The MTA is now selling off naming rights to the highest bidder for its stations around the city, starting with the Atlantic Avenue Brooklyn hub, which will now bear the name of the famously slavery-linked Barclays Bank (also not to be overlooked is how much money they relieve people of in their prominent role in the ongoing scam that is the credit industry).  $10 says a graffiti/sign defacement explosion is on the horizon at the Atlantic Ave. station.

A BID (business improvement district) - and there are more than one I’ve been informed, so this isn’t the ones that it isn’t, whoever they are - has made the complaint that a bike lane is hindering business for shops along 5th Avenue.  Their proposal is to impose some ‘bike lane’ that just has bikes riding with traffic, so it’s easier for trucks to double-park for deliveries (I don’t see how this is any different than just getting rid of the bike lane and putting cyclists at the mercy of drivers who often seem to see them largely in about the same capacity as bugs against a windshield)

While major elections tend to be fairly rare in odd years we’re having one here in NYC.  So i have lots of new friends….for a little while. 

With the Bankruptcy of General Motors came the inevitable bailout (part 2), making American taxpayers the proud (or not) new majority stakeholder, to the tune of 60%, in one of the worlds infamous lumbering dinosaurs of automobile development.  There’s a lot of pressure out there urging you to “buy American” but when it comes down to it, in this case at least, you apparently don’t have a say in whether the product is something you really care to invest in.  So now that I’m part owner does that mean that I get the opportunity to veto their crappy car decisions? (the mere existence of Hummer comes to mind)

In this three week stretch it appears it’s all about highlighting authorities and their penchant for doing nothing to fix things that need fixing (and in the case of the MTA, making it look like they’re fixing something when the only reason anything is any better is an unintended consequence, which they have duely patted themselves on the back for…even though once they finish doing the maintenance that caused the ‘fix’, they intend to return it to its normal inadequate self)





 

For no terribly good reason Macy’s has chosen to hold its annual fireworks display on the Hudson River this year.  Commonly held on the East River the fireworks are a boon to businesses along the river’s Brooklyn and Manhattan edges and an age-old tradition.  When contacted for a reason why they changed the location, Macy’s cited a weak explanation that this year marks the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s exploration of that river…and then refused to say whether or not the fireworks would be returned to the East River the following year.

Like many museums the Brooklyn Museum is having to do more with less and, to address budget shortfalls, is employing measures from lowering salaries to forced unpaid leave to ditching entire exhibitions.  So goes the economy.

Recently the EPA decided what everybody knows already - namely that The Gowanus Canal is an open sewer. They are trying to designate it a ward of the Superfund program and get it cleaned up for good.  But not so fast.  The city and Toll Brothers, a local real estate development company are concerned that if the Gowanus sewer becomes a Superfund site, they won’t be able to develop residental property on its banks.  Ew. Come on now. It stands to reason that if you’re going to build a condo building on one of the most disgusting waterways in the entire city nobody is going to want to live there, right?  Not so, say lawyers for the Toll Bros. and the city.  They have put forth the ludicrous argument that Superfund sites are so stigmatized that no one will live near one after cleanup is completed…so it’s better to just not bother with the full cleanup and get to work right away on those condos (because if you’re in NYC these days you know that what we really need is more empty residential space).  The real reason they put forth this bullshit argument becomes clear when the most important piece of the puzzle is added – and that is that if the Gowanus is designated a Superfund site then NO development can take place at all until the completion of the cleanup.  Honestly this seems like a better deal to me but I think that greed is clouding reason here.  (to be fair, the city IS engaging in a cleanup operation of its own, but they lack the proper funds to clean things up properly.  A Superfund designation would bring the full power of the EPA to bear on the site and funding would be available to do it right)

I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried. They really did this. I cant imagine that somebody over there wasn’t quietly snickering at what a great joke it was to tease by now totally insane F train riders with the idea of a longer train at rush hour so they didn’t have to stand with their heads in eachothers armpits every day before and after work.  And specifically to do it on April Fools Day and then hours later say what might as well have been “Oh, hey by the way you bunch of losers, we were just messing with you. Have a great day and enjoy that fare hike!”  The MTA has this city by the balls. Buy a bike.