May 29, 2005

ON that Christmas day in 1998, life could hardly have seemed better for the Gordon brothers, David and Greg. They brought their wives to celebrate the holiday amid the festive décor of their parents' home in Conroe, Tex., a onetime oil boom town north of Houston. As family members relaxed, the brothers eagerly compared notes about their triumphs of the last year. The stock market bubble was still expanding. For David Gordon, a corporate lawyer from Tulsa, that translated into a flourishing business helping companies go public or make acquisitions. For Greg Gordon, who ran a successful wholesale jewelry business with his wife, Lisa, the flood of market wealth had created a heated demand for the luxury items he sold.

From nuclear negotiators to student dissidents, from bazaar merchants to turbaned mullahs, Iranians agree: the right to develop nuclear power is a point of national pride. ''For a country to have nuclear energy means that it has made progress in all other fields as well, so other countries have to respect its technology,'' said Nilufar, 29, a graduate student in energy management at the prestigious Sharif Industrial University. Nilufar, covered in black so only her face was showing, agreed to be interviewed on such a delicate topic only if her family name was not used.

Banks financing home purchases will sometimes appraise property for less than sale price, forcing buyer to seek way out of deal or to come up with more cash or more creative financing in order to proceed with it despite low appraisal; bank appraisals are based on closed deals that can be several months old and therefore not reflective of current prices, particularly during times of sharply rising prices; broker involved in such situations can sometimes find comparable deals that may satisfy appraiser; buyers who signed contracts without contingency financing, as many do in highly competitive market, may have no recourse but to proceed with deal; low appraisals can be particularly hard on first-time buyers; photos (L)

MAYBE it's time to retire the term ''retro-rock.'' Not because it doesn't fit but because it fits too much too well -- it's becoming redundant. These days, rock tends to be retro by default, whether on the pop charts or on MP3 blogs. The million-selling Las Vegas band the Killers became a mainstream sensation by reviving the sound of 1980's new wave, while the beloved Scottish cult band Bloc Party became an underground sensation by ... well, by reviving a different strand of 1980's new wave. From Gap commercials (where you can find the 18-year-old Joss Stone belting out the half-century-old ''Night Time Is the Right Time'') to indie record shops, rock 'n' roll nostalgia is everywhere. A young listener might well wonder what other kind of rock 'n' roll there is, and an older one might find that a surprisingly difficult question to answer. Only a few years ago, it was a mild shock to hear so many young bands sounding so old-fashioned. In 2001, when the Strokes released their galvanizing debut album, the garage-rock boom seemed like a sharp (and sometimes shrill) reaction to a mutating musical world. The Strokes' retro juggernaut was a strike against turntables and keyboards, rap-rock and electronica. And if the band sounded a bit like their favorite late-1970's punk forebears, that was part of the point: they were digging in their heels.

At first, Stacey Akerson did not know what they were -- those oblong, shrouded objects that she first began spotting a couple of years ago, affixed to the tops of cars on the streets of Brooklyn. ''You always wondered, what's that up there, covered up?'' she said. Now Ms. Akerson, a gas station attendant at a BP in Bedford-Stuyvesant, knows exactly what they are: surfboards. Her dentist and former art teacher have them. And, incongruous as the scene remains, she barely bats an eye these days as they whiz by her gritty corner of Atlantic and Brooklyn Avenues, on the way to the beach about 12 miles away.