SELLER: Rush Limbaugh
LOCATION: Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
PRICE: $13,950,000
SIZE: 4,661 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Last spring, right wing radio talk show blowhard Rush Limbaugh made a big stink about selling his New York City apartment due to what he called, "stupid, punitive, and massive tax increases" put into place by outgoing and unpopular New York governor David Patterson. There were few New Yorkers–and certainly none Your Mama knows–who publicly mourned the potential loss of the proudly vitriolic shit stirrer. Mister Limbaugh, who spends most of his time in posh Palm Beach, FL, is finally making good on his–as it turns out–not so idle threat to dump his New York City digs. The button pushing pasha of conservative commentators recently listed his full floor Fifth Avenue condominium with an asking price of $13,950,000.
When Your Mama clicked and clacked on over to the online property listing for ol' Rush's penthouse pad, much to our shock and awe we realized that over the last couple of days we'd three times spent far too much time staring at the listing photographs, our big mouth hanging open with bamboozle and bewilderment over the mortifying murals painted on far too many of the walls and ceilings of this apartment. We were so vexed and perplexed by the monstrous and downright weird murals that even after viewing the listing three separate times we plum forgot to have our customary peep and poke around the property records. Had we done so we would have discovered the apartment is owned through a trust whose name can be quite easily linked directly back to Mister Limbaugh's Palm Beach residence.
Your Mama was spared having to put that property puzzle together by the good folks at Gawker–or maybe is was the gal at the New York Post–who earlier today broke the news of Mister Limbaugh heaving his penthouse onto the market. Property records show that the fire breathing Republican dragon picked up his full floor Fifth Avenue condo way back in April of 1994 for somewhere in the neighborhood of five million buck. This would have been just before he was married for a third time to former aerobics instructor Marta Fitzgerald. The now erstwhile lovebirds were, it might humor the children to know, married at the home of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas who officiated the nuptials.
The couple went, amicably he says, to the court of dee-vorce in 2004. That was not long after Mister Limbaugh admitted to having a thing for Oxycontin, an ugly situation that led to a stint in rehab, and not long before he was arrested and charged with "doctor shopping," presumably for his Oxycontin fix. Mister Limbaugh pleaded not guilty, natch, and the charge was dropped after he agreed to a $30,000 fine and some kind of drug therapy treatment program. He has, by all accounts complied. Ironically, prior to admitting to his own illegal drug use, Mister Limbaugh advocated for jailing illegal drug users. However, it seems that what is good for the goose was not good for Mister Limbaugh's gander otherwise he'd have had to put himself in the pokey (rather than one of the posh Arizona drug rehab centers) for being a prescription pill popper.
Anyhoo, listing information shows the 4,661 square foot condo carries colossal monthly maintenance and taxes that combined total $13,360. Your Mama would bet our long bodied bitches Linda and Beverly that amount of moolah is well above the average monthly income of most of Mister Limbaugh's core demographic. Listing information also indicates the apartment contains 10 rooms with 4 bedrooms, 5.5 poopers and 4 terraces, two of which have direct Central Park views.
Mister Limbaugh's sky mansion, according to listing information, offers direct elevator entry and a double wide living room with a fireplace and windows on three sides that give stunning views of Central Park. The formal dining room is also wrapped in windows on three sides, offers views of Central Park, opens to two terraces and sits adjacent to the eat-in kitchen. Other rooms include a wood paneled library/den and a media room that opens to a very narrow, west facing terrace.
The bedroom wing, on the east side of the apartment, is comprised of three family or guest bedrooms, each with an en suite pooper and one that opens to another very narrow terrace. The master suite is entered through a private foyer flanked by his and her poopers and dressing rooms. Your Mama would like to direct the childrens' attention to the brass chandelier in the all beige master pooper. Lo-ward have mercy puppies, could there anything more sissy than having a damn chandelier in a man's pooper? Don't get Your Mama wrong; We love us some sissy. We're just surprised Mister Limbaugh does too.
The apartment is completed by a storage space in the basement and a separate staff room located on the building's third floor that is so oddly configured and small that it would be an overt punishment to ask a staff person to actually occupy the room. Certainly our imperious house gurl Svetlana would sooner tear Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter limb from limb rather than endure such ludicrously Lilliputian living quarters.
The apartment building, a pre-war affair originally built in 1928 as the Adam Hotel, was converted to condos in the early 1990s and full time doorman and concierge services provide the building with white glove services. The building does, actually, face Fifth Avenue but rather East 86th Street. The developer was able to snag a Fifth Avenue address by purchasing some contiguous air rights, possibly over the Duke Semans mansion next door that is owned by billionaire Tamir Sapir and for sale for $50,00,000. In addition to the massive and not very pre-war sized picture windows throughout, Mister Limbaugh's spread has hand painted gold leaf moldings, a hand-cut patterned marble floor in the entrance hall, herringbone mahogany floors in the public rooms, wall to wall carpeting in the bedrooms, walls upholstered in Fortuna fabric–whatever that is–and scads of those maudlin, hand painted murals we mentioned earlier. The murals were, according to listing information, hand painted by a "renowned" artist named Richard Smith. Your Mama has never heard of this Smith person but, then again and thankfully, we don't really run in a murals on the walls and ceilings sort of crowd.
Through the doors of the library/den, a bucolic and watery landscape mural that includes a flowering pink cherry tree is painted on the wall in a columned ante room that has rounded corners and leads into the living room, which itself has a clunky, coffered ceiling painted to resemble tree branches and a cloudy blue sky. The beamed ceiling of the formal dining has another mural of a cloudy sky painted into an oval shape and surrounded by landscapes scenes in each of the four corners. The mural madness continues into at least one of the guest bedrooms where we find a supremely oppressive tropical scene, complete with a couple of criss-crossed palm trees. The mural covers the entire wall opposite the four poster bed and to gives the room a sad look of a cheap motel three, long blocks off that beach that is–for some bizarre reason–trying and failing to attract a rich, stuffy and elderly clientele from some place like rural Virginia.
The most ornate and visually complex mural was saved for the master bedroom, which is all did up and done over in an elaborately feminine day-core. This despite the fact that there hasn't been a Ladee of the Limbaugh House since sometime in 2003 or 4. The walls have insets upholstered in a rose colored fabric that looks to Your Mama more like patterned taffeta than anything else. The windows are treated with the same rose colored fabric fashioned into drapery that is swagged across the top of the windows, edged with dangling pom-poms and pooled in pathetic little heaps on the kinda rose-y kinda beige-y carpeting. On one side of the room, an ornate armoire stands in the corner–probably with a tee-vee in it–and on the other, a womanly shaped chaise upholstered in a dark rose colored and patterned fabric. Next to that very grandmotherly chaise sits a gilded commode on top of which is–much to Your Mama's horror–a multi-colored silk flower arrangement.
Looking up we find the all to expected mural of a cloudy sky surrounded and festooned with flowered garlands. In the center of the cloudy part of the mural two white doves hold a garland in their little beaks as if they are the ones responsible for placing all those flowered garlands around the faux sky. It's all just so depressingly mawkish that we can barely stand to look at it and yet we can't seem to keep from looking at it, feeling stricken with a terror that cleaves deep into our decorative heart. Just about the only thing remotely masculine that Your Mama can find in Mister Limbaugh's master bedroom is the phallic four poster bed the burly man tucks into when visiting the Big Apple. We recognize that this day-core may very well be left over from his third marriage to Marta the former aerobics instructor. But, children, that relationship swirled down the terlit of love way back in 2004. Your Mama can't help but think there's something rather odd, creepy even, for a man to keep to such overtly, almost comically feminine day-core for so long after his dee-vorce. Particularly for a man like Mister Limbaugh who has a long history of making fun of homosexuals for what he sees as their (stereotypically) effeminate ways.
Mister Limbaugh's primary residence is an oceanfront estate in hoity toity Palm Beach, FL. The prop records are a wee bit confusing–or we're just too far into our trio of afternoon gin and tonics–and depending on where we look, show he purchased the property either in February of 1996 for $6,700,000 or June of 1998 for $3,900,000. The Palm Beach County public property records show the property spans 2.9202 acres and includes a beast of a mansion with 9 bedrooms and 11 poopers. The tax man shows the property has an assessed value of $24,634,744, a staggering market value of $48,303,931, and an even more jaw dropping 2009 tax liability of $451,212.42. Oddly enough, the Palm Beach tax man records show that the taxes on his Florida estate have been hiked by $48,271 just since 2007. So maybe ol' Rush is gonna get his panties in a bunch about that shit too and leave the state of Florida due to the steeply escalating taxes on his lavish estate.
Now then, before any of you people of the conservative persuasion get on your high horses and start sassing Your Mama, calling us vulgar names and telling us to stick to real estate and blah blah blah, please take note of a few things:
1. This is our little blog and we can say whatever we damn well please.
2. We talk friendly smack about everyone regardless of their politics, proclivities and points of view.
3. Mister Limbaugh himself says very controversial and often disrespectful things about people every damn day and his fans eat it up like a horse in a hay factory. If ol' rabble rousing Rush can dish it out, then surely he and his fervent acolytes can take a few blunted digs by a booze brained writer obsessed with the entirely frivolous subject of celebrity real estate.
4. In an effort to be–as they so humorously say at Fox News–fair and balanced, we'll conclude by saying that to his credit Mister Limbaugh donates time and some of his many, many, many millions to charitable causes. He heads up a telethon to raise funds for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and he spearheads an annual fundraising drive for the Marine Corp-Law Enforcement Foundation which provides scholarships to children of Marines and law enforcement folks who have died during the line of duty. And these, to borrow a coined phrase from big, bad Martha Stewart, are good things.
source: Corcoran
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