Some cool real estate websites images:
Piano on the pier, Jun 2011 – 05
Image by Ed Yourdon
One of many young pianists, showing his stuff to the world. Admiring father is on the right … and I have no idea who the guy in the middle is. All I can be sure of is that it’s not me….
Note: for some mysterious reason, this photo was published in an undated (early July 2011) blog titled "Calgary Calgary Real Estate Ads Market-July 2010." It was also published in a Dec 26, 2011 blog titled "Augment Your Web Presence with Real Estate Website Marketing."
***************************
A few years ago, British artist Luke Jerram came up with the intriguing idea of spreading pianos around the city, with an open invitation for anyone nearby to wander up and begin playing something. Anything. He started in London, and subsequently brought his festival (known as "Play Me, I’m Yours") to some 19 cities around the world — including Moscow, Sydney, São Paulo, Barcelona, Bristol, Bath, Birmingham, Cincinnati, San Jose, and Pécs — before coming to New York City in June 2010. Sixty pianos were donated, painted, and "installed" throughout the five boroughs of New York; and over a period of two weeks, I managed to visit every single one of them (except for two pianos in Queens, which had been vandalized and removed before I could get to them) and photographed them all in this Flickr set
I had such a good time with the New York pianos that I checked Luke’s website periodically to see what plans he had for 2011. In addition to plans for Geneva, Adelaide, and other places, he scheduled a festival in Austin, TX for the month of April, details of which you can see at this Internet site. There were only 14 pianos in Austin, many located along the river that runs through the center of the city. As with New York, roughly 2/3 of them were sitting empty and alone when I got to them — so there were only five pianos where I could actually listen to people playing music. For each of those five, I made video recordings; you can find them on this Internet site.
I wondered whether Luke would be bringing his piano festival back to New York again in 2011, but a different group decided to jump in first, with a somewhat more ambitious project: instead of 60 pianos, they placed 88 pianos around the city. The project is called "Sing for Hope"; it acknowledges that it was inspired by Luke Jerram, and it claims to be the "world’s largest street piano installation to date, and is expected to reach over two million people."
The project’s web site has a map showing where all 88 pianos have been placed, and I decided immediately that it was far more than I could hope to tackle. Sixty pianos last year was hard enough; and this year, there are a dozen just in Staten Island alone, not to mention the dozens of other ones scattered throughout Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. Sheesh! So I decided to limit my visits to a single piano — one that’s located fairly close to where I live, and one that I remember from last year’s festival as being quite picturesque, out at the end of a pier that extends out into the Hudson River, at 70th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Obviously, the pier was not built as a showcase for the "Sing for Hope" piano; it was actually constructed by Donald Trump’s real-estate empire back in 2000, on top of an old wooden pier that was built a century ago when freighters and barges unloaded their cargo all along the west side of Manhattan, onto the railroad cars waiting to transport them to other parts of the counry. When shipping faded in the 1950s and a couple major railroads collapsed into bankruptcy, the pier fell into disuse and decay; it was further damaged by a massive fire in 1971. I remember jogging all the way out to the end of the pier in the mid-70s, when I lived on Riverside Drive, wondering each time whether I was going to run onto a rotting plank and plunge into the river below, never to be heard from again… But all of that was a long time ago, and now that the new pier is here for everyone to enjoy, nobody remembers the history.
So … this Flickr set contains some photos of the piano in its dedicated spot, as well as a few short video clips of various New Yorkers playing whatever music appeals to them. There were lots of other New Yorkers — including the young woman who told me that she had painted the piano I was photographing, and who wanted to re-glue a fragile piece of sculpture/artwork to the top of the frame — and perhaps a few visitors and tourists, who had no interest in the piano, but who just wanted to enjoy the weather and the terrific view up and down the river; I photographed some of them too. Out in the river, there were barges and tugboats, kayaks and jet-skis, sailboats and yachts … and two of the most amazing boats I’ve ever seen, flying an American flag together with an enormous "Gay Pride" flag that looked big enough to wrap around the entire boat.
Altogether, it was a great way to spend a couple hours on a warm Sunday afternoon, which I followed up with a second visit the following Friday, in the hour just before sunset. And these photos will be uploaded over a seven-day period beginning with the holiday weekend when there is an even better excuse to hustle down to the pier to spend a few hours: the annual Fourth of July fireworks display. If you’re down there, look around for a crazy guy with a camera: it might be me.
BMH01
Image by McBeth
pretend along with me?
let’s pretend that you’ve been browsing the local real estate websites in search of Your Next Home and you come across one that says ‘this 150 yr old bldg was once a business but has been gutted and completely renovated on the outside. The inside is being left in this condition for buyer to choose whether it will be retail space downstairs or a living area downstairs. From the sounds of the listings it appears as though the upstairs could also be made into either one generously continuing living space to extend that first floor environment and that you’ll find a similar mostly-gutted condition upstairs on the 2nd story looking like this picture.
Pretend you love it and that you decide to buy the place. How much do you think you’ll realistically be spending on the walls, floor, etc. if you want to make this building your home?
I don’t know what kind of wiring is necessary for kitchen, bath, etc. but creating those would also have to be part of your financial factoring.
No cheating, please do not look on your neighbor’s paper for the answer. Use a no.2 pencil and erase completely. (thank you)
house #1 – front long view
Image by Austin & Zak
This view is similar to the view on the real estate website originally seen.
