another DoB-approved crane collapse

It was not but 12 hours ago that I suffered through a special meeting of Community Board 2 in Manhattan where I heard a representative of the city’s Department of Buildings tell us that they had just finished a citywide inspection of every construction crane of every type now in operation. This was supposed to reassure us that all of the cranes were found to be safe.

About an hour ago, in a scene eerily reminiscent of the March disaster that killed seven, a tower crane at 333 East 91st Street (at First Ave.) partially collapsed, the cab falling over a dozen stories. NY1 is reporting that emergency personnel have pulled people from the wreckage, but their conditions are not yet known.

So much for the credibility of the new, post-Patricia Lancaster DoB. Who is Mayor Michael Bloomberg going to get to take the blame for him this time?

I am writing all this from my apartment, which is next to a construction site where at this moment a two-story-high jackhammer attached to a backhoe is crushing reinforced concrete with such force it causes my entire building to shake violently. Such shaking has caused things to fall from shelves on many occasions over the course of this development—but not to worry, the DoB tells me that this shaking is within permissible limits.


Update: NY1 has reported that acting Buildings Commissioner Robert LiMandri just last week lifted the emergency regulation that required a city inspector to be on site whenever a tower crane is “jumped” (raised higher).

NY1 also reports that this crane is the same model of crane as the one that collapsed in March. Both of these cranes were owned by the same company—New York Crane.

NY1 is now also reporting at least one fatality.



(cross-posted on The Seminal)

what’s a guy got to do to get a #%&*$! cubano these days?

It’s spring in January, and the warm weather puts a man in mind of some pork. Unfortunately, this city is pretty much determined to prevent me from having it. In the last year, we lost Havana Chelsea, which was good, but—not to argue with its old sign or anything—not home of “the best Cuban sandwiches.” That prize, in my estimation, went to Brisas del Caribe. . . which [sigh] closed about one year ago.

And now we have lost the dearly beloved Sucelt.

This leaves La Taza de Oro in Chelsea and. . . well, I pretty much don’t know what. Not in lower Manhattan, anyway. (I’m talking about a good roast pork sandwich—I can list several bad ones.)

The search for information on the Sucelt lead me to what is possibly the most depressing blog in New York. . . not that I didn’t spend hours relishing it, mind you. This guy gets a full hats off, not just a mere hat tip.

The closings of venerated and distinctive little places like the Latin diners, or old bars, butchers, and repair shops—the places that make New York a city of neighborhoods—to make way for drug chains, commercial banks, and big box stores have been accelerating at an alarming rate in recent years. I think that it pre-dates 9/11, and can really be traced to the suburban aesthetic and thinly veiled racism of the Giuliani administration. Mayor Mike Bloomberg has done nothing to reverse the trend—likely because the Boston-born billionaire has a similar white bread worldview.

Though there are plenty of other reasons to never want to see either of these megalomaniacs become president, this is really enough. Any man that keeps me from my pork could never get my vote.

a man whose allegiance is ruled by expedience

What the hell—right? I mean, if the late Mayor John Lindsay could jettison his Republican ties after losing the party primary while running for a second term, why can’t Mayor Mike jump a sinking ship after winning his? In Tuesday’s announcement that he is removing the epithetical (R) from his name, however, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R ?) looks less like to me like Lindsay, and more like Wernher von Braun.

To be certain, I am less upset with Bloomberg’s leaving the GOP than I was when he joined it in the first place. The fact of the matter is that then, as now, the mayor had little in common with the New York or the national Republican Party, either with regards to history or ideology. If anything, Bloomberg became more of a Republican after he was elected mayor back in 2001.

Instead, what Bloomberg saw in the Republican Party back in ’01 was an opportunity. Mike had an ambition, and the New York Republicans—already in rapid decline back then—had a need. Bloomberg had no desire to work his way through the system or wait his turn, so he switched from Democrat to Republican expressly to snag a guaranteed ballot spot he likely could not win on his own in a Democratic primary.

Mike also had money, and in the Republican primary, and most certainly in the general election, he spent it. He blitzed his opponents. By most accounts, Bloomberg spent over $70 for each and every vote he received on his way to defeating Democrat Mark Green. (He actually spent even more—over $110/vote—in his campaign for reelection.)

And so, with his loose change and his convenient change of sides, Mike Bloomberg got to be mayor. And while he has been like a breath of fresh air after the vile and nasty Rudy Giuliani, Mayor Bloomberg has hardly been a progressive’s dream (some very recent proposals for a greener city notwithstanding).

Even looking past the unchecked overdevelopment taking place in New York and Bloomberg’s less than small (or large, for that matter) “d” democratic approach to public education reform, it is hard to celebrate Mike’s run as a Republican mayor because of the support he felt necessary to lend to his new found friends. Bloomberg has given $350,000 of his own fortune to the state party and perhaps more to its candidates, and let us not forget his role as host to the 2004 Republican National Convention.

And let us not forget the preventive detentions, security clampdowns, and the more recently revealed covert infiltration of protest groups that lead up to and surrounded that convention—a style of policing that was not a so much a special case as a case study for the Mayor Bloomberg/Police Commissioner Ray Kelly regime.

Also let us not forget Mike’s not insubstantial campaign help lent to Joe Lieberman (Monomaniacal Party-CT) as the Senator fought successfully to circumvent the will of his constituents and (up till that moment) party.

In fact, it is maybe in Lieberman that we have the best object lesson for understanding Bloomberg’s de-partification (if you will). Both of these men like to brag about how their worldview extends beyond ideology or party, and, in a way, they are right. Neither man is about party because both are all about themselves.

As with Beltway Joe mouthing off almost every week on the Sunday talk shows, many of Mayor Mike’s moves can be seen as grand attempts by a lame duck to remain relevant. Or, if not relevant, at least visible—it is hard, after all, to relinquish the spot light, the bully pulpit, or even the rope line.

But, beyond the attention, what does Michael Bloomberg want? Von Braun was easier to understand—he wanted to make rockets. If he had to join the Nazi party and build V-2s to do it, so be it; if he had to become a naturalized American and make ICBMs, all the better. In the end, he was eulogized as the man who got mankind to the moon.

Bloomberg has recently aimed for the moon himself, making many ambitious and sweeping proposals for changes that will almost all theoretically come to fruition long after he is out of office—his current office. I, for one, still question whether his heart is really in it.

That remains to be seen—as does whether Mike really wants (as he currently claims) to be mayor for another 900-odd days. If not, I fear what we learn about Michael Bloomberg and what he wants will, in reality, be less about what he wants for others, and more about what he wants for himself.

(hat tip: Tom Lehrer)


(cross-posted to capitoilette and Daily Kos)

mayor Mike finally listens to me

I have been saying for some time now—most of this millennium, I dare say—that if I were ever elected mayor (fat chance!), one of the first things I would do is require that every new New York City taxi be a hybrid (originally, I meant gas/electric, today I’d like to see plug-in/gas/electric). With the city mandating a maximum three-year lifespan on cabs (in reality, most only make it two), that would mean a completely hybridized fleet by the end of the decade. Imagine the savings in gas. . . and the reductions in pollution and noise!

Hybrids are ideal for the stop-and-start short-haul driving that is the stock-and-trade of city cab traffic (plug-in hybrids would be even more ideal).

But wait, you say, I ain’t climbing into the backseat of no Prius! Well, first off, the Prius’s backseat is roomier than you think (look at this chart), but, more importantly, in a generation (that’s a taxi generation—three years), if not less, that Prius is going to be replaced by a car that will make you forget you ever had a fondness for the Ford Crown Victorias that make up most of the fleet today. (Do you have a fondness for that car? Really?) Don’t forget, the Crown Vic Stretch was designed and built specifically to win the certification of the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission. . . and so, the business that would result from a certification. Mandate that New York taxicabs have to be hybrids, publish the specs, and watch as the automotive world suddenly learns how to make a bigger, better hybrid. A move by New York would incentivize innovation and force improvements in hybrid automobile technology, and those improvements could easily make inroads (no pun intended) into the rest of the civil and the consumer markets.

So, it is on this occasion (rare though it may be) that I take the opportunity to congratulate New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg for finally getting with the program (my program) and requiring that the entire fleet of New York City cabs be gas/electric hybrids by 2012.

Do I think that’s two years longer than anyone needs? Yes. Would I have rather he said hybrids by 2010, plug-in hybrids by 2012? Sure. Do I think he could do even more to push the automotive industry with additional requirements for NYC cabs? You bet. Do I wish that he would also move to severely reduce the number of medallions any single company can own, and make more provisions to safeguard the cabbies that might be forced to pay for part of this conversion? Absolutely. But the road is made by walking, and this a very good first step. (OK, not the perfect metaphor, here. Sorry.)

Bloomberg, aspirations for higher office or no, is doing a lot lately to make his legacy a green one. If only his attitude toward real estate development wasn’t all about that other green. Then maybe all of this city’s residents would be in clover.