Halloween and Party Time

True, it was last year's Halloween party, and perhaps they have learned better since. But someone that used to work at a giant NY state legal company commonly referred to as a "foreclosure mill," representing important banks and mortgage firms foreclosing on householders, sent the NY Times some snaps from the corporation's Halloween 2010 fete, and they're not pretty.

There is not any way to learn how many staff of the Steven J.Baum firm entered into the mean-spirited spirit, but the pictures show one worker wearing a ridiculing sign reading "3rd party squatter.

I lost my home and I wasn't served" -- meaning never received foreclosure documents, something many house owners say occurred to them. Maybe it'd be one of those passive-aggressive non-apologies for some preposterous behaviour, usually couched as, "if anybody was offended," so unconditionally blaming anyone that was disgusted as a boring P.C bore who won't get the gag. As an alternative the firm said to the NY Times that proposals that some workers wearing costume that "mocks or tries to belittle the predicament of those individuals that have lost their houses" couldn't be "further from the truth." In Sep , Occupy Wall Street objectors marched below the previous home of the Manhattan Stock Exchange, fifty five Wall Street, now a luxury studio building.

Guests on the balcony of the building's trattoria sipped cocktails and giggled and snapped pictures of the protesters below. These contrasts made me think of another enormous party just about 115 years back, at the Waldorf-Astoria. 2 Gilded Age one-percenters, Mr. And Mrs. Bradley-Martin, threw a costume ball where the guests showed up in excessive ensembles of silk and gold and jewels.
The Bradley-Martins were the first trickle-down followers ; their notion of doing their equal share and helping the economy still devastated by the crash of 1893 was giving a grand ball and sending out the party invites so late the guests would need to Buy American instead of order their outfits from Europe.

In contrast, the 2001 birthday celebration that Tyco General Manager Dennis Kozlowski threw for his spouse in Sardinia -- with an ice sculpture of Michelangelo's "David" peeing Stoli, I kid you not -- cost $2 million. Half it was paid for by the company on the the excuse that this was an investors ' meeting. Kozlowski is now doing his boogying in a Manhattan jail. In 1897, Mrs. Bradley-Martin, untroubled by historic precision, wore Marie Antoinette's ruby necklace as she dressed as Mary, Queen of Scots ; what those 2 queens had in common is they were both decapitated. It seemed to be a poor costuming choice all around.

The general public chaos failed to relent after the party mess, including the detritus of six thousand orchids, was swept away, and Mr. And Mrs. Bradley-Martin -- the missus had allegedly hyphenated her other half's name and surname to sound more elegant -- shortly decamped for Britain , where their child had married an earl and become a countess. The Bradley-Martins ' exit was not completely as the party was over, in more ways than one.

New York sued the couple, claiming they'd scrimped on their taxes. The city's suit was dropped as the couple lived a serious part of the year in Britain . So , the Bradley-Martins set another case law, this one by outsourcing themselves overseas and avoiding taxes. Ecstatic Halloween to The Street. That is one neighborhood where nobody has to ask "Trick or treat." Everyone knows the solution to that one.