The Curmudgeon of Rivington Street

As his apartment on the Lower East Side crumbled, a former Club Kid resented the moneyed millennials who filled his building. Then he let them in on a secret that transformed their lives.

Please summarize articles so we can decide if they’re something we’re interested in reading or not.

Sorry for the multiple paywall posts, this site is slow as fuck

I didn’t realize Riggs only had to spend 4 years in prison for murder.

Tragic old queen looking for money.

You can pass if you like.

thanks OP / is the gist of this that the club kid helped other tenants in the bldg reduce their rents? they had been overcharged?

More milking of the Michael Alig club kid murder case. It’s the glamorously sordid NYC crime no one wants to forget, apparently. It was a Manson murders for the 90s, in a sense.

The article is interesting in revealing what’s behind what that neighborhood has become, and the complexities left behind amongst all the changes. I lived in the exact neighborhood from 1992 on, and remember seeing him and Riggs around. Times change drastically, but they don’t. So many layers to this city!

I’m really surprised none of the tenants considered the possibility that their apartments might have been improperly categorized as market rate, especially with the landlord raising the rent 30%. They needed the old curmudgeon in their building to tell them?

I was waiting for the point in the story where his neighbors would use their windfall to assist him.

Why isn't that man on better HIV treatment? He looks like death. Poor guy.

Summary of the article - he let the current yuppie tenants to discover the building had never been deregulated from rent control. The owners could not produce the paperwork to justify the deregulation (based on improvements to each apartment), so rents had to go down. Some of them radically.

My Ghost of Christmas Future.

What is his gripe? He wants the landlord to fix his apartment, but he won’t let anyone in?

So:

1. Friends with a murderer 2. Won’t allow repairs to his apartment, but complains it’s in bad shape 3. Didn’t tell the other tenants they were being overcharged, only told one couple, who got a lawyer involved and now the other tenants are using the same lawyer 4. Wants the tenants he did not help to thank him

Sounds like a real prince.

I’m less interested in his nonsense and more interested in the financial position of the current owner. How much did they pay for the building? When? Did they know the rents were illegal? Was it financed based on an illegal rent roll? What kind of due diligence did the bank do? What’s the mortgage amount? Are any of the apartments legally free market? If the current owner decided to walk away and the building goes into foreclosure, can the tenants be kicked out?

He was a cunt back in the day. Just desserts.

The headline just MIGHT hint that he's disagreeable, Dora Dumbfuck. It's not the takeaway from the article.

R17

[quote] Didn’t tell the other tenants they were being overcharged, only told one couple, who got a lawyer involved and now the other tenants are using the same lawyer

The couple he told had helped him with things, took care of him, took his groceries upstairs for him. Makes sense he'd want to repay them, he liked them.

He was probably reluctant to reveal anything, not wanting to draw attention to the fact his rent was so much lower. Probably worried something bad would come of it for him in terms of his rent.

I can see not telling people, but he shouldn’t expect them to thank him!

Thank him financially. He is saving them huge amounts of money for years and years to come.

Hopefully this piece of the impetus for that.

He didn’t save them anything. The couple did. He only told the one couple. After they were nice to him. Everyone else only found from the couple. NOT telling people that the landlord was breaking the law was arguably fucked up. There’s no way he deserves thanks, much less a financial reward, from the people he concealed it from for years.

Without him, none of them would be saving anything. He started it all.

Would someone please fix his ROTTING KITCHEN FLOOR before the entire building collapses? For God's sake, he is not well.

There's clearly something else going on since he refuses to allow them access to make the repairs he keeps complaining about.

Well his social workers are not doing their jobs. Even if he is resistant to help, he seems like a risk to everyone and himself.