Why We Buy VWs

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I’ve owned just a few of cars over the years:

Of those 7, 5 have been VWs… Initially it was just ’cause I needed a cheap car and my brother-in-law had one, but now it’s a lot more than that…

The 1980 Honda we bought used and it was a nightmare. I was in college in Austin and the thing kept breaking down and it was out of warranty and the repairs were expensive and my parents just didn’t understand how much of my money the car was eating up… When someone rear ended me while I was sitting at a red light and the car was totaled I was actually pretty happy not to have the expense of a car.

After that bad experience I wasn’t exactly running back to Japanese cars even though my parents had always had good luck with Toyotas. The ’97 Golf I bought ’cause I wanted an inexpensive car that looked decent… I test drove the Golf and a Jeep Wrangler and the Golf was a lot more fun to drive, so I got it. I liked the car well enough that I was pretty sure my next car would be a VW…

Then Ellen DeGeneres came out on TV. You might not think that it would have an impact on car buying, but for gay men (like me) it definitely did. Ellen’s coming out was a huge deal. Gay people didn’t have the visibility back then that they do now and advertisers were scared and started pulling their ads from her show.

So what did VW do? They took the spot right after her character came out and started a new ad campaign with the following ad:

The straight world didn’t really think too much about it, but gay men and lesbians took notice. It wasn’t enough to get lesbians away from Subaru (who’s had the lesbian icon Martina Navratilova as their spokesperson), but it solidified gay men’s love for VW.

Yes, there are bumps along the road, like when a sales guy from Potamkin (the VW dealer in Manhattan) woke me up one morning and proceeded to call me a “fucking faggot” and then hang up on me after I told him I didn’t think much of his dealership because when I tried to buy the Golf from them in ’97 they refused to tell me the details of the financing until after I had signed the document to purchase the car (VW customer service had the sales manager at Potamkin call me to apologize for the sales guys comments).

And we’ve had at least one really frustrating problem with our GTI – a plastic part in the door kept breaking which would drop the window into the door meaning the car wasn’t wasn’t secure and couldn’t be left in anything other than an attended garage. It happened 3 or 4 times and was always hugely inconvenient. They did eventually figure out how to fix it and it hasn’t been a problem since.

And the Passat we never should have bought… It had constant problems and they were really expensive to fix. We would have spent less if we had bought a new car. But what I didn’t appreciate at the time was how hard of a life it had had – which isn’t something I can hold against VW.

But all in all I love VW. The design of their cars is still pretty good (though not always the best), and I like the level of fit and finish, and I feel like you get a really solid car for the money.

And of course the R32 is just special… It’s going to be a blast to own and if anything serious ever happens to it (knock wood), I’ll be really upset.

Manhattan Congestion Pricing

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Dan and I have been looking at office space recently (which I mentioned in the post on how square feet are measured in Manhattan). We’ve looked in East Harlem, Midtown West and did drive through considerations of SoBro (the South Bronx), Long Island City, but the most serious contender is a loft space near the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn.

At first we were worried it would take forever to get to Gowanus, but when we drove the route a couple times it seems it will only take 35 minutes – not bad.

I was wondering whether Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to institute congestion pricing would affect us and add $16 on top of the $8+ we’re already going to pay going through the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. Turns out it won’t.

  • The amount you pay in tolls (using EZ Pass) is deducted from the fee.
  • The fee is an all-day fee – no one gets charged more than once per day.
  • If you stick to the FDR, or West Side Highway (like we would be doing), or travel other approved routes to pass through Manhattan, there’s no fee.
  • The fee is only charged for travel from 6am to 6pm – so we wouldn’t get charged for driving home (which we’d do after 6pm).

So, for a number of reasons it wouldn’t affect us at all…

But I’m shocked Manhattanites don’t have a problem with the plan… If you do any driving in the City during the day – including moving your car for alternate side of the street parking – you’ll get charged $4 if you go past one of the cameras that scans license plates to figure out who’s moving “in the zone”.

Personally, I feel like Manhattanites should get huge breaks from the plan, but that’s not really the case. I’m just glad we live north of 86th Street…

Want more info? Read the Mayor Bloomberg’s fact sheet on congestion pricing (PDF).

New Leaf Cafe in Fort Tryon Park

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Dan and I went to New Leaf Cafe for drinks on the 4th of July. New Leaf is one of just a handful of restaurants we have in Hudson Heights – it’s in a great old building in the middle of Fort Tryon Park, near the heather gardens.

When we first moved into the neighborhood in 1997 the cafe was usually closed, or had businesses in it that almost always failed since the kitchen didn’t support much more than making sandwiches. Then Bette Midler came along and gave a grant through New York Restoration Project (which she founded) to upgrade the cafe with a proper kitchen and New Leaf Cafe was born.

It was nice having another restaurant in the neighborhood – even though the food was “unpredictable” it was something different and the atmosphere is really wonderful. The problem is, as time has passed the food is still mediocre/unpredictable, and the prices have gone up. It’s one thing to get so-so food and good atmosphere for a “reasonable” price, but when you pay more, you expect more…

On Valentine’s Day Dan and I went to New Leaf and spent $255 on a dinner for two (the only alcohol on the bill was an inexpensive bottle of champagne). For that price you expect something decent, but the food and service were only “OK” at best and some of the food just wasn’t that good (I’m trying not to sound completely harsh, but you get my point…)

After that we swore we wouldn’t go back there for dinner – it’s just not worth the price. It’s not like dinner for 2 always costs $250 (Valentines was a ‘special’ event with higher prices), but it just seems whenever we go there for dinner we always leave disappointed – so we’ve just given up…

On July 4 we arrived around 3 or 4pm wanting drinks and appetizers only to find they weren’t serving any food – not even chips or beer nuts… Nothing… We got a couple of drinks ($9/each), and sat on the walk in front of the cafe and watched people go by. When our hunger got the best of us Dan ran and got crappy hot dogs from the hot dog vendor at Margaret Corbin Plaza (at the entrance to Fort Tryon Park).

It really was beautiful out. Everything was incredibly green and the weather was blustery, but we were protected from the wind… It reminded me of sitting out on our screened porch when I was a kid – looking out at the garden in bad weather…

But once again, the restaurant part of the experience was underwhelming – the drinks just weren’t all that good… How you can get Absolute and juice wrong, I’m not quite sure – but they did – and Dan wasn’t all that impressed by his martini… And once again, high prices for something that’s just not all that great…

We really do want to see New Leaf do well, and we’d still consider it for lunch, but lately it’s just been one disappointment after another… I’m hoping they get a new chef who will turn the place around…

Our car is on it’s way…

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Back in February we ordered a new VW R32. I just found out from Brendan at Boardwalk VW in Redwood City, CA that 1) the car was “born” on Dan’s 40th birthday (6/15/07), and 2) that it will be at the port on 7/6/07. Brendan’s not our dealer, but he’s been really generous with all the people on VW Vortex who’ve pre-ordered their R32s – letting them know the status of their cars. He even found out the VIN number for us… WVWKC71KX8W021052…

But other people are saying that VW will be holding the cars at port and not releasing them until August since they want to do a proper ‘launch’ for the car and not have the cars trickle out one at a time… While I’m not happy the car will be sitting in the hot sun for the better part of a month, at least we should get it early in August… Hopefully we’ll be able to take it to Canada when we go up to renew Dan’s visa in mid-August…

NY Commercial Real Estate – “Rentable Square Feet” vs. “Usable Square Feet”

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Slicksurface is growing to the point where we’re needing to find office space. It’s a really frustrating experience. The factors, are 1) space, 2) location, and 3) price. No matter what we look at we’re giving up something…

But the really frustrating part is that none of the real estate agents bother to measure the spaces they advertise. It’s common to only have 60-70% of the space that’s advertised. I’ve seen two spaces that were advertised at 1,000 square feet. When I pulled out my laser/sonic measuring device the first place (in East Harlem) was 999 square feet, the second was about 600 square feet (weird shape – still not quite sure how big it was exactly).

So now I ask the agents what the actual, usable space is, but I’m finding no one can tell me the real dimensions… They have a listing and haven’t even bothered to measure it – so it’s impossible to compare advertisements. You have to show up and measure it yourself, which is a complete waste of our time and the agents’ time.

So now we have to figure out whether we want a small space with no view in midtown west, or a larger space in a place like Gowanus (Brooklyn) or East Harlem where the space and view will be nicer/larger, but the location isn’t as good…