actually from Rochester, New York. Mark, Okay, yep,
Danny Danny Wegman. When I left the Waldorf in the
Tavern on the Green in twenty one club, I met
(17:35):
Danny Wegman through through a relative and we started off
premise catering business with you. You remember David Bulet, Oh god, David,
Oh my god, got the best we did.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Would the best parties.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
He was a great guy, but the great guys.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Yeah, you know what.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
He You'll admit a little nuts big time.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
I was with him for three or four years.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Very hard to have the number one highest rated New
York restaurant in New York and then be closed in
six months unless you're a little nutty.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Oh my god. But I'll leave it with this. Jim
from New Jersey is one of my best friends, and
he calls in all the time. And when I heard
you mentioned Wegman's, I said, oh god, I got a
call Mark.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
And all right from Rochester. Hey, you said you worked
at the Waldorf.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
I was director catering at the Waldorf.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Well have you seen the new Waldorf.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah, I'm I'm a member of the Distinguished Alumni and.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
I like the old war Dog walderf a little better.
What do you think?
Speaker 2 (18:38):
So they had their open party in the ballroom the
night before our dinner. So it was a little bit
of a mess. And the lobby I think's really nice, Mark,
it's beautiful.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
It's they took away a lot of stuff that I.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Didn't think they did. You know, they took away it
went from I think it went from like fifteen hundred
keys to that to like three hundred believe it or not.
So they're all private, you know, beautiful million, multimillion dollar
a year co ops and condos or whatever. But but
the ballroom is still the ballroom.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Yeah, it's not that same. It was white and gold.
Now it's silver silver. It looks like a big tin
can when you're in it. The beautiful lighting's gone. They
got those led Haligen whatever they are. They're not the same.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
They took the they took the chandelier at which is ridiculous.
I mean, how can you how can you do that?
But uh yeah, back in the days, forget about it.
I mean we had so many parties there, oh my god.
But but anyway, Danny's I think Danny's daughters are now
in charge of the company and they're great, great people
as well. And uh yeah, so's father.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
All right, Well it's a great Wegmans, great store. Thanks
for calling. Let's go to uh Stuart in South Carolina. Stuart,
how you doing?
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Hey, Mark car are.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
You two points one? You know I've been in plays
Off almost fifty years in the South in very gun
friendly states. I have never worked a home invasion, not
one ever. I've never worked at carjacking ever, because people
here know is they open up your door to your house,
they're probably going to die. If they open up the
you're a car door, they're probably.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Going to die.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
So guns, guns prevalent among people, are a real crime
to turn. And you know that criminals do not obey
gun laws. Australia and New Zealand have taken guns away
from everybody nobody.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Okay, but you live in the South South Carolina. People
know how to handle a gun. This is New York City.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Can you imagine a woman in a great neck handling
a gun?
Speaker 4 (20:33):
Well, maybe this is true, but if they may, he's
going to purse.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
You can't even find the coach check every thing. You know,
you're going to look for a gun.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
And the other point I want to make is you're
absolutely right. New York City is wonderful. South Carolina is horrible.
We have crocodiles everywhere. The humidity and the summer is
just horrible. The people are unfriendly. Please New Yorkers stay
in wonderful New York City, and please don't come to
South Carolina. It's a horrible place to live.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Nah, you've been sarcastic.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
But yeah, I'd.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Rather be in New York right now.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
It's what gas is two thirteen right now.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Hey, no, but you got nowhere to go there.
Speaker 4 (21:12):
We got the beach, the mountains, got everywhere here. I
mean I've been I grew up in Levittown, but what
I've been down South over fifty years, I would never leave.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Now it's a great place. I'll stay here. But it's
a great place. Thanks for calling, Stuart. I'll actually we
have time. We'll take some more calls tomorrow because I
want to get to a Steve Cuzo. He's the expert
on New York, on real estate, on restaurants, on what's
going on, how is New York doing? How is business?
We'll get to all of that. What's going to happen
(21:42):
under mom Donnie. We'll get to all of that. Coming
up next on seven to ten. W ind Mark on
demand by setting up preseat for his podcast on the
iHeartRadio app. Now back to Mark Simon on wor Well.
Steve Cuzo is the great columnist for the New York Post,
(22:03):
nobody better on real estate, on restaurants on New York
on what's going on? And all his columns are up
on the New York Post website. Steve Cuzo, how you doing?
Speaker 3 (22:12):
He Good morning, Mark. I always hope I can live
up to your great billing, and.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
You always do. Now when it comes to apartments, rentals, sales,
offices moving, how is New York doing? It's not true
that everybody's leaving New York.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Is it? No, sure isn't. The office market has strongest
it's been in about ten years. And you think about
what that means. Recovered from the pandemic. People are back offices.
It's hardly any space available, that's how strong the market is.
(22:51):
And housing a very interesting story, you know, right. I
wrote a piece yesterday in the Post. It's up on
our website about the whole myth, the fallacies around so
called affordable apartments. So you know, you've got the incoming mayor,
Zona Madani and many others complaining about we've got to
(23:13):
build affordable housing, you know, get people off the streets
into affordable housing. There's a number of issues here. Number one,
most of the people, many of them at least, do
not they'd rather be on the street because they are not.
They're not normal people. They're psychos, they are drug addicts,
they are dangerous homeless people. They're not people by and large,
living on the street simply because they can't afford to
(23:36):
make ends meet despite working three jobs. Okay, so let's
get that straight. Number two. There's a myth that the
city doesn't have or doesn't create affordable apartments. It's you
can look it up. This is not a matter of opinion,
but of objective truth. The City of New York, through
various meetings, rezonings, et cetera, has generated the creation of
(24:02):
over three hundred thousand new rental apartments in the last
roughly ten years. That's an extraordinary number. And of those
a significant percentage, a minority percentage, but still a meaningful percentage.
Twenty percent typically are ear marked for people with incomes
(24:27):
below average. They are intended for people who make a
certain percentage of the median area income. That is to say,
by and large, people who are working class, not middle
not up, not affluent. They have families, some of them
were of two to three jobs, and these are apartments
(24:51):
that are set aside for people with those lower incomes
and not set aside for people with no incomes, which
is of course what Mamdani and his fellow travelers in
what I call socialists the sophistry want. They're intended for
people who earn a living. They're tax paying citizens of
(25:12):
the city, and they deserve a place to live that
they can afford. And the city has delivered. Okay, let's
say three hundred thirty thousand new units altogether, and rentals
were talking about not condos, twenty percent of that, so
sixty thousand, roughly, very roughly are affordable in a meaningful sense.
(25:35):
So you read all this propaganda in Bologne. It's propagated
by the activist organizations, the New York Times and other
left leaning media that the city has failed its homeless
populations by not building or not creating affordable home to them.
It's malarkey, just not toru.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Well, sometimes you don't have affordable housing because the places booming.
You know, if you went to a garden city, Long Island,
it's very expensive, there's no affordable housing. But the next
town over, Hempstead, not so good. A lot of affordable housing.
But so is every place have to have affordable housing,
you just go to the next town.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
No. The truth is I don't Mark, I don't really
know the Garden City situation. But more to the point
is that I mean, you can't have uniform you can't
have affordable housing by any definition, distributed uniformly. Of course,
the five boroughs hundreds of different neighborhoods. Obviously some areas,
(26:36):
some neighborhoods lend themselves more to higher income residents than others.
But what's remarkable is that you look at the city now.
The city has generated entire new skylines of mostly rental
apartment buildings in the last fifteen years, and places like
(26:57):
Gowanas in Brooklyn on the Canal, in the parts of
downtown Manhattan in the South Bronx, Long Island City, and
Hunter's Point in Queens. These are success stories. These stories
help explain why we're not seeing a massive exodus of
(27:18):
people from the city. Obviously, there will always be some
people who want to go. Let them go, and they'll
quickly find The New York Times actually had a terrific
story about a week ago about how people who think
they're going to leave the city suddenly discovered that it's
not as easy as they thought. They thought they could
get the tax benefits of living in Texas or Florida,
(27:40):
just by filling out a change for transform or something,
and it turns out this is far from the case.
So nine out of ten people who say they're leaving
the city for good don't. Hey.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
So these big, big, big real estate guys, they know
their stuff. These guys are brilliant. Now I noticed they're
building a ninety story skyscraper Madison in fifty eighth Park Avenue.
Fifty second they get one hundred story skyscraper going. They
got all these skyscrapers going, one on fifty seventh coming.
They wouldn't be doing this if they didn't believe in
the future of New York, would they.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
They? Of course, they believe. They're not infallible. They often
make a lot of them make big mistakes and go,
you know, if not broke when a minimum they lose
their umpires. They'll look back to case of William Zeckendorf,
one of the famous developers of all time. He ended
up living in a I think I'm like a furnished
(28:33):
room or something in Santa Fe, New Mexico. A lot
of these characters that too much. You know, they're intoxicated
by easy money. The banks are too willing to lend
sometimes interest rates are very low. Interest rates obviously fluctuate,
but when they're very low, everybody sees they don't see
any possible downside. And yet there are buildings, rental apartment
(28:57):
buildings and condo buildings that did not do well and
had to be taken over by someone else. By and large,
I agree with you that generally speaking, real estate developers
have a greater you know, they're more attached to the
reality the pulse of the city's economy than journalists are,
and they wouldn't be making taking the kinds of gambles
(29:20):
that they take if they weren't confident. So the buildings
you mentioned Madison Avenue, there are two of them. One
is being developed by related companies at fifty eighth Street
and Extel I think, two blocks north. They're both putting
up giant you know, the buildings. Not even certain exactly
what the mix will be of apartments or offices, perhaps
(29:41):
a hotel. But yeah, of course they have confidence and
they those buildings are going to do fun.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Also, the big new restaurants opening all over the place, right,
and you covered a lot of big restaurants that opened recently.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
Yeah, well, the one I wrote about last week. Is
called Palladinos and it's in Grand Central Terminal. It's on
the you know.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
The the.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
The mezzanie. The balcony is overlooking the main concourse. I
never heard of this guy, Joe Palladino. He's from New York,
but he made a career in Texas, Uh, opening steakhouses.
Now he's come to New York. And it's magnificent. It's
absolutely beautiful. It's a great place to sit, even if
you didn't eat or drink anything. Not that, not that
(30:25):
they're promoting asking people to come and not spend any
money because the setting is so magnificent over the you know,
the main floor of the terminal, and the food's great.
And I had a story in my real estate column
today that there's another steakhouse coming and it's called something
like Jay. I'm sorry, I just can't remember the Jack
(30:47):
Jack D's Jack D's it going to Yeah, and it's
going to be on in the building known as seventy
five Rockefeller Plaza. Now it's really the restaurant will actually
be on the West fifty second Street side.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
The space is currently vacant. That's another big one. So
over two hundred seats, and the two guys doing it
are professionals. One of them is the son of Jack Dorian,
who is creative Dorian's Red Hand on the East Side.
And uh, it's there's New York City has an unlimited appetite,
(31:23):
it seems for steakhouses. I often think there are too
damn many of them, But there you go, that's what
that's what the public wants. They don't want, you know,
eight seat counters where you just need you know, vegan
weird stuff.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
All right, So bottom line, New York is booming, right,
it's doing very well.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
Yeah, I mean, there's nothing is permanent. And in terms
of the real estate aspect of it, people forget that
it's a cyclical industry. It goes up, it goes down.
Everybody nobody knows what's really coming. Everybody is old saying
fighting the last war. Yeah, and so god knows where
(32:05):
we're had it. But a couple of weeks ago, you know,
I sat down with Mark Holliday, who's the CEO of
sl Green, the city's largest commercial landlord, and he's very optimistic.
I said to him, Mark, this, you know, vacancy rates
are down, prints are up, and blah blah, blah, you know,
am I missing something? Is there is there a weak
(32:27):
link here in this picture? And he said, well basically
not all right, good good news now for now.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Excellent news everybody. If you want to read Steve Cuzo's columns,
they're all up on the New York Post website. You
can find all his columns there and make sure you
read them regularly in The New York Post. Steve Cuzo,
thanks for being with us.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Thanks Mark, always fun.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
All right, take care, hey, don't forget. Buck and Clay
will be here at noon today with a great show
for you. And then you got the most listened to
radio show in America, Sean Hannity at three, Jesse Kelly
at six. And you'll love our new Jimmy Faylish show,
Jimmy Fayala, great talk show. It's very funny. It's every
night at nine here on seven to ten WR.
Speaker 4 (33:07):
The Marlow on seven ten WR.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
A lot's going to happen today. They'll be press conferences today.
As far as the Rob Reiner murder, I never thought
he'd be saying that. Police. Remember it's three hours earlier
in Los Angeles, so it's only nine o'clock there. But
at some point pretty soon they'll hold a press conference,
they'll announce things. They've not officially announced anything yet, but
what we know unofficially the son Nick has been charged.
(33:36):
They arrested him. He was taken into custody. Apparently they've
got enough evidence or whatever they need, they've actually charged him.
He's being held on four million dollars bail right now
and apparently had vicious fights all weekend with the Sun.
It looks like he stabbed both of them. But Joe,
you'll hear more today. So we'll be back tomorrow and
I'll be covering the whole thing for you. Don't go away.
(33:58):
Buck and Clay are coming up next. I'll see tomorrow
at ten right here on seven ten wo
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