November 13, 2005

THE 60th edition of Who's Who in America, that venerable guide to American achievement, was published last week. The familiar two-volume ''big red book,'' a librarian's Vanity Fair, recognizes 109,000 people and, by their inclusion, recommends them to posterity and to America's collective memory. Kind of like a magazine cover that stays on the stands forever. But in the era of the Internet and Google, of reality television, gangsta rap stars, celebrity publicists, incarcerated domestic divas and the famous 15 minutes of fame (probably closer to 5 now), who is who?

Recent market reports show that studios and one-bedroom apartments in Manhattan are increasing in value, while price increases for larger apartments are not keeping pace; studios and one-bedroom apartments, 55 percent of all sales from July to September, are up 5 percent from spring 2005; average value of larger studios has climbed 11 percent, to $428,831, and one-bedrooms now average $687,744; photos; graph compares costs per square foot (M) Manhattan apartments (M)

ON Jackson Avenue in Long Island City, Queens, the Ten63 cafe chronicles the news of the day on a colorful, always-changing sidewalk chalkboard. The chalkboard has featured announcements of every sort and importance, from the demolition of smokestacks on a local-factory-turned-condos to the engagement (and subsequent breakup) of Paris Hilton. In the last few weeks, one more bit of news has been proclaimed in chalk: Ten63 -- so named for its address, 10-63 Jackson -- is itself about to close. The triangular three-story building that houses the cafe, and that once housed municipal offices for the borough, has been bought by developers who want to make it taller and convert it to residences.

New York City real estate agents encounter surprises of all kinds when entrusted with keys to apartments on market, from unusual objects and furnishings to unplanned and embarrassing encounters with occupants assumed to be away from home; photos (S)

IF you think life is moving too fast -- hyped up with BlackBerries, blogs, podcasts and instant messages -- imagine what it is like to run a movie studio these days. It's bad enough that a movie's box-office gross revenues will decline about 50 percent each week and that the time between a film's release in the theater and its debut in the home-video market is shrinking rapidly. (That window is less than four months now, down from six months just a year ago; some industry leaders predict it will soon shrink to nothing.) Even more vexing, success or failure in theaters, often a break-even proposition at best, will be determined with near-certainty by early afternoon of the opening Friday -- and then by the turnout at a few bellwether theaters like Loews Lincoln Square and AMC Empire 25 in Manhattan.