Latest / The Mark Simone Show / Mark interviews journalist Steve Cuozzo.

Transcript

Mark interviews journalist Steve Cuozzo. · The Mark Simone Show

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Live from the WOR LifeVac studios, The Mark Simone Show.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Hey, Steve Cuso, the great New York Post columnist. Nobody
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: better on Manhattan, New York City, restaurants, real estate. We'll
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: get to all of that with him. And he's with
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: us now. Steve Cuso, how are you doing?
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: Hey, good morning. How are you doing?
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Good. There's a rumor that you've got a new book
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: coming out that you've actually written a novel.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Well, thanks for mentioning, not just a rumor, Mark, but
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: a fact. And I've written my first novel.
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: It won't be out.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Till December 8th from a company called Post Hill Press,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: distributed by Simon & Schuster. And it's called Consuela's Thrill.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: And it's a thriller. It's an erotic, romantic thriller. And
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: I've said a lot of it, the whole last third
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: of the book in Coney Island, which happens to be
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: one of my favorite subjects for my.
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: Real estate column.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: And there's so much going on there right now in
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: terms of development, new housing, et cetera.
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: It's really fascinating.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: And amazingly, Mayor Mamdani, one of the few sensible things
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: he's done is to establish a Coney Island Business Improvement District.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: And I don't know if he knows what that really means,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: but it's a great thing for the middle class. It
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: means economic growth, development, aimed at sparring new retail, new
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: apartments that are not just cheapest kinds of apartments, but
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: middle class, middle income places to live. And one of
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: the things I've done in this book is to, I've
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: imagined something that doesn't yet exist, but might soon exist,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: which is a luxury condo tower on the Coney Island
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: boardwalk overlooking the ocean. So as you know, our friend
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: John Katsimatidis has two beautiful rental apartment buildings at the
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: western end of Coney Island. And I've imagined that he would, well,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: not him, of course, but someone would put up a
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: luxury condo tower next to them. And he actually has
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: the land there and has always wanted to build. I
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: think he needs a zoning change. And so it's a
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: setting that I think makes sense for people who care
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: about New York City and anybody who loves Coney Island
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: the way I do.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but is this a good thing? You know, like
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: when you drove to Queens, it was Queens. Now when
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: you drive through Queens, it's high-rises, big glass, black glass
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: skyscrapers all over the place. It looks like a financial district.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: It looks like Cleveland over there.
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: Is this good?
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: No, I love those big glass high-rises. You see them
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: in places like Long Island City, Hunter's.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: Point, Flushing. Other parts of Queens that.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Have been resentful over the years precisely to promote new development. No,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: the buildings are not equally good. Yeah, some of them
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: can seem monotonous. If you take this number seven train
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: or the N train out of Manhattan toward either Schumer
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: or Astoria, respectively, you're suddenly, hey, what's going on? You
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: come out of the tunnel. and you see, what's going
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: on here? What are all these new buildings? Well, people
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: have made homes there, and these buildings typically, you know,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: they bring stores, they bring fitness centers, restaurants.
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: So their whole communities.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Now, in Coney Island, it's another story entirely. There's no
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: risk of, or promise, depending on how you look at it,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: of Coney Island becoming anything like Flushing or Astoria or or.
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: Places like that, Long Island City.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Developments are different there, and they tend to be grouped
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: along Surf Avenue, which is.
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: One block in from Boardwalk, and they're good buildings. People
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: are moving there.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: It's an exciting thing to see that middle-class people, for
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: the first time, have embraced.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: Coney Island as a place to live.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: And, of course, you have the advantages of the amusement park,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: et cetera, the ocean, beach. You have the disadvantages that
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: there's very little shopping around there. It isn't easy to
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: get to or from from other parts of the city.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: But it's all moving in what I think.
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: Is a good trajectory. And, you know, we'll see where
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: it goes. Yeah.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: Now, Steve Kuzo, when I talk to people all over
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: the country, you probably get the same thing. They'll say, oh,
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: New York, it's so dangerous. Is anybody still there? Did
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: everybody leave? Tell us the truth. People are actually coming
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: in like crazy, aren't they?
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: Completely ridiculous. I mean, yeah. Mark, there are people out
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: there who hate New York City. I don't know why.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: They've moved away years ago. They have racist views of Manhattan.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: And I know this because I get all these emails
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: every time I write about anything new in the city.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: You know, I get these horrible emails. People post things online.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Why would anybody want to live.
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: In this raffle and all this kind of thing? But
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: the truth is that it's the hottest place in the
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: world now.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: And, you know, prices of everything keep going up. That's
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: a good and also a bad thing. But it indicates
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: the extent to which there's great demand for food.
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: To live here, to be here.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: And yeah, we know the schools, the public schools stink.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: There are parts of town that seem resistant to even
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: the best efforts of the NYPD to sort of tame
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: certain corners of Brooklyn and the Bronx that are made difficult.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: But Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch has done a phenomenal job
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: And she hasn't even been in the job that long,
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: about a year, reducing the.
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: Number of murders, crime. We have the lowest crime, the
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: lowest serious crime rates in history. It's amazing.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Yes, there are problems with lower level crime, which I
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: grant you, it's not low level if you're a victim
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: of a mugging. Even so, those numbers are still coming down,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: not as rapidly as for capital crimes, but they're coming down.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: People compare them to the numbers prior to 2020. I
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: don't really see the relevance of that. Obviously, conditions were
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: different before the pandemic, but all I see is Wonderful
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: things happening all over town. And anybody who thinks that
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: this is a hellhole, they're just idiots.
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: But when you say that, you can actually back that up. Like,
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: for instance, we know apartment rental is way up. But
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: what about leasing, leasing businesses, commercial space?
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: Right now, Manhattan office leasing, offices are mainly concentrated in Manhattan,
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: of course.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: And it has never been harder for companies to find
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: space or to expand than it is now because demand
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: is so great. All the new office buildings fill up immediately.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: The greatest companies here continue to expand.
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: I write about this all the funds.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Wall Street companies, media, tech, AI, you know, Anthropic, which
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: is one of the most in the news AI-focused companies,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: recently leased an entire building of 350,000 square feet on,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: I think, Hudson Street in the Hudson Square area.
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: It's an amazing thing.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: And this reality runs contrary to the narratives that some
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: people are still putting out about how, I don't know,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: New York has seen better days.
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: I don't know what they're talking about.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and obviously, just walk around. Restaurants are mobbed. They're packed.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: You can't get a reservation in a lot of places.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: There's lines out the door for things.
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah. It's a good and a bad thing.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: Now, am I wrong? Are French restaurants making a little
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: bit of a comeback?
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: Totally.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: We've never been without French restaurants, but In the recent
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: year or so, there have been a whole bunch of
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: new openings. And my colleague, Jennifer Gould, wrote about this
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: a few weeks ago. And there are new restaurants coming
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: that have opened recently downtown. Danielle Balloud is opening his
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: giant brasserie, Balloud. across from Lincoln Center in.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: A few weeks.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: And there were all sorts of smaller restaurants as well
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: that are opening. Claudette is a wonderful restaurant down on
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Lower Fifth Avenue. It closed for a few years and
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: recently reopened. It's a banner time. if you love French
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: cuisine in all its forms. But it's also a matter
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: of time for people who love Korean food and steakhouses.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: It's a phenomenal thing that we've seen recently. And the
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: only time I've resented is when I have trouble getting
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: a reservation somewhere.
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: This happens more often than you might think.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: Hey, before we run out of time, I loved Shelley Fireman,
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: the great restaurateur. Traderia Del Arte, Red Eye Grill, Bond 45, Fiorello.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: Did you report that that company was filing bankruptcy?
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they're in Chapter 11, and this happened a few
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: weeks ago.
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: And they actually filed about a month ago, but nobody noticed.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: And, you know, Shelley Fireman, founder of that great company, passed.
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: Away almost a year ago.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: And I think that even before Shelley died, it wasn't
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: quite right.
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: They had opened a few restaurants. It flopped.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: But they have these great long-lived restaurants like Trattoria Del
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Arte and Fiorello and Bond 45. Some of these restaurants
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: have been with us for 30 years. This is almost
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: unprecedented in New York City. Nobody has restaurants that are that,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: as many restaurants that are that venerable.
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: And I think that they've had trouble because.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Their main restaurants are all very, very close to or
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: across the street from major entertainment venues. And those have
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: sort of during the pandemic, there was no entertainment. So
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: Bond 45 is on a block with three Broadway theaters. Well,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: you know, there were no Broadway theaters for nearly two years.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: So naturally, they suffered a staggering loss of business, and
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: they have yet to recoup that.
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: Same with Trattoria dell'Arte across.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: From Carnegie Hall. I was there last night. We hope
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: they recover. That's a great restaurant chain. Hey, we're out
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: of time.
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: They're in business. They're all still going strong.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: Steve Cuso. What's the name of the book again?
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: Oh, it's called Consuela's Thrill.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: And they're actually pre-marketing it on Amazon, on Simon &
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Schuster website, Barnes & Noble.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: So order now.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just go to Amazon. Just type in Steve Cuso.
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: As well as thrilled.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, type in Steve Cuso. It'll come up on Amazon.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: Pre-order it. Thanks for being with us. We'll do it
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: again soon.
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: Thanks a lot, Mark. Take care.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Take care. Hey, don't forget, it's a three-hour show now.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: I'm here 9 to noon, 9 a.m. till noon every day. And,
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: of course, 6 to 9, you've got Curtis Lewa, Larry Menti,
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: right here on 710WOR.