Get those certified checks to bid at city auction

3 Hanover Square

Bidders will have the opportunity on July 29 to win an apartment at the city’s estate auction of five co-ops and a condo ranging from the Financial District all the way up to Washington Heights.

Manhattan Public Administrator Ethel J. Griffin will seek to dispose of the properties, which can be inspected July 13, 15, 19 and 22 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. each day.

Two of the properties failed to sell at the last auction, and had the amount of their minimum bids cut, so this is your second chance.  (Should they go unsold this time, the apartment will be turned over to a real estate broker to market.)  They are:

Bruni and Carter: Separated at birth?

An engrossing excerpt from restaurant critic Frank Bruni’s forthcoming book, Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater, caught my eye in the New York Times Sunday Magazine.

Fascinated, I read the account of his youthful indulgence, which so closely paralleled mine – thankfully, only up to a point.  But here are some tidbits that resonated:

• As a youngster, he would demand and devour two hamburgers at a time, wanting more.  For my school lunch, my mother had to pack two sandwiches.
• Bruni remembers almost everything about his childhood in terms of food.  I am told that when I was 2 years old and my folks engaged in a rare indulgence in a lobster at a restaurant, guess who ate the whole thing?  Of that I don’t have a specific recollection, but ah, those BLTs in later years, the slices of processed cheese smeared with French’s yellow mustard, the fresh (rather than canned) vegetables that I urged my mother to try cooking, the apple pie I mastered at 15.
• He recalls, as well, ice cream smothered with his mother’s homemade chocolate sauce.