Benjamin Bratt Exits the Village

SELLER: Benjamin Bratt and Talisa Soto
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $2,500,000
SIZE: 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES:
We read with great interest today on the always informative City File that actor Benjamin Bratt and his model/actress/stay at home mommy wife Talisa Soto sold their lofty apartment in the Village for $2,500,000.

Your Mama carries a warm spot in our cold heart for Mister Bratt. See kiddies, once upon a time, back when Your Mama was still hawking high priced home furnishings to scads of rich and famous people, we did a bit o' bizness with Benjamin Bratt. Besides being much taller and far more dee-lishusly juicy in real life than on the boob-toob, he was just so incredibly nice and refreshingly free of any of those annoyingly entitled and haughty airs famous people sometimes put on when they're dealing with the help. And, make no mistake butter beans, we were definitely the help, nothing but a shop sitter in a good pair of shooz charging large sums of money to a parade of black Amex cards. Yes, we may have owned the shop, but we were still just a lowly shop sitter to most of the famous folks we dealt with.

Anyhoo, the very bizzy actor recently finished up a long, long, long run on Law & Order. Since then he's made just one appearance on an episode of Modern Family–one of the better new sitcoms as far as Your Mama and our friend Chow-lee are concerned–but previous to and concurrently with his run on Law & Order, Mister Bratt appeared in tee-vee programs such as The Cleaner and E-Ring, and also worked his beautiful light brown skinned stuff in films like Blood in Blood Out, Miss Congeniality, Traffic and Piñero. We can't honestly say we've seen any of those programs or films besides Traffic, but we adore Mister Bratt anyway.

Property records show that Mister Bratt and Miz Soto scooped up their 7th floor apartment in September of 2003. Unfortunately Your Mama doesn't have any idea what they paid for the 3 bedroom and 2 pooper place, which carries monthly maintenance costs of $2,443.

The airy and open plan main living space has hardwood floors, a 13-foot ceiling and tall and wide windows on two walls. What it does not have, as evidenced by the through window air-conditioner, is a central heat and air system. Your Mama would have gladly suffered through such an inconvenience during our many years in Noo York City in exchange for a direct and dramatic view of the Empire State Building and a 900 square foot living/dining area that is, quite frankly, more than twice the size of most 1-bedroom apartments in the Village.

Technically, as per the listing, there are three bedrooms, but one of them was used by Mister Bratt and Miz Soto as an office/library. Besides, given that there's not actually a closet in there, it's not really, legally, a bedroom anyway. None the less, we love that narrow space with the shelves that go to the ceiling and the wee reading room tucked back into a quite corner. The one switch up we'd make in here is to haul in and hang that capiz shell chandelier in the living room, which is dwarfed by the voluminous space into the library, and where it would have an lovely over-sized appeal. Then we'd take that lovely little green glass pendant and put it in the reading nook along with a couple of very cozy chairs and little else. Your Mama can think of few luxuries we'd love more than to have a wee room with some natural light whose only purpose was to provide a comfortable and serene spot to read.

The kitchen, oddly shaped and with a column right in the damn middle, is separated from the main living space by a mahogany breakfast bar–at least we think it's mahogany–and the white cabinets with a raised panel give it a slight country house thing going on. We don't care for that country house in the city look and we're quite sure we'd smack right into that pole over and over and over again, particularly after a we get a few cocktails in us. And when don't we have a few cocktails in us, you know what Your Mama is saying?

The two bedrooms that function like bedrooms are tucked back up into the back of the apartment and the master bedroom includes a nice big dressing room and a pooper with two gigantic windows, an exhibitionists dream.

Mister Bratt hails from good ol' San Francisco where until 2007 he and the Missus owned a residence on Page Street in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood. However, that's been sold and we read somewhere but can not confirm that Missus Bratt–and we presume Mister Bratt and their two shorties–lives somewhere in hills above Los Angeles in a house without swimming pool. Wherever they live, it's not on West 13th Street in New York City.