What’s Curbed’s relationship with the residential brokerages?
I would say there really is no relationship; almost like, I would say, “love-hate”—but most of the hate that’s geared toward a brokerage from Curbed comes from the comments [from readers]. There’s gentle chiding from us—if brokers are lazy with their listings, or the typos they make—but we’re never really like, “Screw Corcoran” or anything like that. It’s really just reader hate. What comments won’t you post? Well, the thing is, if you post a comment, it gets up on the site. There’s no holding back or way for vetting, which is why you see so much blatant racism whenever we do anything about Harlem. Or whenever we mention Dumbo, it creates this insane flame war. Between who? The Dumbo defenders, people who live there and bought there, and everyone else—who say, ‘Dumbo’s just an overpriced piece of shit; it’s not a real neighborhood.’ Their words; I find it to be a lovely neighborhood. If something gets out of hand, then Lock [Lockhart Steele, Curbed’s founder] will go in and just erase
