Posts from — June 2008

The current boundaries of New York City school districts.

As overcrowding at the city’s schools reaches unbearable levels and newly hip neighborhoods fill with strollers and nannies, the city’s Department of Education and its head, Chancellor Joel Klein, are considering new options to alleviate the crunch. Since new school construction is so gosh darned expensive and fraught with red tape, the DOE is considering another option–changing the boundaries of the city’s school districts to try and even out the load.

Let the battle begin! Parents, many of whom forked over thousands more than they would have normally paid for residences specifically within the city’s best school districts are furious. One example is in the district that includes the coveted P.S. 321 in Park Slope, where a local Community Education Council official was quoted about considering the redistricting plan that would move many children to another local elementary school:

“I imagine that I would be hung in effigy and/or drawn and quartered by the population of Park Slope for considering this…But I think it’s something that has to be considered.”

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Ever notice how despondent the two parents look in the mosaic art work in the 8th Street-NYU subway station in Manhattan? When you think about it, its really not that they’re lost and trying to find their way with a map, but rather, their daughter just pointed to NYU’s Silver Center (the old Main Building) and said “I want to go there.” Tuition and room/board is set to break the $50,000 mark next year, and NYU’s student newspaper projected the frightening circumstance (at the end of the article) that if the 65% tuition increase NYU has seen since 1998 continued until the university’s bicentennial in 2031 students (and parents) would be forking over $119,000 a year to attend. Yikes. If you look closely you can see the fear parents’ mosaic eyes as they realize that they have no hope of retiring–the mother looks angry, but the father seems resigned to the fact, or is just numb inside.

Curb detail by takomabibelot on Flickr.

In Dyker Heights, a neighborhood better known for its uber-festive Christmas decorations, tensions continue to rise about an issue that affects many of the city’s residential enclaves. The trouble started when a homeowner on a block of attached 1905 rowhouses, Gus Englezos, got permission from the Department of Buildings last July and again this January to construct a parking space and curb cut (the cut in the line of the curb that slopes down to provide a way for a vehicle to enter the driveway) on what was his front lawn.

Other residents on the block of 70th Street between Fort Hamilton Parkway and 8th Avenue began to object as Englezos (legally) demolished his front porch and made preparations to construct the driveway and curb cut. They feel that the creation of parking spaces in front of the houses, which don’t have rear garages/parking, would both diminish the looks and integrity of the block as well as take away a valuable on-street parking space with the creation of the curb cut. [Read more →]

Ecolution by escapehelicopter on Flickr.

Despite the delays, increasing fares, weekend service changes, and rain-related shutdowns, the New York’s subway and surface transit systems are assets to the city’s overall quality-of-life in that they keep tons of airborne pollution out of the skies. Imagine if all 8 million of us hopped into our own cars each morning instead of packing into trains and buses. Now the MTA is trying to figure out how to turn these environmental assets into a financial ones–possibly by trading its emission-reduction benefits on the worldwide carbon market.

Last month, the MTA reached out to the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton to see if it could quantify the agency’s carbon footprint and figure out a way to turn it into cold hard cash. After calculating the amount of greenhouse emissions that the MTA’s subways and buses actually cut from the air, the MTA can put a value on these carbon offsets and then trade them (by the ton on the open market) to polluting businesses around the country and world. These polluters are allowed to exceed government-mandated limits on greenhouse pollution if they buy unused emissions from environmentally-friendly outfits like the MTA.
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Greek Stuff on Flickr.

With the 2008 season underway, much of the major construction work on the Mets’ new home at Citi Field has been completed for the stadium’s planned opening in 2009. The two giant scoreboard frames and lighting towers are erected, most of the exterior cladding has been added, and windows have been fitted into the Ebbets Field-themed main entrance.

In addition, the outfield walls already have been marked with measurements: 330 in the right field corner, 408 in center field, 379 in left-center field (the wall is 14-to-18 feet high) and 335 in the left field corner. Seats (with cupholders) have already been installed in many of the new stadium’s upper-deck sections.

The fate of Shea Stadium’s iconic apple of center field–the lovably scrappy fiberglass creation which rises from a plywood top hat when a Met hits a home run–is still the matter of some debate, though.

BellTel Lofts on Flickr.

The Daily News reports that it has been confirmed that the cast of the twenty-first season of MTV’s the Real World will live in the BellTel Lofts in downtown Brooklyn. The MTVers will share a 6,000-square-foot, two-story penthouse with 10-foot windows, five bedrooms, and two terraces–and have no fear, a Jacuzzi is also planned for the swinging pad.

In an efforts to appease the unlucky neighbors, who will have to put up with the intolerable drunken locust swarm that is a modern Real World cast, the contract signed between MTV and the building management prohibits taping in the gym and other common areas of the building. The BellTel Lofts are located at Willoughby and Bridge Streets in a 27-story building that once housed the New York Telephone Company and was converted to condos last year. Learn more about the building’s history here.

Grand Concourse by ipythias on Flickr.

This coming Saturday the Bronx Museum of the Arts will host a panel discussion on grassroots initiatives that foster and promote dialogue among the diverse populations of the Bronx and how the famed Grand Concourse serves as an axis drawing new waves of immigrant communities.

The panel will feature Gail Nathan of the Bronx River Art Center, Kellie Terry-Sepulveda of The Point, Charles Rice-Gonzales of the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, and will be moderated by Holly Block, Executive Director of the Bronx Museum of the Arts. The day includes a walking tour of the neighborhood led by Sam Goodman, which starts promptly at 11 A.M. Reservations requested at (718) 681-6000 ext. 132

Grand Concourse: Cultural Crossroads
Saturday, June 7, 2008, 3:00 P.M.
Bronx Museum of the Arts
1040 Grand Concourse at 165th Street
Bronx, NY 10456
(718) 681-6000
www.bronxmuseum.org

Admission: $5.00, free for Bronx Museum members