RE: "art" & real estate
On Thu, 26 Jul 2007, Don Feinberg wrote: Maybe so, but I can attest that they're in my neighborhood in droves, a steady stream of walkers with maps and both living and printed guides .. in families and tour groups and singles and quartets in numbers I haven't seen *ever* before -- easily twice the flow of just last year. The tour busses are in gridlock down 7th Ave South and through Bleecker Street, literally bumper to bumper, and all of them full. We used to have maybe one in two hours, now they're a steady stream. In fact just this week they had a planning board meeting about "the tour bus problem."Actually, not. Foreign tourism in the US is down about >40% overall from year 2000. Yesterday I noticed five very defeated looking people squnched up on the brick border of a tree pit and asked them what they were so sad about. They said they weren't sad, just exhausted from walking. They were from Spain, here for another two days, then to Las Vegas and after that San Francisco. I advised them to skip Las Vegas, but agreed that SF is nice. But Don, I wouldn't rely on those figures anyway. In fact that's not what we hear. They tell us NYC hotels are pretty full (and they're building more) and the if the numbers are down, god help us when they go back to "normal." True, many of them could be Americans and Canadians, but if so, they're talking some pretty funky languages ! As for "foreign exchange" -- I note that in the 1960s, when we lived in Switzerland, the dollar was worth 4.25 francs. This past Wednesday (2007) according to the NY Times, a Swiss franc was worth 80 cents and a dollar bought 1.24 francs, or maybe it was vice versa, I can't decipher their lingo. Whichever, that makes the dollar look significantly *stronger* than it actually is, because that's the rate for huge transactions by megabanks. Private parties changing money don't do nearly as well. Actually, the worst tales of horror I heard this year were about London airports. My own worst experience in an airport (though admittedly long long ago) was Barcelona.And it ain't the bargain prices. Just ask some foreign nationals what it's like even to transit through a US airport (without even entering the country). You'll see why. cheers, Judy Don Feinberg ducque@mindspring.com -----Original Message----- From: Jonathan Bailey [mailto:jon@jonathan-bailey.com] Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 9:15 PM To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca Subject: RE: "art" & real estate Judy said:...which is another reason we get so many Europeans. NYC is a bargain !***Snort*** JB www.jonathan-bailey.com Tenants Harbor, Maine
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