There's been a lot of building going on in the Village. Some is tear-down and new construction, and some is add-ons and redesigns. What we're winding up with is modernization and more up to date styling, which is fine, but also homes that are frankly too big for our small lots.
Another consequence of these "improvements" is higher prices. Someone told me the house on the NW corner of 10th Avenue and 117th St is listed with an asking price of over $5M. My house cost me about $380K in a high market in 2005, and I remember when we started to see asking prices of $1M.
So they're nicer houses now, and bigger, and more modern, and imposing in a neighborhood like this one, and increasingly expensive in ways BP houses didn't used to be. I suppose that's a version of progress. Mac Kennedy must be happy he's no longer here, because he liked houses that were much more modest, smaller, and either MIMO or Hacienda style. Not that we don't still have some of those, until they get replaced, but that's decreasingly representative of the Village look.
Several weeks or so ago, one of my childhood friends, who now lives in Aventura, called me to say a letter carrier in the Village had been stabbed to death. He knew nothing more about it, and I wasn't aware of anyone else talking about it. I suppose my friend must have heard or read something on the news. For some reason, I was thinking about the guy who delivers my mail, and a few days ago, he was driving up to my house while I was outside. I don't know his name, but he's a nice guy, and I like him. I asked him if he was the USPS employee who had been stabbed, and he was! He said some younger person on one of those scooters thought the letter carrier had cut him off at a STOP sign, and stabbed/poked him with a knife. He looked fine, and he said he was fine. He had what seemed to have been a minor injury, and he told me the kid who stabbed him is in jail, has been charged with attempted murder of a federal employee, and will be spending a long time in prison. Boy, did the Village not used to be like that.
I still say it's a tragic waste of possibility that we allow our medians to look the way they do, but I've lost that battle enough times that I've given up. If this is the way most Villagers want to live, they "win."
And for what amounts to comic relief, Dan Samaria is now in yet another outrage, this time claiming that our manager, Al Childress, who has lived here for many years, made fun of Dan. I have known Al for quite some time, and if anyone ever registered a complaint about Al, it would be that he's too soft-spoken and mild-mannered. Dan's had his adventures being sued by Tracy Truppman, suing Tracy Truppman, suing the Village, and complaining about how mean Commissioners are to him. I still fail to understand what person would vote for Dan to be a Commissioner, but it's probably the same people who look at the medians, and don't see anything about which to complain.
