Hey Folks - Tickets on sale for our Going Places, Doing Stuff trip "Wild Tilly's Circus Story," tomorrow at 6:00.

http://www.fluxfactory.org/going-places-doing-stuff-iii/

This year I'm doing a joint excursion with Matt Levy, Josh Bernstein, and Moira Williams. The trip is Saturday, August 7th. It's starting early, and ending late, late, late - don't sign up if you have anywhere to be before Sunday morning.

Want to know roughly what you're in for? 2008 trip. 2009 trip. There's two clues to this year's trip in the title. A prize for whoever figures it out (no spoilers in the comments please).

4 Upcoming Walks

I've been meaning to do these since, April, but have been delaying them. In conjunction with the good folks at "Hey, I'm Walking Here," I'll be leading 4 walk this summer - three down the longest streets in their respective boroughs, and a final three-state walk from Ft. Lee NJ to Greenwich, CT.

The first one is this Saturday from Greenpoint to Coney Island, including all of Bedford Avenue, the longest street in the Bronx. Meet at 11:00 AM at the corner of Manhattan and Bedford in Greenpoint (G to Nassau). We'll end up at the Coney Island Sandcastle Contest.

The others are tentatively scheduled for August 14th (Tremont Ave, Bronx), September 4th (either Northern Blvd Queens, or Hylan Blvd. in Staten Island) and Sept. 25th (Three-State Walk). The last two especially are subject to change.

Slideshow this Thursday - July 15th

This Thursday I'll be doing a slideshow on the Parisian underground with my friend Steve at the Flux Factory. 39-31 29th Street, Long Island City, NY 11101. 8:00 PM. Free and open to all.

City of Light, City of Darkness - Panel on the Parisian Underground

Though it's known as the "City of Light," there are 170 miles of absolute darkness that exist under Paris – a network of limestone quarries dotted with WWII bunkers, ossuaries, unofficial art galleries, and other assorted surprises colloquially known as “The Catacombs.” It is home to a subculture of people of all ages, interests, and nationalities who make a hobby of exploring and utilizing these and other hidden spaces throughout the city – the “Cataphiles.” Moses Gates and Steve Duncan will be covering the history, culture, and structures of this underground world in a slideshow presentation, as well as explaining how you, too, can become a Cataphile.

Canarsie

Summer's here, and it's walking season again. My goal is to complete Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, and do half of Queens before the season's over, which will probably be sometime in November.

One of the first neighborhoods up on my list was Canarsie. Canarsie for me had always meant "typical Brooklyn" - you know, as in "hey - it's Joey Bagadonuts from Canarsie." Canarsie produced people with thick accents who drank beer in cans, and had 12-foot long cars that they faithfully washed once a week.

Canarsie is still typical Brooklyn - while the neighborhood has little to no remants of its Jewish and Italian population (Young Israel of Canarsie sits dilapidated on 108th street), having almost completely turned over to a West Indian population during the last two decades, its feel remains much the same. Ethnic groups come and go, neighborhoods stay. The middle-middle class feel is something that seems seeped into its sidewalks. Houses are brick and non-descript. A BLT at the deli costs $2.00. Couples hang out at Canarsie Pier, which still has a "no commuter parking" sign, despite it being decades since the last commuter boat ran from the pier. It's Canarsie: middle-of-nowhere, Brooklyn.

Neighborhoods: Canarsie
Tracts Walked: 954, 958, 962, 964, 968, 1098, 956, 966, 990, 992, 994, 996, 998, 1004, 1006, 1008, 1010, 1024, 1026, 1028, 1034, 1018, 1020, 1022, 1012, 1014, 1016, 984, 986, 988

The City According to NY Magazine

Hey New Yorkers - you recognize this, don't you?

No, this isn't a strange Rorschach blot. This is New York City. At least, this is what New York City looks like according to NY Magazine. Or, to put it another way:

As you probably know, Nate Silver's "Best Places to live in NYC" piece has come out in NY Magazine. Now, I am a big Nate Silver fan, mostly because he brings a much-needed dose of data-driven reality and intellectual honesty into an area - namely political writing - where very often people just make shit up and expect to be believed.

And going through the methodology for the NYC neighborhoods article, I'm more and more impressed with how Silver conducted this study - not only did he go way above and beyond the call of duty in gathering and analyzing data, he also made this great tool that lets you weigh the different criteria according to your own definition of what you want in a neighborhood. Got your panties in a bunch because Silver counts schools for 6% and you don't have any kids? Easy - adjust the weighting to make schools count for nothing, and you've got the rankings that matter to you. You can never satisfy everyone, and there's tons of debate you can have over the minutae of the methodology and results - I, for one, am on record as saying the neighborhood that ended up first is a giant social ponzi scheme. But with something like this it's easy to hate and pick out faults, but really, really tough to actually create. All in all, this is a wonderful quantitative analysis - of half of New York City.

So my problem is not with Nate Silver, my problem is what NY Magazine gave him to work with. And what he had to work with was this:

5 neighborhoods in Staten Island, representing about an eighth of the population.

7 neighborhoods in the Bronx, representing about a quarter of the population.

8 neighborhoods in Queens - including all the neighborhoods west of the BQE -representing about a third of the population.

18 neighborhoods in Brooklyn - including all of the area north and west of Prospect Park - representing about half the population.

22 neighborhoods in Manhattan consisting of the entire borough (with the exception of Marble Hill, if you want to get nitpicky).

All in all, a little under half the population of the city is represented in the 60 neighborhoods that are surveyed. As for the the neighborhoods chosen - need you ask? It's everywhere the NY Magazine readership might already consider living (all the usual yuppie and trending-yuppie neighborhoods of Manhattan, Brownstone Brooklyn, and West Queens), with a few bones thrown seemingly at random to the other parts of the city (Belle Harbor? Westerleigh? Co-op City?). In short, the "best neighborhoods" are determined by considering a self-selected sampling of neighborhoods. The best proof of this? The neighborhood everyone seems to be up in arms about getting left off is Forest Hills - the one yuppie area that wasn't included.

Silver addresses this by saying "-- The choice of neighborhoods, and the geographic boundaries assigned to them, were determined by New York magazine staff. I thought they did a very comprehensive job, on balance. It's not trivial to include additional neighborhoods because a lot of this involves counting things -- whether laundromats, toxic waste dumps, or murders -- by hand. The 60 neighborhoods within our scope are not necessarily the 60 best neighborhoods. Yes, we'll get Forest Hills included if we do this next year."

This is ridiculous. Under half the city is nowhere near a "very comprehensive job." No newspaper, magazine, or any other reputable publisher would dream of putting out an article where they analyze the 19 states East of the Mississippi River and North of the 36th Parallel, plus Montana, Florida, Alabama, Oregon and New Mexico, and then list the top 20, call the article "The Best States to Live in America," and respond to criticism of this by claiming they did a "very comprehensive job, on balance," and complaining that doing the other 25 states would be too much work. But yet, that is exactly what this article does - just substitute "New York City" for "America" and "Neighborhoods" for "States."

I don't necessarily even have a problem if NY mag wants to discount everything outside of Manhattan and Brownstone Brooklyn. But it is not "the 50 best neighborhoods to live in New York." It's "the 50 best neighborhoods to live in yuppie New York." I would have actually liked this a lot better than throwing in a few neighborhoods outside this area for what seems to be the sole purpose of showing they're considering more than Manhattan, Brownstone Brooklyn, and Western Queens. When I was in college at my very white Midwestern state school, one year they noticed the cover of a University publication happened to only feature white faces. So did they look for another scene on campus to shoot that was more diverse? No. Did they try and recruit more minorities? No. Did they even just say "hey, I guess this is who we are, so we'll just go with it." No. They used the same picture - but just photoshopped in a few random, darker faces. This is the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the neighborhood selection for the article.

Really this is about me, and many other residents and lovers of the city, being fed up with half the city being completely ignored. If you like Brownstone Brooklyn better than the East Bronx, hey, I don't have a problem with that - so do I. But I at least give both of them a chance. I don't pretend the East Bronx doesn't exist, and don't pretend that it's somehow not part of New York City. And if you only have the resources to survey half the city, why is it always taken for granted that everywhere in Manhattan, Brownstone Brooklyn, and Western Queens must automatically be included, while a few of the rest of the neighborhoods of the city maybe get squeezed in if there's room? Why not distribute them equally throughout the 5 boroughs? Or, better yet, why not first eliminate the neighborhoods where 90% of New Yorkers won't be able to even afford in the first place, instead of starting with them?

There's a lot of publications in this city that focus on one or two particular areas, or ethnic groups, or cultures. But Caribbean Life doesn't call itself "New York Life." The Jewish Press doesn't call itself the "New York Press." The Queens Tribune doesn't call itself the "New York Tribune." Only one culture - the upscale yuppie culture - has the chutzpah to focus on one part of the city and call itself "New York Magazine."

Inspiration

From Page 1 of the January 23rd, 1903 edition of the New York Times

WALKED UP BRIDGE CABLE

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Young Man's Dizzy Climb to the Top of Manhattan Tower

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Policeman Goes in Unwilling Pursuit, Anticipating a Battle in the Air, but Is Disappointed in His Fears.

A tall, broad-shouldered young man, well dressed in a business suit, a light-colored raglan coat, and a light fedora hat, separated himself from the crowd of pedestrians on the Brooklyn Bridge last evening and sprang up on a big supporting cable where it passes up beside the foot passage from the anchorage on the Manhattan side. Without further ado, he started nimbly upward, bound for the dizzy height where the cable joins the top of the tower... Policeman Hogan of the Bridge Squad, on post at the point where the climber began his daring venture, saw the start, but was too late to intercept him... "What'll I do?" inquired Hogan helplessly. "Go after him," ordered Brophy." "Sure," echoed Farrell. "It's on your post."

Hogan, with the same degree of eagerness displayed by a man about to be hanged, gingerly tested the cable with one foot, as if doubtful of its sustaining power. "Go on," yelled a man in the crowd. "Let's see you do the Steve Brodie act." Hogan shivered perceptibly, and cast a reproachful glance in the direction of the voice. But he started. As he did so he slipped, and clutched a stay cable hurriedly, while he muttered something which provoked a solemn-faced bystander to say reprovingly: "Man, would you swear in the face of death!" Hogan waited to hear no more. Upward he started, while Brophy and Farrell shouted reassuringly that if they were wanted they could be found back at the trolley loop. In the meantime the man in the raglan coat had progressed steadily. He was nearing the top, and to the throng on the bridge he looked like a manikin walking on a clothes line. Soon the diminished figure could be seen standing on the recess of the tower quietly surveying the city and harbor at its feet. Far below could be seen the policeman, laboriously making the sweeping ascent...

When Hogan got within speaking distance of the youth, he had the agreeable surprise of his life. "Hello old man," said the stranger genially. "I'm glad there are two persons of good sense in this city. Do you come up here often?" "I could live up here" warmly assented Hogan as a great weight began to lift off his heart. "It's all I can do to keep from coming up, when I ought to be at work." ...Finally, the young man agreed to retrace his steps down the cable, and he started first with Hogan close - but not too close - behind. ... the bridge platform was reached, and Brophy and Farrell were there to congratulate Hogan. "You done nobly," they averred, and then recommended that he take the stranger to the Oak Street Station. On hearing that the stranger began to fight, and fought well all the way to the station...

He said he was Harry Leonard, 24 years old, but would give no address. His reason for climbing, he said, was to see if the tower was safe, and to inspect a little flag there.

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A tip of the hat to Harry Leonard, 24, of parts unknown. And to Policeman Hogan, of the Bridge Squad. And to John Law, Dave Frieder, Alain Robert, Sam Schwartz, Kez, Gary Gorman, Dr. Bojidar Yanev, SaneSmith, Renaldo Clarke, Sam Rohn, Santas Melmoth and Dennis, Morry Alter, Peter B. Kaplan, Phillipe Petit, Vic Argo, Art Jones, Jordan Lage, and Ben Wolf, and of course the rest of the BMW crew. And to anyone else who has managed - by whatever means and for whatever purpose - to find their own answer to the question that everyone who has ever walked across our stone sentinel has asked themselves: "Wow - I wonder what it would look like from up there?"

photo - qx
http://www.ninjito.com/

The Bridges of New York County Part 11 - Nooks and Crannies

There's a lot of ways to cross the Manhattan Bridge. You can walk it, bike it, drive it - even ride over it on the back of a subway if you want, although that's certainly not recommend as a regular means of transverse.



At about the 24 second mark you can see one of the nooks and crannies of the bridge - a short abandoned tunnel that used to connect the north tracks to the uptown Broadway Express line before the completion of the Chrystie Street Connection in 1967. Out of all the bridges, the Manhattan is the one that seems to have the most of these nooks and crannies to explore. A constructed, but never used Second Avenue Subway station below its Manhattan approach. A narrow passage that lets you squeeze inside the globes that crown its Brooklyn-side tower. Perhaps the most interesting is a small nook inside the entrance colonade that houses a time capsule to be opened in 2009. And there's a few others that have either been closed off, or like the formally unused North Walkway, since opened up to the public.



Unused Second Avenue Subway tunnel - photo by Danielle Plamondon

Getting cozy inside one of the globes

Time Capsule Nook - South part of the Manhattan entrance colonade

North walkway - 2003

And out of all the bridges I've climbed, it's the most ephemeral to be on top of. There's none of the stone solidity of the Brooklyn, or the web-like heavy iron of the Hell Gate. Even being on top of the hollow sheet metal of the Williamsburg or see-through platform of the Queensboro feels stable by comparison. The top of the bridge is perhaps five and a half feet wide - narrow enough that you can lie down on the top lengthwise and touch either end with each hand. There isn't even a guardrail, unless you count the tension wires that run across the top of each tower.

The first time I climbed the Manhattan was with an Aussie friend of mine, who captured the essence of the escapade (as well as some great photos) in one of one of my favorite essays. To anyone who truly wants to understand why we do this stuff: this is required reading.