Neighborhood Threat

I have been on the West Coast and completely out of the Brooklyn loop. I settled down tonight to catch up on some reading, only to hear of Robert Guskind’s passing.

I’ve been in Seattle visiting friends for the past few days. I lived here for close to 10 years, starting in 1995. I came in at a turning point in the city’s history, when things were still quirky and the city still had a ton of character. Gradually, like any city, I watched the culture become less unique and more smoothed out and cleaned up and, by design, less Seattle.

I mention this because Robert was an unique voice, a voice truly Brooklynian, stubborn, opinionated, passionate, committed. Even if I didn’t agree with him often I was glad that he was there. I was glad that he was writing. I was glad, always, that his blog existed. It was a very New York voice in a city that is losing the things that make it great every single minute of every single day.

And now another voice in this wilderness is gone. My heartfelt, deepest condolences to his friends and family and colleagues.

I have sympathy for residents unhappy about filming (especially when Fringe AND Life On Mars are back at Franklin & Greenpoint one day after the other - Life On Mars needs A LOT of space for all its vintage cars, but I don’t have sympathy for one group of people in Greenpoint:

Construction companies.

No, Hunter Roberts Construction Group, you don’t get to stop filming in Greenpoint because it gets in the way of whatever crappy building you are working on.

Now, that reminds me, I need to go look up some DOB permits.

I am the biggest fan of having a bookstore down the street from me…but the chances of me ever getting home in time to pick up a book by 7pm during the week is slim and none. So I was delighted to get a note from the store’s mailing list today advising me of their new hours:

Monday-Thursday: 11am-8pm
Friday-Saturday: 11am-9pm
Sunday: 12noon-8pm

I’m going to take the decision to extend hours (and operate 7 days a week) as a sign that the store is doing a healthy business, another great thing.

There’s nothing cooler than emailing the store and having them hold books for you (which they love doing) - support your local bookseller!

Now, I have officially seen everything:

Smiths Speed Dating at our own Black Rabbit Bar. Friends in SEATTLE are enviously emailing me about this.

(That’s Smiths as in Johnny Marr and Morrissey.)

The boyfriend is a WaMu customer, and although he works in Manhattan, and is, therefore, within spitting distance of many, many branches, he chortled when Extra was replaced with a WaMu branch on Manhattan Ave.

Until, that is, today. The WaMu branch will be closing, and once again he will have to trek out to the Bushwick (e.g., Graham and Grand) branch.

So what goes in the space now? And how long will it take to fill it?

When I first heard about the Election Night incidents at N. 7th and Bedford, and read some of the comments over on Free Williamsburg, I have to say that my immediate reaction was: stupid entitled white children acting as though only they matter, I am sure they did not help themselves very much.

On the other hand, I do not like or trust the NYPD. So I was completely certain that they were wrong, at least to a certain extent.

Now that I have seen the footage, and talked to a perfectly respectable citizen of our community who was handcuffed and taken in for giving a cop the finger, I will say this:

The NYPD was completely over the top on this. They were wrong.

I will also say this:

The stupid kids exercising white privilege and blocking traffic and keeping people up all night under the guise of entitlement are also wrong. Not everyone had the luxury of staying up all night celebrating. People had to get home to kids and family and to and from jobs. You can cry out for a car-free Bedford another time, right now, it’s a transportation artery - and that also goes for PUBLIC transportation, like the B61 (which should go down Berry and not Bedford, but that’s another story too).

There is no question that the cops were out of line, however. There is very little justification for their behavior. And they only got away with it because they were doing it to white kids in Williamsburg. If they had tried to pull an action like this in Bed-Stuy it would have been an international incident.

We went to vote at around 8:15 this morning. There was a line out of the McGuinness Senior Center, mostly due to the backup of not remembering what district we were in. The guy in front of us insisted that we had to wait in line even if we DID know our district.

Not true.

We are in District 75. It’s never that crowded, but today was not any normal day.

The poll workers seemed amazed that that many people were there that early. They said that lunchtime was when it really got bad.

I don’t even want to think about what that meant today.

My record was there just fine, but the boyfriend’s was not. He had to produce ID and then he disappeared. I love how we still have the old-fashioned booths that I remember from when my parents voted in the 70s, complete with pencil carefully clipped to the side in case you wanted to write someone in. I went into the voting booth, closed the curtain, twirled my knobs and pulled the lever.

When I came out it was even more crowded. The phone rang, and it was the boyfriend. I had no signal downstairs but had enough to hear him say he was outside. He had to vote on paper, even though he didn’t want to, he had to vote on paper because despite not being on the rolls the last time this happened and him sending them a letter AGAIN updating his address, he was still not there, even though his ID actually reflects his current domicile.

Him and Tim Robbins. He was in good company, and would have liked to have been afforded the luxury of taking Tim’s protest route and going down to the Board of Elections, but alas, that course of action was not for us peons.

(I’m glad Tim did, and at least he pointed out that he had the luxury of doing so.)

My flickr feed is here, and I cannot tell you how important it was for me to have my camera this morning.

I’ve always used Northside, after two incidents when I first moved to the neighborhood. Never had a problem, never had an issue.

Until yesterday.

The boyfriend is home sick with the flu. He never gets sick, which means it’s a million times more miserable for him than for me. I couldn’t stay home or go in late, so I left him cash to take a car to the doctor.

Northside charged him $40 to the Upper West Side from Greenpoint. He didn’t even really think about it or have the strength to argue, and didn’t really put two and two together until he took a cab home and it was only $25.

He didn’t tell the driver he was sick, but it’s pretty obvious from looking at him. It costs $40 to go to JFK, for heaven’s sake. Yes, he should have pushed back, and if he didn’t know how much it cost he should have checked with the dispatcher. But this blatant rip-off ensures we will never give Northside our business again. My guess is that the driver assumed he was new to the neighborhood and since he was white and male, had money and wouldn’t know the difference. That’s reprehensible.

This sign is displayed at a noted nightspot in downtown Manhattan. I would like to call your attention to the last line:

“Exit the bar briskly and silently. People are trying to sleep upstairs. Please make all travel plans and say all farewells before exiting the bar.”

This is clearly an establishment that wishes to stay in business. This is clearly an establishment that wishes to have as little impact on its neighbors as possible. In short, this is a responsible bar owner.

Now, no, I don’t know how well this is enforced or if this is all just window dressing. But at least it’s there.

At this point I’m the last blogger in Brooklyn to write about <a href=”http://www.nag-brooklyn.org/blog/2008/09/guest-post-safe-biking-in-north.html”>the terrible accident between a bike rider and a Northside car service driver</a>. A letter was sent out to the community and CB1 urging a boycott of Northside, and there was some debate back and forth on the CB1 mailing list about the virtues of this approach.

The points made in the letter boiled down to the fact that in many people’s opinions, Northside has been a bad neighbor, as follows:

• Drivers idle in bus stops, causing the buses to have to stop in the middle of the street. That causes traffic to back up and subsequent delays. (Drivers are not allowed by law to solicit fares on the street. Car service has to be called. There’s a different set of laws than with yellow cabs.)
• Drivers pull up to collect their fares and honk, instead of asking the dispatcher to call the fare and tell them the car is waiting. I can attest to that. I’ve had drivers pull up to our house and honk when I was standing right outside.

My position on the list was that even given all of this - which many vehicles in the neighborhood are guilty of (Mobile Wash units, off-duty ambulances, armored cars) - the issue appeared to be with the individual DRIVER and not the entire fleet of cars.

Since the original call went out (which didn’t come from the injured cyclist), Northside has met with the victim and is covering all of his medical bills. The cynic in me could say, “That’s only because they got caught.” To me, Northside has always been reputable. There’s always a bad egg in every company - I can tell you about the car service we use at the office who tried to take me home to Greenpoint via the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel - but I am glad that this is being resolved.

If you read the interview linked at the top of the item, the cyclist makes many excellent points about bike lanes and what they bring to the community, and also reminds drivers AND CYCLISTS of their responsibilities.

On that note, the CB1 debate brought up a popular complaint of mine, inconsiderate cyclists on the Pulaski Bridge. I understand that it sucks. I understand you don’t want to dismount. But I’ve been run into TWICE, deliberately, by cyclists trying to make a point. I’m not going to ask you to walk your bike across the bridge, but pedestrians get the right of way, and if you have to get off for half a second, deal with it. Just deal with it.

And show up to the CB1 Transportation Committee meeting, where they plan on discussing how to ameliorate that problem.