WMFU is 50 years old today. Celebrate by downloading a podcast or listening to an archive show. And give them some money.
Happy Brithday, WFMU
Bad Headlines
You’re seeing this headline a lot today: Bush’s Disapproval Rating Worst of Any President in 70 Years. Don’t believe it. Bush has the worst disapproval rating ever (in the latest Gallup poll, 69% disapprove of the job he is doing). They’ve only been doing the poll for 70 years, and in that time, no one has a higher disapproval rating than fearless leader.
Worse still is this nugget from within the article: “the disapproval sets a new high for any president since Franklin Roosevelt“. You’d be forgiven if, in reading this, you thought that Roosevelt was unpopular. In fact, prior to Bush, Truman had the highest disapproval rating (67%). The poll began in 1938, at the beginning of Roosevelt’s third term. Actually, Bush holds three of the top of five places in the history of the poll (in addition to Truman (at the height of the Korean War), Nixon had a disapproval rating of 66% in August of 1974 – within a month, he had resigned).
Lancaster Out
As reported everywhere, Department of Buildings Commissioner Patricia Lancaster resigned today. I’ve harped repeatedly on the failings of DOB, but don’t see this as much more than blaming the messenger. As many of the commenters at City Room noted, Lancaster inherited an incredibly dysfunctional agency, and did much to turn it around. Interestingly, DOB seems to finally be catching up with volume of construction – as Gowanus Lounge noted just this morning, there seems to be a marked increase in the number of Stop Work Orders appearing throughout Williamsburg and Greenpoint.
As I’ve said before, the real issue with DOB is that it is both an expeditor of construction and development and a public safety agency, and those two goals are often not compatible. Construction is an inherently dangerous industry, and DOB needs to do a better job of regulating construction professionals (contractors, expeditors, architects and engineers). But in order to do that effectively, DOB would probably need to make the development process less efficient – and that goes against its grain.
Lancaster’s resignation does nothing to address this inherent imbalance. Hopefully her successor will be able to.
Grand Street Renaissance
Sodafine
Photo: Sodafine
Not so suddenly, Grand Street has become a thriving retail strip.
The April/May 2008 issue of WG (the newish Williamsburg Greenpoint News + Arts paper) has a great article by C. C. McGurr on the retail renaissance along western Grand Street. By her count, there are 62 businesses operating on the six block stretch from Kent to Marcy (I can think of at least two or three establishments that were left out). The eastern portion of the strip is dominated by food & drink, but throughout Grand Street, the diversity of retail is pretty impressive. More impressive is the fact that (by my count) about 50 of these 62 establishments have opened since 2001. Better still, there have been relatively few closures in that time (regrettably, Alioli was one of them). And these numbers don’t include the stores and restaurants on the avenues just off Grand Street, easily another dozen, if not two.
McGurr blames the BQE for the demise of Grand Street’s retail in the post-War era, but I’m of the opinion that the BQE actually helped Grand Street. What makes the western portion of Grand Street so special is that is not a through street. The relative lack of vehicular traffic gives the strip a quieter, more relaxed feel. Combined with the low-scale buildings fronting on a wider street (at least west of Roebling), this makes the street much more open and pedestrian friendly. Compare Grand Street to Metropolitan (in the extreme), or even Bedford Avenue, and you’ll see what I mean. (As for the BQE, ten years ago, most of Williamsburg’s historic ground floor storefronts were boarded up or converted to residential, and the BQE was not responsible for all of that.)
[WG has a website, but no web presence. If you want to see the article, pick up a copy at a local store, bank, etc.]
Whither the Water Taxi?
Back in the coldest, darkest days of winter, when New York Water Taxi suspended service on its East River route, the company said that service would resume on May 1. In February NYWT pulled the water taxi dock out of Schaeffer Landing entirely. At the time, it was reported that the dock was to replaced with a smaller, permanent dock.
Crossing the Williamsburg Bridge the other day, the dockless void in front of Schaeffer landing got me wondering about when that new dock was going to appear. The good news is that it will reappear – service to Schaeffer Landing is as part of the new summer schedule for NYWT.
The bad news is that the resumption of all commuter service on the East River has been (very quietly) pushed back to June 2. And they’ve shortened the evening schedule – the last boat out of Wall Street will now leave at 6:07 (there used to be a 7:00 boat).
But at least service will be back in June.
A month later than promised.
Assuming the dock is in place by then.
ExxonMobil Greenwashing Greenpoint?
The irony here is quite rich – ExxonMobil, the company that is (mostly) responsible for the oil plume that sits beneath Greenpoint is sonsoring today’s Go Green Earth Day celebrations at McCarren Park. The notice is very last minute, but when some local activists found out about this, they decided a protest of some sorts was in order.
The Go Green Earth Day celebrations at McCarren are a locally-organized event, put together as the result of a lot of hard work by the folks at Town Square; ExxonMobil is only paying to sponsor the event. The planned protests are intended to be fun, and hopefully won’t be disruptive – so either way, go out there and have fun.
Friends,
Apologies for the short notice but we just found out that ExxonMobil is sponsoring tomorrow’s Go Green Earth Day Festival in McCarren Park. ExxonMobil is also responsible for the largest oil spill in America’s history, larger than the Exxon Valdez, just meters away from where the festival will be taking place!
Other festival sponsors include BP America, Waste Management, and Forest City Ratner Company (responsible for the Atlantic Yards project). These companies are no friend to our community, and no friend to the environment.
Please join the Greenpoint SuperFUNd SuperFriendz in taking immediate action.
NOW: Send an automatic email letter expressing your outrage to the powers that be.
SATURDAY (tomorrow): Join us at McCarren Park for a protest rally. We’re calling on YOU to help reclaim Earth Day from the greenwashers and reclaim the oil from McCarren Park!
Reclaim the Oil!
Saturday, April 19, 11am
Meet at Driggs and N. 12th
By the dog runThere’s oil a plenty underfoot and we oil men will be on hand with rig, drills, and buckets to reclaim our oil and our earth (day).
Dear Exxon, We Drink Your Milkshake!!!!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
About Greenwashing:
The term is generally used when significantly more money or time has been spent advertising being green (that is, operating with consideration for the environment), rather than spending resources on environmentally sound practices. This is often portrayed by changing the name or label of a product, to give the feeling of nature, for example putting an image of a forest on a bottle of harmful chemicals. Environmentalists often use greenwashing to describe the actions of energy companies, which are traditionally the largest polluters.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
About the Greenpoint ExxonMobil Oil Spill:
Between 17 and 30 million gallons of oil lie beneath North Brooklyn. See here for oodles of press coverage: http://www.greenpointvexxon.com/index.htm#press
Natural Selection
Via Brooklyn Vegan, Southpaw owner Matthew Roff is to take over the (now) former Galapagos space on North 6th Street. Good news, I hope.
That Explains It
Closed by Order of the Department of Health
It has been noted elsewhere that Kellogg’s Diner has closed for renovations. Turns out, the closing might not be so voluntary. It seems the Department of Health happened to stop by and – surprise, surprise – found a few things amiss. So as the sticker here indicates, Kellogg’s was shut down on 9 April with 77 violation points. It probably had something to do with the fact that no surface in that place was fit to be in contact with food.
I’m often skeptical of DOH inspections (Brick Oven Gallery) but in this case, its long overdue. And I’m not alone there – witness the comments here and here. And from the “commenters” on the sticker in Kellog’s window – which say “Finally!” and “Good Riddance”.
UPDATE: In the comments, Mr. Fact points out that Kelloggs had applied for permits to do work six to nine months ago. True enough (I missed that on DOB because the permits are under a few different BINs). Still, the final permits were not pulled until after the DOH inspection. And to date, no one has expressed the least bit of surprise that Kelloggs would be shut down by DOH.