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Locally Sourced Vegetarian Citrus Fizz? $5.99. Grass Fed Himalayan Tuna Salad? That'll be $9.99. Taking gentrification and a rent hike into your own hands? Priceless.

That's how the neighbors at Jesse's Deli in Brooklyn's Boerum Hill neighborhood are trying to save their local convenience store.

Owner Jesse Itayim opened his doors in 1984 at the corner of Bergen and Bonds Avenue, spending time in that location and another before moving to his current location, 402 Atlantic Ave., in 1989.

The fate of the family business was threatened recently by a hike in the monthly rent — from $4,000 to $10,000. Itayim could not afford it, and he prepared to close after more than 25 years in business.

When customers and neighbors asked about the bare shelves at Jesse's Deli, they found out it was closing by July 31.

A neighbor started a petition and sent 1,200 signatures in support of Itayim to the landlord, Karina Bilger. Bilger returned it unopened, with a note saying there would be no renewal on the lease, and declaring all past offers rescinded.

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Jesse's Deli in Brooklyn, NY, where neighborhood supporters are looking for a way to keep the corner store in business after a rent increase. Jesse Itayim hide caption

itoggle caption Jesse Itayim

Jesse's Deli in Brooklyn, NY, where neighborhood supporters are looking for a way to keep the corner store in business after a rent increase.

Jesse Itayim

Bilger has not responded to NPR requests for comment, but she told dnainfo.com that she tried to come to an agreement with the owner two years ago.

The community showed support for Jesse's by making mock posters that advertise prices increased two and a half times and "gentrified" products. They called the campaign an "Artisanal Rent Price Hike Sale," and displayed the bright posters inside the store and in the front window. A social media campaign used the hashtag #jessespricedout on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Organizers also appealed to Mayor Bill de Blasio and local Councilman Stephen Levin to support Jesse's and other small businesses by getting behind the Small Business Jobs Survival Act. The measure would require, among other things, a minimum 10 year lease.

The bill and the protest campaign for Jesse's Deli, a neighborhood staple for the working class, middle class, and creative class in the area, may be too late. The family is looking for a new location, preferably in the same area.

Mohenad Itayim, Jesse Itayim's son, is still confident in the business his father started over 30 years ago. "We are fighting to the end," he said.

"We do not know where we'll end up."

Jesse's Deli

jesse itayim

gentrification

Brooklyn

"Detroit's largest art object" is up for sale, and it's not part of a collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

It's the Fisher Building, a National Historic Landmark, and it's on the auction block — the online auction block, that is.

You could purchase one of Detroit's most iconic buildings online at Auction.com June 22-24.

The bank foreclosed on the 29-story art deco building recently and now some real estate experts are calling it a rare opportunity to get a piece of history at a bargain basement price.

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The story of the Fisher Building begins in the late 19th century. The seven Fisher Brothers built carriages for horses, then, bodies for cars. General Motors bought out the Fishers in 1919 for $200 million, or about $2.7 billion in today's dollars. The Fishers used some of that money for civic causes, and some to build a palace to honor their legacy. They chose Detroit's most-prolific architect, Albert Kahn, to build it.

"So the Fisher brothers reach out to him, they say, we're going to give you a blank check. In return, we want the most beautiful building in the world," says Ryan Hooper with "Pure Detroit," a group that gives tours of the Fisher Building.

The New York League of Architects said the goal was achieved: They declared the Fisher the most beautiful building of 1928, largely because of the three-story arcade.

"We're talking about these art deco chandeliers hanging above us, this beautiful frescoed ceiling above us," Hooper says, pointing up at the ceiling

"The exterior of the building, it's marble clad, making it the largest marble clad commercial building in the world. Inside you have over 52 different types of marble, all different colors coming from all different parts of the world," he says.

And 430 tons of bronze to really put it over the top — some of which is on the lobby elevators.

"It's a cast bronze door, marble frame," Hooper says, admiring the elevator. "It's kind of mind blowing when you think about it."

These were once the fastest elevators in the world, Hooper says.

There's also a 2,000-seat theater inside the building. And all of this can be yours.

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The 29-story Fisher building is up for auction online. Sean_Marshall/Flickr hide caption

itoggle caption Sean_Marshall/Flickr

The 29-story Fisher building is up for auction online.

Sean_Marshall/Flickr

"I think the property has the potential to trade in the $20 million to $30 million dollar range," says A.J. Weiner, the managing director for the real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle's Detroit office.

Keep in mind, the Fisher Brothers originally put $140 million in today's dollars, into the property. In Chicago or New York City, a building of this size and grandeur could sell for perhaps $500 million, Weiner says.

This week's auction also includes the neighboring 10-story art deco "Albert Kahn Building" and two parking garages.

But would buying the building be throwing good money after bad?

"I think it's throwing good money after great," Weiner says.

That's contingent on a few things though. This neighborhood, called "New Center," was once among the wealthiest commercial areas on earth. General Motors had its world headquarters here. Detroit boosters say it's the next commercial part of Detroit that's ready to take off.

Jim Bieri, with Stokas Bieri Real Estate in Detroit, says if the neighborhood can come back around, the Fisher Building's price tag would be really low.

"It's shocking because it is a magnificent architectural gem," says Bieri.

He says beautiful, historic buildings like the Fisher can attract more tenants and fetch high rents. But, he adds, people don't work in the marbled lobby.

"I haven't ridden the elevators much lately, but I'm told they don't operate like the used to," says Bieri. "I just know that when they get into a building like that, if you haven't been taking care of it, there's just issue after issue from electric to HVAC."

Tour guide Ryan Hooper took me to the vacant 19th floor. Occupancy rates in the Fisher Building have dwindled in recent years. The carpeting needs replacing, as does the plumbing and the bathrooms. Overall, it's drab.

It could cost a new owner $60 million to fix up the Fisher Building, perhaps double the purchase price. And it will also require an act of faith by any new owner that this neighborhood can indeed come back, and new businesses will want to move into the building.

Fisher Building

auctions

Detroit

Back on April 1 of this year, The Hollywood Reporter broke the news that Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig had secretly filmed a Lifetime movie called A Deadly Adoption. This was kind of confusing, because ... it was April 1, after all. Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig are movie stars. Why would they have filmed a secret Lifetime movie, of all the weird things?

A day later, Variety reported that because the secret got out, Ferrell now said that they were just going to forget the whole thing, even though it had already been filmed. In other words, the story went, they were going to dump a project for which people had presumably already been paid and on which they had already worked simply because the plan to spring it on the public didn't work out the way they hoped. This seemed to make the story go away, for the most part, despite not seeming particularly credible from a business perspective. Maybe no one wanted to say so in so many words, but it wasn't clear that anybody cared that much whether they went ahead with it or didn't.

And then in early June, The Hollywood Reporter was back to tell you that the movie was apparently back on, because a billboard was up advertising it for air June 20. That's ... hey, that's this Saturday night! Perhaps this was the way the news was originally supposed to get out, and Ferrell's statement was their way of trying to scooch the toothpaste back into the tube so they could squeeze it out again later.

By now weary from the experience of a TV movie that was on then off then on again in spite of having no particularly clear reason to exist, television watchers waited to find out whether this would quickly be followed by some triple-deke move in which we'd find out that the whole thing was a Jimmy Kimmel stunt or something of that nature. But apparently not, because now there's a trailer and the airdate really is, apparently, Saturday night. (Lifetime has not allowed screeners for critics. You know I would have watched it the minute its little electrons made their way to me.)

The trailer is spot-on enough as a parody that it isn't so much "funny" as "weird," like spoofing a basketball game by just playing basketball. It proves you understand the ins and outs of playing basketball, but is it hilarious? A Deadly Adoption was written by Andrew Steele, who comes from Saturday Night Live and Funny Or Die, and who wrote Ferrell's spoof comedy Casa de mi Padre. So it is indeed a spoof, from spoof minds, with at trailer as deadpan as possible.

Or, in the alternative, it's a very, very long Saturday Night Live sketch.

But the weird thing about a spoof of this kind of Lifetime movie at this late date is that the ironic viewing of Lifetime movies is already a long and glorious tradition. Any night when this kind of Lifetime movie, the dangerous-sexy kind where there's a happy home until something terrible happens, you can find a thriving community of people who identify, mock, deconstruct, and roll around in every trope. This is already a genre of film that exists probably half for the benefit of people who watch it because it's so goofy. There are entire Twitter accounts — one that I follow is @jenboudinout, who calls herself "Lifetimealicious — where watching Lifetime movies for the sheer spectacle of it is a frequent pastime if not a full-time gig.

The random shaky-cam in #ILoveYouButILied is like Dad left the camera on a tripod and the family dog keeps bumping into it.

— Lifetimealicious (@jenboudinot) May 7, 2015

The bar for this kind of thing, in other words, is higher than you might think if you're just a genre tourist, or if you are operating on the assumption that Lifetime movies are reliably watched only or mostly by people who think they're of great cinematic merit. When I gleefully reviewed the Lifetime masterpiece Deadly Spa two years ago, it was as part of a thriving, lively, wonderful community of people not unlike those who watch The Bachelor: much more savvy than it's often given credit for.

If this is just Ferrell and Wiig demonstrating that they know what Lifetime movies look like and being right — if it's essentially what the trailer is — then it will be an interesting and impressive feat of duplication, but it won't necessarily be funny, particularly after about the first commercial break. It's sort of like the Internet-mocking site Clickhole; it's funny when it has jokes, and less so when it relies on just knowing how to describe its target and get it right.

In the meantime, we'll have to see whether the regular Lifetime movie audience wants any part of this. In my experience, they really prefer to bring their own jokes.

Ebola has dug in its heels.

Despite dramatic drops in the overall numbers of reported cases, Sierra Leone and Guinea are still struggling to stop the deadly disease.

"We don't have the degree of control that's essential to stop the epidemic."

Dr. Daniel Lucey, of Georgetown University, who just returned from Guinea last week.

Case tallies in both countries have dipped towards zero in the past few months, only to bounce back up. Sierra Leone reported 14 new cases this week and Guinea counted 10.

To try to finally wipe out Ebola once and for all, Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma ordered the military last week to enforce new community-wide quarantines around the most recent cases.

"The curfew restrictions and the soldier activities will last for a 21-day period," President Koroma declared on TV last week. Anyone caught violating the quarantine will be arrested, he ordered.

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People aren't allowed to leave the quarantined communities, and the government has imposed a curfew from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. The new restrictions are aimed at "ending the secret movement of cases, contacts, and dead bodies that has propagated transmission over the past 2 months," the World Health Organization said.

Guinea arguably is in a worse position than Sierra Leone. The outbreak has been going on longer in Guinea. Cases are more geographically widespread, and some rural communities in Guinea have blocked health workers from entering.

"I think it's going to be very difficult to actually get to zero cases and stay at zero cases in Sierra Leone and Guinea," says Dr. Daniel Lucey, a professor of immunology at Georgetown University, who just returned from Guinea last week.

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A health worker marks a house as free of Ebola while going door to door, looking for infected people in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Michael Duff/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Michael Duff/AP

A health worker marks a house as free of Ebola while going door to door, looking for infected people in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Michael Duff/AP

Lucey has worked as a doctor on Ebola treatment wards in both Sierra Leone and Liberia. He still sees major problems facing the Ebola eradication effort.

One bad sign is that people continue to die from Ebola at home and are only diagnosed as having the disease after death. "That means they've been sick for days, possibly weeks, and so they're contagious," he says. "Who did they expose? It's hard to know once they're dead."

To gain the upper hand against the outbreak, health officials need to be able to track down anyone who may have been exposed to the virus. Currently they're monitoring more than 2,000 contacts of Ebola patients in the region. Yet, despite this, sick people keep turning up who aren't on any known contact list. "We don't have the degree of control that's essential to stop the epidemic," Lucey says.

To get control of this outbreak, health officials need to be able to go visit the contacts who are being monitored for Ebola. They have to get blood samples to laboratories. They have to be able to transport patients to isolation wards and safely bury anyone who's died of the disease.

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In remote parts of West Africa, with poorly-maintained dirt roads, this is difficult in the best of times. It'll get even more difficult as seasonal rains kick in to full gear, Lucey says. "If we haven't been able to succeed in the last six months during the dry season, how are we going to succeed in the next six months in the rainy season?"

Lucey concedes that there has been incredible progress against Ebola. At the apex of this outbreak last fall, there were more than a thousand cases being reported each week. Now we are down to only about two dozen new cases each week.

But those last few cases may be the hardest to stamp out, Lucey warns. And if the outbreak doesn't get completely stopped soon, he says, there's a danger Ebola could become endemic in the region.

Sierra Leone

ebola

Global Health