Effort to Transform Embankment Gets a Boost
Posted on 10. Dec, 2009 by Nathaniel Adams in Health and Environment, Living, Politics and Government
Jersey City’s Historical Embankment, subject of a long campaign to turn it into a park.
By Nathaniel Adams
Robert Hammond, the man behind Manhattan’s High Line Park, is partnering up with Jersey City’s Embankment Preservation Coalition to help them in their mission, hoping to use the success of the High Line to promote their project.
“They’re in a similar place to where we were in 2003,” said Hammond, “they need a real estate and political champion.”
The Embankment is an elevated freight train line that fell out of use many years ago and has been at the center of a 12-year-old fight to decide its fate. Unlike the High Line, a structure built in 1930, wide enough for two train tracks, and constructed as a steel frame raised on metal columns, the Embankment, built in 1902, carried seven tracks and is made of huge piles of earth surrounded by stone walls up to 30 feet high.
“We sort of think of the Embankment as a land art piece we want to preserve,” said Maureen Crowley, director of the Embankment Preservation Coalition.
The coalition and the Jersey City government have been trying for years to turn the structure, which is owned by private developer Steven Hyman, into a public park. Hyman has wanted to use the property to build luxury houses. The two sides have been involved in court battles for years.
The city and the coalition have worked to have the Embankment declared a historic landmark, have tried to acquire it through eminent domain, have blocked attempts by Hyman to demolish the structure, and have filed suit claiming that his purchase of the property was invalid. Hyman has appealed decisions, run campaigns against Jersey City Mayor Jerremiah Healy, and claimed economic hardship as a reason for wanting to replace the embankment with apartment buildings.
Currently, all sides are waiting for the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., to decide in the latest of a long series of cases and appeals whether or not the original sale of the property to Hyman by the Consolidated Rail Corporation was legal and valid.
On October 25th, Mr. Hammond visited the Embankment for the first time, walking the length of it at street level and snapping photos of the vivid autumn trees lining the top and the tendrils of ivy spilling over the sides and clinging to the solid, heavy stone walls. That night he spoke at the coalition’s monthly meeting, expressing his enthusiasm for the project and inspiring the organization to keep fighting.
Since Hammond’s visit, he has publicized the project on the High Line blog, which refers to the Embankment as a “sister project.” On November 10th, he met with the Embankment Preservation Coalition in private to discuss strategies.
“It’s all in the very inchoate stage,” said Crowley. “I think he’s going to help with publicity and fundraising ideas at this point.”
The High Line endorsement comes at a time when parks and conservancy projects throughout Jersey City, Hudson County and the entire state are experiencing a surge of popularity and success. In the November 3rd elections, an item allocating 400 million dollars for, among other environmental projects, parks and open spaces, was up for public vote on ballots across New Jersey. It passed 52% to 48%, despite incumbent Governor Democrat John Corzine, the only candidate who supported the bill, losing his office to Republican Chris Christie.
On November 10th, the Jersey City Council approved a resolution to purchase a former landfill next to the Hackensack River, to be turned into a park. The land, sitting beneath the steel skeleton of the Pulaski Skyway, will be connected to a larger planned public development along the Hackensack River which will run through all of Hudson County, from Bayonne to North Bergen.
On October 15th, environmental advocacy group Hackensack Riverkeeper honored Mayor Healy with its annual Friend of Hackensack Riverkeeper award for efforts in historic preservation, creating open spaces, and promoting green policies. The group cited the above projects and the city’s work to revitalize Reservoir 3.
The reservoir is a 14-acre site in the heart of the Heights, an urban residential area of the city. Built in the 1870s to provide clean water to a city susceptible to diseases such as typhoid, the reservoir was closed in 1990. When people started venturing back onto the site in 2001, they found a vibrant mini-ecosystem behind the reservoir’s 20-foot high stone walls.
The Jersey City Reservoir Preservation Alliance, started in 2002, has been working with the city to preserve, protect, and promote the site, offering kayaking programs, ample fishing in a lake populated with Sunnys and Largemouth Bass, and painting classes with natural subjects as diverse as lakeside cat-tails, old brick gatehouses, ducks, islands, falcons, and great blue herons.
This summer the city council passed a resolution allowing the alliance to hire an architecture firm specializing in historic preservation to first study and assess the site to create what alliance president Steven Latham calls “a place for nature to thrive.”
Pit Bull Ban on Avenue D
Posted on 30. Nov, 2009 by Hamid Razik in Living
By Hamid Razik
Alex Perez says his girlfriend, Waleska Maldonado, and Blue, his 6-year-old pit pull are his only family.
Because they live in the Jacob Riis Housing Project on 14th Street and Avenue D, he would have had to see his family broken up if he had not licensed the dog before a ban prohibiting pit bulls in New York City Housing Authority projects went into effect May 1, 2009.
Now, animal rights groups are asking the housing authority to withdraw the ban, saying it’s too severe and has caused the euthanization of several obedient dogs, not just the menacing ones the rule seeks to eliminate.
“It’s wrong,” Perez, 41, a one-year resident of Riis who works at a bread factory in the Bronx, said of the ban. “A lot of people treat these dogs like family. My girlfriend would be devastated,” if forced to give up Blue. “Me too.”
On any given day, several pit bulls can be seen being walked by their owners on leashes, a legal requirement, among the six- to 14-story red brick high rises that compose Riis and the neighboring Lillian Wald housing projects. Built in 1949, both developments occupy 29 acres of land, from FDR Drive to Avenue D, East 14th and Houston streets, and house 7,400 residents.
Residents have mixed feelings about the ban, which includes all dogs more than 25 pounds but specifies pure-bred pit bulls, Rotweilers, and Doberman Pinschers no matter what their size.
“I hate them. They’re ugly, they’re dangerous,” Lucy Sepulveda, 52, a 40-year resident of Riis said of pit bulls. “I don’t go in the elevator with one of them. Period. Not ever. Not even the owners can control that dog.”
Eddie Garcia, 70, a 48-year resident of Wald, said he is scared of them.
“They cannot be touched, even when you to try to be friendly, they’re not friendly back,” he said. “They are nobody’s friend.”
The housing authority, which maintains 178,500 apartments with nearly 650,000 residents, says there have been 17 attacks since 2007 in which people have been harmed or where animals have been killed or maimed by other, fiercer dogs. A 12-year-old girl was severely mauled by two pit bulls in Brooklyn in 1997.
Since the housing agency implemented the ban, 113 dogs have been turned in, said Jane Hoffman, the president of the Mayor’s Alliance for New York City Animals, Inc. The alliance is an animal rescue group not affilliated with the city. It, along with the ASPCA, is calling for the ban to be lifted.
About half of the dogs have been euthanized, she said. The other half are in shelters or have been placed with families. Residents who had dogs prior to the ban were allowed to keep them as long as they were registered.
Two of the dogs turned in by residents since the ban were located in the Wald and Riis projects, Hoffman said. Of those, one dog was placed with a family. The other was destroyed.
“They’re devastated,” Hoffman said of dog owners. “You have to choose between your family member or your home. Would you like to become homeless or give up a dog that you have had for years?”
Peter John Zayas, 46, a carpet installer and lifelong Riis resident, said there are many senior citizens in public housing who are afraid of the dogs. Thirty-five percent of housing authority residents are 62 or older.
“You don’t see families, you don’t see a little girl walking those dogs,” he said. “It’s all young dudes. They think, ‘My dog is an extension of me, an extension of my pride and my ego.’”
Paul William, who’s lived at 911 FDR Dr. for 30 years, was walking two small poodles through Riis one recent afternoon.
William said he had had a pit bull for 14 years. After it died recently of natural causes, he bought smaller dogs because the pit bulls were too controversial. He said he would not have been able to part with his dog, Shoshoni, whom he thought of as a beloved family member.
“It’s a select few that ruin it for the whole,” he said.
MTA tries to squeeze in more commuters
Posted on 19. Nov, 2009 by Siddharth Philip in Living, Metro, Money and Economy
By Siddharth Philip
How does the Metropolitan Transit Authority in New York City intend to manage the problem of fitting more commuters into already cramped subway cars? Simple – it just gets rid of the seats.
At the end of November, the transit authority will introduce a pilot project that eliminates seating in some subway cars during rush hours so that more people can fit by standing. Officials say removing some of the seats will increase capacity by 18 percent.
The project will comprise a single train with four modified cars, and six regular ones. According to Deirdre Parker, a spokesperson for New York City Transit, these cars will feature flip up seats that will be locked during rush hours, to increase standing room in the trains. After the rush hours, workers will unlock the seats and return them to their normal positions.
Ishan Singh, 26, an investment banker who commutes between the Upper East Side and Wall Street on the 4 train, said he felt that this was a step in the right direction.
“Every morning, the crush loads on the train ensure that I have to wait for at least three trains to pass to even get a toehold in the subway,” Singh said. “Thanks to the overcrowded trains, I have to leave home almost an hour early just so that I’m not late for work.”
Sarah Stewart, a receptionist at a law firm in the Lower East Side who lives in Brooklyn said that she didn’t mind commuting standing all the way from her home in Williamsburg to her workplace as long as it ensures she gets to work on time. Sipping her coffee and reading email on her Blackberry, Stewart waited for a V train at Delancey Street, having transferred from the J train.
While Singh will have to wait a while for his journey on the seatless train, Stewart might get a chance to decide after a ride on the seatless compartment. Parker of NYC Transit said that the train with seatless cars will be piloted on the lettered lines (A, B, C, D, E, J, L and M).
Not everyone is pleased about this new development. John Richard, 75, who commutes between the Upper West Side and Chelsea, said he felt the move would make commuting difficult for the elderly, disabled and pregnant women. “As it is, we have to deal with stations that haven’t yet been equipped with elevators,” he said. “Now they want us to stand all the way? What do we pay taxes for? Is it to make our public transit even less accessible?”
He said that he was not going to start riding the Access-A-Ride bus, the special transit service run by NYC transit for disabled and elderly people who cannot access the subway or buses.
Gene Russianoff, the staff attorney and chief spokesperson of the Straphangers Alliance, a public transport advocacy group, said that he doesn’t agree with the project.
“I absolutely hate it,” he said. “I understand that lots of lines are running far beyond their capacity, but this isn’t the way to go.”
Russianoff said the idea of having to stand the entire ride from Brooklyn, for example, was revolting. “We’ve been lobbying for longer trains, and an upgrade of the signaling system to a modern, computerized system. The manual system that is presently in use limits the number of trains that can run in a given span of time.”
Russianoff said that his organization is raising questions about the pilot project but will wait for a reaction from the public before jumping to any conclusions.
“The long-distance riders will suffer while the winners will be short-haul riders who only travel a few stops.”
Parker of NYC Transit said that since only four out of 10 cars would be seatless, those who want to sit can make their way to the other six cars. Richard, on the other hand, said he felt that this will increase the pressure on the other six cars as everyone will try and get a seat.
Both Russianoff and Parker said, however, it was hasty to jump to conclusions until the train, which is still being assembled at an MTA workshop, rolls onto the track and the pilot project begins.
“Let’s wait for the train before passing judgment,” said Parker.
Homebrewing on the Rise in New York City
Posted on 14. Nov, 2009 by Jeannette Neumann in Living, Money and Economy
By Jeannette Neumann
Josh Fields’ beer money started drying up last year when profits from his art studio in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where he paints and sculpts, began to dwindle.
Determined not to curtail his taste for good beer, he pulled some cavernous kettles and kegs out of storage, and returned to brewing beer at a friend’s loft in Williamsburg.
Fields, 30, and his friend, Jon Conner, 39, a fellow artist, first experimented with homebrewing six years earlier, but only made brews from time to time. It was not until last February that they returned to the craft seriously and found themselves among a growing trend of New York City beer enthusiasts discovering the thrill of raising a toast with their own stout or lager.
“It seems like it’s really blowing up,” said Fields, as he served a dry stout from a “kegerator,” a refrigerator he and Conner built to hold three, five-gallon kegs of their brew. This batch was dubbed Micky Rourke because it’s “been around the block and has a punch,” Fields said with a laugh.
They brew enough, they said, for their own enjoyment and for friends, as well. While a six-pack at the corner bodega sells for around $10, a pint of their homebrew costs 30 to 40 cents to make.
“When you realize you can do it yourself, for less money, that’s a pretty appealing idea,” Fields said.
On a recent Saturday afternoon, the two artists were presiding over a beer tasting for 23 visitors and a handful of friends in Conner’s loft as part of the week-long, second-annual NY Craft Beer Week, which offered lectures, tours and competitions – one of a growing number of activities throughout the city promoting micro- and homebrews.
Josh Bernstein, 31, a freelance writer for New York magazine and Time Out New York, led the group on the seven-hour stroll to the homes of four brewers in Bay Ridge, Carroll Gardens, Clinton Hill and Williamsburg. He leads tours throughout the year.
The exact number of homebrewers in New York is difficult to estimate, Bernstein said, since the drink is for domestic consumption only. Gary Glass, director of the American Homebrewers Association in Boulder, Colorado, estimates that 2,400 of the 750,000 homebrewers in the U.S. live in New York City, based on membership in his organization. Danielle Cefaro, 25, and her husband Benjamin Stutz, 32, said they believe the number of homebrewers is nearly seven times that figure. The two former chefs opened Brooklyn Home Brew in Sunset Park at the end of July, one of only two specialty stores in New York selling brew ingredients and equipment.
Most enthusiasts said brewing beer at home is unlikely to become a common practice in New York City, where many apartments are not spacious enough to house equipment or store the beer while it ferments.
“Space is what kills beers in New York,” Bernstein said.
Also, cities like Portland, Seattle, Denver, San Diego and San Francisco have a stronger tradition of micro- and homebrewing. That means there are more stores that sell equipment and ingredients and more homebrewing clubs, making it an accessible hobby to pursue, Glass said.
Regardless, most agree homebrewing has continued to grow exponentially since it started catching on in New York City less than five years ago.
Home concoctions are nothing new of course – the brewing of alcohol flourished at home during Prohibition.
But these modern day moonshiners aren’t brewing in their bathtubs.
A homebrewing kit can cost anywhere from $70 to nearly $500, depending on the materials, which could include a kettle, ale yeast, floating thermometer, funnel and a hydrometer. Tips and tribulations are shared on online forums that continue to pop up, guiding the brewer through an all-day process that includes crushing the grain, steeping and boiling the ingredients, quickly cooling the unfermented beer in a cold-water bath in the sink, straining the concoction into a large fermentation bottle and adding yeast. Then the brew is left to sit for anywhere from two weeks to six months depending on the kind of beer.
Fields and Conner even invested $20 in a computer program to measure the alcohol content of their beer. Mickey Rourke measures 4.95 percent.
“What they’re showing is a great appreciation for craft beer,” said Ben Hudson, a marketer for The Brooklyn Brewery, which has grown into one of the most successful microbreweries in the city since it opened in Williamsburg in 1996. “Tastes are continuing to change, with people expecting flavor in their beer instead of yellow, watery fizz.”
Hudson said he has seen an increase in homebrewers at The Brooklyn Brewery’s weekly happy hours and tours over the past few years. Many share with him their dream of opening a brewery, he said, following in the footsteps of The Brooklyn Brewery’s co-founder and president, Steve Hindy, who got his start homebrewing while working as a Middle East correspondent with the Associated Press in Beirut in the 1980s. Hindy’s brewery now produces over 90,000 barrels of beer a year.
In addition to technology and equipment, an underlying philosophy appears to unite these 21st century anti-teetotalers, one that takes a page from the slow food movement catalyzing the boom in farmers markets over the past decade: Make what you can yourself or buy it local.
At the third stop on Saturday’s homebrewers tour, 38-year-old electrician Paul Kaye served up his Belgian whit, a Helles, a porter and a milk stout in his Clinton Hill backyard garden, carpeted with basil, lemon mint, oregano, tomatoes and zucchini.
“With homebrewing, from the beginning to the end, you know exactly what goes into it,” Kaye said. “It fits in with the whole concept of eat and buy locally.”
Conner’s 4,500 square foot apartment is also his sculpture studio, where he cut and assembled the latticed wood crates to store his bottled beer.
Cefaro said most of her customers at Brooklyn Home Brew are 25- to 35-year-old males who share an artisanal approach to life, whether it’s canning their vegetables or making ice cream from scratch. Many live in Brooklyn.
“They’re carrying on a very fine tradition” of small-scale brewing, explained Matt Levy on a recent Sunday bike tour exploring Brooklyn’s history as a stronghold for German brewers at the turn of the last century, also part of NY Craft Beer Week.
Levy considers the recent surge in domestic beer making a resurgence, especially in Brooklyn, where the smell of malt and yeast used to hang over the cobblestone streets, replaced decades ago by the smell of fresh fruit sold in the sun, weekend laundry and last-days-of-summer barbecues.
With a hopeful lilt to his voice, Levy ended his bike tour with a toast: “To Brooklyn and breweries.”
Audio slideshow: Tattoo Time
Posted on 04. Nov, 2009 by Lim Wui Liang in Living
By Lim Wui Liang and Christian Yarnell
Barbara Rogers, Cat Lady
Posted on 04. Nov, 2009 by Lim Wui Liang in Living
By: Lim Wui Liang
Barbara Rogers, 62, grips the wire mesh fence at the back of Flushing Town Hall, presses her face close to it, and meows into someone’s backyard.
A man walks by and stares. Across the street, another nods his head as Rogers turns and smiles at him. Soon, feral cats scamper from out of nowhere and into the parking lot at the back of the Town Hall. They are hungry and Rogers has set out cat food in aluminum trays waiting for them.
For more than 15 years, Rogers has been looking after feral cats in Flushing. Besides feeding them daily, she also traps and sends them to be neutered.
“It’s a crisis,” she said. “There are so many unspayed, unneutered cats in Flushing. There are colonies everywhere.”
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) estimates that there are up to five million owned and stray animals in New York City. In 2008, their Mobile Clinic Program spayed and neutered more than 23,000 animals, a 63% increase over 2007.
Lois McClurg, assistant TNR (Trap Neuter Release) director, NYC Feral Cat Initiative, said it is difficult to determine the exact number of feral cats in New York City. They only keep track of colonies that have been neutered and registered by volunteers, and this is not representative of the total number of cats on the streets.
Rogers migrated from Australia more than 30 years ago, where she said she “learnt respect for all the animals” as a child growing up in the rural areas of the Pacific continent. She got married twice and her second husband died several years ago. .
“My theory is that if you’re going to have small animals or small children, then don’t expect to have your house beautiful,” said Rogers. “I think that’s when people get disgusted and they put them out.”
She feels that there is not enough education about the responsibilities of pet ownership and hopes to start such a program in public schools one day.
Rogers remembers the night that she first became involved in animal rescue. She was on the 7 train “many, many years ago,” heading home after a long day at the office. Three teenage girls sat opposite her with a kitten in a brown paper bag.
“They were holding on to it and squeezing it and hurting it,” said Rogers. “So I growled at them and said, ‘No, no, no honey, this is not the way you hold a kitten.’”
She walked over and took the kitten from them. When the train stopped, the girls ran out.
So she brought the cat home and “had her for a good few years and she went over the rainbow bridge.”
She has taken in more cats since that night – more than 200 over the last 15 years. She quit the corporate world nine years ago.
Today, Rogers has six cats in her one-bedroom apartment along Northern Boulevard in Flushing. They sprawl lazily on her kitchen table and window sills. Photos of previous cats she owned adorn the shelves in her kitchen and hallway. Every now and then, she gets on her knees and shoos out a feline from beneath a wardrobe.
Rogers traps feral cats and sends them to the Humane Society of New York, an animal welfare organization, to be neutered. She then takes them home and puts them in cages to recover. After a few days, she releases them where they were trapped. The process of ‘Trap, Neuter, Release’ ensures that births among feral cats are kept in check.
Rogers believes that people either love or hate cats.
“There is no in-between,” she said.
Often, passers-by would come up and ask her why she is feeding them.
“I ask them if they plan on having breakfast or if they plan on having an evening meal, and they say ‘yeah,’” said Rogers. “Then I say, ‘Well, the little kitty needs to get fed too. And the little kitty also needs to have a drink of water.’”
“And that usually keeps them quiet for a little bit,” she said, laughing.
Small Businesses in Lower Manhattan Feel Recession’s Pinch
Posted on 19. Oct, 2009 by Siddharth Philip in Living, Money and Economy
While riding the subway can be good for the environment and easier on the wallet, it can be bad for business. Especially for Ciro Villalobo’s business.
Villalobo, who manages a parking garage on Worth Street in Lower Manhattan, said that his business has dropped 25 percent since the recession began.
“Despite rates being slashed by 50 percent to $275 a month [from a high of $525], we are still seeing fewer cars coming in to park,” he said.
He declined to say whether any workers had been laid off, but a worker at another parking garage nearby who refused to be identified for fear of reprisal from the management, said that employees have been let go in his garage due to the slow business.
A recent New York Times story cited a Department of Labor report which revealed that unemployment in New York City hit 10.3 percent, with more than 415,000 people without jobs in the city. With unemployment at such high levels, a number of retailers, both small and large have been badly hurt, including those around Wall Street – which many blame for the economic downturn.
At a high end furniture store devoid of any customers on a Monday evening, the manager, who only identified herself as Mary for fear of losing her job, said that a number of employees have been laid off while others have taken pay cuts and seen benefits such as health insurance being axed.
“It’s horrible,” she said. “I’m still upset about it.”
The number of customers walking into her store has dropped at least 40 percent, according to Mary, and few are willing to spend $2,700 on an ordinary looking wooden, although handcrafted, bed despite the store offering a 20 to 25 percent discount.
Officials at the Downtown Alliance, while refusing to disclose how many stores have gone out of business, say that they are doing what they can to make retail viable in the area. James Yolles, the director for public affairs at the alliance, said his organization is using consumer-targeted retail campaigns to rev up sales. Apart from the usual holiday shopping campaigns, the Downtown Alliance is offering a free shuttle bus service within the district that connects retail stores in the area.
Further, Community Board 1 has set up a $5 million fund for economic revitalization for retailers in Lower Manhattan, administered by the Downtown Alliance, but most retailers interviewed for this story said that they were unaware of the fund, which allows retailers to expand and improve their stores with loans at low rates of interest.
Some businesses, on the other hand, are thriving. One example is Benjamin Aneff of Tribeca Wine Merchants who said that this year has been better than the last year because he deals with collectors across the world.
“While most businesses in the area are down 50 percent, we might actually see higher numbers this year,” he said. “In fact, the recession has helped us find great wine at great prices.”
Despite claims by the Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke that the worst has passed, Mary, the manager of the furniture store, said she hasn’t seen any changes in her store’s dismal sales.
“Everyone is still hoping for a miracle,” she said.
