Why should NYers know that our departed deputy mayor was arrested?

Plus: What to watch for in the Teabaggers' Delight presidential debate (see below)

Former Deputy Steve (the urban wonderman) and Mayor Mike in happier times -- which is to say with no snow falling and nothing of note being reported from the D.C. police blotter

"I thought the immediacy of my resignation mooted the need for further explanation. I was wrong. The lack of a fuller disclosure I now regret as I regret the loss of my public service career and the intrusion my children have experienced."

-- former NYC Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith

by Ken

This expression of regret from former Deputy Steve is farther than the deputy's former boss, Mayor Mike, is willing to go. However, if you read deep into the story, you'll find that Mike and Steve are in agreement that any disclosure should have come only from the deputy.

Bloomberg Says Disclosing Deputy Mayor's Arrest Not His 'Responsibility'

September 5, 2011 12:13pm | By Tom Liddy, DNAinfo News Editor

MANHATTAN — Mayor Michael Bloomberg refused to apologize Sunday for failing to disclose that former Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith had been arrested in Washington D.C. just days before he stepped down.

Breaking his silence after a church service at the Christian Cultural Center in Canarsie, Brooklyn, Bloomberg said that it was not his "responsibility" to tell the public about the July 30 arrest, according to the New York Times.

"I did not believe it was right for our administration to put out a story about an incident that had the potential to [bring] even more suffering to the Goldsmith family," he said, WCBS/Channel 2 reported.

The mayor, who canceled an appearance on his weekly radio show with WOR's John Gambling Friday in the wake of the revelations, said that while he had an obligation to his constituency, he also had a duty to treat his employees fairly.

"I also believe as an employer, employers have a responsibility to treat employees with some consideration and that is how I built my business, that’s how we run this government and that’s how we will continue to do so," he said, according to CBS.

However, Bloomberg added that if Goldsmith, once touted as a superstar but widely blamed for the administration's disastrous response to the Christmas 2010 blizzard, had not resigned, he would have been fired.

"Given the high standards we set for government service and the serious circumstances surrounding his arrest, Mr. Goldsmith could no longer continue work at City Hall," Bloomberg said, according to WCBS.

Bloomberg's comments drew quick fire from Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.

"Unfortunately the Mayor has this backwards: His first obligation is to protect the public, not to protect a staff member," he said in a statement. "The City Council should hold hearings, so we can get a full accounting of the facts in this matter."

The revelation last Thursday that Goldsmith, the former mayor of Indianapolis, had been arrested for allegedly shoving his wife during a heated argument at their D.C. home sparked a flurry of criticism from local politicians, including Public Advocate Bill de Blasio.

Bloomberg, who reportedly accepted Goldsmith's resignation at a meeting the day after his arrest, merely said that his deputy was leaving office to pursue work in the private sector.

"Your claim that Deputy Mayor Goldsmith was 'leaving to pursue private-sector opportunities in infrastructure finance' was a misrepresentation of the facts," de Blasio wrote in a Sept. 2 letter to Bloomberg.

"I cannot accept the leader of the City of New York lying to its citizens."

In a statement, Stephen Goldsmith said that he did not reveal the reason behind his resignation because he did not want to embarrass his family, nor did he want to become "a distraction to the important work of City Hall."

"I thought the immediacy of my resignation mooted the need for further explanation. I was wrong," Goldsmith said. "The lack of a fuller disclosure I now regret as I regret the loss of my public service career and the intrusion my children have experienced."

Goldsmith also said that it was his responsibility to disclose the reasons for his resignation, not the mayor's.

"I regret the criticism of the Mayor for his support of my family," Goldsmith added.

If city officials are arrested within the five boroughs, their arrest is reported to the Department of Investigation. However, those arrested outside the city's boundaries are not subject to the same rule.

The public advocate plans to introduce legislation to close this loophole.

According to a Washington, D.C. police report obtained by DNAinfo.com, Goldsmith, 64, allegedly shoved his wife, Margaret, into a counter.

"I should have put a bullet through you years ago!" Margaret Goldsmith yelled, according to the document.

Goldsmith then broke a phone and grabbed his wife and would not let go, the report said.

The Goldsmiths have disputed the account in the police report.

Several observations:

(1) I'm sorry to say I don't pay close enough attention to municipal affairs to have any meaningful insight into how good a job Deputy Steve, the reputed (if only by himself and Mayor Mike) urban wonderman, did. Sure, he f**ked the blizzard up royally, but maybe that was the solitary blemish on an otherwise splendid record of job performance. It's merely my unsupported impression that the guy's a highfalutin stiff.

I do recall Mayor Mike insinuating repeatedly that we should be on our knees celebrating our good fortune in having such an august one as Deputy Steve, an authentic urban wonderman (a former mayor of Indianapolis, after all), as our deputy mayor for administration. And Mayor Mike would know. I guess.

(2) Pursuant to the above, I spent some time perusing the reader comments posted on some website or other when the story of Deputy Steve's, er, embarrassment first broke. There was one category of comments which annoyed, maybe even scared, the heck out of me; we'll come back to that. But I recall one solitary soul raising the first question I had when I was trying to digest the original report, which as I recall made reference to the incident in question taking place in the Goldsmiths' home in D.C..

So I was immensely relieved that that one commenter thought to pose the question: What was a deputy mayor of New York City doing with a home in D.C.? In some account or other I did find the explanation that Deputy Steve split his time between NYC and D.C. Not quite good enough, I think. The question simply changes to: What was a deputy mayor of New York City, authentic urban wonderman or not, doing splitting his time between NYC and D.C.?

Perhaps we should be grateful, not just that the urban wonderman deigned to take this job but that he spent some of his precious time in our city, and the rest of his "home" time however-many-miles away in D.C., as opposed to setting up his urban-wonderman laptop in -- oh, I don't know -- Cabo San Lucas.

(3) As to the comments that distressed me, it was the strain of "why's everybody bustin' the guys balls?" and "what marriage doesn't include disagreements?" comments. To which I can only say: Ferchrissakes!

While it may well be that the Goldsmiths, as the above report notes, "have disputed the account in the police report." It's clearly true that whoever might have pressed charges declined to do so. That said, I'm not aware of any dispute that:

(a) Mrs. Deputy Steve called the cops on her husband.

(b) Deputy Steve was arrested. (As in "arrest report.")

It should go without saying that neither of these considerations, separately or together, establishes guilt, and I'm making no such presumption. I do, though, wonder at the sanity of anyone who suggests that a wife calling the cops on her husband is a "what's the big deal?"-type occurrence in a marriage, and I wonder at the suggestion that when a deputy mayor is arrested, the people he serves don't have a right to know about it.

With, of course, appropriate explanation from the parties of the first and second part. Deputy Steve, you notice, takes a sort of in-between position: that if he hadn't stepped down as deputy mayor (forgetting for the moment Mayor Mike's revelation that if he hadn't, he would have been fired), then sure the public would have had a right to know, but since he did quit, it's nobody's business and his family is entitled to its privacy. Um no.

One extra observation: Since the Goldsmiths are disputing the account in the police report, it's apparently not definitively certain that Mrs. Deputy Steve indeed said, ""I should have put a bullet through you years ago!" However, could we have a show of hands here? How many people believe the cop who wrote the report made this up?

In the original public accounts, it should be noted, the line was attributed to Deputy Steve rather than the missus, which creates a certain "oh, the brute!" frisson. It is apparently a fact, however, that the police report attributes the line to Mrs. Deputy Steve. One might point out that the erroneous information would almost certainly not have circulated if the actual report hadn't been still under wraps, but never mind. Again stipulating that we're entering here the realm of speculation, not to be confused with either judicial process or full investigative inquiry: If Mrs. Deputy Steve indeed said it, at whatever level of frustration, anger, or whatever, is there anyone to whom the thought doesn't occur that who after all knows the guy better?


MY INSIDER'S TIP: WHAT TO WATCH FOR IN THE
"TEABAGGERS' DELIGHT" PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE

Okay, I got carried away here, with everybody else offering their personal "what to watch for" tips. But seriously now, what are you, nuts? You would actually consider watching these specimens "debate" in front of a horde of militant, "f**k the facts" doodybrains?

Which bring us finally to today's --

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Good news for Texas Gov. Rick Perry

"In a positive piece of news for the Texas Governor, a new poll shows him leading the pack among voters who describe themselves as delusional."

-- from today's Borowitz Report, "Perry Outlines
Bold Proposal to Repeal Twentieth Century"

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Urban Gadabout: NY Transit Museum tours announced plus those "WAHI" Upper Manhattan tours

Wikipedia offers this view of Washington Heights beyond the George Washington Bridge, from the west. For a listing of historian James Renner's upcoming tours of the Northern Manhattan neighborhoods of Washington Heights, Inwood, and Marble Hill, see below.



by Ken



Since I last wrote, the New York Transit Museum tour schedule has been announced (you can find it on the Calendar of Events page of the website, and the early registration period for members is in full swing. As I mentioned, all the regular tours on the fall schedule are offered at least twice, and some of the especially popular ones, which in the past were generally already offered more than once, are offered even more often.



The four I pounced on start with two led by peerless "urban geographer" Jack Eichenbaum. With Jack you not only begin to understand why neighborhoods and regions have developed the way they have, but you see things you just wouldn't see with less tuned-in tour leaders.



PENN STATION "ECOLOGY"

Saturday, September 17, 10am-12n, and Sunday, October 9, 1-3pm

Constructed in a once squalid are known as the "Tenderloin," Penn Station united rails from Long Island, New Jersey and points south that previously terminated on the other side of the Hudson. Urban geographer Jack Eichenbaum will lead this walking tour through the remnants of the neighborhood's past and look at its proposed future, including the Farley Post Office building, the historic Hotel Pennsylvania, Herald Square, and "Koreatown."

LIFE ALONG THE L TRAIN

Saturday, October 15, 10am-1pm, and Saturday, November 19, 10am-1pm

Since its expansion to 8th Avenue in Manhattan in the 1930s, the L line has stimulated gentrification along its route. We will explore the West Village and Meatpacking District -- including a portion of the new Highline Park -- and on to Bushwick and Williamsburg, noting the continuous transformation of each of these neighborhoods.

By the way, Jack has announced some additional fall tours of his own, including an on-the-ground survey of the area he's currently watching with perhaps the greatest fascination, What's New in Long Island City? (Saturday, October 22, 11am-1pm) and one in his home area, which has already undergone an unrecognizable transformation, Religion on the Land: Polytheologic Flushing (Saturday, November 12, 12n-2:30pm). I've already done a fair amount of wandering in both Long Island City and Flushing with Jack, and I can assure you it's a special experience. (I would definitely do LIC with him again if I weren't already registered for the Municipal Art Society tour of the Chinatown-Little Italy Historic District at the same time.)



Jack also invites us to "hold the dates" for a pair of cold-weather tours ("both partially indoors"), with details to be announced: Keeping Off the Streets of Midtown Manhattan (East Side) (Saturday, December 3) and Flushing's Chinatown (Sunday, December 18).



The other two tours I couldn't resist are:



POWER UP! A SUBSTATION INSIDER

Saturday, November 5, 10am-12n, and Saturday, December 3, 10am-12n

As part of subway construction in 1904, the 59th Street Powerhouse was built to supply the massive amounts of power required to move trains and light tunnels in the new subway. Robert W. Lobenstein, former General Superintendent of New York City Transit, will take us inside magical Substation No. 13 and lead a sidewalk tour of the 59th Street Powerhouse.

MOVIN' ON UP: 75 YEARS OF SUBWAYS UNDER QUEENS BOULEVARD

Sunday, November 13, 11am-2pm, and Saturday, December 10, 11am-2pm

Seventy-five years ago the Independent Subway System was extended from Jackson Heights to Jamaica under Queens Boulevard, now a shopping mecca. Ridership at Forest Hills station now ranks 40th out of the system's 468 stations. Ride sections of this line and walk its surrounding neighborhoods with subway historian and retired LIRR manager Andrew Sparberg.

These are all $30 for NYTM members, $45 for nonmembers.



Two perennial favorites are offered four times each but are so popular that they're likely still to be tough to book.



At some point I will definitely do the CONEY ISLAND YARD tour again, and prepare for it better by schooling myself on the various kinds of subway cars that are serviced in this giant maintenance facility, and how exactly they work, to better appreciate this unparalleled close-up view of how that maintenance done. But the pièce de résistance is the visit to the tower where New York Transit personnel oversee the extraordinary coming together at Coney Island of four separate subway lines.



This is a must. It's being offered Tuesday evenings, 6-8:30pm, on September 13, October 11, November 8, and December 13 ($30 for members, $50 for nonmembers), and you're going to need photo ID -- they take security very seriously at the Coney Island Yard. (Anyone who didn't understand how essential the subways are to the life of the city got a demonstration when they were shutdown in anticipation of Hurricane Irene.)



The visit to THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN: OLD CITY HALL STATION is also enormously popular. When the old City Hall station was built, it was the anchor of the original subway line, and the station was built on a decorative scale that was never repeated. You're really traveling back in time here, and the station may be less "wow"-inspiring than you expected. (For one thing, it's not that large. The trains of the time were only five cars, cars that were much shorter than later ones.) But more than anything, you're seeing history here. The station was abandoned both because of lack of use and because the extreme track curve on which it sits could never have been adapted to handle the much larger, multiple-trains that became standard on the NYC subways.



You can glance at the station by staying on a no. 6 train after its last southbound stop at Brooklyn Bridge, when it makes the loop that turns brings it onto the northbound local track of the station -- and you are allowed to stay on the train, we were told, unless Transit personnel tell you the train is going out of service -- but you won't see much. The tour is the only way to get out onto the station platform and actually see what there is to see. This is the one NYTM tour that's members only, and may be itself be reason enough to join, though there seem to me plenty of other reasons, not least all those other tours. (Note that in addition to using my early-registration privilege, I paid $120 for my four tours, which for nonmembers would be $180.)



And oh yes, as I mentioned last time, there's one more of the museum's famous day-long NOSTALGIA RIDES, once again riding the old IRT lo-V cars up the Lexington Avenue line to Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx (Sunday, October 23, 10am-3pm; $35 for members, $50 for nonmembers). This time it's offered as a package deal with a box lunch and a tour of this final resting place of some of New York's Fanciest citizens (with cemetery architecture by some of New York's fanciest architects).



And I haven't even mentioned the museum itself, in downtown Brooklyn, which is terrific, both for its permanent exhibitions and the special ones offered for limited periods. (I was grateful at the two cracks that the summer Nostalgia Rides that departed from the museum gave me at the incredible exhibition on the Triborough Bridge, an amazingly thorough documentation with photos, archival documents, models, plans, etc. of how the concept for this complex of structures took shape and how it was executed, including what it displaced.)



Nor have I mentioned the numerous other special events, including all sorts for kids (many of whom are incredibly knowledgeable about the subways; at the Coney Island Yard, the youngsters on the tour knew everything about those trains!). Or the Museum Annex at Grand Central Station, which has free admission and is currently hosting an exhibition called "The Once and Future Penn Station." If you're visiting the city, you should definitely try to get to one if not both locations, and if you live here and haven't been yet, you really should go. For basic information, the Transit Museum website is a great starting place.





"WAHI" TOURS



Well, I've gotten my copy of James Renner's Washington Heights, Inwood, and Marble Hill, and it's a terrific book. But it didn't register for me before that it's part of the valuable Images of America series, which means it's basically a book of photos. There are lots of fine historical photos, informatively captioned, but alas no, it's no substitute -- as I was hoping -- for the tours I'll have to miss, owing to schedule conflicts, in this six-Sunday September-October series offered by the official historian of Manhattan Community District 12.



By way of overall introduction, James writes:

Washington Heights and Inwood (WAHI) are communities that have, over the years, gained recognition in massive demographic changes. People from other parts of the city are visiting and moving here because of its affordable housing and beautiful parks. These tours will demonstrate to the resident and visitor alike how upper Manhattan has changed and adapted to suit the needs of its new inhabitants and tourists.

You can find the full schedule with tour descriptions here. There are parts of the city it's easy to find covered by multiple walking tours; these aren't among them. The tours on the schedule ($15, $10 for students and seniors) are:



JUMEL TERRACE HISTORIC DISTRICT & SUGAR HILL (Washington Heights)

Sunday, September 11, 12n (additional fee for Morris Jumel Mansion admission)



COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER (Washington Heights; 165th to 168th, Broadway to Haven Avenue)

Sunday, September 18, 12n



FORT GEORGE (Washington Heights; 190th to 193rd, Amsterdam and Audubon Avenues)

Sunday, September 25, 12n



SHERMAN CREEK (Inwood)

Sunday, October 2, 12n



TUBBY HOOK (Inwood; Dyckman Street, Riverside Drive and Broadway)

Sunday, October 9, 12n



MARBLE HILL

Sunday, October 16, 12n

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Storm diary (continued)

Sure, it's a matter of appearance rather than reality, but Governor Cuomo conveys the appearance of a mealy-mouthed bureaucrat. (He's surrounded here by National Guardsmen because he was announcing a doubling of the Guard presence this weekend to deal with . . . well, whatever.)



by Ken



Apologies for not mustering a more reasonable type of post. I understand better now, now that I'm going through it, how/why Floridians go into all-storm all-the-time mode from the time a big storm begins to take aim on the mainland, even when for the foreseeable future there's no new "news" and nothing more to be done in anticipation, at least nothing that we haven't already been informed about a few zillion times in the days before.





As I pointed out last night, even then we were a full 24 hours, if not more, away from the arrival of the brunt of the storm in the tri-state Greater New York area. Today we've watched Irene attack the Carolinas, and as I write, the New Jersey coast is beginning to feel Irene's presence more directly. We've been told that the storm winds have lowered noticeably, and don't seem likely to pick up again, but we've also been told that the size of the expected storm surge is "locked in." (Apparently storm surges don't have the flexibility of, say, slimy pols who can be coaxed to a more "reasonable" point of view with a modest infusion of cash. Okay, maybe not so modest if it's, say, an influential senator or a House committee or important subcommittee chairman you're buying.)



Now in New York City it's being estimated that the worst of Irene is likely to hit us between midnight and 3am, setting up the worst conditions on the ground for later Sunday morning, 8am-ish. The winds may proves less ferocious than they were yesterday but are still pretty hefty, and are being talked about in turns of even scarier "gust" numbers. And even if in the city itself we get "only" 5-10 inches of rain, that's still a lot of rain, in an area that's already saturated from a very wet August, meaning that the ground isn't likely to be able to absorb much new water. Also, as I saw one TV talking head protest to her Expert Meteorologist Guy, there's quite a difference between five inches of rain and ten inches -- though I think at that point she was talking about the difference between six and 12 inches. Indeed there is, but EMG assured her that no, there are too many variables for us to have any idea where within that range we're going to fall until the rain finishes falling.



So here we all still are on a day that outwardly has all the hallmarks of a perfectly normal rainy Saturday in the city -- except of course that nothing is "normal." There hasn't been any public transport for a third of a day now, so those of us who depend on public transport to get us anywhere beyond walking range clearly aren't going anywhere. And of course much of the talk on the tube is still of the mandatory evacuations in the city and coastal localities from New Jersey to Connecticut. From what I've seen on TV, some people in the areas subject to "mandatory" evacuation evacuated and some didn't. As officials point out when pressed by the TV talking heads, there really isn't any way that they can force people to leave.



ONE OBVIOUS NOTE TO BE APPLIED TO THE NEXT BIG STORM



One obvious note, in line with what I wrote last night about storm preparedness normally developing in reaction to the rightness or wrongness of the response to the last big storm: If it turns out that the preparations ordered by our government leaders, based on the worst-case scenarios, was disproportionate to what the storm actually delivers, you can expect that the next time we're presented with such a drastic prospect, even fewer people will take the threat seriously. And there's nothing to be done about it. How can you blame those leaders for planning for the totally realistic prospect of those worst-case scenarios? And the fact is that they're clearly influenced by the city's drastic underanticipation of last December's blizzard.



MEANWHILE, THERE'S SOMETHING TO BE SAID FOR ENFORCED INACTIVITY



It's a luxury for me, since these days I find my time so heavily overscheduled. Finally I'm making dents in the pile-up on my DVR -- finally sorting out, for example, which still-unwatched In Plain Sight and Law & Order: Criminal Intent episodes are stored there and which ones I'll have to try to track down online. Armed with that information, I've begun attacking the backlog, and have enjoyed beginning to catch up with the recently completed In Plain Sight season. At some point I'll probably have something to say about all this.



POSSIBLY FINAL SATURDAY-NIGHT STORM NOTES



(1) I just double-checked the MAS website and the "tour hotline" ("in case of severe weather") to see if there's news of my scheduled walking tour of the Tompkins Square neighborhood of the East Village tomorrow afternoon, and found no news. Perhaps tomorrow? I guess it's academic, since with the subways and buses idled, there's no way I could get there anyway. (For that matter, tour leader Francis Morrone would normally be taking the subway into Manhattan from Park Slope, Brooklyn.)



(2) I caught some of Governor Cuomo's public appearance today, and boy, does he not inspire leaderly confidence. This is almost a totally matter of perception rather than reality. Then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, for example, oozed authoritativeness in those crisis situations, and I never felt that that authority corresponded with reality. Mayor Mike too commands a certain amount of authority. Governor Andrew, by contrast, even while taking ownership of yesterday's decision to shut down our public transport system today at noon, sounded like a mealy-mouthed bureaucrat.





SUNDAY UPDATE: FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH --

TODAY'S MAS TOMPKINS SQUARE TOUR IS POSTPONED



I just noticed that tour leader Francis Morrone offered the above info in a comment this morning. Thanks, Francis!

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Irene

With Saturday post-noon update (below)



It's all new to us, "mandantory evacuation," here in the Greater New York area. Above you see what we now know as Zone A. (The Rockaways are actually Zone B but have been included in the Zone A mandatory evacuation because road and rail access to -- and consequently egress from -- the Rockaway peninsula is so limited.)



by Ken



It's so strange. Here we are, in the Greater New York area, girding for the worse -- while everything outside remains perfectly normal, and isn't suppose to go bonkers for another full day, though the rain is expected to start tomorrow. More importantly, though, tomorrow at noon the region begins turning into a pumpkin, when all public transport goes into shutdown mode.



I figured it was going to be a closer, nail-bitinger call tomorrow. But it makes sense that if you're going to prepare for the worst, you have to actually plan for the worst. You can't tell a quarter of a million people (and that's just in the city itself; obviously there are equally low-lying areas in New Jersey and out on Long Island, and in Connecticut too) to evacuate in an hour. Of course we still don't know what it means to tell New Yorkers -- and other tri-staters -- that they have to evacuate. It's never been done before.



Well, at least I didn't have to go to bed wondering whether I was going to try to catch my 9:52am Metro-North train en route, eventually, to Constitution Island, opposite West Point, where I discovered only today online that it's Reenactment Day tomorrow. Probably I could have made onto that train, and even gotten to Constitution Island, assuming they're going to go ahead with tomorrow's festivities. (I tried calling the office, but there was just a recorded message. Not a recorded message about the present situation; it just related the normal arrangements for the island.) The problem, though, is that by mid-afternoon it was already announced that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which operates not just the city's buses and subways but the Metro-North train I would be taking, prompted by Gov. Andrew Cuomo (the MTA is a state-chartered agency),

will begin an incremental suspension of its subway, bus, and Long Island Rail Road, and Metro-North Railroad service beginning approximately eight hours prior to sustained 39 mph winds reaching the area. Subway and bus lines will begin shutting down after 12 noon tomorrow.

This is another first for New York. As far as I know, there's never been a deliberate shutdown of the transit system.



By Sunday the storm is expected to be upon us, so I guess my scheduled Municipal Art Society walking tour of the Tompkins Park area of the East Village is also kaput. The normal MAS policy is "rain or shine," as we were reflecting a couple of weeks ago when a surprisingly large band of us gathered for a walk through the area between Union Square and Madison Square in Manhattan. By coincidence that was also a tour led by Francis Morrone (it is a coincidence, isn't it, Francis? have you don something to offend the weather gods?), who reflected that way back when somebody at MAS decided on that "rain or shine" policy. He ventured that the decision might be worth reexamining. Nevertheless, we accomplished the tour quite successfully. There's a difference, though, between "rain or shine" and a historic hurricane.



It was also by mid-afternoon that Mayor Bloomberg had announced the mandatory evacuation by 5pm tomorrow of the city's lowest-lying areas, designated "Zone A." The weather folk have warned us that In the event that the storm visits its maximum wrath upon us, bring surges in the six-to-eight-foot range (meaning waves who knows how high?), Zone B areas too will be at risk, but it was a momentous enough decision to order the evacuation of Zone A.



Already today we saw video on TV of hospitals in the Zone A area being evacuated -- not an inspiring sight. On TV this afternoon I saw a genius man-in-the-street saying what a lot of us, I admit, had fleetingly thought: that the ordered evacuations and shutdowns were "a little premature," since the storm hadn't hit yet. But of course you can't wait till then to attempt that kind of evacuation.



If we get anything as serious as they are predicting, it’s likely to be pretty awful. As I've been pointing out a lot lately, in a much different context, New York City is a port city, and the city and its surroundings contain an awful lot of low-lying coastal terrain. And as the meteorologist expert guy on NY1, the local cable news channel, pointed out this morning, this damned storm hasn’t changed track in two days. Of course I saw that same segment, obviously on tape, about three times in the time I had the TV on, which didn’t exactly inspire confidence in its up-to-the-minute-ness.



In all the time my mother lived in Florida, I got to participate vicariously in hurricane watches — down there EVERY time a storm is approaching everything else goes off the TV and nobody talks about anything else. (You’d think they would have gotten used to it, but apparently this is how you “get used to” living season in, season out in the playground of tropical storms and hurricanes.) And as you say, you just never know. Sometimes they forecast the worst and not much happens, and sometimes they’re fairly casual in anticipation and dreadful stuff happens. What you discover is that the response is usually based on what happened LAST. So if the forecasters OVER-predicted, people tend to assume the new storm will be no big deal, whereas if they UNDER-predicted, people tend to assume it will be the end of the world. Unfortunately, the storms have no memory of the last one, and so do what they like.



Nevertheless, this thing is still headed straight at us, and I don’t know that there’s much between it and us to throw it off course. It just strikes me as kind of weird to thing that whatever’s going to happen, by Monday it will have happened.



A colleague at work recalled her sister's experience living through Hurricane Andrew in Florida in 1992. (I looked it up.) My mother never forgot Andrew. She was in an area close enough to the water to be subject to mandatory evacuation, but she didn’t evacuate, and you could see when she talked about it how she was affected by the memory of the SOUND of the storm passing over her area. (I don’t think she was that near the center of the storm, but of course hurricanes are very big storms, and some part of it did pass right over her area.)



The thing is, when she talked about it, it was never quite clear what the “lesson” of Andrew was for her. That she should have evacuated? I don’t think so, because I don’t think she was prepared to evacuate even WITH the memory of Andrew. But she sure lived in dread of living through something like that again. Alas, with stuff like hurricanes, you never find out till afterward what the correct response should have been!



On the way home this evening I stopped in the supermarket to pick up some stuff. The place was busy but not mobbed. I thought about getting milk but decided the amount I have on hand should be enough for the weekend, but on the way home I questioned the decision. And then it occurred to me that I still have time tomorrow to shop -- though I don't know how much milk they'll still have. Nevertheless, it's a reminder of how long we still have to wait, probably a full day yet, for whatever's going to happen to happen.



And then the weird thing is that, whatever's going to happen, by Monday it will almost certainly have happened.



Be safe, everyone.





SATURDAY POST-NOON UPDATE



Well, the first-ever transit shutdown has been in progress for about half an hour. Buses and subways are carrying passengers only as they make their way to the end of their final trip and/or to their designated hibernation site. New York Transit officials already began yesterday moving trains and buses from yards and garages that fall within the flood-prone zone, and no doubt many of those finishing up their pre-storm travels will also be headed for unexpected shelters.



NYT officials also caution that the shut-down system will take a minimum of eight hours to restart once they're given the "all clear," which throws the Monday morning commute into doubt.



For the record, I did venture back to the supermarket this morning for those items I regretted not buying last night, but I was lazy about it and waited till after 11, and while there was certainly a healthy crowd, under the circumstances it was manageable. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the shelves had indeed been restocked since last night and I was able to snag not just my milk but a number of this week's sale items.



As I hit the sidewalk on the way out this morning, about 11:25, the rain was just beginning, and by the time I walked the block and a half to the store it was coming down -- though I assume not a patch on the way it's going to be coming down.

[courtesy of Howie]

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Dan Maffei Wants To Take On Teabagger Ann Marie Buerkle Again... But First He Has To Persuade Democrats He Deserves Their Nomination

Yesterday we mentioned that, by overwhelming numbers, the Democrats who lost last November were either Blue Dogs (more than half of them lost their seats) or their conservative allies. There were, however a tiny handful of progressives who also got swept up in the carnage, half a dozen Democrats who did NOT deserve to lose their seats but whose districts are so red that the Tea Party rage and the right-wing momentum impacted them as well. We've mentioned that Alan Grayson (D-FL) and Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH) are both running for Congress again next year. Yesterday, Dan Maffei, one of the more conservative Democrats to have lost in 2010, made it official-- he's challenging deranged teabagger Ann Marie Buerkle to a rematch.



Their contest for New York's 25th CD, centered in Syracuse, was the closest election of the year and Buerkle squeezed by with a 648 vote margin-- 104,602- 103,954. Maffei lost because of a swing towards the crazy teabagger in the traditionally Republican suburbs of Rochester. In 2008 Maffei had won the Monroe County section of the district 26,883 (58%) to 19,179 (41%) but last year the Monroe precincts gave Buerkle the lift she needed-- 20,790 (55%) to 17,106 (45%). She picked up over a thousand Republican voters in the county at the same time that Maffei lost over 9,000! The biggest county on the district, by far, is Onondaga (Syracuse) and Maffei still won that one handily-- 76,046 (54%) to 65,632 (46%) but, even there in the most Democratic part of the district, it was a disappointing turn out. In fact in 2008, Maffei had taken 112,856 (56%) and his GOP opponent had only gotten 81,312 (40%). So while Maffei's falloff from 2008 was almost 37,000 votes, Buerkle's falloff from the presidential year to the midterm was only just over 15,000 votes. The two smaller, more rural and Republican, counties voted against Maffei both times but in 2008 he managed to get 47% in Wayne and 42% in Cayuga. Last year Wayne only gave him 37% of its vote and Cayuga 35%.



Clearly, Maffei needs to win back the suburban Rochester swing voters in Monroe County and turn out the disillusioned Democratic base in Onondaga. His dull and uninspiring , centrist message isn't going to get many progressives excited. He'll be counting on Obama's presence at the top of the ticket for Onondaga and he'll be counting on Buerkle's political psychosis for the swing suburbanites. She's been one of the most insane of the radical teabaggers among the House freshmen. Although she represents a swing district equally divided between Democrats and Republicans her voting record is to the right of most right-wing Confederate lunatics from the deepest red districts in the bowels of the South. Her ProgressivePunch score is a dismal 1.64, not just the worst of any New York congressmember, but tied (with two Mississippi KKK freaks, Gregg Harper and Steven Palazzo) for the 14th worst in the entire Congress. Buerkle's voting record is to the right of Darrell Issa's, Mike Pence's, Patrick McHenry's, Eric Cantor's, Paul Ryan's Taliban Dan Webster's, Allen West's, Steve King's, Virginia Foxx's, Louie Gohmert's, Mean Jean Schmidt's... getting the picture? From a political perspective, she's stark raving mad. As Maffei pointed out, "Buerkle has had eight months to show some sort of willingness to compromise and get things done for the district or the country, and she remains as radical as ever."

Buerkle was among 66 Republicans who voted earlier this month against a compromise to raise the debt limit and cut more than $2.1 trillion in federal spending over 10 years.



"It seems like it has been a long time since we were working on how to get things done-- not to shut things down and put the United States literally on the brink of default," Maffei said. "It’s an opportunity I have to represent the people of Central New York again. We cannot continue to allow someone as radical and extreme as Buerkle to do so. I represent a much more moderate point of view."



Buerkle, reached Tuesday afternoon on a trip to Israel, declined to comment about a rematch with Maffei.

Ironically, the congressmembers touring Israel are reassuring Israel that they, unlike the hard-pressed working families of central New York, will feel NONE of the impact of the financial hardtimes disrupting the U.S. and the rest of the world. American aid will see to that.



This is the letter Maffei sent supporters Tuesday morning making his announcement:

Since January a shock wave of Tea Party driven partisanship and inflexibility has rolled across Congress. When I lost my election last November by 648 votes, I hoped that such a close result would convince our new Congresswoman to put aside her radical ideology, and set about finding ways to bring people together and create new opportunities for Central New Yorkers. Instead, she has marched in lockstep with her Tea Party friends, and voted time and again with the special interests who spent so many hundreds of thousands of dollars on the attack ads that helped her win. 



Rep. Buerkle’s actions, now that she is in power, have clearly shown her dangerous priorities. She has already voted to end Medicare as we know it while protecting tax breaks for oil companies and billionaires. She has made her right-wing social agenda her priority while ignoring the real needs in this District for infrastructure funding and public education. And she was part of the extreme group that refused any compromise, and nearly plunged the nation into economic catastrophe.



Over the past 9 months I have done a great deal of listening to friends, neighbors and former constituents across Central New York about what they feel about the direction of the country, and whether I should be a candidate in 2012. The overwhelming refrain has been that it’s time for Congress to stop wasting time, and start working together to solve the very real problems that we face.



Sometimes, people are so frustrated that they are tempted to throw up their hands in disgust and walk away. I understand this feeling. But I know that there is a bright future in front of us as long as we don’t give up on Central New York, America, or ourselves. Working together, we can do better! That is why I am running for Congress in 2012. Our campaign will offer the people of Central New York a better future than the divisive politics of Ann Marie Buerkle.



People have had enough, and they want and deserve a representative who will offer solutions to modernize our infrastructure, to protect seniors and our middle class, and to get our deficit under control while jump-starting our economy. I have always worked hard to find solutions, and have been successful at doing so both inside and outside of government. The people that know me best know how passionate I am for the future of my home and birthplace, Central New York, and that passion gives me great energy. But I can't change things without your help. I am running for Congress and I ask for your active support.

If Maffei gets the Democratic nomination it will be another example of a conservative Democrat-- he's a member of Rahm Emanuel's sell-out New Democratic Coalition-- duking it out against a reactionary Republican. There's no real upside for normal working families. Is he better than Buerkle? Sure. She's an F. He's a C or a D. Oh boy! When he was defeated he went to work against the interests of working families at the right-wing think tank, Third Way, working on repatriating corporate profits at lower tax rates, one of the most regressive proposals floating around Washington circles. And, as the National Journal points out he's a dedicated "moderate."

In the House, he emphasized his moderate stripes and nonideological pragmatism. He joined the New Democrat Coalition, a group of moderate Democrats. He got seats on the Financial Services and Judiciary committees.



He says he keeps a photograph of hard-charging Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff and former Illinois lawmaker, in his office closet as a reminder of the need to raise money.

The other Democrat hoping for the nomination is Brianne Murphy, a 30 year old Syracuse labor attorney. Tom Buckel, who is considerably more progressive than Maffei, was thinking of running for the seat but decided to run for the state Supreme Court instead. Tom told me that Brianne has a compelling personal story. He was right. She's an amazing, passionate candidate who is so lively, intellectually curious and animated that she makes Maffei seem like Mr. Potatohead. I spoke with her last night and my first impression was that she would make an incredible candidate against Buerkle. She told me that people across central New York are looking for "an advocate for their interests in Washington; and a fresh voice that isn’t beholden to any special interests."

"Growing up in Syracuse, raised by a single mother who supported our family with a good, union job and with some help from the government, and now as an employment attorney, I know firsthand the challenges that working families in Central New York are facing.



"I know how important it is that we support working- and middle-class families with strong public policies that create good jobs. I know the values my mother instilled in me-- promoting the common good, supporting our children, and advancing equality-- and won’t be afraid to fight for them in Washington. I believe we must win back the economic debate by fighting for policies that will create the good jobs of the future. I plan to do that in Congress."

New Yorkers will be lucky if she's part of their delegation to Congress-- and everyone else in the country looking for social justice and a muscular approach to old fashioned economic fairness will be as well. She's worth checking out-- especially if you live in the Syracuse area. In 2008 Blue America endorsed Dan Maffei and helped him raise money after he assured us of his progressive agenda. What a disappointment he turned out to be! We didn't re-endorse him in 2010. This year we'll be looking closely at endorsing his primary opponent. For now, if you want to help Brianne's campaign, you can do it here.

Did St. Vincent's Hospital in NYC engineer its own bankruptcy for the sake of a real-estate killing? (Caution: It's the NY Post asking)

Plus: How I spent the earthquake



NY Post caption: St. Vincent's officials allegedly ran the now-defunct hospital's finances into the ground in order win approval to sell it off [sic].



"DA investigators are examining sky-high payments to top executives and private consultants at the hopsital . . . said multiple sources familiar with the probe. Former CEO Henry Amoroso . . . oversaw the runaway spending, which led to $1 billion in debt and bankruptcy before the hospital closed in April 2010. . . . Going broke allowed the hospital to get an OK from the state Health Department to sell to the Rudin family, which is building luxury housing on the site. Without bankruptcy, state officials would not have been permitted [sic] the hospital to shut down, the sources said."

-- from "DA eyes St. Vinny's 'go-for-broke' plan"

by Brad Hamilton, in yesterday's New York Post

by Ken



This is why you have to pay attention to sourcing. I was intrigued by this story when I stumbled across it yesterday on the handy daily local news digest site DNAinfo.com, and today I see it's been picked up by a number of sites -- now including this one. But I also note that, as far as I can tell, all reports trace back to a single source: an "exclusive" (possibly too exclusive?) report by Brad Hamilton in (ugh) yesterday's New York Post.



For example, Becker's Hospital Review's report is based on "a NY1 News report," but the report in question by the New York cable news channel was attributed entirely to . . . the New York Post! Meaning that without some kind of corroboration, it's just stuff somebody's saying.



Still, it's tantalizing. It's hard to explain to people who don't know the area -- which is to say the lower portion of Manhattan -- how hard it was hit by the closing, after a period of protracted financial woe, of St. Vincent's Hospital, smack in the heart of Greenwich Village, in April 2010. And there's no doubt that this is extraordinarily valuable real estate that the erstwhile hospital was sucking up for no better person than, well, to serve the health care needs of the community. To heck with that!



For the record, various interested parties at least went through the motions of trying to find ways to keep the facility open as a hospital. But also for the record, the sale to the Rudin family ("whose real estate holdings are estimated at more than 10 million square feet in New York," according to the exceedingly developer-friendly New York Sun) was rammed through pretty aggressively. In April of this year Anemona Hartocollis reported in the NYT:

A plan to build a luxury housing development and an emergency medical center in Greenwich Village came a step closer to reality on Thursday as a federal bankruptcy judge approved the sale of the bankrupt St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan campus.



The judge, Cecelia G. Morris, approved the $260 million sale to the Rudin development family and the North Shore-Long Island Jewish hospital system despite vociferous opposition from a small group of community activists who have been arguing for the creation of a new full-service hospital on the site where St. Vincent’s had operated for more than 160 years.



One opponent, Alan J. Gerson, a former city councilman who lives in the area, asked for more time to present a rival buyer, but the judge declined.



The sale was unanimously supported by St. Vincent’s creditors, including GE Capital, who are owed about $1 billion, according to Kenneth Eckstein, the lead lawyer for St. Vincent’s. . . .

All of that said, what the Post's Brad Hamilton reported is, as I said, tantalizing, and he at least claims to have multiple apparently unnamable sources, and unnamable sources do sometimes have legitimate reasons for their unnamability. Hamilton found one person who allowed himself to be quoted, and by name -- before we return to unnamed "sources."

"This was a well-thought-out plan," said Tom Shanahan, a lawyer for a group of former St. Vincent doctors and nurses suing St. Vincent's. "They wanted out and had to justify it to the state. They were running it into the ground."



DA Cy Vance's team is looking into whether vendors double-billed for services, gave kickbacks for contracts and hired relatives of hospital employees, sources said.



Two senior administrators each got more than $1 million after leaving their jobs -- and continued to be listed as employees on tax returns.



Virginia Sweeney, the top nursing officer whose employment ended in 2006, got paid $1.3 million between 2007 and 2009. Jane Connorton, the president who left in 2004, pocketed $1 million over the next four years.

Hamilton reported that former St. Vincent's CEO Amoroso and vice chairman Jane Iannucelli "did not return calls for comment." DNAinfo.com's Liddy reported, "The DA's office did not immediately respond to an email for comment." And both the Post and DNAinfo.com were told by St. Vincent's spokeswoman that the hospital is not aware of an investigation.



Now of course it could just be that St. Vincent's was run with normal-range fiscal ineptitude and chicanery that fall within the range of standard operating practice, which under recent hospital-unfriendly financial circumstances made the operation unsustainable, and seeing the end in sight, the overseeing rats stuffed their pockets with moolah before jumping ship.



Or it could be that something a lot more dastardly went, possibly even drawing attention now from the Manhattan D.A.'s office. Since it's the fraud unit reportedly involved, it's presumably not related to the crackerjack team that masterminded the DSK, er, prosecution.





CONFIDENTIAL TO RUPERT M.:



Rupert M., do you see why it can sometimes be a disadvantage for a "news" organization to develop a reputation for propagandizing and making up stuff in its so-called reporting? It makes it kind of hard for folks with a grain of sense to take anything you "report" at face value -- even if we can assume that no phones were hacked in the reporting of the story.





HOW I SPENT THE EARTHQUAKE

"It's not nice to fool Mother Nature."

So I guess it was a little before 2 this afternoon. Hey, if I'd known it was going to be history, I'd have checked the time -- I just thought it was, well, I didn't know what the heck it was, but I considered and dismissed "earthquake" as a possibility. We don't normally have earthquakes on the 14th floor of my building in the Financial District (Lower Manhattan) of New York.



So like I said, it must have been a little before 2, and I was at my desk in my cubicle on the 14th floor of a pretty sturdily built building (at least in the 2½ years my company has been here, the building has never moved that I'm aware of), and for a while the floor and everything kind of trembled, and after awhile people sort of looked at one or another, and somebody mentioned that there had been a 5.8 earthquake in Washington. Only I didn't make out exactly what that person said; I reconstructed it later after I found out that there had been a 5.8 earthquake centered in northern Virginia, which was also reported as 5.9 or even 6.0 Online somebody joked that S&P had upgraded the earthquake from 5.8 to 6.0.



Then we were hustled into the conference room to hear our HR director, who happened to be in California (as it happens, our office manager was also out of the office -- coincidence?), via conference call tell us to do whatever we felt necessary for our safety. She also warned us about taking precautions before getting on a subway, but somebody else reported that New York Transit was reporting no service delays. (And New York Transit wouldn't kid us now, would it?)



Me, I figured if an earthquake is coming to get me, I really wouldn't know where to go to escape its clutches. I figure you're just as likely to walk into it as to escape it. When I went back to working on the InDesign file I had been working on, the computer claimed that the file was damaged. I rebooted and tried reloading it, and while the program still voiced suspicion about the file being damaged, it then accepted and saved some small changes, and the asterisk went away. So far the file seems to be OK.



And that's how I spent the earthquake. We're not used to this sort of stuff here, but believe me, I take it seriously. It's not nice to fool Mother Nature.

I HOPE MOTHER NATURE ISN'T PLANNING MORE OF THIS

SEISMIC STUFF JUST NOW. I HAVE URBAN GADDING AHEAD

Constitution Island, viewed from the West Point side

As I write, I'm getting read to leave the office for this evening's Hidden Harbor Tour of the "North" (i.e., Hudson) River waterfront, and then tomorrow I'm actually taking off work for my first look, courtesy of a tour offered jointly by SI 350 (a volunteer group promoting celebration of Staten Island's 350th birthday -- apparently someone thinks Staten Island is 350 years old; I wonder how Mother Nature feels about that) and the NYC Parks Dept., at the work-in-progress Freshkill Parks, built with huge infusions of technology, cash, and manpower on top of the old trash megadump.



The Parks Dept. has been offering tours, but I could never figure out from the website where I would have to get to, or therefore whether I could get there via public transit. This tour, however, is leaving from in front of the library in St. George, the part of Staten Island where the ferry lands -- and that I know how to find.



Then Saturday I'm actually venturing outside the five boroughs of NYC, well up the Hudson River to venture onto Constitution Island, which is opposite West Point on the west bank of the river, and is only open three weekends a summer. I'm expecting to meet up with a Shorewalkers group at the Metro North train station in Cold Spring, on the east side of the river from the island.

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Urban Gadabout: On the waterfront -- two interesting-looking MAS tours, provided the weather cooperates

Aerial view of Governors Island, off the southern tip of Manhattan
(with the Brooklyn waterfront off to the right)

by Ken

Rain, rain, stay away!

For this weekend I've had a couple of Municipal Art Society walking tours penciled in all summer, and as the dates approach I've grown more and more enthusiastic. The only problem: The weather forecast for the weekend is lousy, with talk of thundershowers both afternoons. Some other time I want to write about the weather factor, something that's obviously wholly beyond the control of tour planners and leaders and yet has so much to do with the success of the walk out come -- not to mention whether there actually is a walk.

But for now I'm hopeful about this weekend's MAS offerings: "Governors Island: Heart of the Harbor," Saturday at 11:45am (meet at the bike rack to the west of the Battery Maritime Building); and "Coney Island: What's Next?," Sunday at 10:30am (meet in Coney Island outside the Stillwell Avenue subway station, on the northeast corner of Stillwell and Surf Avenues).

I should go back to that point I made about having these tours "penciled in." MAS schedules its walking tours in two different configurations. Some are booked ahead, by advance (paid) registration; others are offered strictly on a walk-up basis. The idea is to accommodate different kinds of tour-takers, and to make sure that even when the advance-registration tours sell out, as they usually do, there are still tours available on a walk-up basis for people who don't like, or weren't able, to book the other kind. And it happens that both of these MAS tours are of the walk-up variety, which is why I've only had them "penciled in."

Turnout for the MAS walk-up tours is of course wildly unpredictable. On a nice day, turnout may be massive. On a miserable day, it can get mighty lonely. It's only in extreme weather situations that a tour is canceled. (I'm keeping the "hot line" number, 212-453-0050, handy.)

GOVERNORS ISLAND

Saturday, August 6, 11:45 a.m.-2:00 p.m.
Governors Island: Heart of the Harbor
Governors Island offers a singular vantage point from which to see the last 200 years of the life of New York Harbor and a glimpse into the next 200. Join us for a look at the island of today as well as the opposing waterfronts of tomorrow. We’ll also take in the award-winning Harbor School and discuss the opportunities and challenges the island offers as it enters its new life as a public space.
Tour Leader: Carter Craft, civic activist and a leading waterfront planner.
Meet at: The bike rack to the West of the Battery Maritime Building.
Cost of Tour: $15, $10 MAS members. Pay at tour.

The reason I've been getting more excited about this tour is that I did some online investigation of tour leader Carter Craft, who was formerly program director of the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, which was founded in 1999 as an initiative of . . . the Municipal Art Society (!), and then in 2007 was spun off as an independent entity. Carter has carved out a career for himself as a "waterfront planner."

In July-August 2007 he fielded three days' worth of waterfront-related questions from readers of the New York Times's City Room blog, and he's written a slew of column features for Gotham Gazette, among a help of readily available online writings. Of particular interest to me was a piece he did for UrbanOmnibus last summer previewing the Museum of Modern Art's "Rising Currents" exhibition, which (the introduction explained) would "display the design schemes of five interdisciplinary teams, charged with re-envisioning 'the coastlines of New York and New Jersey around New York Harbor and [imagining] new ways to occupy the harbor itself with adaptive "soft" infrastructures that are sympathetic to the needs of a sound ecology,'” obviously with reference to the expected rise of water levels in the harbor. If you look at Governors Island, just off the southern tip of Manhattan (I reported on my first trip there, in 2006 and returned just a couple of weeks ago, taking advantage of the free ferry service provided all summer), it looks like the damned place is maybe a few inches above the water.

CONEY ISLAND

Sunday, August 7, 10:30 a.m.
Coney Island: What’s Next?
As we explore America’s first great seaside resort, we’ll look for remnants of Coney Island’s “honky-tonk” past, when as many as a million people would visit “Sodom by the Sea” on a hot summer day. View Nathan’s Famous, the popular ballpark, the new amusements, the historic rides and enjoy the boardwalk as we discuss the struggle to designate landmarks and the future of the fabled resort.
Tour Leader: Joe Svehlak, urban historian.
Transit: D, F, N, or Q Trains to Coney Island.
Meet at: Outside the Coney Island/Stillwell Ave. subway station at the N.E. corner of Stillwell and Surf avenues.
Cost of Tour: $15, $10 MAS members. Pay at tour. If you want to go for a swim with Joe after the tour, wear your bathing suit!

As for Coney Island, I was just there for the second of the New York Transit Museum's three Nostalgia Ride days (there's one still to come, on August 20, using vintage subway cars and buses, to the Rockaways), and was happy to have a tour of the rebuilt Stillwell Avenue station (opened in 2005), which services four separate subway lines. And I was surprised to see that there have been other changes -- for better and worse. I'm ready for a proper onsite update.

Weather permitting.

The rebuilt Stillwell Avenue station at Coney Island,
where four subway lines come together

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Urban Gadabout: Newark Bay or bust! (Is there anyone else whose pulse is sent racing by the prospect?)

A nice overview of the waters in and around New York City (which is in light gray), pretty much all really inlets of the Atlantic Ocean: 1. Hudson River; 2. East River, though the number indicates the wilder upper portion, which has more in common with -- 3. Long Island Sound, to the east (between Long Island and Connecticut); 4. Newark Bay; 5. Upper New York Bay, and on the other side of the Verrazano Narrows -- 6. Lower New York Bay; 7. Jamaica Bay (that big purple splotch along its shore being JFK Airport); 8. Atlantic Ocean. Newark Bay (4) connects via the Kill Van Kull (to the northwest of Staten Island) to the Upper Bay and via the Arthur Kill (to the southwest of Staten Island) to Raritan Bay, at the bottom-left corner of the map.

by Ken

Here's the news in a nutshell: a New York Harbor tour that targets . . . Newark Bay!

I realize it's a pretty small subset of readers who will share even a fraction of my excitement about this news. Newark Bay? The more or less inland harbor -- hidden from view from the outer coast by the big land blob that is Staten Island -- that is the, the industrial hub of North Jersey? Would it help to think of it as the maritime heart of Sopranos country?

It's still not exactly glamorous, but Newark Bay is now where the hottest action of New York Harbor, since despite its remove from the open ocean, thanks to diligent dredging of the Kill Van Kull and Arthur Kill, its outlets to that ocean, it can handle all many of the larger ocean-going freight vessels, and its western shore gives them access to the North American mainland, a major saving in shipping costs.

Maybe it's just this thing I've developed, this late-life fascination with the real geography of the harbor,now going beyond the obvious part that's on display from the Battery (the southern edge of Manhattan Island) and from the New York City Department of Transportation's gift to harbor hounds, the Staten Island Ferry. That's the Upper Harbor, 5 on the map --

* lying between Manhattan to the north, Brooklyn to the east, Staten Island to the south, and New Jersey (north to south: Hoboken, Jersey City, and Bayonne) on the west;

* with Governors Island sitting just south of Manhattan and east of Brooklyn, and with Liberty and Ellis Islands just east of the New Jersey coast;

* and with the Hudson River projecting north on the west side of Manhattan, separating it from New Jersey;

* and the East River to the east of Manhattan, separating it from Brooklyn (spanned in these lower reaches by the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg Bridges) and as it continues northward separating Manhattan and the Bronx from Queens;

* and just visible from standard Upper Bay outposts, the Kill Van Kull separating Staten Island on the northwest from New Jersey (with views from some angles of the Bayonne Bridge over the kill);

Nowadays there seem to be all sorts of boats cruising the upper harbor, and I've done those tours. Mostly, though, they seem to be about what you do besides harbor-viewing, like dinner, or brunch, or fireworks (or sailing on a yacht, or a sailboat, or . . .). In the summer there's now free ferry service to Governors Island. (In fact I'm headed to Governors Island tomorrow.)

I've been trying to fill in my picture of the harbor and the coastline. To the east I did my pilgrimage to Plum Beach, Brooklyn (on Rockaway Inlet, more or less midway between 6 and 7), to observe horseshoe crabs with Urban Park Ranger Andrew. Farther east I took advantage of an Urban Park Rangers walk along Rockaway Beach, and still farther east there was a Shorewalkers walk along Jones Beach.

Farther up the East River, I seized the opportunity of a Municipal Art Society walk to get a close-up view, and actually walk over, Newtown Creek, which forms four-plus miles of the border between Brooklyn (to the south) and Queens (to the North), the NYC boroughs that occupy the western end of Long Island.

For the harbor itself, for Jane's Walk weekend in May, the tour I chose took me to the north shore of Staten Island, with a good view of the working harbor, even on a Sunday -- you're reminded that ships don't get "days off" while they're at sea and under intense pressure to make their schedules), including my best view as of then of the Kill Van Kull separating Staten Island and New Jersey, including a pretty good view of the Bayonne Bridge spanning the kill.

By now it should be clear that a major role in the geography of the southern part of the harbor is played by Staten Island, and for that reason, and also for my shocking ignorance of this borough of the city of New York, I've been undertaking a sort of crash course in Staten Island, taking advantage of Municipal Arts Society tours to Snug Harbor, on the Kill Van Kull shore (though we didn't get much of a view of the water): Tottenville, on Raritan Bay, at the southern tip of the island (to which I recently returned for the Second Annual Raritan Bay Festival), and Stapleton Heights. (In fact, I'm about to head out to an MAS tour of the budding cultural scene in Staten Island's St. George.)

In my mind, at least, all of this was pointing me toward -- what else? -- Newark Bay, but I honestly had no idea how I might tackle it as a destination. That is, until I was, as usual, perusing the week's listings in Time Out New York and found myself staring at this listing:

Hidden Harbor Tour: Newark Bay Tour

South Street Seaport, Pier 16, Tue 6:15pm. Fulton St (at South St)
(866) 977-6998circlelinedowntown.com
Subway: A, C to Broadway-Nassau St; J, M, Z, 2, 3, 4, 5 to Fulton StGet directions
$29, seniors $22, children $15

As one of three of its New York Harbor tours, this trip around Newark Bay on Circle Line's Zephyr includes views of the Red Hook Container Terminal and Bayonne Bridge, a passage through Kill Van Kull, which divdes Staten Island and New Jersey, and an exploration of the busy container ports across the water.

Sure enough, the Circle Line Downtown website lists the three Hidden Harbor Tours:

Tour 1 - The Newark Bay Tour
Feauturing the Kill Van Kull, Bayonne Bridge and The Giant Container Ports of Newark Bay

Tour 2 - The Brooklyn Tour
Featuring Brooklyn's Maritime Heritage & Future - Brooklyn Navy Yard to Sunset Park

Tour 3- North River Tour
The Changing Waterfront of North River - Passengers Ships to Kayaks

There are much more detailed descriptions of each onsite. Still-to-come dates for the Newark Bay Tour, in addition to July 12, are August 9 and September 13; for the Brooklyn Tour, July 26 and September 27; and for the North River Tour, August 23. If there was any financial advantage to booking all three tours, which I was certainly prepared to do, I couldn't find any trace of any, but you better believe I went ahead and booked Tuesday's epic trip to Newark Bay.

Luckily for me, I work within walking distance of Pier 16, so with just a little fudging I'll be able to make that 6:15 departure. I've already printed my ticket, but I'm still supposed to be there 30 minutes before departure time. Can you tell that I'm excited?

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Urban Gadabout: Inside the Revolutionary Apple with a co-author of "Inside the Apple"

James explained that the fence around Bowling Green in Lower Manhattan is not only one of the city's oldest surviving artifacts but a participant in some key historical events.

by Ken

Is there any traveler who hasn't become wholly dependent on the Internet? Whether it's for scouting destinations, gathering information, finding timetables, making reservations -- even for a humble urban gadabout, it's hard to imagine doing it these days without the staggering range of resources online.

Online is how I do essentially all of my planning with my "regular" tour providers, New York's Municipal Art Society, New York Transit Museum, and Urban Park Rangers. I'm so booked up for the summer that I have hardly a weekend "day off," and on a lot of those days I'm doubling up. Still, I'm aware that this only scratches the surface of what's available out there, so Friday, with a thinned-out schedule thinning for the 4h of July Weekend, I did some online searching, and stumbled onto, insidetheapple.net, the blog of Michelle and James Nevius, wife-and-husband authors of a combination history of New York and guidebook called Inside the Apple, and learned that on July 3rd James would be doing a "Revolutionary War Walking Tour" in Lower Manhattan, for which, as of a post from a couple of days previous, they still had places.

So I followed the instructions for e-mailing a reservation request and soon got back a confirmation, which left only the consideration of weather, which today started out dreadful, with intermittent heavy rain and overcast, and a not especially sunny forecast. Nevertheless, James sent out an e-mail to the reservation list expressing the hope that the storms would pass through by our scheduled assembly time, 4pm said, "Thus, I am going to be at the meeting place at 4PM to lead the tour and I do hope you will be too! Bring an umbrella, of course, and good humor, and I'm sure will have a great time."

So as soon as I finished puttering around with Bruno Walter and the Siegfried Idyll, I set out for Peter Minuit Plaza, in front of the Staten Island Ferry, and incredbily, just about the whole group of 25 walkers turned up. (As James pointed out, you're apt to get a bunch of no-shows even in perfect weather.)

And through intermittent, sometimes heavy rain, our hardy band trooped through a host of locales where way back in Revolutionary New York events of significance happened, though as is true of almost all of our two centuries of colonial history, first Dutch and then English, hardly anything except streets (and many street names) survives from that time. (A particular bête noire of James, we discovered, is the relative lack of attention that's been given to our four-century-old city's English century. Everybody loves the Dutch century, he points out, and of course the two centuries-plus since the Revolution are wildly popular. But the English century may be too closely connected with English rule, the city itself having been not just the site of the English military command but a center of Loyalist sympathy and activity.

James himself is wildly charming and personable, and an easygoing fount of information, so the tour was a resounding success. We wound up walking up Broad Street to the corner of Broad and Wall, and the Federal Hall that's not the Federal Hall where George Washington was inaugurated as our first president but occupies the same site (in much the way that what now passes for Fraunces Tavern, a famously favorite hangout of George Washington, is a re-creation of the building from Washington's time. Walkng up Broad Street we passed my office building, 20 Broad, and by then I had learned that there wasn't any great canal-like purpose to the canal that originally ran up the middle of Broad Street, as is described in the history of the street that's engraved in the new curbside that was created when the street was repaved with stones -- and security outposts -- from Beaver to Wall Streets a couple of years ago.

I was happy to buy a copy of Inside the Apple from James (I like the idea of a larger chunk of the purchase price going into the authors' pockets), and am just starting to get to know it. In an introductory note, Michelle and James explain:

The goal of Inside the Apple is to give you a different pathway into the city's long and rich history. While there are many books that focus on New York's notable events and famous people, ours is instead organized around the places where those events took place. By grounding the narrative in sites that you can see and visit, we provide concrete, tangible, connections between the city of today and its intriguing past.

People have long tried to answer the question: What makes New York unique? We feel the answer is deceptively simple: more than any other American city, it is primarily experienced on foot. . . .

As this suggests, the history-based narrative is grounded in places, with lots of cross-referencing to related chapters, and there are 14 full-fledged walking tours at the end. I'm looking forward to getting to know the book better.

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