My razor

It is getting hard for me to find replacement blades for my Trac II razor. I have had the thing for about two decades now and it is admittedly looking pretty funky. Problem is the only alternative to my double blades is to buy cheap disposable razors or some of the new "four" track razors. These things look like ugly Japanese sports cars and have names like Quattro or MPower. The Trac II razor must have been introduced in the mid 1970s. I know that because my wife and I recently rented some of the classic Saturday Night Live shows from that period. In one show there is a "spoof" ad touting a triple track razor. It was amazing to watch the fake ad 35 years later. The end line went something like. "The Track III, because you are just stupid enough to buy one." Now I think of this SNL ad every time I go to the store and am faced with a wall of track three and four razors. God, are we really that stupid?

New Rockville Town Center

I spent an afternoon walking the newly redone Rockville Town Center this past week. I have to say that it is pretty nice. I am not sure if I like it when they build new buildings to look like old buildings. (Funny thing is, that 30 years ago they went through Rockville like a bunch of Huns and tore down all the old buildings. My how things change.) Now faux old buildings are trendy and they have done that in Rockville, and while pleasing to the eye, it just feels a little cheesy to me. Just my opinion. The stores are OK as well as the places to dine. Biggest problem to me is they once again have filled the place up with franchise eateries. This is starting to bug me as any redeveloped town center seems to have the same trendy places serving up the same bland high fat crap. There is a Lebanese Taverna, but that family owned chain is starting to get a little predictable and bland. Food is good there (LT) as always but the place does not have the charm of their downtown location.

Best thing is that instead of putting yet another bloated and overpriced Borders in the town center, the planners wisely choose to build a magnificent new library right on the town square. It is a two level library and one of the nicest I have seen. Just stunning really. This should be the blueprint for all high density areas.

Now for my major bitch. I like what they have done for downtown Silver Spring but it is obvious that Rockville got a heck of a lot more than SS ever did or will. We got a few blocks of renovation in the big Silver while the county obviously threw scads of money at Rockville. Looks like we are the red headed stepchild again. I know we are supposed to get a new library in SS but whenever the East County is considered the money seems to trickle down to us in smaller bits. I wonder if our new libary will match the quality of the Rockville one. Was all this because Rockville has its own city government or do the people who make the money decisions in our county just favor the west side of the county. I have got my opinion. You will have to decide for yourselves.

God bless Rose Howard, wherever she is......

You got to be on the watch for scams if you use Craigslist. Lots of them out there. As a Realtor, I get to see more than my fair share. But if you are advertising a local or vacation rental then you must be ready. Usually, you will get a email from an interested person from overseas who is looking to rent right away. The will try to send you a check for more than the amount you need and get you to wire money back to them for the difference. Well, the check is going to bounce at your local bank and you are going to come up with nothing. Be very wary if you get an out of town inquiry. I got one note from a Rose Howard which seems to be a very popular name with scammers. I looked up her name and address and there actually is a Rose Howard who lives in Michigan. How she got to be the poster child for scam artists I do not know, but a google search on "Rose Howard and scams" brought up a whole list of them.

Another favorite scam is for the scammers to take a rental listing that is in the local MLS and put it up on Craigslist (using the Realtor's own photos and descriptions) for about 2/3 rds of the market price. They will then agree to meet the mark at the property but come up with an excuse as to why they are unable to gain access to the home (lost key, seller out of town). Then they will try to get any upfront deposit from the victim to hold the property. I am amazed at the number of people who fall for this.

So beware. If it sound too good to be true then the chances are that it is not true but a scam.

Queen of Soul comes to the Big Silver

Montgomery College/Takoma Park campus has a brand new performing arts center and the great Aretha Franklin will open the place for business on September 11th. This center will only add to the luster of our community and provide a much needed venue for arts patrons who live in and around Silver Spring. Go here for ticket information.

With the coming of the coming of the planned Filmore "Live Nation" concert hall to the downtown area and the events currently going on at Strathmore, Montgomery County is no longer the "red headed stepchild" when it comes to great music and entertainment.

FHA loans getting tougher

Over the past decade the time period it has taken to get a loan processed had dropped significantly. In the recent heady days of the real estate boom a good lender could process a loan in about two weeks or less.

Well, those days are over for two reasons. One is that most loans processed these days in the Silver Spring market are FHA, government loans. Traditionally these loans have taken a little longer than the conventional loans that we mostly saw during the recent boom. The other reason is that all loans are taking longer due to more restrictive guidelines and tougher appraisals.

Investors took a big hit from bad loans in the past few year and are watching loan applications more carefully. The FHA loan pipeline is clogging up a bit as a result. If you are selling or buying a home where an FHA insured loan is part of the contract then it is better if you plan on the loan taking up to six week to get approved. A lot of Realtors are still putting 30 days to settle in the contract that they are writing but I think this is overly optimistic these days. I am advising my clients to expect at least 45 days from ratification to closing.

Those of you who have been around long enough will remember a terrible period back in the late 1980s where it was taking FHA loans up to 120 days to close. We were caught in another boom market and the appraisal pipeline was so backed up that you just could not get one scheduled for at least 90 days. It is unlikely that we will experience that sort of delay this time around but do expect your loan to take a little longer to close.

Why I hate haircuts.

I can really drag my feet when it comes time to get a haircut. I don't generally like the experience and tend to let my hair grow way too long between cuts. I never really liked going to the barber and hated the idea of ever going to any place that calls itself a salon. Part of the problem is that I never like the way my hair looks after a cut. But that is not all. Most of the problem stems from the brutal treatment handed out to boys by barbers when I was a kid.

As a kid, my brother and I were dutifully dispatched off to the Wheaton Barber shop located on Georgia Ave next to the Baskin Robbins store. I think cuts were about $1.5o back then. No more than two bucks anyways. There was pretty much only one of two styles for a kid to choose from in those days. One, the "buzz" cut was reserved for Wheaton's core group of "greasers" who generally chose that style to compliment their black leather jackets and green "Max" work pants, or for those who were about to enter the army. For those of us kids who did not aspire to a career in Vietnam or as an auto mechanic, the only other choice for a haircut was the "regular boys" style which consisted of essentially a near buzz cut with a small tuft of hair left in the front for appearance sake. The custom was for the barber to generously lube up this surviving tuft with Vitalis hair ointment and them set it up in a nice, natty little flip. After allowing about ten minutes for the Vitalis to dry, depending on the humidity and wind conditions, you would have a perfect rock hard flip which was good until the next time your parents made you wash your hair. After that, it was bangs of some sort until your next date with the barber. The barbers of that era were not too gentle to kids. I remember the heavy hands on the top of my head to ensure that my pate was in just the right angle for the barber to remove the maximum amount of hair. It was a time when kids did not complain and if any adult figured that a stiff adjustment in head position was called for, there was little support from the public for our basic human rights. The authorities were not called in and the offending barber faced no jail time or public humiliation by having his name put on some sort of intenet list. No sir, you went to the barber, sat in the chair when called, got the cut the barber felt like given you, held still and kept you mouth shut and took it like a kid should. I do remember that all the barbers at the Wheaton shop were Italian but I only remember one name, Enzo, only because my brother and I found that name to be particularly hilarious. Otherwise they were all the same in that there was not going to be any deviation from the traditional "regular boys" cut or the rough treatment dealt out. Any of the three or four available barbers would do as apparently any sort of artistic expression in hairstyling was frowned upon in those days. After all, these were not liberal times. We all were afraid of the H bomb and there were commies everywhere. It was no time for barbers (a conservative lot anyways) to be fooling around with the heads of the nations kids. Any deviation from the norm might just earn them the "pink" label and get them blackballed from cutting hair in any decent establishment. Anyhow, the effect on me was mostly negative and this might explain why I care little for getting my haircut these days.

There was one bright moment. Call it sort of our own personal "Prague Spring" where for a brief moment in time there was light in our lives. We endured the tried and true ritual of the Wheaton shop until my brother Kinne came up with one of his most brilliant childhood schemes. He discovered through the kid grapevine that in Wheaton at this time there was a barber school where for only 60 cents you could go and get a haircut. The only drawback was that your hair was going to be cut by a barber trainee who depending on the stage of their training, might or might not be too good. However, it was well worth the risk as in those days parents did not accompany 11 year old boys to the barber shop. At least my dad did not. He decided when our hair was getting two long and then gave us the appropriate buck and a half and sent us off to walk to Wheaton with instructions to return home with less hair. Apparenlty he was not too concerned about any disrespect that might be shown to us by the barbers. Other than that we were left to our own devices. It was our good fortune that our dad did not know of the barber school. Being the sort of dad that he was, if he knew, he would have naturally opted to send us to the cheapest place he could. However with him ignorant to our recent discovery, we would collect the money from him for a full price haircut and then go to the barber school for the discount hair cut and pocket the difference. That is to say we pocketed it for about as long as it took us to get from the barber school to the "Wheaton News Stand" where we would blow it all on candy and comic books. Those were heady days when when a box of candy or candy bar cost about a nickle and comic books were no more than 20 cents. We were rolling in dough. Fifty cents was our standard weekly allowance so you can well imagine how this extra barber money suited us.

Of course it had to end. Somehow my father got wind of our scam and put a stop to it. He was a fair man and probably admired our entrepreneurial spirit, so there were no serious repercussions for our brief foray into fraud. However, once he became aware of the barber school, (Who told him? I blame my brother but the evidence is slim at best.) he just adjusted the amount of money that we got for our cuts to the discount rate and life went on. After all to an adult, a bad regular boys cut was really not too different looking from one of the higher quality. It certainly did not bother my dad too much to look at us.

So there you have it. For about a year or so in my sweet boyhood I actually looked forward to getting a haircut but not because I thought any higher of the barbers and the experience. It is just that the extra money made that particular medicine go down easier. Before and after that, it pretty much has been pure hell.

Sligo Creek Golf Course

For decades the small but nice nine hole golf course in Sligo Creek Park has been home to hackers and whackers of all calibers. Montgomery County has a very fine system of public golf courses but has limited facilities in close in locations. The Sligo course is really the only option for those in Silver Spring who want to get in a quick round. I grew up playing on county courses and spent a lot of time learning to play at Sligo. Nowdays, I don't play golf anymore so I don't know why I care so much that the county has chosen to close the little course in Sligo. Yet it bothers me and I don't want to see it happen.

After all, it is not much of a course. It is not very challenging and only nine holes when the norm is eighteen or more. The county says that the real issue is money. The course just does not pay for itself and they are faced with serious money problems these days. Of course they neglect to mention that all of the public courses in the county along with virtually all of the many other recreational facilities lose money. To me the issue is bigger than this one little second rate course. Most of the other courses in the county are in the outlying suburbs where there is more wealth. The little course at Sligo unique in that it has been an attraction for minority golfer and newbies. It is not considered a challenging course and thus not usually frequented by the serious hard core golfers. It is a great course for a new player who can go there and stink up the links without drawing the ire of his fellow golfers. It has been said that over the years the Sligo course has been more welcoming to women as well but I can't really comment on this.

The real issue to me is that I think it is another "dis" in the long series of "disses" to the folks who reside in the East County by our government. I am getting pretty pissed about this and it is beginning to stick in my craw. It seems like when there is money to be saved, it is the East County that takes on the burden and the golf course is just another example of this. I am tired of my portion of the county getting the "red headed stepchild" treatment and perhaps the planned closing of the Sligo Creek Golf Course is the place for us to draw the line. It is a good time to voice your opinion about this to your county leaders.