Month: June 2008

Yes, we’re recycling this image, but its the same
old story.

For those of us who have been waiting for July, and the return of NY Water Taxi’s East River Service, life continues to be a good news/bad news kind of thing.

The good news? As of today (30 June), NYWT has supposedly resumed its East River service.

I say supposedly, because as a Williamsburg resident, I would have no way of verifying this. That’s because the bad news is that – according to the NYWT website – East River service will not include Schaefer Landing until 7 July.

Riding across the East River on the J train today, I noted (as I do just about every day) the singular lack of any docking structure at Schaefer Landing. Yes, the dock that was supposed to arrive in May, is still not there. Nor is there any activity around the area where one might expect a dock to be indicating that anyone is remotely interested in actually building a dock-like structure.

Not that I don’t believe NYWT when they say service will resume on 7 July. Its just that we’ve all been, uh, mislead a few times over the past few months.

Meanwhile, I encourage everyone to try out the Ikea Express. It departs every 20 minutes from Pier 11 in Manhattan and runs right to Ikea’s new Red Hook store. And its free! No purchase necessary. 36 boats a day – gratis (or fri, if we are getting in the Ikea spirit)! Amazing what a little subsidy will do. As far as I know, you don’t even have to set foot in the big blue store. Go to the ball fields and get a taco. Go to Pier 41 in Red Hook for delicious key lime pie. Go to Baked on Van Brunt for more dessert. Go to Lenelles’s for some good hootch. Go to Fairway for a decent selection of food (you won’t find that in Williamsburg). Consider it your steal-this-book moment while you wait for NYWT to show up at Schaefer Landing with four pitiful boats every morning and four more in the afternoon.

Via Daring Fireball, Jerry Seinfeld had this to say about George Carlin:

His performing voice, even laced with profanity, always sounded as if he were trying to amuse a child. It was like the naughtiest, most fun grown-up you ever met was reading you a bedtime story.

One of the great unexpected pleasures of fatherhood has been learning that George Carlin is the narrator for all of the Thomas the Tank Engine videos. Makes them a hell of a lot more fun to watch.

(I guess Seinfeld doesn’t watch Thomas with his kid; nor Gruber for that matter.)

We have the best tap water in the world. Drink it.

[And don’t panic, its a very limited recall – about 150 gallon bottles of Nestlé water sold at ShopRite only. But still, drink tap water.]

The most recent newsletter of the Center for an Urban Future has an article [that’s a pdf] by Steve Hindy, the founder of Brooklyn Brewery, bemoaning the plight of small manufacturers like his. As Hindy points out, the squeeze of rezonings, gentrification and legal non-manufacturing uses in manufacturing zones (such as hotels) is driving up rents to the point that many manufacturers can’t afford New York any more.

This is about more than beer. It is having an impact on our parks and open space (both the MTA and CitiStorage are having trouble finding places to move to, and until they move, Barge Park and Bushwick Inlet Park can’t be completed). Its also having an impact on affordable housing (part of the MTA is one of the city-owned sites slated for new affordable housing). Most importantly, it has an impact on jobs – good paying jobs with benefits. For all the promise of new jobs to come from the rezoning, most of those are temporary construction-related jobs or low-paying service sector jobs. The jobs provided by light industry have supported many Williamsburg and Greenpoint residents for generations, but they are for the most part a thing of the past. The new wave is Ikea, Whole Foods and Duane Reade.

Despite claims of its demise, New York City (Brooklyn in particular) has a thriving manufacturing sector. Its not the leviathan of past centuries, or even of the years immediately after World War II. And its not the traditional sectors we nostalgically think of. It is lighter industry, industry that often benefits from a close proximity to the city, such as food processing, set construction and custom woodworking. Its also specialty manufacturers like Brooklyn Brewery, Aurora Lampworks or IceStone. Industrial enclaves such as the Brooklyn Navy Yard or GMDC have waiting lists for new tenants. This is not the industrial base of your grandparents, it is one that lives more easily with mixed residential and commercial uses.

Of course Williamsburg figures prominently.

Allegations that a testing company isn’t necessarily doing the testing to determine the structural integrity of all that concrete being poured in the city. Does anyone else get the feeling that every link in the construction chain is broken?

He was here a minute ago.

With DOB under the microscope, now is probably not the best time to be bribing inspectors. Hell, any inspector taking a bribe in the current environment is an even bigger idiot. Too bad judges can’t add time for stupidity.

If a house was built in the 1830s, 150 years after the Dutch ceded control of New Amsterdam to the English, it is not a “Dutch Farmhouse”.

(Which is not to say that this building shouldn’t be a landmark.)

More fallout from the wall collapse that killed laborer Lauro Ortega, and more self-certification shenanigans. Turns out the engineer who pulled the plans authorizing construction at the site had lost his self-cert privileges. So he signed his partner’s name to the documents.

The contractor/developer of the project has already been charged with manslaughter. The engineer – Abraham Hertzberg – is charged with 9 felony counts of offering a false instrument.

Its good to see DOB and DOI going after the bad actors, but at some point the structural deficiencies in the system itself need to be addressed.