The .Plan

Can it be that good?

By February 2005, one month after it opened, Pinkberry was already turning a profit. The lines started that summer. By that August, it was discovered by Daily Candy. By spring, Los Angeles had fallen hopelessly in love. The little store on Huntley where the tattoo parlor used to be now serves about 1,300 to 1,600 customers a day.

…For neighbors, there is Pinkberry trash on their lawns, and sometimes Pinkberry customers too. The angriest of the neighbors stand outside at night to remind yogurt lovers that the street is all permit parking, and they will be ticketed if they park illegally. But even that doesn’t always work.

“The bottom line is the customers that go to Pinkberry don’t mind paying $68 for a tub of yogurt,” said Huntley Avenue resident Oliver Wilson, handily adding the price of a parking ticket to the $7.45 cost of a large yogurt. “It’s all Escalades and Mercedes and BMWs. You tell them, ‘Don’t park here,’ and they do. They can afford it.”

The neighbors held meetings to discuss the problem, and talked about it in between meetings as they walked their dogs. They explained their situation to the city and demanded that measures be taken to make sure people were not parking illegally. The city has sent extra parking-enforcement officers to Huntley to ticket customers who are parked illegally. The city also has asked Hwang to station a security guard by the front door seven nights a week to remind people that the street is permit-parking only, to make sure customers put their trash in the garbage can and to make sure that the line goes north toward Santa Monica Boulevard and away from the neighbors.
–Deborah Netburn, “The Taste That Launched 1,000 Parking Tickets”, Los Angeles Times, August 4, 2006

How embarassing, to have made Page One of the Journal for something like this:

Two years ago, [top Asia private banker for HSBC Holdings PLC, Mimi Monica Wong] agreed to pay $15.4 million for eight years of unlimited Latin-dance instruction. About half of that sum she paid up front, in cash. The 61-year-old widow recently said she was “looking for the last bit of glory in life.”

…Hong Kong has no shortage of big spenders. Home to some of Asia’s great fortunes, the city of about seven million boasts the most Rolls-Royces per capita in the world. Yet even here, the equivalent of $5,000 a day for eight years is a lot to pay for dance lessons. “It’s just ridiculous,” says Keith McNab, an Argentine tango instructor in Hong Kong who charges about $70 an hour. “No one could actually take enough lessons to make it worth it.”

In a letter to a local newspaper, a Hong Kong civil servant said such sums could inspire a career change. “Ladies, I am now available to give dancing lessons,” wrote John Shanahan, a senior officer at the city’s anticorruption watchdog. “Payments are accepted in advance. Pole dancing costs extra.”
–Kate Linebaugh, “Banker Now Regards $15.4 Million Lessons As a Serious Misstep”, Wall Street Journal, August 3, 2006