Noted with interest

NYTimes:

The idea seems to cut against the very grain of New York: to transform much of the city’s most storied avenue, Broadway, from a river of blaring cars, trucks and taxis into a planter-lined oasis for pedestrians, bicyclists and picnickers.

But on Thursday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg unveiled a plan to do just that: Vehicles would be barred entirely from Broadway at public plazas in Times Square and Herald Square, and would share the thoroughfare with a bike lane and a promenade along the rest of the stretch from 59th Street to a new plaza at 23rd Street.

The city plans to start making the changes in late May, and more alterations are possible in the future.

Mr. Bloomberg said the plan would relieve traffic congestion and make more room for pedestrians, enhancing some of the city’s most popular public spaces. But it could also change the very nature of some of Manhattan’s busiest and most famous areas, including the theater district, Times Square, the fashion district and Macy’s front stoop.

“People avoid Times Square because the traffic is so terrible and people are getting pushed out into the streets — the sidewalks can’t handle it,” Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference in a restaurant at the Marriott Marquis, a hotel overlooking Times Square, where a giant image of the rock star Ozzy Osbourne flashed behind him on an electronic billboard.

“People don’t come to look at cars stuck in traffic,” the mayor said. “They come to look at the lights, the buildings and the excitement, and this is going to have a lot more of it.”

I can only assume that having had his plan for congestion pricing in Manhattan thwarted, the Mayor has decided to make driving on the avenues such a challenge that nobody will want to do it anymore. Good luck to him.

Continue reading Noted with interest

The legend of Marvin Hamlisch

Today marks the 125th anniversary of the Brooklyn Bridge. It really is one of my favorite places in the US.

The tragic poet Hart Crane made of the bridge a potent symbol for some of his best work:

. . .
Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft
A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets,
Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning,
A jest falls from the speechless caravan.


Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks,
A rip-tooth of the sky's acetylene;
All afternoon the cloud-flown derricks turn . . .
Thy cables breathe the North Atlantic still.

. . .

So, the city is celebrating 125 years of John and Washington Roebling's engineering wonder with a series of parties that began yesterday, featuring "pecial guest performances including the legendary Marvin Hamlisch, followed by a Grucci Fireworks extravaganza. A festive lighting ceremony will illuminate the entire Bridge, which will remain lit every evening from 9pm–11pm through Memorial Day."

I have to admit, having been somewhat disappointed by The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull last night, I am dying to have someone fill me in on the legend of Marvin Hamlisch. I guess that scoring The Sting and being named as the Anti-Christ isn't enough for one lifetime.

Continue reading The legend of Marvin Hamlisch

Scenic view

The view of Manhattan from my old stomping grounds in Brooklyn's Northside. Despite massive development pressures for this old warehouse district, the state is preserving about 2.5 acres to turn into parkland. All around this park, there will probably be about 20,000 or so apartment units constructed over the next 5 years. There's already a 42 story tower nearing completion just to the south (left of where i was standing when i shot this panorama) and a 5 story condo directly behind me to the east. I should add that NYC deals with urban infill development like this in several ways that are different from Durham. Most significant, is that developers get concessions from the city regarding building height and number of units if they agree to keep a certain percentage of their units "affordable," defined by some percentage of the median market price for similar apartments. Also, there's no minimum number of parking spaces that developers must provide. Actually, i'm pretty sure there's a maximum number of spaces per bedroom that developers are allowed to include in projects like this. Of course, this is, to my knowledge, the largest remaining parcel of land available for development in either Brooklyn or Manhattan, and certainly the last one on the waterfront.

The waterfront was once a train shipping facility, where loaded rail cars from Long Island would get spun on a roundhouse and loaded onto barges to be shipped around the Battery to New Jersey and from there to the rest of the country, back in the early 20th century. When i lived there in the 80s, the barges were still tied up to their docks, and the outlines of the roundhouse were still visible if you knew where to stand and look.

Click on the photo for a larger image.

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New York images

(Warning - image intensive post. Click on any image for full size)

With Shea Stadium, the home of the New York Mets since 1964, shutting down at the end of the this season, i decided to make a pilgrimage back to the park and see the team i've rooted for virtually my entire life one more time in their old park. And with my oldest daughter getting ready to leave the country for a few years this summer, i thought i might bring her along. She managed to get to one game at Shea before we moved to the west coast while she was an infant. And it was an opportunity to show her some of the other places where she spent those first months of her life.

One of the things i've always loved about the city are the random graphic elements that seem to appear whenever someone leaves white space around. In a place where corporate entities big and small spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year to make sure you see their message, the notion of using the cityscape for personal expression remains somewhat subversive.




These guys are bilingual, although i don't think this is a literal translation.


We stayed Friday night on Pearl St., near the financial district and the Brooklyn Bridge, and walked up through Chinatown, Little Italy, the Lower East Side, and Soho in the rain. We had tickets for Friday night's game, which Mets' management, always putting the fans first, finally got around to calling off at around 8:30 that night. Saturday morning we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge into Brooklyn Heights. Here's the obligatory artsy-fartsy shot of the Bridge's stone arches.

And one of the my oldest taking her own photo looking up the East River. That's the Manhattan Bridge in the background, and the Williamsburg Bridge behind that.

We used to live a few blocks north of the Williamsburg Bridge, in a neighborhood called the Northside. Bedford Avenue is the spine of the neighborhood, and if you take the L train from Manhattan, it's the first stop. I could never figure out when we lived there why it wasn't the happening neighborhood: it was affordable, convenient, and safe. Now, it is the happening neighborhood, and while it's still convenient and safe, it doesn't appear to be affordable. The one-bedroom we were renting for $140/month in 1985 is going for about $2700/month these days. And the 6 unit building across the street that sold for $90K that same year is now worth about a million, maybe more.

We made a spur of the moment decision to continue walking from the Heights up to the Northside. These abandoned homes on Flushing Ave, not far from the Bridge, were puzzling.

This is some of the most expensive real estate in the country, and 12 or so 2500 square foot homes have just been abandoned to the vines for the past 40 or so years? This explained things, though.


The day after the rainstorm:

A redbud grows in Brooklyn:


Obligatory John Lennon memorial photograph:

We eventually got to see a ball game. Mets fans have always been an interactive bunch, and Karl Ehrhardt was probably the best of the bunch. He apparently died earlier this year, and my condolences to his family. It was good to see that the tradition continues in some form. Here's Cow-Bellman working the crowd.

I suppose it was to be expected, but the Mets, who lost almost every game i ever saw them play at Shea, including being no-hit by Bob Moose of the Pirates in 1969, stunk up the field but good on Saturday night, and lost 7-1, giving up 6 runs in the last three innings. My daughter now knows what it's like to be a Mets fan.

Final note. Everyone knows that New York is renowned the world around for its customer service, especially that provided by the many public utilities in the city. Here's an example of what i mean, provided by the Long Island Rail Road.

Continue reading New York images