Actress Brooke Smith Lists L.A. Abode

SELLERS: Brooke Smith and Steven Lubensky
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,649,000
SIZE: 2,878 square feet, 4-5 bedrooms, 2.75 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The other day, as we aimlessly sifted though some of the newer listings in Los Angeles, Your Mama ran across a (somewhat) modestly scaled and urbanely-dressed two story traditional listed with a $1,649,000 asking price that set off all our celebrity real estate bells. A cursory tuck into the property records left us stymied but our freakishly well-informed friend and informant Lucy Spillerguts told Your Mama—and we later managed to confirm with a more careful if roundabout perusal of the property records—that the house in question is owned by television and movie actress Brooke Smith and her arty-farty Russian-born cinematographer husband Steven Lubensky.

Miz Smith might not be a household name like Blackman Cruz shopping romcom/sitcom star Jenny Aniston or pop music matron X-Tina Aguilera but, children, she has a downright proper Tinseltown pedigree. Her mother, Lois Smith, was a beloved, quietly powerful—and retired—Old-School publicist to the stars who—may she rest in peace—very recently died in a freak accident whilst staying in a bed and breakfast in Maine. Her long roster of superstar clients included—as per her recent obits in The Hollywood Reporter and The New York Times—Marylin Monroe, Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, Martin Scorcese, Liza Minelli, Whitney Houston, Rosie O'Donnell and Warren Beatty. This lady was serious Hollywood business, we tell y'all.

The younger Miz Smith, Brooke, grew up in and around New York City and—so the story goes—was once roommates with indie-cult favorite musician Jeff Buckley who drown in a Memphis (TN) river in 1997 at just 29 years old. Daughter Smith—that's Brooke—started up her ladder of Showbiz fame in the late 80s and in 1991 she landed a plum role as the young woman at the bottom of the well in The Silence of the Lambs with that skin-suit sewing and organ eating Hannibal Lector played by a pitch-perfect Anthony Hopkins. Remember that? A few years later she appeared in the splendidly bleak 1994 Louis Malle film Vanya on 42nd Street, which happens to be the very first film Your Mama ever saw in a movie theater in New York City. More recently Miz Smith has had recurring and/or prominent roles on a slew of television programs (Six Feet Under, Law & Order, Crossing Jordon, Weeds and Grey's Anatomy) and will soon be seen in the upcoming silver screen drama Labor Day with Kate Winslet and James Van Der Beek.

Anyhoodles poodles, property records reveal Miz Smith and her Russian hubby paid $1,643,000 in August 2008 for their margarine-colored residence located on a leafy, tree lined street in the Hollywood- and West Hollywood-adjacent Sunset Square neighborhood of Los Angeles. We happen to love this particular neck of L.A. quasi-urban fabric but we've heard more than a few high-nosed real estate snobs we know over-dramatically poo-poo the 'hood as being too, well, 'hoodish. We just roll our boozy eyes at them because—pleeze—this taint the 'hood, children. It's not East Gate Bel Air, but it's hardly Compton, okay?

Current listing information shows the completely updated and upgraded abode sits tightly on a compact, .16 acre lot, was originally built in 1921 and measures a roomy but far from large 2,878 square feet with 4-5 bedrooms and 2.75 bathrooms.

An intimate foyer and stair hall joins the deeply inset front porch to the sparely furnished and internationally flavored "formal" living room that's nicely outfitted with wide-plank peg and groove hardwood floors, a bookcase flanked fireplace and two sets of magnificent floor-to-ceiling French door style windows that—when the curtains are pulled open—expose the room to just about anyone who might be stroll or roll past on the street or sidewalk.

Your Mama is pleased to report that someone had the smarts and took the time and effort to design—or re-design—the main floor living spaces to connect through perfectly aligned double-wide doorways between the living and dining room—where there are more floor-to-ceiling French door style windows—and between the dining room and kitchen. The enfilade-style alignment injects an elegant architectural formality to the decidedly casual and lightly funky but very purposefully curated and decorated main floor living spaces.

The chestnut-colored wood floors in the living and dining room switch to a bright, blood red stain or paint in the galley-style eat-in kitchen. While this isn't exactly our "style" it's none-the-less, by our utterly meaningless estimation, a well-conceived and nicely executed kitchen with beamed and vaulted ceilings, snow white Shaker style cabinets topped with swanky Carrara marble, top-grade commercial style stainless steel appliances and a built-in corner breakfast banquette nicely juiced up with a Eero Saarinen designed Tulip table...or maybe it's the not half bad and considerably less expensive Ikea knock off. Whatever the case...

There's a second built-in banquette in the adjoining, main floor den/library/family room where Miz Smith and Mister Lubensky—and/or their lady or nice-gay decorator—installed a dark patterned wallpaper, played an abstract painting off a simple still life and filled the floor-to-ceiling book shelves with actual books.

A main floor bedroom with direct access to the backyard and easy access to a three-quarter bathroom makes a private guest or domestic space and the four other potential bedrooms upstairs spoke off around a spacious central landing. Two bedrooms—plus a third currently used as an office—share a vintage-style bathroom with black and white diamond-checked tile floor, a single pedestal sink and a white-tiled tub/shower combination.

The Master bedroom itself isn't particularly large but it does have a closet lined and privacy promoting entry vestibule, lots of windows including a Juliet balcony, a bedroom-sized walk-in closet/dressing room and an attached bathroom with marble topped double sink vanity, separate glass-enclosed stall shower and a jetted tub for two set into a window- and sky-blue tile-lined niche with palm tree views.

Several main floor rooms, including the kitchen, open to a T-shaped and bougainvillea draped covered porch that really couldn't be more charming if vine-draped covered porches float your real estate boat. A tree shaded grass patch over looked by a tree house separates the back of the house from a trellis shaded outdoor dining area at rear of the property with built-in brick barbecue station.

The slim, gated concrete driveway that runs up along side the house stops short of the detached two-car garage at the back corner of the property that may or may not currently be used for parking cars.

Where the Smith-Lubenskys plan to decamp—they have two small children—isn't known. Until the lat few years they maintained East Coast outposts but, as far as Your Mama can tell they don't currently own any property in New York and it. In May 2008, right about the time they bought the house in Los Angeles they now have for sale, the couple sold a small property in High Falls, NY to actor Willem Dafoe for $393,000 and in December 2010 they sold a renovated and updated two bedroom and two bathroom co-operative apartment in a dignified pre-war building on Riverside Drive for $1,250,000.

listing photos: Sotheby's International Realty

Ice-T and Coco To Make a Move in New Jersey

BUYERS: Ice-T and Coco
LOCATION: Edgewater, NJ
PRICE: $2,199,000 (list)
SIZE: 4,200 square feet (approx.), 5 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms

NOTE TO THE CHILDREN: In light of the devastating effects of the psychotic storm Sandy, Your Mama thought maybe today we should just give it a damn rest. "Who needs this kinds of stoopid celebrity real estate frivolity at a time like this?" we said to The Dr. Cooter as he scooted out the door at the crack of dawn. For Chrissakes. We can be a real beotch, but we are not heartless. Sometime in the late mid-morning, having touched based with most of our East Coast people who all—thankfully—made it through rattled but unharmed, we grew weary of the non-stop cable news coverage. We needed a break and thought that maybe a little celebrity real estate dish could maybe be a momentary respite for one or two of the children. We sincerely mean no disrespect to anyone who grappled with and/or continues to deal with the destructive seriousness of Sandy. Okay? Onward we go now...

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama does not (regularly) watch the reality program Ice Loves Coco but iffin we did we'd know that Grammy-winning rapper-actor Ice-T (Law & Order: SVU, New Jack City), his Showbizzing wife Coco and her SUV-sized backside recently acquired a very contemporary—and still under construction—single family residence just across the Hudson River from Manhattan in the river side community of Edgewater, NJ.

Before we set our celebrity real estate sights on their new digs, let's have some background education and a short go at their current crib, shall we?

The couple legally hitched their life and love wagons in 2001 and in August 2003 they sold Ice's long-time bachelor pad in Los Angeles, a nearly 4,000 square foot roost high above the Sunset Strip on sexy and dangerously curvy Sunset Plaza Drive. Property records show Ice had owned the house since at least the mid-1990s and unloaded it for exactly $2,000,000 to a gentleman who owns—or once owned, we're not sure if he still owns it or not—a high profile nightclub in West Hollywood that caters primarily to homosexuals and those who like to pal around with them and where a whole gaggles of those shade-slinging painted ladies from RuPaul's Drag Race* perform every Monday night at 10:30.

Anyhoo, the sassy, brassy and suh-waggy yet genuinely likable couple decamped for the East Coast—Ice was raised up in Newark and Alpine, NJ—where they settled into a penthouse rental on the Upper West Side with a glorious view of the Hudson River. At some point, we don't really know when because we don't actually know them, Ice T and Coco decided they were ready to plant some real estate roots in the New York City area.

After they decided they could not or did not care to spend the vast sums of money required to purchase a Manhattan apartment of the size, quality and location they desired** the couple shifted their search to the other side of the mighty Hudson River. In September 2005 they found their real estate nirvana and shelled out, according to property records we peeped, $1,500,000 for a 2,161 square foot duplex penthouse atop a boxy and glassy contemporary building in someplace called North Bergen, NJ, between the Hudson River side communities of Edgewater and Guttenberg, the proud home of the insanely amazing Mitsuwa Marketplace.

We have no idea how the tri-terraced penthouse looked at the time of their purchase but we do know from at least one video easily accessible on the internets that they made the decoratively inexplicable decision to cover the Brazilian hardwood floors with plum-colored wall-to-wall carpeting, added custom built-ins for the flat screen and audio/visual equipment and—natch—put in a big ol' fish tank that glows blue at night.

They converted one of the three original bedrooms into a walk-in closet/dressing room for Coco and her extensive collection of high-heeled shoes and kitted out a windowless, bathroom-sized space hidden behind a paneled wall in the living room as an office/music studio—ahem—"man cave" for Ice.

Somewhere in there they installed—brace yerselves, butter beans—a goddamn stand-up tanning booth that ever-tan Coco uses to keep her skin that unnatural tawny tone she seems to prefer. Well, bless her heart. Doesn't she know that a lot of doctors, scientists and researchers surmise that tanning beds might have something to do with the uptick in melanoma rates, particularly with young women? Let's call her warned.

Other notable features of the top floor duplex include a living room area with soaring ceiling and sweeping river and city views, a separate dining space, an open-concept kitchen, a master bathroom with separate shower and jetted tub and a state-of-the-art home automation system that controls the lighting, window treatments and a/v equipment. The boutique building offers doorman services, a residents only fitness facility and on-site parking—there are two covered spots deeded to Ice T and Coco's penthouse, according to listing information.

Although the couple's penthouse does not appear to be listed on the open market, as of early August (2012) it was shown on the the website of the couple's camera-friendly real estate agent as being available for private showings with an asking price of $979,000.

A few quick clickety-clacks of the well-worn beads of Your Mama's bejeweled abacus reveals that even with a full price sale—it could happen, right?—Mister Ice T and his lady Coco are still faced with a jolting loss of $521,000, not counting carrying costs, improvements and customizations and the attendant real estate fees.

The couple have used their reality show to showcase their decision to sell their penthouse and purchase a new and larger residence where they'll have more room for man-caves, shoe shelves and guests, like, say, one of Mister Ice's children or grandchildren. That's right, hunties, Coco is the step-grandmother of two young children. Imagine that! That really takes the cherry off Your Mama's step-grandmother story. Ours was a worldly and wickedly smart, Mercedes-driving professor of economics who happened to deal a little dope on the side. Swear. To. God. Ask Sister Woman.

Anyhoo, last November, Ice and Coco's real estate agent posted on her blog in November 2011 that "Law & Order star, Ice T and his entrepreneurial muse Coco" had "unexpectedly found their perfect home" in a not-yet-completed contemporary under construction on the cliffs of Edgewater (NJ). The blog report showed a photograph*** of a sun splashed open-plan living/dining/kitchen space (above) with fireplace and wall of nearly floor to ceiling windows through which can be seen a slender, negative edge pool and an unimpeded view across the Hudson River towards the always spectacular, sky-scraper strewn New York City skyline.****

According to listing information squirreled out of the interweb plus a few tidbits revealed by their real estate agent on her blog Your Mama surmises that, when completed sometime near the end of this year (2012), Ice and Coco's new crib in Edgewater will sit up a gated—and heated—driveway and have about 4,200 fully customized square feet on four floors with an elevator and a 12-zone geothermal heating and cooling system "plus a 'man cave' for him (a six car garage) and a 550 sqft closet for her, which Ice affectionally [sic] calls the 'bitch cave.'" Now that's, klassy with "k," ain't it?

To be honest, puppies, Your Mama hadn't given any of this Ice and Coco real estate bizness more than a fraction of a second of thought until we heard from those Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial who snitched to Your Mama that, after a great deal of research, they managed to locate Ice and Coco's new house in Edgewater, even though the various property records data bases they make use of do not yet reflect their ownership of said house. Listing images still accessible online are, however, a dead match to the one on Ice and Coco's real estate agent's blog. Make of that what you will.

A few minutes additional poking around by yours truly and we determine the couples contemporary new home is well sited for privacy near the base of the palisades that shoot up along the the western shore of the Hudson and was designed as a mirror image (above in rendering) of the one directly across the shared driveway.***** We also discovered the house sits at the tail end of a nondescript, up sloping cul-de-sac lined with—well—let's be nice and say it's lined with much more prosaic, ordinary and less expensive-looking single family houses.

Their real estate agent promises in a November 2011 blog post that the couple's brief property search and their first tour of the house they actually bought will be chronicled on the second season of their show, Ice Love Coco, and Your Mama presumes that should there be a third season, the new house and it day-core will be prominently featured. Well, at least in the hideous aftermath of Sandy we have that to look forward too, don't we?

Back in November 2011 their real estate agent revealed, again on her blog, that Ice and Coco also maintain residences in Arizona and Florida. Your Mama doesn't find any immediate evidence they own any property in Arizona. That doesn't mean Ice and Coco don't own any property in Arizona, only that we could find no evidence of such a thing.

They actually sold their three bedroom and three bathroom penthouse in Sunny Isles, FL—that's due north of South Beach just south of Golden Beach—back in June (2012) for $1,290,000, a significant amount less than the $1,530,000 they paid for the place back in August 2007.



UPDATE (Next day): It seems the couple have yet to move into their new crib yet as Coco posted a video on the YouTube of her (and her colossal cleavage canyon) standing in the wind and pelting rain on the balcony of their Edgewater penthouse as Sandy barreled ashore.

*Neither Your Mama nor The Dr. Cooter will apologize for thinking that the world is a better place with RuPaul's Drag Race in it. It just is.

**We have no information at all about the couple's current or previous financial capabilities and they very likely opted to live in Jersey for any or many reasons that may may not have had anything to do with their pecuniary position.

***It might be a rendering, we're not sure.

****At least it's "always spectacular" to those who feel urban vistas.

*****The two adjacent homes that share a gated driveway and garage apron may or may not be exact mirror images when completed although they appear that way on the online available listings and marketing materials.

exterior photo (North Bergen): Google Maps
listing photos (Edgewater): Liberty Realty via Zillow

Maroon 5's Adam Levine Buys in Beverly Hills

BUYER: Adam Levine
LOCATION: Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $4,380,000
SIZE: 6,539 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Its no surprise to anyone in the celebrity real estate gossip game that tatted-up and famously promiscuous model-squiring Maroon 5 lead singer turned televised singing contest judge (The Voice) has been on the hunt for new digs in Tinseltown.

Back in early September, in fact, our trusted informant Butty Butterlips tattled to Your Mama that Mister Levine was allowing one of Tinseltown's more successful real estate agents to quietly shop his house—a low-slung, contemporary art-filled one-bedroom bachelor pad perched on a private hillside above Bronson Canyon in the star-studded Los Feliz area—with an asking price in the high three millions and back in March 2012 the property was featured in a glossy and adoring article in Architectural Digest, often but not always a sign a celeb-owned home is or will soon go up for sale.

What did come as a bit of a surprise, at least to Your Mama, was an covert communique we received today from an inside source who snitched that Mister Levine has already quietly acquired up a new crib in the Benedict Canyon area of Beverly Hills. Redfin agent Corina Galen says, "Benedict Canyon in Beverly Hills is a great area for celebrities. There are a lot of homes with spectacular views and plenty of privacy, which makes it a hot spot for high profile clients."

A quick perusal of property records confirms that Mister Levine, through the same trust that shows up on the deeds and documentation for his home in Los Feliz, paid $4,380,000 for the so-called Benedict House, a 3.66 acre gated estate on a canyon view ridge in a small, gated enclave high above Bev Hills called Wallingford Estates.

Listing information shows the sprawling, single story ranch house was originally built in 1940, measures in at 6,539 square feet and contains a total of six bedrooms and seven bathrooms. Although "meticulously maintained," listing information suggests there's more than enough room to custom build a monstrous 20,000 square foot house. As he did with his previous home, Your Mama fully expects Mister Levine will bring in Mark Haddawy—or some other equally skilled and well-compensated lady or nice-gay decorator-designer—to doctor up transform the undeniably deluxe but decoratively anemic ranch style residence into something more befitting a sexed-up rock star. However, we don't have any reason to think he'll knock the house down to make way for a behemoth Beverly Park-style faux-French chateau or massive mock-Tuscan extravaganza. That just doesn't seem his style but, then again, what do we know? Nuthin', that's what.

Anyhoo, a long, gated driveway adds to the property's serene sense of privacy and seclusion as it sweeps across the property to a large motor court partially girdled by the main house, attached two car garage and separate studio space suitable for conversion to a screening room, guest house and/or music studio.

Pegged wood floors in the small, lackluster entrance hall continue into the formal living and dining rooms as well as into a spacious den/office complete with a fireplace and a wide bank of windows that reach from the floor almost to the ceiling.

The open plan informal living space(s) include a roomy center island kitchen with granite counter tops, ordinary white raised-panel cabinetry, a pair of dishwashers and a freakishly expensive range. A high breakfast bar separates the kitchen from a wood-floored family room with vaulted sky-lit and wood-beamed ceiling, a built in entertainment center, fireplace and French doors to the outdoor entertaining areas. An adjoining home office/craft space has a wrap-around built-in desk and cabinetry.

The back of the house opens to a tree-ringed backyard with multi-level, brick-accented stone terracing, a flat grassy pad, a vaguely piano-shaped swimming pool spa and an elevated circular spa. Set mostly out of view below the driveway towards the front of the property, a lighted championship-sized tennis court overs over the canyon in the tree tops.

As of today, based on a quick study of various property record data bases, Mister Levine continues to own his Los Feliz area residence that is not listed for sale on the open market.

listing photos: Rodeo Realty via Redfin

Leontyne Price Lists Worn Out Downtown Townhouse

SELLER: Leontyne Price
PRICE: $5,000,000
SIZE: 2,800 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Over the weekend Your Mama received an unexpected missive from a musically-inclined informant we'll call Ari A. Appreciator who thoughtfully let us know that word had begun to make its way though the international opera community that the New York City townhouse of the near-peerless soprano Leontyne Price has popped up for sale with a $5,000,000 price tag.

Miz Price, long retired and now in her late 80s, picked up her downtown townhouse located in the bustling SoHo adjacent southern flank of the West Village way back in 1962 for an unknown amount of money that we can all be assured was a slim fraction of its current asking price. This real estate acquisition would have been the year after her legendary debut at The Met in January 1961, a debut, children, that brought down the damn house with a electrifying ovation that lasted 35 minutes—or 42 minutes, depending on what one reads. Either way, people hooted, hollered and clapped 'til their palms burned and throats went hoarse with adulation and adoration for Miz Price's rare, richly fluid and diligently controlled vocal acrobatics.

Among her many subsequent accolades and accomplishments, Miz Price sang at the 1965 inauguration for and 1973 state funeral of President Lyndon B. Johnson and, in 1978, at the invitation of President Jimmy Carter, she gave a nationally televised recital at the White House. She was selected as a Kennedy Center honoree in 1980, was given a prestigious National Medal of the Arts in 1985, and in the late 1990s wrote a children's book version of the Verdi's Aida that Elton John and Tim Rice turned into a Broadway musical of the same name. She maintained a recital and concert career well into her 70s and earned herself 13 Grammy Awards plus a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Oh, and did Your Mama mention Miz Price is black? It might seem like an unnecessary detail to mention nowadays but, children, when Miz Price rose to the pinnacle of the operatic mountain top in the 1950s and '60s and bought herself a townhouse in New York City, Jim Crow was still the law of the land in the United States. Think about that for a moment, because what Miz Price achieved both on and off the stage was, quite simply, extraordinary.

Anyhoo, current listing information shows the fairly unassuming and clearly down-on-her-heels red-brick Federal style townhouse was originally built in 1829 and asks prospective buyers to note that the "faded beauty" sits within a designated Landmarks District. Its Landmarks District location will require the next owner(s) to seek and obtain permission from the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) in order to repair and/or alter just about anything and everything both inside and outside the house. Some people might find the requirements and restrictions of the LPC to be cumbersome and constricting, but preservation-minded people might suggest to those folks they simply ought not buy a building in one of the city's numerous landmarks districts, thereby sparing them that particular headache and hassle.

As depicted on the floor plan included with current marketing materials, the four-story townhouse measures in at about 2,800 square feet with three bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms, at least 4 fireplaces that may or may not be in working order, four over-sized storage rooms and an unusually deep but pitifully neglected backyard.

The parlor floor living room—with mirrored fireplace flanked by built-in floor-to-ceiling book cases and some truly tawdry, olive green wall-to-wall carpeting that looks like it saw its better days two decades or more ago—is hardly huge but at 24-feet long does stretch almost the full depth of the house. At its rear end, the living room connects to a puny, nine-foot-square study that overlooks the un-tended backyard. Also on the parlor level, just off the foyer that, like the living room, elegantly extends the full length of the house, there's a privately located half bathroom for guests and a large, walk-in storage room.

Along with a somewhat useless vestibule and a street-side dining room with a fireplace, the kitchen—miniscule such as it appears on the floor plan—is located in the partly below street level basement. There's also an over-sized utility room and, tucked way way way in the back and accessed only through one of two walk-in storage rooms stuck like warts to the back of the house, there's a supermodel slender bathroom that has, as far as Your Mama can tell, just two redeeming qualities. The first is that it exists at all—an inconveniently located closet size pooper is better than none at all—and the second is that it offers a wee window for ventilation.

Miz Price's private chamber—the exact same size as the living room as per the floor plan—occupies the entire third floor and offers a fireplace, four closets plus a linen closet in the hall and a separate dressing room. The master bathroom, with separate tub, shower and street view, appears on the floor plan to only be accessible by exiting the bedroom and crossing the stair landing. This is, obviously, not ideal and—with an o.k. by the LPC, natch—would require immediate remedy should Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter buy this house, which—of course—we aren't.

There are two more bedrooms and a walk-in storage room tucked tightly under the eaves on the top floor. No doubt due to the sloping roof lines, the lone bathroom on the top floor is only—and unfortunately—accessible to occupants of one bedroom by passing through the other.

It's not difficult for Your Mama to see how a smart architect—a whole lotta money and the LPC's approval—could maintain and enhance the architectural integrity of the structure and transform Miz Price's worn out and chopped up townhouse into a well-organized if somewhat petite townhouse that meets with the demands and requirements of a wealthy New Yorker who isn't looking for a 12,000 square foot Beaux Arts behemoth with a swimming pool in the sub-basement and a hot tub on the roof.

We have no inside intel on where Miz Price plans to decamp but Your Mama hopes she will realize enough proceeds from the sale of her long-time New York City residence to keep her comfortably for the rest of her life.

listing photos and floor plan: Brown Harris Stevens

Korean Chaos

Well, it has been a long time since I last posted and I would like to catch up. Thankfully, business has been good and I have had little downtime. Here is a 2004 Kia Optima with a 2.4 liter 4cylinder motor. I see a ton of Hyundai/Kia vehicles in my area. They are very popular. The shops concern is the vehicle seems to run pretty decent with a slight lack of power but once warmed up has a very shaky idle. There no codes. I first look at some fuel trims which seem to be acceptable. I road test the vehicle and no doubt it is slightly underpowered and indeed has a shaky idle. I decide to look at engine vacuum to start with because the vehicle feels like the EGR valve is stuck on at an idle.

As you can see 14" of vacuum at an idle. I normally see these vehicles produce 19" of vacuum on a good running vehicle. The low vacuum is a clue. The next thing I do is feel the EGR valve with the vehicle running. It feels pretty cool the touch. Now, this is not an absolute foolproof diagnostic test. However, typically if an EGR valve is flowing some exhaust gases it will be warm to hot to the touch at an idle. Warning, do yourself a favor hit the EGR with a non contact laser thermometer first before putting your hand on it. Ok, EGR not flowing at an idle, what is next?

I like to scope things. I feel it gives me the best bang for the buck. In my business remember I need to be fast and efficient. I want to look at crankshaft sensor to camshaft sensor patterns and how they correalate to each other. If you notice the cam sensor is driven off the exhaust camshaft of this car.

Here is the CKP sensor pattern in yellow on channel 1 and the CMP sensor pattern on channel 2 in green. Call it my OCD or whatever I typically always use channel 1 for CKP sensors, it keeps captures consistent. Ok, is this a good pattern? This is where data acquisition comes into play. So I pull up a known good waveform from my library.

Here again CKP is channel 1 in yellow and CMP is channel 2 in green. What I can see immediately is that the Cam sensor pattern either intersects the Crank sensor pattern halfway or straddles it midway. Lets revisit the vehicles waveform at a different timebase.

It is shifted no doubt. Be careful using this method. The pitfall is that the Cam sensor is only on one camshaft. So we could have a situation where one camshaft that drives a sensor is in time and the other that has no sensor is off. When presented with that situation I use running compression with a pressure transducer and look at exhaust and intake valve opening events. Here, I didn't have to. I advised the shop to check timing belt alignment. Sure enough they called me back later that day after resetting the timing belt. The vehicle performed and idled well.

I recently was at a shop that just did a timing belt replacement on a 2004 Hyundai XG350 3.5 liter v6 with 75,136 miles as part of routine maintenance. The vehicle ran well into the bay. Unfortunately, it ran quite poorly after the service. It was setting misfire codes and had a terrible lack of power and a rough idle. These cars normally idle like glass and perform quite well.
The tech that did this job was sickened. He is a very thorough tech and I have been there a couple of times in my life where the vehicle ran worse after I serviced it. It is a bad feeling. I really felt for him. I went over the timing belt procedure with the tech and on the car several times. I often find that more can be found out asking questions than looking at the car. After some head scratching the tech said something that stuck with me. He said he had a hard time seperating the crank pulley from the crank sprocket. With this I broke out the scope and decided to check CKP/CMP correalation. I had a hunch.

Here again CKP in yellow and CMP in green. I didn't have a known good pattern handy. But, I felt very confident that it would follow suit like the Kia previously. Here, is another shot.

Cursor 1 is where the rising edge of the CMP sensor is and cursor 2 is where it should be. I know what happened. I tell the tech to get the timing belt off and remove the crank sprocket and CKP interruptor ring behind the crank sprocket.

Here is the interruptor. Those blades pass through the CKP sensor causing the square wave pattern. If you notice there are two dimples on the ring that should not be there.

Here is the backside of the crank sprocket. The two protrusion tabs that should go into the holes on the CKP interruptor ring are worn off.

Here is how it fits together. What happened here is when the tech was seperating the crank pulley from the sprocket it pulled the crank sprocket forward and disengaged the CKP interruptor ring from the crank sprocket. When the tech reinstalled everything it moved and therefore corrupted CKP/CMP timing. This caused the vehicle to run like the timing was retarded drastically. This was very easy to do. Hyundai does not extend the crankshaft woodruff key all the way in and relies on these two small tabs that are easily broken to index everything. One new crank sprocket and interruptor ring and away it went.       
 
 

Ross Bleckner Gives It Another Go in Sagaponack

SELLER: Ross Bleckner
LOCATION: Sagaponack, NY
PRICE: $15,000,000
SIZE: 4 acres, 4 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It was just yesterday that Your Mama learned that a-list abstract expressionist artist Ross Bleckner had re-listed his bucolic and legendary compound in the Hamptons with a $15,000,000 price tag. We first heard word from our tireless and much-appreciated aide de camp Hot Chocolate but, before we could sing a single stanza of Yankee Doodle Dandy, those ever-industrious kids at Curbed had done chawed that bone.* C'est la vie in the increasingly crowded and cut-throat world of (celebrity) property gossip, right? Onward we push anyways. Okay?

Mister Bleckner's comely compound sits about equidistant between the swank, boutique-filled East Hampton and Southampton communities and spans about four, L-shaped acres located just a gloriously short stroll (or roll) to the sand in the bare-footed and beyond beautiful but ego-bruisingly expensive beach side enclave of Sagaponack.

The estate's main house was, quite famously, the long-time home of fey and fantastic and fantastically fey writer/social chronicler Truman Capote who owned the property for nearly 25 years before he went to meet his Great Editor in the Sky in 1984. Mister Capote (Breakfast at Tiffany's) is said to have put the finishing touches on his phenomenal, genre pioneering true crime novel In Cold Blood while living here. This property is, for many artists and writers, hallowed ground.

In 2002, Architectural Digest published a delightful collection photographs of the Mister Capote and his simple, contemporary, custom-built cottage. We imagine, natch, the interview and photos were done years earlier since, as just mentioned, Mister Capote, may he rest in peace, had met his maker 18 years earlier.

Anyhoo, Mister Capote bequeathed the property to his long-time man-friend companion, writer Jack Dunphy, who passed it to the Nature Conservancy upon his death in 1992. Mister Bleckner purchased it the following year for—we suggest the real estate weak-willed snatch up a nerve pill—$800,000. That's right, children: eight hundred thousand dollars. That is, of course, an unimaginable amount of money for minimum wage workers and middle class earners alike but—all things real estate being relative to their locations—it was a downright enviable and fractional pittance of its current value. Mister Bleckner certainly did his pocket book a favor when he put this piece of Hamptons heaven into his property portfolio, didn't he?

Current listing information shows the beach-close compound has four legal buildings with a total of four bedrooms and 4 bathrooms in about 3,500 square feet of interior living space.

As best as Your Mama can figure from a careful reading of current listing information, the recently expanded ocean view main house—approximately 2,000 square foot with a crisply rustic and warmly austere day-core—has two bedrooms and two bathrooms. A wee, achingly sweet cedar shingled guest cottage has two more bedrooms and one more bathroom and a detached, 1,900 square foot, clerestory windowed art studio claims, we unscientifically deduce, the fourth and final bathroom.

The compound's gorgeous grounds have that painstaking and perfectly un-fussed look that makes the Hamptons so damn dreamy. They are, people, they're dee-voon.  To be sure, the Hamptoons are hardly a douche bag free zone and the traffic alone can be enough to make you slit your wrists on a sunny Saturday in August. Plus—let's get real for a moment, shall we—it's downright preposterous that any person—no matter how rich or gauche—would ever pay $100 bucks for a single pound of unbelievably delicious lobster salad from that little gourmet shop in "downtown" Sagaponack. (All you Hamptonites know exactly where we mean.) But, children, as Your Mama lives, breathes and drinks gin and tonics like water, they are absolutely spectacular. They really are.

Anyhoo, towering hedges line the long driveway and curve and bend to define various outdoor "rooms." The "room" just behind the main house holds the rectangular swimming pool dropped effortlessly into a broad swathe of very green lawn. On the other side of the main house, the west side, another broad expanse of lawn unrolls towards the beach. At the far end an abrupt cut in the dense foliage marks the entrance to the long, curving outdoor hallway that connects main house to Mister Bleckner's art studio.

Imagine for a moment that this might be your commute to work, as it is for Mister Bleckner when he is in residence in Sagaponack. Gone are the blaring horns and all those hazardous moe-rons who are too cheap to buy themselves a goddamn Bluetooth device. In their place, lucky Mister Bleckner hears the sound of the distant surf and the rustle of the salty sea breeze as is skitters smoothly through the reeds. Maybe there are birds chirping and unseen swarms of crickets doing their high-pitched buzzing-thing too. There be birds chirping, right? Whatever there is, we'll take us an extra dollop of that daily during the summer, thank you very much.

This is not, as it turns out, Mister Bleckner's first time to ride this particular real estate merry-go-round. In 2008, he had the property listed at $14,600,000, almost ten percent less than its current price tag.

The Old-School Hamptons-lover that Your Mama is hopes the next owner will maintain the modesty of the property. However, without any special stipulations laid forth for the preservation of the property—which there may or may not be—the cynic in Your Mama thinks a hot-shot spec mansion builder could easily swoop in, buy it and bulldoze this beeotch to make way for a 20,000 square foot shingled "cottage" with a bowling alley in the basement and a $35,000,000 price tag.

Knock on wood, child.

*This is a recurrent theme today. We also first learned from Hot Chocolate that Susan Soros, the ex-wife of billionaire George Soros, put her New York City apartment on the market at $50 million before we figured out that the New York Times was already on that real estate nugget like white on rice.

listing photos: Sotheby's International Realty

Susan Soros Lists $50M Upper West Side Sprawler

SELLER: Susan Soros
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $50,000,000
SIZE: 4-6 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Does the extended family of lefty-liberal gajillionaire financier/philanthropist George Soros know something about the extreme upper end of the New York City real estate market the rest of us less financially fortunate don't?

Two days ago Mister Soros' only daughter, Andrea Soros Columbel, listed a 19th-century Greek Revival-style townhouse in the West Village with an asking price of $29,500,000 and yesterday—we first learned from our aide de camp Hot Chocolate and later saw was first discussed by the New York Times—Miz Columbel's former step-momma, Susan Soros, the much younger second ex-wife of the newly engaged octagenarian macdaddy super-tycoon George Soros, hoisted her exceptionally spacious, family-friendly Upper West Side sprawler on the open market with an eye-popping but hardly-unheard-of-for-Manhattan asking price of $50,000,000.

Is this just a real estate coinky-dink between two not actually blood related Soros family members who—we don't know—may or may not have communications with each other?* Could be. You decide. Does it even matter? Anyhoo...

Miz Soros and Mister Soros were legally wed for 20 years, made two children together and divorced in 2006. But she ain't just any ol' primped, pampered and generously alimonied ex-wife of a billionaire. Child, no. She's a serious person, a scholar. This lady earned a Ph.D. from London's Royal College of Art—maybe we should be calling her Dr. Soros?—and in 1993 founded and funded the distinguished Bard College Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design and Culture.

Miz Soros picked up her post-divorce apartment, according to the peeps at Property Shark, in June 2006 for $25,000,000 in an off-market deal with investor turned movie producer David J. Mimran. Mister Mimran had only acquired the apartment himself in 2004 when he shelled out about $12,200,000 to boutique hotelier Ian Schrager.

Mister Schrager bought the apartment in 1997 for about $9,000,000—so the story goes—and had it worked over by avant garde architect/designer Philippe Starck. Mister Starck's decorative handiwork—no doubt an absolute extravaganza of whimsy—remained intact when Miz Soros picked the place up in 2006. She told the New York Times shortly after her purchase that she wasn't sure if she would keep or replace Starck's day-core. Iffin Your Mama was the wagering sort—and we are definitely not—we'd bet Big Daddy's farm she removed most if not every inch of Mister Starck's handiwork. As far as Your Mama knows, we have never met or even put our actual eyeballs on Miz Soros. None-the-less, she does not strike Your Mama as a woman who would have a nine-foot tall bergere chair in the powder pooper.

Perfectly perched on the northeast corner of the 19th floor of the Art Deco-tastic Majestic building on Central Park West at West 72nds Street, the two-unit combination crib contains four bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms and a media den easily convertible to a fifth bedroom plus a brutally puny prison cell-sized staff bedroom and three-quarter bathroom tucked at the tail end of the service hall at the very back of the apartment.**

The $50,000,000 price tag, according to current listing information, also includes a fully renovated one-bedroom staff apartment on a lower floor as well as all of the furniture in the main apartment.*** The Majestic, an impeccably maintained full-service white-glove temple to upscale urban living, allows up to 50% financing and—for what it's worth—the monstrous $13,759 monthly maintenance for Miz Soros' spread is 41% tax deductible, whatever that means.

The apartment—of unknown square footage—has direct elevator access into a spacious formal living/dining room prominently nestled into the apartment's northeast corner with wrap-around views and a monolithic stone fireplace. A large library on the backside of the fireplace has walls lined with built-in book cases and powerful, head on park views.

On the other side of the living/dining room there's a generously proportioned, multi-purpose kitchen/great room with five sets of French-style doors that open to the slender terrace that snakes its way along the entire northern length of the apartment. Depending on where one stands on this terrace there are wide city vistas to the west and north that sweep over the roof top of the legendary Dakota building, take in almost all of the Central Park including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and continue along the long row of swish and swanky apartment houses that line up like limestone soldiers along Fifth Avenue.

Beyond the kitchen/great room, the north wing contains a media den with built-in sofa banquette and three guest/family bedrooms that each have direct access to a private or semi-private bathroom. The windowless half bathroom in the corridor that extends north from a small vestibule behind the kitchen/great room appears to be the only powder pooper for guests in the entire apartment. A half bath for guests is great to have—of course—but this one isn't, by our humble and utterly meaningless estimation, very conveniently located for the hoitier of the toity dinner guests who might find it less than elegant to have to traipse through the culinary cross-hairs of the kitchen in order to cop a squat mid-cocktail party or -chef-prepared dinner soiree.

The long, multi-chamber guest/family bedroom corridor makes a hard left at its end to yet another but not quite as long hallway with laundry area, service elevator access, mechanical equipment and the aforementioned, brutally puny prison cell-sized staff bedroom and three-quarter bathroom.

The opposite end of the apartment—that would be the east-facing southern flank—is devoted entirely to the super-sized master suite comprised of a privacy-enhancing entrance hall, a roomy sitting room, an equally roomy separate bedroom and a compact but well-equipped windowed office space that connects through from the sitting room to the adjacent library. There's also a giant bathroom with free-standing soaking tub set askance almost in the middle of the room and two, fully kitted and customized walk-in closets and dressing rooms. Finally there's exclusive use of a private terrace with an astonishing view that encompasses a significant portion of Central Park and the Upper East Side all the way around and down to Midtown and Central Park South.

Your Mama has no inside intel on the future real estate plans of Dr.-Miz Soros. With both her children now young adults it would certainly make sense to downsize. Then again, who would be surprised if she upsized? People of extraordinary financial means frequently make what seem to mere financial mortals like capricious and downright inexplicable real estate decisions. Larry Ellison maintains more high maintenance residences than Your Mama can count on both hands, including the entire Hawaiian island of Lanai that he bought this year for nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars. Entertainment industry honcho David Geffen—child-free and nearly 70—already owned a suburban mini-mansion-sized apartment on Fifth Avenue when he coughed up a blood-chilling $54 million to buy the tremendous, 12,000-ish square foot duplex penthouse upstairs. It just doesn't make sense. Howevuh, butter beans, if Your Mama has said it once we've said it 87,000 times too many, it ain't nuthin' but an effort in futility to try to comprehend the wild, wacky and often fickle real estate ways of the rich and famous.

*For the records, Your Mama has absolutely no notion of and makes not real claims about whether Daughter Soros and Second-Ex-Missus Soros are bosom buddies, sworn enemies or something in between. Okay?  

**Listing information actually shows the apartment has six bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms (plus the separate staff apartment)

***All the furniture? Really? Your Mama would bet Big Daddy's farm every stick and scrap of Miz Soros' furniture and day-core is among the most expensive money can buy but—let's get real children—who pays fifty million bucks for a New York City apartment and wants the previous owner's highboys, sideboards, sofas and commodes? Does that include the mattresses?

Ice Hockey Hottie Loui Eriksson Lists Dallas Digs

SELLER: Loui Eriksson
LOCATION: Dallas, TX
PRICE: $2,495,000
SIZE: 7,141 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: A few days ago Your Mama chit-chatted with the children about a glassy, modestly scaled mid-century modern that beau-hunky Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgård purchased in the hills above Hollywood. Today—thanks to an informant we'll call Wanda Slipsomedish—we roll out Your Mama's celebrity real estate red carpet for another strapping Swede, this time professional ice hockey player Loui Eriksson who recently heaved his contemporary twisted traditional mini-mansion in Dallas, TX on the open market with an asking price of $2,495,000.

Your Mama does not follow ice hockey any more than we follow the lesbian rodeo circuit, but children, you should hear our boozy b.f.f. Fiona Trambeau go on a tear about the ice hockey. If there's anything in this world that Fiona loves more than the big ol' backside of a swarthy professional baseball player—word to the wise, Angel Pagan, Fiona is coming for you—it's the sturdy blond haunches of a foreign-born puck pusher like Loui Eriksson.

Anyhow, once Fiona stopped screeching and hollering she told us young Mister Ericksson—six-foot-two and just 27 years old—hails from scenic Gothenburg, Sweden, and currently plays the left winger position (whatever that is) for the Dallas Stars, who first drafted the Nordic bruiser in 2003. During the 2008-09 season he played all 82 games, then he played for Sweden in the 2010 Winter Olympics and in 2011 he was selected for the NHL All-Star Game in which he scored the game-winning goal. So, clearly, he's kinda a big deal on the ice. Indeed, Mister Eriksson is such a big deal that his current, six-year contract with the Stars (2010-2015) compensates him with an average of $4,250,000 per year.

According to the various property records we peeped, Mister Eriksson and his long-time spouse/baby momma, Micaela Kanold, purchased their quarter acre-plus Dallas spread, located on a leafy lane in the posh Preston Hollow neighborhood in December, 2009 for an undisclosed amount of money.*

Current listing information shows the chunky, Prairie House style contemporary was custom built in 2007 by Geoffrey Grant, a bigwig builder of luxury homes in Dallas. The un-gated and undeniably airy two-story domicile includes, as per listing information, six bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms in 7,141 square feet of interior space, every inch of it all done up and did over in a glitzy but casual, whimsy-tinged and downright feminine decorative style Your Mama might inadequately describe as Tastefully Flashy Period Pastiche meets Corporate Boutique Hotel Chic.

As we do whenever we come across some intel about an upscale residence in Dallas, we queried Candy Evans, the sassy, entrepreneurial—and legally embattled—Dallas-based property gossip who works over real estate but good on her fab online endeavors Candy's Dirt and Second Shelters. Candy got back to Your Mama immediately—she's good like that—and, natch, she knew all about the Eriksson mini-manse. She was, she told us, at that very moment, sipping champers and typing her manicured fingers to the nubbins on a rather gushing report of Mister Ericksson and Miz Kaland's thoroughly and opulently decorated Dallas digs. Candy did take a quick break from her scuttlebutting duties—told y'all she was good like that—and, to our delight, further elucidated re: the house, "This is what we in Dallas call a Mini Honey Pot. You are east of the big acreages where the likes of Kelcy Warren and Tom Hicks and George W. nest. This is where you find those who want gigunta homes on a little less land so they can hop in their G-5s and go off to their Vail pads!" A Mini Honey Pot! Die-ing.

Anyhoo, glass and wood front doors painted a high gloss jet black and set into a colonnaded porch open directly and—some will surely feel—abruptly into a Texas-sized formal living/dining room that stretches than 30 feet with impressively lofty 13-foot ceilings, espresso-colored maple floors and wide banks of extra-tall windows and French-style doors. A fireplace centrally set into a paneled wall anchors the living room end of the capacious space and two walls in the dining room are slathered in an over-scaled red, white and pink floral print wallpaper that Your Mama really wants to detest, believes we really should loathe and would never, in a million years install in our own home but none-the-less inexplicably—and much to our own decorative chagrin—sort of has a cotton for.

The living/dining room opens on its long, rear wall—directly opposite the front door—to a central stair hall that steps down into second, less formal but equally as decadent family room that's all decked out in a monochromatic yet glittery, sophisticated lady palette of cream, crystal, dusty rose and chrome. A second fireplace is flanked by open display shelves backed with a shimmery brocade-pattern wallpaper and zhuzhed up with framed photographs and perfectly balanced clusters of decorator-curated tchotchke.** Eight foot French-style doors and windows look out and open the family room up to a deep, covered porch with monumental steel fireplace. 

Two steps up from and open to the family room a sleek-and-chic galley-style Balthaup-brand kitchen was designed and installed with a center island snack counter (for four), snow white slabs of quartz counter tops, a complete collection of commercial-style stainless steel appliances and a built-in breakfast banquette. A nicely equipped butler's pantry conveniently connects the kitchen to the dining room.

Behind the kitchen—at least we think it's behind or, maybe, beyond the kitchen—a window-lined room currently used as a children's play space (above, top right) has, matte black walls with cutesy artwork, a wall-mounted flat-screen t.v. for tuning the child out, a super-stylish modern-style play kitchen and direct access to the backyard.

A second family room (above, bottom), on the second floor, is perfect for keeping the kids out of the more adult-oriented areas on the main floor and is finished with a row of built-in homework desks and a complete wall of floor-to-ceiling cabinets and shelves custom-built around—of course—a wall-mounted flat-screen television.

Each of the home's half dozen bedrooms was, clearly—as seen in the delicious listing photos, worked over but good by a lady or nice-gay decorator with a lot of ideas, a thing for wallpaper and a decent but not unlimited budget.*** The roomy, white and silver-toned master suite (above, left) has a humongous, wallpaper and lattice headboard structure stuck to the wall behind the bed and an attached bathroom with a glass-enclosed—if not particularly private—open-plan bathing suite (above, right) comprised of soaking tub platform and separate multi-head shower area.

One family/guest bedroom doesn't have any wallpaper at all, another has super-graphic black and white vertical striped wall paper on at least three walls and another yet has shimmery silver- and mint-hued brocade-patterned wall paper up on just one wall plus the damn ceiling. Candy's very accomplished and regularly published lady decorator told her a wallpapered ceiling is de rigueur in au courant Dallas decoratin' circles.**** Well—all due respect, gurl—we are not convinced. It kind of gives Your Mama the vertigo, like we're standing on the wall, iffin that makes any sense. Anyhoo, you say luminescent patterned wallpaper on the ceiling we say super-matte white paint. Whatever.

Another bedroom—probably intended for a young girl based on an entirely stereotypical reading of the listing photograph—has plum colored walls that we think might be a soft fabric stretched over batting and a fifth bedroom—for an infant, duh—was done entirely—and we mean in its entirety, hunties—in a stunning but not particularly stimulating-to-baby blush kissed beige color.

A (thankfully) removable child-safety fence separates the covered outdoor living/dining area off the kitchen and family room from the over-sized concrete pavers that surround the slightly-raised spa and large, rectangular swimming pool with tanning shelf. There's also a diving board, the fulcrumless kind that hardly bends a smidgen even when ferociously pounced upon by a husky diver and that we imagine an insurance company would label as an attractive nuisance.***** A flat, but fairly petite patch of grass at the back of the house is the perfect spot to let the dogs do their business and/or install a super-sized and high-cost swing set and play structure.

Your Mama has no inside intelligence on where Mister Eriksson and Miz Kaland might be headed next but would anyone be surprised it it wasn't over to the east a little bit where, as Candy said, all the big acreage estates are located? No. We wouldn't either.

*We can not confirm the figure, but Dallas-based property fiend Candy Evans reported this week on her blog that the couple paid somewhere around $1,400,000.

**We can not confirm the pottery clusters and etc. seen on the shelves on either side of the family room fireplace in the listing photos were actually curated by a decorator. We only speculate they were because they're just so, well, so that it's a tell-tale sign a professional decorator has been all up in the house.

***We can not confirm the day-core in any or all of the bedrooms—or any other room in the house, for that matter—is the actual handiwork of a professional lady or nice-gay decorator. Maybe this was an singular effort by the lady of the house. It could be. It probably isn't. But it could be. We also can't confirm that Mister Eriksson did or did not have "a decent but not unlimited budget" for his furniture and other decorative items. We have absolutely no knowledge of what sort of budget he did or did not have for his obviously very thoroughly decorated residence.

****What Candy's Dallas-based lady decorator, Michelle Nussbaumer, actually said about wallpaper on the ceiling was that it's, "very NOW" and not, as we said, "de rigueur in au courant Dallas decortin' circles." It wasn't specified in Candy's report whether Miz Nussbaumer  thinks a wallpapered ceiling is NOW only in Dallas or if it's also NOW in well-dressed, upscale homes in other parts of Texas, the U.S. and/or the entire world.

*****We really have no idea if an insurance company would term this diving board or any other thing on this property as an "attractive nuisance" or any other kind of nuisance. 

listing photos: Dave Perry-Miller & Associates