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.


 
 

PATEL MOTEL

by Bert Stratton

An Asian Indian asked me if he should buy a motel.

Why ask me?  Why not ask Patel? I thought.  Forty percent of American hotels are owned by Indians, and many are Patels.

The Asian Indian was a tennis pro who had invested in Cleveland real estate and lost money.  He thought maybe I knew some tricks about investing.

I knew this: Most everybody in the real estate biz in the 2000s was not hitting the long ball.

He asked me about stocks.

This is what I knew:  My late father, who was a stock broker for about six months in the 1950s, taught me the market is legalized gambling.  John Bogle, former chairman of the Vanguard Group, said, “The investor in America sits at the bottom of the food chain.”  You have to be lucky twice with stocks: when you buy and when you sell.

In March 2009 the New York Times business-page headline was “Are We There Yet?”  There meant the stock market’s bottom.

In March 2009 the price/earnings ratio was at its lowest in more than 20 years: 13.  (Trailing 10-years figure.)  The worldwide P/E was even lower, down to 10.  It was a good time to invest, but scary.

***

My Uncle Lou and Uncle Al drove a truck, delivering wholesale items to stores.  They offered me a carton of baseball cards — 24 packs — at deep discount.  I was in.  I immediately ripped open all the packs.  I was 9.  This was my first speculative investment.  I got a lot of Humberto Robinsons (an Indians relief pitcher) and no Mickey Mantles.  Maybe my uncles were teaching me dollar-cost averaging: better to buy a pack a week (i.e., dollar-cost averaging) than go all in.

The Asian tennis pro moved to Florida.  His wife and kids couldn’t stand Cleveland winters, for one thing.  He didn’t have a job down there.  He didn’t have a house.  I hope he knew Patel.

—-
Here’s “Beer and Coconut Bars,” which I wrote for the CoolCleveland website.  Went up a week ago.  The story is definitely full Cleveland, if not cool Cleveland.

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3 comments

1 Garry K { 12.14.11 at 11:55 pm }

Great column, and I enjoyed the coconut bar column, too. Although there are many, many bakery items that precede coconut bars on my list.

I really enjoy your brief, but thoughtful reminiscences. I was gone from the area (Cleveland Heights) for over 25 years. Never really missed it. Now that I’m back, I enjoy the heck out of our “traditions”!

2 Garry K { 12.15.11 at 10:21 pm }

And where you pulled “Humberto Robinson” from is beyond me…

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/robinhu01.shtml

3 Kenny G { 12.21.11 at 10:10 am }

re: “Beer and Coconut Bars” story.

I’ve been a bakery freak most of my life, and noticed when I came to Cleveland in 1973 several unfamiliar [to me] items available in more than one bakery: “tea biscuits” (Russian, chocolate — occasionally apricot or blueberry), ladylocks, cinnamon sticks, “paradise bars,” “high hats,” “double cookies,” and “Chinese cookies.” That’s all I can think of now.

I don’t mean one bakery, of course, but many bakeries. For the word “strudel” to be used in this town, it has to have flaky phyllo dough — not as in other cities (e.g. Rochester), where it’s totally acceptable and appropriate to call a pastry a “strudel,” which combines other kinds of dough with fruit and nut (or sometimes coconut) fillings.

The Hungarian influence is big here – with Jews and gentiles alike.

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