I see those fine reporting skills Panchito honed as he was being charmed by the good ol’ dry drunk have not gone dull while he’s been chewing and typing. In babbling out a thumb sucker he missed the elephant on Central Park West. Even my regard for the Big Homme has risen sharply since realizing why he opened where he opened: There’s an infestation of gazillionaires just minutes away now. Paul Goldberger wrote a gripping piece about it in the New Yorker, rather breathlessly answering “What does 20 million buy you these days?” But why let a huge development, on a lot that had been empty as long as we’ve lived in New York, with apartments snatched up with fortunes more solid than hedge funds, stand in the way of an easy joke about the Upper West Side?