UPDATE: The New York City DOT responds via Twitter: "@nyctheblog No, it is not legal for anyone to block a crosswalk with or without a placard."
As per normal on this stretch of Centre Street, multiple cars have blocked access to the crosswalks and curb cuts in front of the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse, depriving the handicap and frail the option of moving onto or off a sidewalk without difficulty or assistance. Two vehicles had official placards on their dashboard (see top right). One vehicle belonged to an NYPD employee, the other to an employee of the New York State Judicial system. Do these placards give the vehicles a right to park illegally like this? Even assuming so, their choice of parking arrangements seemed particularly inconsiderate and unnecessary considering the public parking lot only a couple of feet away that had an abundance of empty spots as illustrated in the photo below.
Have you seen those fake dollar bills all over the Lower East Side and elsewhere?
As East Village Feed reported on Tuesday, Zynga, the game developer responsible for Mafia Wars and Farmville, among others, has undertaken an illegal marketing campaign in Manhattan that includes affixing fake dollar bills onto city sidewalks. According to the City of New York, it is unlawful for any person to deface the street or sidewalk with advertisement or printed matter.
The blogger at East Village Feed reached out to both Zynga’s CEO and PR representative for comment on the ad campaign but did not hear back. I called the Sanitation Department, who were not pleased to hear about the campaign. They will remove any stickers if given the location, but it doesn't seem fair that the public should pay to clean this up. The game company and marketing team who distributed the fliers should be held responsible for clean up. Indeed, Sanitation requested contact information for the marketing company or game company, which was difficult to find. Only a phone number for Zynga's billing department could be located.
After posting video of a 'Rat Zoo' in Collect Pond Park that was widely reported on elsewhere in the news, a reader emailed to comment on recent layoffs affecting 70% of all city Pest Control Aides by the Dept. of Health, in effect decimating the department in all five boroughs. Zita Allen, with District Council 37 of American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, noted: "Isn’t it ironic that the NYC rat problem comes just months after the Dept. of Health laid off 70% of the city’s Pest Control Aides."
According to Allen, Manhattan had only six CPCAs for the entire borough; four have been laid off, leaving just two. CPCAs work to prevent not only rats, but bed bugs, which have reached epidemic proportions in New York City. In follow up emails, he expounded further...
Summertime in New York City means a lot things. Mister Softee; Legs; Fourth of July; Hanging out in the park. It also means time to get your planting on. As seen here in the photos taken last night on the corner of Spring and Lafayette, the numerous white, empty advertising boards at street level—many illegal and now empty due to recent enforcement actions by the DOB—make perfect pop up parks; green graffiti if you will.
Follow the four easy steps below, as shown in the photos, to create your own pop up wall gardens on street level (illegal?) ad space.
After much fanfare when it re-opened in October—the triangular shaped park doubled its previous space and was a welcome addition to the neighborhood—the little park that could has been beset by constant closures and repairs on one side or another. Or as is the case now, on all three sides!
I've heard from a reliable source the work happening now is necessary to correct problems with the original contractor. I have not confirmed this.
With so much repair taking place at the park now, NYC The Blog phoned Council Member Margaret Chin's office yesterday and spoke with staff member Patricia Owen to get the 411.
Jennifer 8. Lee, a New York Times reporter until recently, retweeted the photo as well, and added a perceptive note: "massive times square snow ball fight possible bcbway closed to traffic. thank you mayor bloomberg."
That photo has captivated the attention of many people. Four kids who have laid claim to starting the whole thing have set up a Facebook page to commemorate the event; the wall is currently populated with comments from many who were in attendance, sharing their photos, videos, and comments. "This was the best snowball fight ever," wrote Gary Smith. "I love NY!!!"
But exactly what is so captivating about a snowball fight—an event that happens everywhere, every year? Yes, it was the first major snow fall in New York City, which might have added to the general interest in snow related news. Yes, it took place in Times Square, New York City, arguably ground zero for focus on any number of events. But there seems to be more at play here, something else people find captivating. As Jennifer 8. Lee noted, this could only happen because Broadway has been closed to traffic in that area of Times Square. It is this idea of participating in the city you live in, without fear or concern of constant traffic and noise, free to be part of the landscape in anyway you feel, that must surely be part of the attraction people feel toward this event. To really Own This City, as Time Out NY is fond of saying, sharing it with just yourself and others on the ground.
As I walked around last night in the unusually quite and desolate streets of New York City during heavy snowfall, it occurred to me how nice it was to be able to do this, free of speeding vehicles and the unbearable, artificial noise of this loud city: "I'm pretty sure this is how it was supposed to be."
I am pretty sure this is how New York City is supposed to be. The narrow streets in the interior of our city, made for walking, not driving. Cobblestones and cafes. The vehicles, for the most part, restricted to outlying roads. A city where pedestrians have the run of the place in it's interior, opting to have a snowball fight in the middle of Times Square if the mood strikes.
Though not often sold this way, the issues of transportation and public space are social and political issues. They can be designed to create equality or inequality, and too often they are designed with inequality in mind. Initiatives such as Summer Streets are positive steps in addressing these inequalities. As the issues of transportation and public space get discussed as social issues and not technical one, it seems inevitable that whole neighborhoods will become car free in the future. As Enrique Penalosa, former Mayor of Bogota, Columbia is fond of saying, "We can have a city that is very friendly to cars, or a city that is very friendly to people, we can not have both."
In Times Square last night, people witnessed a city that was friendly to pedestrians, and perhaps every retweet of that photo could be seen as a vote in favor.
Or at least a quality of life issue and potential mental health hazard if you happen to live in the units directly adjacent to the display, your windows facing it.
This screen resides at Polo Electric, 497 Canal St, near Hudson St, where it has been built into the buildings wall. As you can tell in the video above, it is not just the size or brightness of the display, but the ferocious manner in which the light blasts forth from what seems to be the heavens of the Lord himself.
Celebrity Vision, listed at the same address as Polo Electric, is the company marketing these. Their website states they only focus their advertising efforts on high traffic areas; specifically major tunnels and bridges. The better chance for a car accident we suppose.
Is this display legal? No serious, really. Not only might it be too bright, too big, too non-neighborly, but at an intersection already dangerous due to heavy traffic and multiple crossroads, it is potentially a serious impediment to the safe flow of traffic as it releases an orgasm of light all over your window shield, temporarily blinding you.
In an area not (yet) known for an abundance of obnoxious advertisements and isolated from the busier nearby areas of Soho, the West Village, and Chinatown, this display befitting a Hollywood set for Las Vegas doesn't really blend in well at all. It's fully one story high, three feet deep, and 15 feet wide. As shown in the video above, the display shines directly in the windows of an adjacent apartment building, which must make for a wonderful living environment. This movie screen on steroids was brought to our attention earlier this week when traveling east down Canal in a cab. Convinced a car was flashing his lights at him, the driver was irritated. Surely we were being pulled over by the police. But it wasn't a vehicle behind him flashing his lights, it was the display across the street.
Walking down the street, the lights easily followed us to the Avenue of the Americas, two long blocks away east. The glow from 497 Canal is reaching the area, bouncing off buildings, car windows, and illuminating the sidewalk. It was as if your own personal rain cloud was following, except in this case the rain cloud was the inside of a nightclub.
Yay New York (!!) and their hands off attitude, where you are free to express yourself in any way you see fit, except of course if you are a person, in which case you better cut it out.
Upper East Siders enjoy their accoutrements well made, big, and built to last. They want the trees to have long and healthy lives, so their dogs can continue to piss and shit all over them for generations to come. They laugh at your dirt covered tree beds.
Prior to the redevelopment of the High Line railway into a park, it lay abandoned and unused for decades. But not completely abandoned. Determined artists used the area not only as a canvas for graffiti, but as a sculpture garden. At least one anonymous artist welded metal sculptures, seen in the photos above, and left them bolted onto concrete walls in the Chelsea Market tunnel. Some enterprising residents who lived directly adjacent to the park planted gardens in the rail bed outside their window, providing electricity and water for the plantings, and a welcome sign for any who happened by.
Friends of The High line have since restored a large portion of the railway to a bountiful and lush garden, a public park now open to all. The Chelsea Market tunnel now seems bare in comparison, but does have a coffee cart. Any vestiges of urban grit that used to inhabit the High Line has been removed, including most of the graffiti. This has been an ongoing concernfor some. Just yesterday, the New York Timesreported on these issues, noting what graffiti was up there "has been almost completely erased."
Left unmentioned in these reports is any talk of the metal sculptures. In 2005, New York City took ownership of the High Line from CSX Transportation, Inc from Gansevoort Street to 30th Street. In 2006 when the photos here were taken, the sculptures were still there; by default public property. The sculptures were left anonymously, an anonymous gift from an artist to residents of NYC. It's possible they were created by REVS, a well know graffiti artist whose work is visible from the High Line. During the beginning of this decade, he started leaving metal sculptures around the city, though the pieces on the High Line have never been identified as such by streetartafficanodos.
Curious about what happened to these sculptures, NYC The Blog sent Friends of The High Line an email on Sep 16 of this year. Initially concerned about a REVS sculpture that may or may not have existed, the query expanded to include questions about all the sculptures, and other public property left on the High Line, including a number of old subway turnstiles.
Salmaan Khan at Friends of The High Lline told NYC The Blog via email that they didn't know about any REVS sculptures:
...but the sculptures that were attached to the High Line in the Chelsea Market tunnel have since been lost. They were stored for a time at 820 Washington Street, at the Southern terminus of the High Line, but the building they were being stored in has since been demolished, presumably along with the sculptures. We were never able to find out the name of the artist, so they were never contacted. That art piece led an interesting life!
In a follow up email, FOTH explained they lost track of the sculptures after the construction company moved them, "at some point in between all the construction, demolition and movement of everything on the High Line." It was left unclear who stored them at 820 Washington and under what pretense (presumably to keep them safe.)
Did the sculptures get destroyed? Maybe an enterprising volunteer with an eye for art or history is keeping them safe in their apartment? Whatever happened to them, it seems clear that we won't be seeing them in any of the public art displays FOTH have been hosting since opening the park.
It seems unfortunate to say the least. Friends of The Highline have touted the effort that went into The park to replicate the original flora, reuse original materials and incorporate public input. The railroad tracks for example were returned to their original locations and integrated into the planting beds. And the plantings were inspired by the landscape that developed on the tracks during the decades after the trains stopped running. So it seems puzzling and shortsighted that seemingly by design, FOHL excluded from these homages any reference to the High Line's last twenty years as a place for unsactioned public art.
In a triangle of land between Kenmare, Lafayette, and Cleveland Place, NYC Parks Department has been expanding and reconstructing the area into a new park. Lots of progress has been made as of late, and the park looks to be near completion.
This small park is at a crossroads of several dynamic New York neighborhoods: Little Italy and the Bowery to the east, Chinatown to the south, and SoHo to the west and north. The site/area became parkland as a result of the City Charter of 1938, which turned over all public places and squares to the Department of Parks.
The site was formerly known as Kenmare Square, for the street that runs east to Delancey.
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Have you seen those fake dollar bills all over the Lower East Side and elsewhere? 
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