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Tag: Geno Petro (page 1 of 1)

March 26, 2015

My Pettiest SM Peeves

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Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

I’m a Chicago real estate blogger  who resides in a glass house (okay, an MCM high rise) so throw ’em if you got ’em.  A little collateral stone breakage comes with the territory in this Midwest cranny. Regardless, here are a handful of Social Media miens that tick  me off on a daily basis. In no great order:

1) Stock Photo Images On A Realtor’s Blog
My take: If you’re going to offer up something to the SM gods that even faintly smells literary, have the decency (imagination?) to snap your own accompanying picture. (Unless of course, its a really cool shot of a vintage car or dog.)

2) Blogs In A Box
My take: Come on fellow ‘bloggers,’ we all know you don’t write that crappy content about real estate minutiae that you plaster on LinkedIn and Facebook every other day. (“6 Factors Homeowners Should Consider Blah Blah Blah.” ??? Yeah right. I saw three different Realtors with their names on some re-tweaked version of that one the other day.) It’s pretty obvious you’re paying some vendor $1.26 per copy to re-brand these thinly-veiled press releases, ‘newsletters,’ and USA Today column fillers. Grow a brain, please.

3) Proprietary Use Of The Word ‘Professional’
My take: At least once a month I get dissed because my shaved headed, sun shaded profile picture is ‘unprofessional.’  It’s all in the POV, folks.  See, to me it looks like everybody else on LinkedIn appears to have gotten the Glamor Shots Jos. A. Bank Funeral Director Discount. If you think your shizz is so self- important then try this: unsubscribe from the SM platform for a couple days and see how much the rest of the buttoned-down world doesn’t notice.

4) Facebook Profile With Your Name But Your Child/Grandchild’s Face
My take: Someone please explain???

5) Facebook Pages Of Dead Dudes Acting Like They’re Not
My take: Keith Moon and George Carlin immediately come to mind. No shit, Keith even wished everybody a ‘Happy Friday’ last week and he kicked it back in 1978. Look it up.

6) Bully Commentors, Distressed Diplomats From Angola In Possession Of My $20 Million (US),  & All Other Web Crawling Spamsters
My take: Bite me.

G.

 

 

January 25, 2009

I Prefer Vera Wang

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Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

I am not a gay man but I’d play one on television if I thought there was a Golden Globe in it for me.  In fact, my wife insists that her next husband will indeed, be a gay man and I’m cool with that as long as I’m not still around to witness all the fabulous shopping thrown back  in my face.  And  just so you know that this Op-Ed is not coming from a squinted biased eye, I’m hereby going on cyber-record to announce to the entire Blogosphere that our bride’s maid was a male fashion designer, my best man was a lesbian, and we first encountered our bisexual ceremonial minister at a coffee shop in Boystown.  If you don’t believe me,  just ask our poor parents.  And perhaps this is why a certain Jason Wu recently ‘Requested’ my Friendship on Facebook.  (The fact that I even know who the man is serves as the premise for this piece.)

And thus, without doth protesting too much, if you ever met me in person you’d clearly see that I’m not physically fit enough to be gay—or at least, not the sort of gay I’d prefer if druthers were in order. I do know a little bit about fashion, though, and I have to declare that I am totally pissed that Michelle Obama did not wear Maria Pinto at the Inauguration. There, it’s out. I said it.

Allow me to digress.  Maria Pinto is a well known Chicago based fashion designer who studied under Geoffrey Beene.  She is the twin sister of my best friend and managing broker, Joe Pinto,  and a personal friend and designer-of-choice of my wife, Mona. For the past 18 months,  none other than the Michelle Obama, has been  frequenting  the Pinto showroom for complimentary couture and thus, dangling the possibility of  wearing Maria Pinto for The Inauguration.  There were nods and winks but I can say no more.  And since ‘ The Dress ‘  will ultimately hang in the Smithsonian alongside the likes of Jackie Kennedy and First Ladied others…well, needless to say…this was all a pretty big deal Read more

July 12, 2008

Meano Geno

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Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

Feedback

“Okay,” I finally tell the other realtor after two solid minutes of back and forth phone chatter. “You’re right. I’m wrong. You win the argument. But guess what…? We’re still not buying the house.”

I try to be nice. I really do.  But sometimes my fellow property slingers just touch on that last raw nerve (I think we all know which one I’m referring to) and I say something mean.  One agent even called me “Meano Geno.”

“Thanks for the feedback, Meano Geno,” she snapped into the phone.

“You’re not very welcome,” I muttered back into the dial tone.

I’ve written about this before; listing agents who, within hours and sometimes even minutes of a showing, ring me up for feedback. And occasionally, they don’t even wait for everyone to leave the premises. One recently minted licensee strategically positioned himself in the foyer as my clients and I were scurrying to safety through the living room.  Blocking the front door with his presumptuousness, he posed to us, with the toothy despondence of a Ford sales trainee, the universal cliche of the day…

“What do we have to do to earn your business today, sir?” he asked, looking right past me and my client’s wife, going straight to the perceived decision maker. The husband looked at me. I looked at the wife. We paused for a moment of silence. I reached into my shirt pocket and took out the business card of an agent we met an hour earlier at a different showing; another panter.  (Pant”er\, n. One who pants. –Congreve.)

“Here…call me later for feedback,” I said as we all inched past him, close enough to catch a whiff of that new car smell cologne he was wearing, and slipped out the front door in single file, toward higher, more residentially improved ground.  Our new toothy friend stared down at the gold embossed Century 21 card for a few seconds then looked up at us before finally calling out toward the sidewalk…

“Thank you Barbara!”

Me too, me too

Yes, I know. I can be glib at times.  And the truth is, I am hardly ever without a half dozen or so of my own problematic listings that need to be sold yesterday. The difference between me (along with those like me–us, we…) and Read more

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