January 13, 1991

The city's real-estate players have not yet traded in their black ties for black armbands. Some 2,000 members and guests of the Real Estate Board of New York are expected to don dinner jackets and evening gowns for the 95th annual banquet, at $450 a plate, being given Thursday in the Grand Ballroom of the New York Hilton. But the crowd will be smaller by 200 or 300 than last year's, offering another barometer of distress in the industry. It will not be a somber event, however. When you fill a ballroom with landlords, builders, speculators, brokers and lawyers, the low-level chatter and high-level negotiating are bound to be irrepressible. More happens on the floor than around the tables. "Even with a three-tier dais and any number of prominent people, the crowd is the show," said Warren Wechsler, first senior vice president of the board. "As a matter of fact, we've had a dance band from time to time. But since it's impossible to walk between the tables, it's even more difficult to dance between them." "At the very peak of the market, there did seem to be a very, very feverish pitch of activity and deal-making," he said. "Although last year, which was by no means a banner year, one sensed a considerable amount of energy. Like any other business, people's success depends on their optimism, vigor and confidence in being able to detect opportunities, no matter what the market conditions are like."

The Rev. Al Sharpton was stabbed in the chest yesterday as he prepared to lead a protest demonstration through the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn with the parents of Yusuf K. Hawkins, the black youth slain there by a white mob 17 months ago. Police officers assigned to monitor the demonstration immediately seized and subdued a suspect, a white Bensonhurst man with a record of assaults who investigators said was drunk.

The chant belonged to another era, to a place far removed from the drug-infested corners of 130th street and Madison Avenue. Even in the early hours of an icy December morning, with the sounds of police sirens wailing in the distance and strong, frigid winds blowing the lids off aluminum garbage cans, the chant still conjured up positive images. "WIN-go, WIN-go, WIN-go..."

A BILL to require all skiers under the age of 14 to wear helmets has caused alarm in the state's growing ski industry. Opponents of the bill say New Jersey ski areas, which are beginning to compete more directly with those in neighboring states, would be rendered uninsurable by the bill's stipulations and forced to close.

A FINE Queen Anne-style house built in 1906 that was threatened by demolition because it was in Old Salem, a restored Colonial village in this North Carolina city, has been saved by a construction company that moved it 150 yards beyond the historic district for use as its offices. Leinbach House, as it is known, had been built on the site where Salem's first blacksmith lived and worked in the 18th century and would have been demolished to make room for a reproduction of the blacksmith's house as part of the village being restored by Old Salem Inc.