Real Music & Real Estate . . .

Yiddishe Cup’s bandleader, Bert Stratton, is Klezmer Guy.
 

He knows about the band biz and – check this out – the real estate biz, too.
 

You may not care about the real estate biz. Hey, you may not care about the band biz. (See you.)
 

This is a blog with a gamy twist. It features tenants with snakes and skunks, and musicians with smoked fish in their pockets.
 

Stratton has written op-eds for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post.


 
 

LAUNDRY-MACHINE GUY

by Bert Stratton

Howard the laundry-machine guy said I had a yiddishe kup. Thanks.  Howard rented me coin-op washers and dryers.

Howard had never heard of Yiddishe Cup. What, a Cleveland Jew who has never heard of Yiddishe Cup?   “But I’ll see you guys soon!” Laundry guys will say anything.

laundry machine guyI once got a check from a coin-op company in Plainview, New York; their Cleveland rep told me, “We’re a local company.”  The Plainview company was owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland. Somebody in Scotland was pocketing quarters from my buildings’ laundry rooms.

Howard the laundry guy had bona fides: 1) He had gone to my high school. 2) “I got in a lot of fights with the Italians there.” 3) His father had been in Auschwitz. 4) “Jewish geography is my favorite subject.” All pluses.

I said, “I don’t trust you.”

“I don’t blame you,” he said.

I hope to trust him.

End.

Continue if you’re interested in laundry contracts  . . . There was a classic screw-the-landlord lease (yes, there is such a thing) written by a Chicago law firm. (Always referred to as the “Chicago lease” by Cleveland landlords.)  In clause #5 of the lease, the coin-op company had the “right of first refusal,” which meant the company could match any new bid or supplier the landlord came up with. In other words, the old laundry company could remain the landlord’s supplier for life. It was like indentured servitude. The headline for the infamous clause #5 was not “right of first refusal,” which would have been OK, but the very misleading header “exclusive laundry equipment,” which made no sense.  And in very small type too.

—

Come to Cain Park (Cleveland Heights) 7 p.m. Sun., June 28, for a free klezmer concert in the Evans Amphitheater. No tix necessary.  It’s Yiddishe Cup plus Steven Greenman, Lori Cahan-Simon and Shawn Fink. And don’t forget Yiddishe Cup’s newest singer: Tamar Gray. Klez from Kleveland: The 37th Annual Workmen’s Circle Yiddish Concert in the Park.

never hoid em

—
I had an op-ed, “Don’t Go to Music School,” in the New York Times on Saturday (June 13). Check out the comments section.

shareEmail this to someoneShare on FacebookTweet about this on Twitter

3 comments

1 marc { 06.17.15 at 12:43 pm }

Why don’t you just buy your own machines ?

2 Bert Stratton { 06.17.15 at 3:08 pm }

To marc:
I owned some machines for a while but decided life is too short, so I farmed it out.

3 Dave Rowe { 06.26.15 at 11:59 am }

From the tenant’s point of view, it doesn’t matter where the quarters end up, they disappear fast, especially when you’re washing a throw rug.

Leave a Comment