Blogging since 1998. By David Wertheimer

Category: Personal (Page 1 of 25)

Apartment living

My 13-year-old son has been playing clarinet since fourth grade: first on a lark with friends, then more seriously, as he joined the middle school orchestra. In recent months, he really began to enjoy it, and he’s playing a lot—sometimes for two hours at a time, sometimes as late as 10 p.m. before bed.

His bedroom shares a wall with our neighbors, an older husband and wife who we don’t speak to all that much. So I was surprised when the wife stopped me on the building’s front steps a few weeks ago, as I was returning from a dog walk and she was on her way out.

“Is your son playing an instrument?” she asked. “Like a woodwind, maybe an oboe?”

In my head, I cringed, ready for a complaint. “Yes, that’s our younger son. It’s a clarinet.”

Her face brightened. “He’s getting good!”

Postseason baseball and me

No, I’ve never been to the World Series, and yes, I’m still annoyed about it.

Back in 1996, in the days where people would have to buy tickets in person, I waited on line at Yankee Stadium and got postseason tickets. I saw the Yanks in the Division Series, for sure; I don’t think I got ALCS tickets.

Then I waited on line again and got myself a World Series ticket. Amazing! Many of my friends had tickets with their fathers to games 1 and 2; I got myself a single seat, because my dad isn’t a big fan of baseball games, and I was not going to miss out. It was for Game 7.

The Yankees won the World Series in six games.

Thoroughly dejected, I got a refund. In the dynasty years that followed, I was unable to get a World Series ticket again, despite the Yankees’ winning three more championships by 2000. I did get to Game 6 of the 1998 ALCS, and I got to see Mariano Rivera send the Yankees to the World Series, which was incredible; I can still picture the end of the game from my seat, and the upper deck of the old Yankee Stadium bouncing in the enthusiasm. But never a World Series.

The Yankees made the postseason a lot in the ensuing years, but it occurred to me that the only thing better than seeing the ALCS clincher would be going to the World Series, so I stopped trying to get postseason tickets for the early rounds. In 2009, the only time the Yanks made the Series since 2000, I had a toddler in the house and couldn’t be bothered.

So now it’s 2024, I have two teenage sons, and Major League Baseball has a tiered, throttled system for World Series tickets, so when I tried to buy them this week, the only option available was $1266 for the wheelchair row, proof of eligibility required, and a two-ticket limit, too.

With some continued good play, the Yankees will make the 2024 World Series in the coming days, and barring some extraordinary good luck, I won’t be there, again. At least I have a story to tell.

9/11/01

For the past few years, I have lived around the corner from the Firemen’s Memorial in Manhattan. Every September 11, the neighborhood gets quiet. Streets are closed to traffic, and instead are filled with fire fighters in their formal uniforms, somberly marching to the monument, alongside a substantial police presence, mostly directing traffic but also respecting the moment.

I have no direct connection to the firefighters; I’m just a neighbor, and a lot of the time I’m walking my dog nearby. But since 2019, I have felt the moment more viscerally than I did for the decade-plus before, reminded of the effort, the tragedy, the grieving that continues.

Regardless, I don’t tend to dwell on the day, other than to pay my respects. Since it’s getting a fair amount of attention this year in other spaces, I thought I’d briefly call attention to how 9/11 was experienced here. My thoughts are with those who have much worse to remember today.

As I wrote on the twentieth anniversary of the attacks: my memories of the day and the week were chronicled here on the Ideapad, and I still recommend reading them; the page is both contemplative and raw, and it holds up. Also, for really raw writing about the event, my friend Adam’s firsthand writeup is chastening.

Landmarks and luxury housing

This post generated a lot of feedback.

The Flatiron Will Go Condo. This is sad, because it will severely limit who can enter one of New York’s true landmarks. I had a job interview with Penguin many years ago, and HR was in the pointy end, and I can still picture the goofy narrow office in my mind. It’s a fun memory even today. Sixty luxury apartments will reduce opportunities like that to near-zero.

The point here isn’t to argue against capitalism, or to debate the merits of adding housing stock to a city that needs plenty, or to say my little recollection is particularly important. It’s about the Flatiron Building and New York itself, and what it means when landmarks turn into residential real estate.

Of course the Flatiron needs new life, and it’s a mess inside, and it’s such a major project that no one even wanted to buy the building. Commercial office space is not a bullish investment in 2024, and adding apartments in Manhattan is fundamentally good.

That said, its sixty ultra-high-end luxury condominiums are likely to be purchased by a mix of LLCs and holding companies, held as investment properties and pied-a-terres, ultimately contributing little to the neighborhood. A small staff will stand guard at a lobby that a limited number of residents will use each day. Is this the best outcome for the city?

The Plaza Hotel went condo in 2005, four years after the September 11 attacks, when New York was convinced that high-end hotels had passed their peak. This was widely viewed as a disappointment, one that spurred talk of government intervention. How soon we forget! No one wanted to lose access to such a grand, iconic space. Never mind that the old hotel was expensive; at least one could go there, see the lobby, get upstairs if interested, and experience it.

There’s still a hotel in the Plaza, of course, but greatly downscaled. What remains—some hotel rooms, the Palm Court, the ballrooms—exists in part because public pressure helped it persist. That pressure has abated. No one is really fussing over the Waldorf-Astoria’s slow transformation into a more residential space, other than to lament how long it’s taking. And few are going to fuss over the Flatiron, if the reactions to that Threads post are any indication.

I know firsthand what it means to have set foot in these iconic buildings, to use them for their stated purpose, and my hope is that many others get to experience them, too, not just as nice pieces of architecture (which they all are) but as part of the city’s fabric.

Just before the Plaza closed as a full hotel, my wife and I spent a night there. We wanted to experience its grandeur for ourselves. And it was grand indeed: wide hallways, high ceilings, a strikingly oversized room, and all the prewar detail still on the walls, aged but beautiful. Staying there was a singular New York experience. Like my one pop into the Flatiron Building, I’m glad I got to be there. So, too, my coffees in the lobby of the Waldorf, and the various industry dinners I once attended there.

There will always be somewhere else to go for a meeting, a dinner or a night’s stay, and landmark designation means these special buildings will remain a part of the streetscape. Still, losing access to them, in full or in part, marks a shift away from part of what makes them special.

For most of the first century of its life, the Flatiron was a thriving space, with thousands of people walking into its lobby and filling its 22 stories with an ever changing population, each generating their own experiences, their own memories. The building was lively inside and out. That is likely never to return. And the transition away from a bustling and interwoven piece of the city is noteworthy, and a little bit sad.

Straplines

Making good things great. Digital innovation, product strategy, coaching. Family man and Yankees fan. I like minor chords and chocolate mint.

It’s been a year-plus since I’ve posted on Twitter, and today I updated my bio to just send people to my Threads account.

Because I’m @netwert on Threads (a username I really don’t like anymore, cf. this web domain, but what can you do) my bio there simply says, “I should be werty.”

I rather liked my long-time Twitter bio, though, so I saved it and am posting it here for posterity.

These things are by their nature ephemeral, of course. My Twitter bio occasionally also housed pithy commentary, including, “Ask me about my new front teeth,” and, “Charter member of the DJ LeMahieu Fan Club.” Alas, just as with LeMahieu’s batting prowess, that era has come to an end.

An incomplete list of things younger than the comp sub that gave me full access to wsj.com until its cancellation today after 24 years

3G cell phone service
the George W. Bush presidency
Carlos Alcaraz
Verizon
iPod
Beyonce’s solo career
Fall Out Boy
Olivia Rodrigo
9/11
Myspace
Blu-Ray
the AOL-Time Warner merger
Fandango
“Gilmore Girls”
“Monsters Inc.”
USB flash drives
Montenegro
Chrysler’s PT Cruiser
Real Simple magazine
The South Beach Diet
Mile High Stadium
West Elm
Spanx
The entire 21st century

Thank you, Joy, wherever you are.

Puzzles

Word puzzles are a big thing for me. Not in an obsessive way, but in a constant-presence, continual-joy sense. I look forward to getting the New York Times in print each weekend, mostly for the puzzles, and like many, I enjoy the various games on their website, and on Puzzmo, too.

Friends got me back into the weekday crossword a few months ago after many years away. Once I got the hang of completing them online, I was hooked; I don’t think I’ve missed a weekday in two or three months. No complaints.

I do the crossword because my awesome high school English teacher, Ms. Kastner, used to give me a photocopy each morning in senior English, from the stack the teachers made for each other. I got so into it that one day she called on me, I had no idea what was going on, she challenged me why not and I said “because I was doing the crossword!” and that was good enough for her.

Ms. Kastner was my teacher three times in four years and stands out as a favorite; she was warm, funny, hip (she called me Werty! in class!) and loved to teach. Her influence on me is significant, from the crosswords to a college degree in English to an appreciation of Shakespeare, debate and solid grammar. My kids’ love of word puzzles traces through me right back to her.

All of which is background to last week, when I logged onto Facebook to check my birthday messages and found this from Ms. Kastner.

40 years of the Mac

Macintosh computers and Mac OS turn 40 this year, and the media tributes are starting already. The Upgrade podcast linked here asked a few Mac-media luminaries for their picks in a personal Mac retrospective. I did something like this when Steve Jobs died, but that was more than a decade ago, so I figure I’ll play along with their topics:

First Mac owned: the Mac LC, when I went to college, seduced by the color monitor. In retrospect I should have gone with the Classic. I got an Apple //c in sixth grade, so it was logical and comfortable to move into a Mac.

Favorite/best Mac: without a doubt, the Mac SE/30 that I used in the college newspaper office. Quoting my 2011 blog post: “I had on it Eudora, Microsoft Word 5.1a, and a Klondike solitaire app, and it was just about perfect.” Many machines have done many more impressive things in the decades since, but no other computer I’ve used achieved the purity of purpose and sheer enjoyment of use. The classic iPods reached a similar level of perfection.

It’s a bit unfair and crotchety to miss a 30-year-old computer from when I was on a college campus, so I will note that my PowerBook G3 and M-chip MacBooks have also been delightful devices.

Favorite/best Mac software ever: I began using Eudora way back in 1991, and I’ve been chasing the Eudora email experience ever since it went end of life. Even now I have my Outlook UI on my work computer set up to resemble it. Other software I’ve used and loved: BBEdit, Fetch, Netscape Navigator, Photoshop, Napster, Talking Moose (you scuzzball! IYKYK).

Favorite/best Mac accessory or hardware: eh, I’ve never been a peripherals guy, despite having my share of keyboards and mice and external hard drives. I do enjoy and appreciate a good ergonomic keyboard; Microsoft’s have served me well for years. And I once had a super cool desk that fit a computer tower and all its peripherals in an 18″ square footprint by putting a printer stand 5′ high, above the desktop.

Hall of Shame: worst accessory, Mac, or moment: that Mac LC, because, again quoting past me: “I installed AutoDoubler to find hard drive space and my processor slowed to a crawl.” That was probably as bad as it got. I learned some lessons about compacting hard drive storage that spring. And, sadly, I’ve been short on HD space ever since.

Bimodal neuromodulation

I want to believe! A tinnitus treatment called bimodal neuromodulation is getting major media coverage now that two different products are in the market.

As a longtime tinnitus sufferer, I’m curious to learn more about Lenire; I wonder how the team figured out that the mouth was a good conduit for the technique. My own experience suggests a connection to the jaw, although they chose different.

Sadly, I tried Neosensory’s Duo in 2022, and experienced no improvement after two months of training. Literally zero. I know people for whom it worked, though, so perhaps variations will be effective.

Instead, I’ve been trying AudioCardio for the past six weeks. My tinnitus is not good, but I do think it’s marginally better, in that the intensity I’d been noticing in 2023 has toned down a little. Small victories are victories, so I’ve maintained my subscription, and will see how it goes for a while longer.

MindEar may also be worth exploring, as CBT can positively impact a wide range of tendencies and phobias. Why not tinnitus?

Ring ring ring, ha ha hey and all that, but I’m glad there are new paths being forged.

Still true

I revisited my 25th-anniversary blog post today and discovered that the Eatonweb Portal clickthroughs are functional in the Wayback Machine.

Back then, according to the portal, I described the Ideapad as, “Views, opinions, emotions, essays, proper grammar.”

That’s still pretty much the case. Nice job staying on topic, Wertheimer.

A year later, I wrote up the sidebar description that also still rings true:

3 parts observation
2 parts introspection
1 part links
1 part creativity
1 part stinging wit
dash of sarcasm

Part of longevity is just sticking to it.

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