It seems that everyone who hasn't fled to the Vineyard in ignominy after infecting his friends and neighbors is still here in town, buying houses

Honestly, I don’t know what they’re so excited about!

Lots of contracts and pending sales reported today; it was a busy weekend. Here’s a sample:

514 Round HILL

514 Round Hill Road,$3.975, has a contract after 54 days. It sat unsold for 499 days at the same price in 2016-2017.

183 Round Hill Road

183 Round Hill, $2.999, also under contract.

In Riverside, 14 Hidden Brook Road asked $1.299 and went to multiple bids in 7 days. It’s now pending, and though I haven’t confirmed it with brother Gideon whose listing it is, such a short period between accepted offer (Friday evening) and reporting day means no inspections and that, in turn, suggests that the house currently standing on this property won’t see Thanksgiving.

Those with long memories may remember when this house was owned by a crazy old coot who entertained himself by prowling the neighborhood and Old Greenwich stealing bicycles. If a kid’s bike disappeared, one sighed and drove over here to retrieve it. We were all grateful when these owners replaced him.

The hate-America movement has now reached its nadir

Game time at the WNBA

Women basketball players walk off the court during National Anthem, leaving the arena entirely empty.

[ A nobody named Clarendon said]

“I don’t want to hear the anthem, I don’t want to stand out there. I don’t want to be anywhere near it, because it’s ridiculous that justice and freedom are just not offered to everybody equally,” she said.

Attendance at women’s basketball games has consistently ranged from 3-8, depending on how many of the girls’ mothers are in town, so this little display of ignorance and ingratitude is unlikely to change the course of human history.

How significant is the sport? The only way the ladies got any press for their pathetic “season opener” yesterday was to stage a mini-dump on the flag; no one stuck around to report on the game itself, which says all that needs to be said about women’s professional basketball.

If Clarendon’s rubber spheroid falls through a basket and no one is around to see it drop, did it fall at all? Who cares?

UPDATE: The Bee is on it

Some stories are too much fun to try to confirm. Besides, this reeks of plausibility

Everyone out of the pool

A friend and Belle Haven resident writes:

The Belle Haven Club has had to cancel their day camp because at least 1 counselor has tested positive for the corona virus. All parents and their children are not allowed anywhere on the premises for 2 weeks. Why you ask?  The parents that live across the street from the pool [identity omitted to protect the guilty — Ed] had a party in their basement that was attended by 60 Teenagers and underage drinkers.

…. Anyway the family has left town in their private plane to go to their house in Martha’s Vineyard where he is playing tennis at the club up there.  

Stupidity and selfishness will beat gates and armed guards, every time.

Dinner with the power brokers

No room at the inn? Nonsense — call Joe

Dined with Gideon, the Indomitable Susie, and Joe Barbieri at L’escale last night. It was a great evening on the deck, the restaurant seems to be flourishing, and perhaps best of all, the conversation didn’t center on real estate (though we did swap tales of some of our most bizarre encounters and experiences with would-be buyers over the years).

The most impressive part of the evening though, aside from the news that Joe and Gideon are working on another blockbuster deal, is that Joe called the restaurant at 6:10 to reserve a table for four at 7:00. As Gideon texted me, “I just watched as Joe called his pal, the manager of L’escale and booked a table for us on a Saturday night. Astounding”.

I’m going to try that myself. If you care to join me, I’ll send you the date I’ve secured, probably February, outside,

(Yes, as you’d expect, we snuck out while he was distracted and stuck Joe with the tab — thanks, Joe)

I heart New York

The face of discrimination

(Photo credit: Stephen Yang, NY Post)

The NY Post reports on a homeless camp down on 8th Street that’s being ignored by that City’s modern-day version of John Lindsay, Bill,” Big Bird” de Blasio. Not surprisingly, the merchants still trying to make a living down there are distraught, but it’s not just them who wish the Mayor would retake the city:

“It makes me feel uncomfortable. It makes our city dirty and noisy,” said neighborhood resident Olga, 78, who’s lived in the East Village for 33 years.

“There was one woman who was making pee-pee and caca by the bus stop. It was very dirty and disgusting. Nobody wanted to use the bus stop.”

Poor Olga: at 78-years-old, she shouldn’t have to endure this. But my favorite part of the story is its interview with “Solaura’, a tattooed transvestite prostitute, explaining how its work takes place on the streets, and thus cannot use the services of homeless shelters with their 10:00 curfews:

“I am a highly marginalized individual and I just don’t have the same opportunity as a lot of cisgender people as far as employment goes, so the work I do is at night or I would have no income,” she said.

Hard to believe that this sex worker has trouble finding regular employment; it’s certainly because of discrimination against people of his persuasion, but I think we’d be remiss not to bring in Trump to take his share of the blame.

On a related note, I had coffee with a friend yesterday at Old Greenwich’s Joe Studio Cafe (“best coffee in town” my friend says, and it is indeed excellent). My friend, who formerly served in an elite military branch of an ally of ours in the Middle East and has dropped into some of the worst cities around the world, told me of a trip he recently took to San Francisco with his family: the conditions in downtown — not on the fringes, not on a side street — were as bad as any third world country he’s seen. The trash, the human waste, the needle-users and screamers terrified his young son, “and even I was extremely worried.” If a guy like this, with his training and experience, feels he can’t walk in the most expensive part of San Francisco without fear, it gives new meaning to its once-affectionate nickname of “Baghdad by the Bay”.

Not the Babylon Bee — even they'd be stretched to come up with this one

Washington Redskins to be renamed “Washington Football Team”

I resurrected my subscription when COVID hit but cancelled again after three months

280 WSJ reporters, editors and staff demand control over op-ed opinion pieces.

Employees at The Wall Street Journal are pushing publisher Almar Latour to crack down on “misinformation” published in the paper’s opinion pages.

A group of more than 280 WSJ reporters, editors, and other staff sent a letter to Latour on Tuesday calling for more separation between the paper’s news and opinion sections online. The letter also asked for more freedom for reporters to critique opinion articles online and said the opinion staff should be more restrictive in what it chooses to publish, according to WSJ which reported on the letter.

The letter also pointed to a June 2 op-ed by The Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald titled “The Myth of Systemic Police Racism.” Mac Donald argued that the “charge of systemic police bias was wrong during the Obama years and remains so today. … A solid body of evidence finds no structural bias in the criminal-justice system with regard to arrests, prosecution or sentencing. Crime and suspect behavior, not race, determine most police actions.”

While the article has not been updated with a correction, [because there was nothing to correct - ED] the letter accuses Mac Donald of cherry-picking data and drawing an “erroneous conclusion.”

“Employees of color publicly spoke out about the pain this Opinion piece caused them during company-held discussions surrounding diversity initiatives,” the letter continues, adding if the “company is serious about better supporting its employees of color, at a bare minimum it should raise Opinion’s standards so that misinformation about racism isn’t published.”

I gave up on the Journal some years ago after some 40-years of readership because I thought the reporters were tilting their articles, but renewed it when I was looking for objective reporting on Kung Flu; I didn’t find it. The drift left had only increased during my three-year layoff, so I cancelled again. Journal Publisher Almar Latour has rejected these flacks’ demand, for now, but if there are 280 fact-twisters at the paper already there, there will certainly be more to come. These children, traitors to journalism, infest the newsrooms today; NYT reporters feel “unsafe” when they encounter an opinion different from their own, Wall Street Journal reporters “feel pain”. Oh, boo hoo.

They’ve emerged from the saferooms and cuddle bunnies provided them by their college deans when conservative speakers were on campus, and they’ve dragged their bankies with them into the press room.

There were those, and I was one, who chortled at the woes and temper tantrums of these snowflakes, awaiting with gleeful anticipation their arrival in “the real world”. We were wrong; they brought their mini-Marxism sensitivities and virtue with them, and are transforming the world, just as intended by their masters.

Price cut on Field Point

9 Field Point Circle, 3 acres, now $8.6 million instead of November’s price of $11.8

For not all that much more you can get a house as well as three acres at 1 Harbor Drive, but if 1893 architcture isn’t to your taste, here’s a chance to build new.

Well, at least they're starting off at a more realistic price

556 Riversville Road has come on as a new listing today at $3.295 million.That’s different from previous owners who both set off with great expectations, expoectations that wern’t met.

Listed in 2002 at $4.750, it sold for $3.5 in 2003. And those buyers fared worse, putting it back it up for sale at $5.295 in 2008 and selling it to these owners for $3.2 in 2009.

Nice land and house, and our current crop of city-fleers doesn’t seem to be deterred by what has been considered an inconvenient location in recent years, so this may work.

Whew! I guess Mt. Rushmore and Lincoln statues are safe after all

Biden Admits that Trump is our first racist president.

“No, Roosevelt wasn’t being racist when he rounded up 120,000 Jap citizens and stuck ‘em in concentration camps”, Mumbles called out from his basement window to FWIW’s ace reporter, “ because, first of all, everyone involved was a Democrat: California’’s Governor, the Supreme Court — well except for the two Republicans — and FDR himself. FDR! Democrats can’t be racists; just ask my friend Bobby Byrd.

“And these guys knew exactly who they were imprisoning: anyone with 1/16 of Jap blood, unlike Trump and my constituents, who can’t tell the difference between a Chink, a Jap and … are there other Asians? What am I talking about here?

“Anyway, let’s leave those statues alone, at least until I hear otherwise from my bosses.”