NYC alive and ticking

Potheads on the editorial page?

2007-03-22T22:15:54-04:00

Today the phrase "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" can be found six times in the various letters to the editor of the New York Times. I need not say more.

Tags: bong hits 4 jesus, new york times

Horse trough or half-barrel or tub on sidewalk or street: $379.71

2007-01-26T14:32:14-05:00

Is the NYC Water Board's rate schedule really so outdated? Well, would you like to know how much that 65,000-gallon steamboat will cost you this year? Your dentist's fountain cuspidor? A kidney dialysis machine? What about a milk depot? For the purpose of washing cans or bottles, each washing machine, tub or washing apparatus: $189.90.

These rates went into effect on July 1, 2006—lest you thought 1906.

If you want to know more about the history of New York City's water supply system, you can look elsewhere. Because I am only talking about 21st-century rates here. I have no intention of mentioning that Since 1842, there have been no significant interruptions of service other than brief annual shutdowns for the purpose of routine inspections during the period from 1842 to the Civil War.

Back to this rate schedule. Here's an interesting item, #54 under Other Hospital Charges: One or more autopsy tables (one charge). It's refreshing to know that multiple autopsy tables weigh in at the same price ($151.85) as Developing tank located in reception room, per faucet and Washing machine. Well, who has an autopsy table besides the Medical Examiner or the hospitals, with the possible exception of one Mr. Frank Booth in Blue Velvet? By the way, item #59, a private hydrant, runs a hospital $180.83 in annual charges. And page 24 includes coverage of ship connections: This fee is for tugboats and other vessels connecting to the City water supply on a pier, wharf of bulkhead. Sailors: please take note.

Much has been written about the Water Board and its residential customers—you know, the working people who live in outer Queens and Staten Island—who on good principle refuse to pay their water bills. Little wonder, given how ineffective the meters can be and how ineffectual the bureaucracy can be. By the way, Barge. Water for domestic use only runs $94.94 annually. Gee, how does that DEP guy out at the office in Flushing—how a pro pos to put a Water Board office in Flushing!—come up with these numbers?

Nowadays, the city plans to get tough. Because too many of you are failing to pay your bills. Section 3, Failure to Install a Meter or Remote, which commences at the bottom of page 11 (of 42), warns you that An annual surcharge will be imposed equal in amount to 100% of the last annual unmetered water charge when a Customer fails to install a meter or a remote reading device. The surcharge will be applied from July 1, 2000 until the date the installation takes place, and where a meter is installed by a private plumber, the permit for the work has been returned to DEP. In other words, if you paid zero in 1999, you will still pay zero in fiscal year 2007. And if you paid the princely sum of around twenty-five dollars in 2000, then I guess this year you would be paying $3200, not a great deal. In fact, it's probably less than getting a licensed plumber to get you a permit and to install a meter. Because adding $3200, $1600, $800, $400, $200, $100 and $50 to that original $25 makes for a grand total of $6375, or roughly $800 annually for eight years. For additional laughter, do a full document search on "unusually high"—there are 13 unlucky results in this document. Speaking of the numerologically unlucky number 13, is it pure unluckiness that paragraph 13 under Part 1 - Definitions declares: "Dishonored Check" means a check returned unpaid for any cause. As in: you phoned the bank to cancel payment after mailing it in because your rage at such a high water bill was still uncontrollable. Comment: I had an unusually high Con Edison bill last month. It was as high as July's bill, when the air conditioning was chugging away for many hours. But did I complain? Did I dishonor my check? No, because Con Ed automatically deducts my monthly payment from my checking account. There is no recourse.

Now, what if you get a huge bill that there is no way you are gonna pay? See page 42—the last page, of course. Part IX, Section 2, paragraph D 1 pertains to "Disposition of Late Payment Charges ("LPC") During the Complaint Resolution Process": Customers are advised to pay all charges and appeal afterward. Ho ho ho, did Santa Claus or the Grim Reaper write that clause? If you do not pony up, however, do beware the Water Board: During the complaint resolution process, LPC on unpaid charges continue to accrue until the charges are paid in full. Comment: Try discussing the LPC process with a 311 operator the next time insomnia or nightclub noise keeps you awake late at night. ("Hold on, let me ask my supervisor about that.") Seriously, there are lots of people—you know who you are way out there in outer Queens and Staten Island—who steadfastly refuse to pay and still want to suck water from the NYC teat. So it's no coincidence all three final paragraphs begin with If a Customer decides not to pay a charge.... Because at the Water Board, the Customer is always King, and therefore "c" always Capitalized.

In conclusion, this 42-page document is so utterly gripping and informative that one wonders whether Ben Katchor used an earlier version of it when drawing the Lake Erie Soda-Water Company's System map of New York, showing the system of high pressure soda-water pipes, public and private fountains, cisterns, eructuaries, &c. Katchor of course understood one fundamental of NYC water:

At this time in history, the population of The City of New York is close to 1,000,000 souls—each consuming an average of six glasses of soda-water each day, or 375,000 gal. of liquid. The amount of carbonated waters drawn each day from the Canadian shore of Lake Erie is approximately 100,000,000 gal. Careful investigation has revealed that 96,250,000 gal. of this precious commodity are wasted each day. How can the rational mind explain this prodigious loss of liquid wealth? By what mechanism of abuse does the average soda-water drinker discard a quantity of beverage equal to that which he consumes? Subscribers who are not on the meter system have been known to let their tap "run" until the soda-water reaches the temperature of a chilled drink. They have no regard for the fact that thousands of dollars in capital improvements to the entire system are worn-down by heedless "running" of their tap. If the present wastage of soda-water is not curtailed, through educational or compulsory means, the Great Lake Erie will be drained dry in the next hundred years. [...] What is the future of carbonated water in our great metropolis? Can the Federal government be called upon to underwrite the pleasures of a few well-to-do New Yorkers?

Tags: carbonated water, con ed, horse trough, water board

Those smells of winter, when gas is in the air

2007-01-08T18:13:28-05:00

Chances are you had a beautiful weekend, enjoying the summerlike conditions. In the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where I saw the cherry blossoms in bloom, the turtles sunning themselves on rocks in the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden, plus a gray heron and a hawk in the trees, I had to wonder what this all means. It's not a normal January by any circumstances, what with a martyred dictator more influential in death than in captivity, with the smell of gas wafting throughout Manhattan today, and with global warming on the rise. As I write, it's presently 59º in Lhasa, altitude 12,500 feet. Not just the climatologists are concerned; acclerating glacial melt has dire consequences, especially for the entire country of Bangladesh. Speaking of hyperbaric gaseousness, during this beautiful weekend several Chelsea clubs were shut down by the cops, including Sol, Pink Elephant, and Crobar. Smoking? Drugs? Paperwork? Fake IDs? Too many halter tops on a warm weekend? It remains as mysterious as that smell of gas that closed subway stations, office buildings and schools today. In fact, there were innumerable Con Ed employees out in force probing the sidewalks and sewers with interesting devices attached to long poles, trying to ferret out the source of this evil smell. Speaking of ferrets, I saw a sign at the Met food store this morning about a lost ferret. I wanted to pass this sign to Giuliani & Partners, which has trademarked Rudy's name. Old timers recall what a sworn enemy Rudy is of those dastardly weasels. Perhaps they (those weasels) are responsible for the alleged theft of Rudy's playbook last week, in which we learned of the campaign tactics he might adopt in a presidential run. (Which would have consequences for Giuliani & Partners if some of their less reputable clients were profiled, or his former wife for that matter.) However, I can't explore this topic in greater depth because "trade names and trademarks 'Rudolph Giuliani,' or 'Giuliani Partners LLC' . . . shall not be used . . . without prior written consent."

Tags: brooklyn, con ed, crobar, pink elephant, rudy giuliani, sol, trademark

Derek Jeter and Mickey Mouse for Comptroller

2006-12-04T12:05:15-05:00

The NYC Board of Elections has released last month's election results, and it seems quite a few write-in candidates got one vote: In the race for state comptroller, perennial Disney candidate Mickey Mouse garnered a single vote, as did Derek Jeter. In the race for governor, old favorites like Al Sharpton and Alton Maddox each got one vote, as did Pat Buchanan. Bloomberg received three votes in this race (he only got one in the comptroller race). In the race for attorney general, Gene Russianoff and Herman Badillo each got a single vote. Buchanan again got one vote here, Bloomberg got three, and a "Rudy Guilliani" (sic) got a single vote, which can be added to the actual Rudolph Giuliani's tally of one vote, for a total of two votes. Mark Green got five votes, just one vote shy of Maddox's six votes in this race. In the race for US senator, newly re-elected president of Venezuela Hugo Chavez got one vote, as did "NEED MORE INTEGRETY IRAQ WAS A BIG MISTAKE" and "NO ONE IN PARTICULAR" as well as Ted Kennedy, Maddox, Qeen Mother Mour (sic), former President Bill Clinton, Tweety, Daisy Duck, Miss Piggy, Pat Buchanan, and the former officeholder of this seat, deceased senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Humorist Penn Jillette got one vote, indicating that cartoon characters and puppets aren't the only funny candidates out there. Giuliani did quite well in this race, picking up several votes. A formerly unknown candidate named "NEITHER ASSHOLE" also received one vote. In sum, perennial Disney party candidate Mouse did not fare so well in this election year, perhaps underscoring that the electorate's general disgust with politics in 2006 trumped age-old political malaise.

Tags: derek jeter, hugo chavez, mickey mouse, rudy giuliani, ted kennedy

NYC's Global Village Loses Its Idiot

2006-12-04T10:40:47-05:00

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and Christmas comes early this year, for Ambassador John Bolton has announced his resignation. Of course, he had zero chance of confirmation in the Senate, but it's refreshing he got out while (as is said) the getting is good. He leaves the United Nations with no accomplishments of note, and without friends and allies in international organizations and the diplomatic community. Had former Senator John Danforth remained in that office, perhaps the killing in Darfur would have by now been mitigated, rather than increased to epidemic proportions. Bolton additionally leaves no shortage of disasters in the Middle East, which aside from Iraq include Iran, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Syria, further proof that it's tough being the ideological bull in the china shop. Perhaps it's fitting his resignation comes on the day that his arch nemesis, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, celebrates his re-election under rather dubious circumstances. (When you're an ideologue, there's never a shortage of enemies.) On the other hand, even the dear friends such as Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan failed to receive much of Bolton's minimalist largesse, as confirmed by a lengthy article today that the police force in Afghanistan is largely incapable of carrying out routine law enforcement work. Which department oversaw the contract for the training of Afghan law enforcement? The same one that oversaw Bolton, the State Department. As you might expect, the charming man's departure has been greeted with sighs of relief. One salient quotion came from deputy secretary general Mark Malloch Brown: “No comment, he said with a smile,” he said "over his shoulder to reporters who pursued him as he hustled through the corridors of U.N. headquarters on his way to a meeting." The Times' United Nations correspondent scored some other reports on Bolton's drawing power: In Moscow, the Novosti news agency quoted a Russian foreign ministry spokesman saying that Mr. Bolton had been “a very strong professional, although on a series of issues, including problems of U.N. reform, he supported extremely severe views.” The spokesman added that he hoped President Bush would nominate a successor without “excessive severity in his approach.” In other words, farewell to the extremist. Another nice observation on Bolton's magentic personality came from the other great Security Council power: “I think he was serious about the American objective here of reforming the United Nations, and he pushed hard,” said Wang Guangya, the Chinese ambassador. “But of course, sometimes in order to achieve the objective, you have to work together with others.” Stated differently, this playground is losing its bully at semester's end.

Tags: john bolton, united nations

Black Friday: there's a sucker born every minute

2006-11-24T23:37:59-05:00

At 6:45 a.m. this Friday morning—barely had I digested my pumpkin pie—I did see a family of three pushing a shopping cart with a giant flat-screen TV down lower Ninth Avenue. Filled with both admiration and disgust, I did what any New Yorker would do: I kept moving. You really want that flat-screen TV that badly, well then, you get it. About an hour later on Sixth Avenue, I saw hordes in front of Best Buy, and a few shoppers with Macy's bags. It wasn't even 8 a.m. Seems lots of Americans got up in the pre-dawn hours to go shopping. Some even got black-and-blue doing it. Here are a few doo-dads out of context: • shoppers pushed and shoved their way into the Fashion Place mall in Murray, Utah • Once inside, shoppers ransacked stores, overturning piles of clothes as they looked for bargains. • “We were not prepared for this,” said Amber Friedrichsen, the store’s manager. • “Sold out, sold out, sold out,” announced the manager at a Staples on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan yesterday at 7 a.m. “When?” asked the incredulous customer. “An hour ago,” replied the manager — in other words, the minute the store opened. • “Oh, my god, stop pushing me, oh, my god,” screamed Linda Tuttle, a 47-year-old employee at the store. There's a sucker born every minute. Next year digest your dinner before you go out shopping.

Tags: best buy, macys, pumpkin pie, staples

The New York City Museum of Complaint

2006-07-08T12:43:58-04:00

If you are sunning yourself or enjoying free Wi-Fi in lower Manhattan parks in the next week, instead of kvetching about why you are not vacationing in the French Riviera or about the miserably hot and stifling heat, you might be fortunate enough to pick up a copy of artist Matthew Bakkom's tabloid-size pamphlet called the New York City Museum of Complaint. New Yorkers, it seems, have been complaining to their mayor for over three centuries, and Bakkom has distilled some of the finest complaints into his publication, delineating everything from the summer smell of horse carcasses on Henry Street to traffic noise in Manhattan. Meanwhile last night, perhaps in homage to Bakkom's publication, it seems an electrical panel overheated and filled City Hall's basement with smoke. Doubtless Mayor Bloomberg will receive complaint letters on this topic.

Tags: bloomberg, city hall, complaints, matthew bakkom

Elvis Sightings: Early Fourth of July

2006-06-30T12:45:36-04:00

You are lucky to live in a democracy such as this, where the president can take his bud with the wavy hair from Tokyo down to Graceland for peanut butter and bacon sandwiches a day after the Supreme Court rules that his offshore penal colony is kinda sorta illegal. Accentuate the positive! Lisa Marie looks great in that pants suit; White House spokesman Tony Snow put on the gold sunglasses to talk about Elvis (not about offshore penal colonies); and you good folk get great fireworks and hot dogs on Tuesday. It's just too bad Bush did not get his Constitutional Amendment to ban flag burning this week. Senator Hatch said it's the most important piece of legislation facing the Senate. Heck, how come no one listens to the great orator from the Mormon Theocracy? And with the Supreme Court leaving for summer vacation this evening, Elvis sightings are sure to dominate tomorrow's news—not some raggedly ol' decisions emanating from the highest court in the land. Think positive! That pesky missing laptop with the names of billions of veterans was found, and the FBI assures us the data is intact. Who will get the finder's reward? (Still wondering who got that multimillion-dollar reward for narking on al-Zarqawi?) Go America, it's your birthday! Sheryl Stolberg has a fascinating article in today's newspaper about the rewards of personal diplomacy. See, Koizumi is being rewarded for his loyalty today, in case you didn't figure that out yet. Therefore no pesky reporters will ask him why he keeps visiting that naughty World War II shrine, even if 1.4 billion Chinese want to know. Loyalty is important. Bush rewards his friends, such as Angela Merkel of Germany. He will visit her hometown in eastern Germany next month, and see with his own eyes how poorly the economy is faring in Brandenburg. Can you pronounce "Brandenburg"? Anyhow, this Membership Rewards program extends to Condoleezza Rice as well. Earlier this year, she rewarded her pal Jack Straw, the former British foreign minister, with a wonderful trip to Alabama. Too bad he subsequently lost his job after that marvelous world-historical jaunt. Unfortunately, this Membership Rewards program is not valid in Russia, even if you've looked into the eyes of Putin and seen a man you can trust. Because his CCCP functionaries will still imprison oil executives, cut off the press, kick out foreign NGOs and squelch the volume on anyone else who wants to rat out this authoritarian state. Too bad Ms. Rice during this latest jet-set IMF mission has found this to be the case as well with her counterpart, Sergey Lavrov. Good thing the microphones weren't turned off yesterday, because it seems she got an earful. Heck, it's tough being a Sovietologist in 2006! Wow, bet she wishes she were in Graceland today. The food there is better than in Kabul, where she went to prop up our guy Hamid Karzai a few days ago. But she will be home by the Fourth of July, don't worry. I won't mention how Richard Milhous Nixon turned to the King to boost his popularity. Or how Elvis has been sighted by space aliens in Roswell, N.M. I just want to wish America a happy birthday.

Tags: angela merkel, condoleezza rice, elvis presley, graceland, jack straw, richard nixon, sergey lavrov

Political commentary of sorts

2006-05-31T21:57:40-04:00

Makes you wonder what the fat guy is thinking, right?

Sunday stroll down Broadway through Times Square

2006-05-08T10:19:45-04:00

Few sounds match the horror of the pan flute, the accursed South American instrument that has been misappropriated by New Agers and the feeble-minded around the world. But far worse than the pan flute is an amplified pan flute, which amidst the usual cacophony of Times Square stood out yesterday on a stroll down Broadway. Surely this maddening sound must affect one's brainwaves. In addition to the thousands of tourists walking aimlessly—the way flies buzz around your kitchen in summer, seemingly in random directions—for the intrepid New Yorker who just wants to take a stroll down Broadway, it's utterly riveting to see how many tourists there are on the streets. All the African guys from CitySights and Gray Line were out in force aggressively selling hop-on, hop-off bus tour tickets. They too marveled at how many tourists there are going down the streets. Interestingly, as the intrepid New Yorker makes his way down Broadway, he notices the ticket sellers size him up quick and ignore him. They go right for the obese white-sneakered and blue-jeaned tourist, picking them out as deftly as the kids in India or Pakistan have trained themselves to do. Which reminds me of a story: Over ten years ago in Saidu Sharif, a dusty little town in Pakistan, the small children—most of whom were about ten years old—were busy sizing up the tourists in the street (the one main drag) using a smattering of phrases (if one can believe it) in French, German, Spanish and of course English. And they were pretty much accurate in sizing up which tourists were which, based on their shape and egregious infidel clothing. And inside the Swat Valley museum (worth a special trip), a middle-aged fellow came up to me and asked in English if I spoke German. Immediately thinking this was a scam—travel through vast swaths of India the previous year had inured me to the art of the scam—I asked why he wanted to know. "Well actually," he replied, "if you could translate some of these labels and some descriptions of these things into German, why then I could take German tourists around." Ingenious, I thought. Those poor Germans. I then proceeded to do as he asked, and marveled at how he carefully transcribed everything I said in German, but writing in long Urdu script. With uncanny exactitude, he then disgorged everything I told him. It was rather astonishing, the dexterity with which he did this. Which leads me back to Midtown: Once you pass the so-called Romulan Neutral Zone or Asteroid Belt of tourists (West 42nd Street), past the visual onslaught of the enormous Times Square tower with its hulking red-and-white Target advertisements, it's relatively smooth sailing. You're basically safe, and can continue your walk unmolested (i.e. not getting constantly bumped into by rubes) down Broadway. Save, of course, for the occasional noisy ambulance hiccuping its way down through the canyons of Broadway. The walk continues, past all manor of newsstands. Newsstands themselves are in the news once a year or so, generally depicting the plight of the independent news agent, who has around five square feet of negotiable inside his temple of periodicals. Indeed these fellows suffer long hours inside these tiny tombs. But instead I want to mention the mega-news outlets, those of Hudson News and Universal News. Hudson News is all business; they grew fast and opened larger and larger outlets. No way do these people have time for idle chitchat about this and that, or about much other than answering "Do you have this?" by explaining why they don't have that. But Universal News is much different, especially on a lazy Sunday. You can go in and talk with the Egyptian fellows, even if you've never chatted with them before and have a fine conversation as though you were friends since birth. It was just last week I spoke with one of these chaps on at Universal's pantheon of publications on lower Broadway near Broome Street. He was having his lunch, which was an enormous portion of cubed lamb and some very appetizing-looking side dishes. I had to know where he got this lamb. It seems it had come directly from Egypt! We both were excited by this, and he offered me some of his portion. Truly dear reader, how often does such a thing happen in the big city? As much as I wanted to try this lamb, I had to politely refuse three times. I could not take his lamb. It came all the way from Egypt! When would he get such lamb again in the near future? Who else would be flying in from Cairo to bring him this? I felt he ought to gorge himself on it, because he likely wouldn't be getting lamb (or the accompanying fava beans) again anytime soon. Just as I regretted not accepting his hospitality, I think we were both silently in agreement that his graciousness was extraordinary. I then went back to being the wallflower by reading Wallpaper. While this never would have happened at Hudson News, I do want to point out there are plenty of newsstands run by nice people from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan where you can have a grand time. For example, our friends from Bombay who used to run Dhaval on lower Second Avenue were very gregarious and gracious. One could hang around for quite some time drinking a soda or a beer (out of a paper bag so as not to cause offense to anyone—myself included), getting the Marathi news first-hand. One could also disappear into the back with the boss, sit on a milk crate and watch a Hindi movie. Those were good days. Now of course we just order DVDs from Netflix.

Tags: bangladesh, broadway, city sights, dhaval, gray line, hudson news, india, netflix, newsstand, pakistan, pan flute, saidu sharif, swat valley, times square, universal news