The End

April, 2013, I finished up my Census Tract walk, heading down to the last tract I had left in Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn. Tim Stelloh, a great journalist and fun guy to walk about town with, write a short piece about it here. In the future, if you need to get your walking-around-town fix, I suggest you check out Matt Green's imjustwalkin.com - he's walking every street in the five boroughs.

In conjunction with finishing both the walk and my book, I'm retiring this blog as well, although I might still update the travel blog from time to time. You can still follow along with whatever I happen to be doing in life on the Twitter or the Instagram if you like though.

A final note - to be fair, Big Pun should be singing 99.95% - Because out of the 2217 census tracts, I actually still haven't gotten to one of them - Bronx Census Tract number 1. But that's the only one I've actively been trying to miss. Riker's Island.

"Diversity" cont.

Following up on the diversity index post from last week, more on the WNYC story about tract 754 in Midwood being the "least diverse neighborhood in the city."

One problem with this contention is that a single census tract is almost never a "neighborhood." Now, there are some cases where you can make the argument that a neighborhood falls within a single census tract: Co-op City, Broad Channel, Breezy Point, and City Island come to mind, for instance. But tract 754 is definitely not a "neighborhood." In fact, the article references several things outside the tract to try and demonstrate the character of the neighborhood, such as the synagogues within walking distance, and the kosher bagel shops and travel agencies advertising trips to Israel on the commercial strip about 5 blocks away. So let's analyze the larger neighborhood picture to see if it's really the "least diverse neighborhood in the city."


View Midwood in a larger map

In red, above, is Brooklyn Census Tract 754, which has a diversity index of 1. In blue is tract 754, plus every tract that borders it (748, 750, 752, 756, 758, 760). This isn't meant to be the borders of "Midwood," it's just meant to give an example of a reasonable geographical area that could be called a "neighborhood" which centers on tract 754. This lets us see how diverse tract 754's "neighborhood" is.

Running the diversity index on the larger area, it ends up at 27*. And if you include an additional two tracts to the west, which encompass the commercial strip WNYC article describes in the article, it ends up even higher at 32.

Now, 27 is still not very high, especially for New York City, whose diversity index as a whole is 78.5, or for Brooklyn, which scores a 74, or even for New York State, which scores a 62**. But it is still far from extreme. For instance, it's a score as high or higher than 8 states (New Hampshire, Vermont, Montana, North Dakota, Iowa, West Virginia, Kentucky, and tied with Wyoming). It's also a higher score than several other places in New York that are considered "neighborhoods," like Howard Beach (23), Gerritsen Beach (21), Broad Channel (19), Manhattan Beach (10), and Breezy Point (7).

For those curious, these are all predominantly white neighborhoods. There are also predominantly African-American neighborhoods, all in Central Brooklyn and Southeast Queens, that I can assume would also score lower than the "Midwood" area I aggregated (there are no predominantly Hispanic or Asian neighborhoods that even come close to Midwood's score, although there is one tract in Chinatown that scores a 24). But what you would call a "neighborhood" in those areas is made up of many more census tracts than the neighborhoods referenced above, which are made up of 3 tracts at most and are generally just one or two, and more than I can do a quick and accurate back-of-the-envelope calculation with. For instance, a reasonable definition of "St. Albans," would be about 15 separate tracts, and for "East Flatbush" would be about 30. For what it's worth, I'm almost certain St. Albans, Cambria Heights, Laurelton, and East Flatbush would all score lower than 27.

There are also some other predominantly white neighborhoods made up of several census tracts, like Borough Park, which would score lower than 27. And in addition, there are several areas - both predominantly white and predominantly African-American - of at least seven census tracts (the same amount as the "Midwood," area I aggregated), but which only make up part of a neighborhood, where this is true as well.

The real point to this exercise is to demonstrate that much of the conversation around the neighbohoods of New York City is heavily dependent on the details of the geography you use. There is no real objectively "correct" geography when it comes to "neighborhoods" in New York, but it's important not to be loose with the term either. The WNYC article reads as claiming that Midwood is the least diverse neighborhood in New York (which is demonstrably untrue), and you have to really examine the article with much closer attention than I believe it is fair to expect a lay reader to do in order to realize that this might not be the case.

Neighborhoods: Midwood
Tracts: B748, B750, B752, B754, B756, B758, B760

*I should note that I calculate the diversity index slightly differently from the most commonly used calculation, which is USA Today's. Specifically, I include "other race" in the base calculation. In the neighborhoods I analyzed, this doesn't have an effect of more than a point or two difference at most. 

** I should also note comparing the diversity index across different sized geographies is not really a good comparison. Especially at very small geographies, it breaks down. For instance, the vast majority of houses in America have a diversity index of 0, as everyone in the household is usually of the same race. An area's diversity index should really be compared across other similar sized geographies, in this case about 18,000 people.

"Diversity"

WNYC has a really interesting interactive map which measures the diversity of each New York City Census Tract.


It's worth noting that the definition of "diversity" is based on the Diversity Index. This is the probability that two people chosen at random will be of a different race and ethnicity (by "ethnicity" I mean the census definition, which is either Hispanic or non-Hispanic). It's a good and simple measurement for racial diversity, and mathematically allows for diversity to increase based on two factors - both a higher percentage of people of minority groups, as well as the amount of minority groups themselves. For instance, a tract that's 75% Black and 25% Asian would have a diversity index of 38.5, while one that's 50% Black and 50% Asian would have a diversity index of 50. However, one that is 50% Black, 25% Asian, and 25% Pacific Islander would have a diversity index of 62.5.

But this index is one that is not really designed for the type of diversity we're used to here in New York, where we think of language, religion, ethnicity (in the non-census sense of the word), being foreign-born, and several other factors as contributing to "diversity," as well as race.

For instance, take the tract in Midwood (Brooklyn Tract 754) a mainly Orthodox Jewish neighborhood that they report on as "the most homogeneous in NYC." While the tract is 100% white and only .3% Hispanic, if you dig a little deeper the numbers tell a different story. According to the 5-year ACS data, 7.7% of the residents are of Arabic ancestry (who are classified as "white" by the census), 15% of residents are foreign-born, and almost 20% of residents speak a language other than English at home*. Not huge indicators of diversity by NYC standards, but a ways away from deserving the label "homogeneous."

As for the Jewishness of the neighborhood, this is tougher to quantify, but there are clues in the Ancestry category. The census does not count religion, and will not enumerate any answer in the Ancestry category that they consider a religious answer, instead putting them in the "other group" category. This includes "Jewish," as well an any and all derivatives (even ones considered more ethnic than religious, like "Askenazic"). A little over half of the First Ancestry category is enumerated as "other groups."

Unfortunately, this doesn't really tell us a whole lot, as a little over half of New York City overall falls into the "other group" category and New York City is only estimated at about 10% Jewish. However, to complicate things even more, a large percentage (probably close to half) of these are answers are various Hispanic ancestries, which the census tabulates as Ethnicity and not Ancestry. And since our tract as a whole is only .3% Hispanic, we can pretty safely assume a good amount of the "other group" is Jewish. In addition, about a quarter of the responses are various Eastern European ancestries that are likely to have been put down by Jewish respondents. Taking this data, and factoring in some observation from a quick stroll through the neighborhood, I think it's safe to assume the neighborhood is at least half Jewish.

But, there's one more clue. About 20% of the First Ancestry answers are ones very unlikely to be put down by Jewish respondents. These are English, Irish, American, and Lebanese. (There is also Syrian and Iranian ancestry reported, but Southern Brooklyn has communities of Syrian and Iranian Jews). This lets us peg the Census Tract as one that's at most 80% Jewish, giving us a (very rough and unscientific) estimate of about 50-80% Jewish overall. There's really no way of knowing beyond this rough and unscientific guess how Jewish the tract actually is, (much less how Orthodox Jewish), but I think we know enough to say "homogenously," would not be a fair adjective to use.In fact, rather than portraying the eight blocks of Midwood as some kind of insular shtetl, a far better angle for the story would have been "even at its most homogenous, NYC is amazingly diverse."

Neighborhoods: Midwood
Tracts Walked: B754

*It should be noted that the margins of error for these questions on the Census Tract level are enormous, due to the replacement of the Census Long Form with the American Community Survey. But you work with the datasets you have.

Firth of Forth Rail Bridge

Short writeup (and photos courtesy of noclip.eu) about climbing an absolutely majestic bridge in Scotland over on the travel blog.

Hart Island

Hart Island is not its own census tract - instead being included in Bronx Tract 516 along with City Island. This is probably why I never felt the kind of sense of purpose in getting there that I've felt with some islands with no land access - like the Brother Islands or some Jamaica Bay Islands - that make up the entirety of their census tracts. If I had felt that, I'm sure I would have done what others have done - take a boat or canoe out very early Sunday morning, when the island is inactive. For those who don't know, Hart Island is the city's Potters Field, and the largest taxpayer-funded cemetery in the world. Inmates from Riker's Island do the work, and as a result the island is fairly well patrolled when it's active.

Instead I went a different way, on a bimonthly memorial trip with Picture the Homeless, an advocacy group. The visit was brief, and very moving. A memorial pagoda has been constructed a short ways away from where the ferry docks on the island, and the trip consisted of a short walk there, a remembrance of the people buried on the island among the group, and a slightly longer walk back. Altogether there was an amazing sense of peace to the island, a sense I would have been bereft of if I had chosen to go a more clandestine route.

There is no reason why there cannot be more public access to the island. In the 1990s extensive tours of the island were offered. I chatted a bit with two corrections officers in charge of the island about why the visits were now so infrequent and  restricted, with no pictures or journalists allowed.

Now, these are the guys who run the jails. As such I suspected "security" - probably having to do with the fact that prisoners work on the island burying the dead - to simply be the knee-jerk response. But instead I got something different - that the island was for the families of the deceased, that they didn't want to offend anyone by allowing just anyone access to the place. "That's not what this place is about" was one response I got when I asked why people couldn't visit.

I accepted that they personally believed this, although on an institutional level it made no sense. Discounting the fact that families have to go through an extremely onerous process to even visit, no other city has this issue - we are the only municipality without open access to our public cemetery. After all, cemeteries are by and large public spaces. I have never in my life heard anyone complain that a stranger was walking through a cemetery where their loved one happened to be buried. And it shouldn't matter anyway - what the officers didn't understand was that this shouldn't be their decision to make. Often time civil servants feel a sense of ownership of the public works they're sent to steward, forgetting the "public" part of the "public works."

Luckily, there's been a little bit of interest in more open access, with the City Council looking at switching the jurisdiction to the Parks Department from the Department of Corrections, and otherwise trying to make the island more accessible. It would be a wonderful public benefit to combine the best of the two ways people visit now: the freedom of going without supervision, along with the calm of going legitimately. In their testimony before City Council the Corrections Department was reduced to citing "lack of bathrooms and water fountains" as a reason visitation isn't allowed. That this island isn't available for visitation yet is simply a testimony to the culture of providing public accessibility here in New York - that it's simply not worth the hassle. In a normal paradigm, public ownership, demand, and the lack of any rational reason to deny access would lead to an open area. But in New York we're always struggling against the "just easier to keep it closed" mentality.

Neighborhoods: Hart Island
Tracts Walked: Bx516

Dyker Heights Lights

This was originally posted three years ago, but I've had a couple of requests for it again. I haven't been to Dyker Heights yet this season, but the houses that have the huge displays stay pretty consistent year-to-year. As such, I imagine this map is still pretty accurate. I'll update it if I notice anything different next time I'm there. 

You don't have to go to Dyker Heights to see crazy Christmas displays – pretty much any neighborhood with the magic combination of detached houses and Italians will do the trick. Houses at Westervelt and Pelham Parkway in the Bronx, Beach 144th and Neponsit in the Rockaways, East 93rd street and Flatlands in Canarsie, and 81st street at Colonial in Bay Ridge all easily rival the big displays of Dyker Heights.

But Dyker Heights has quantity along with quality. I've included a handy-dandy map of the highlights below. The map is for the heart of the area - surrounded by 15th Avenue, 86th street, the Gowanus Expressway, and 79th street - but you'll find lights well beyond these borders.

Now, keep in mind that pretty much every block in this area has at least one house that would take the cake on whatever street you live on. With that being said, red blocks are streets that are especially worth a stroll down, while blue blocks are can't-miss. Green points mark exceptional displays, and bathrooms (Nathan's and Bklyn Pizza) are indicated by the familiar symbol. The area's about equidistant from the R at 77th street or 86th street on the west, or the D at 79th street or 18th Avenue on the east.


View Larger Map

As you walk around, the displays start to seem a bit repetitive. You notice the same sparkling reindeers, inflated ferris wheels, and Christmas Countdown clocks. For the really big boys (and some of the smaller guys) I'm pretty sure the lights remain a labor of love, but for others the yard signs proclaiming designs by B&R Decorators and V&J Lighting show that the Dyker Heights lights are mostly about the social pressure of keeping up with the customs of the neighborhood.

No, no pictures – go see them for yourself. If you can't take the schlep, check out Gothamist or Flickr.

Tracts Walked: B140, B144, B146, B148, B150 (every street in tract), B186, B184, B170

Riverdale

There are many neighborhoods in New York where I'm reminded of my Grandparents - huge swaths of Southern Brooklyn, half of Queens Boulevard, a few scattered blocks of the east Bronx even. There should be. My grandparents are part of one of largest, and most culturally influential groups ever to hit New York - part of the great wave of immigrants and their children from the shtetels of Eastern Europe. Even today, almost 100 years after it ended, that culture has remained. The people who make it up may not be so numerous anymore, but it still has a while before it fades completely from the neighborhoods it once dominated

There are fewer neighborhoods where I'm reminded of my parents - middle-class liberal boomer Jews. You'd think that would be a big demographic in New York, one which has left a sizable imprint on the city as a whole. And it has - but it's an imprint that's not really rooted in specific geography, one where the residents have transmitted a character that's stuck to the streets. Most neighborhoods where you would think it might be encountered have either remained with that feeling of my grandparents' world, or been transformed into a kind of generic yuppiness. One of the few places (small parts of Flatbush being the only others that comes to mind right away) I've found it has been in Riverdale.

I never thought I'd like Riverdale - because the combination of its name, middle-class residents and relative suburbaness, it was always put out there in the public consciousness as kind of a souless and uninteresting contrast to the rest of the Bronx - a simplistic and inaccurate narrative for both sides of the divide, but one which I fell for.

It turns out I do like Riverdale, very much. Part of it is because it reminds me of a world I know and love, part of it is because it's one of those neighborhoods that feels like it retained its same basic character for the last 30 years as the city has changed dramatically around it -one of the few neighborhoods in New York where you don't feel like you're just seeing a snapshot of a state of flux. But most of it is because walking around it is interesting. It's one of the only neighborhoods where you can turn a corner and not really know what's next: a cliff, a high rise, a mansion, the Hudson River. Greater Riverdale - essentially the Bronx west of Broadway - looks small on a map but feels vast when you walk it. The topography is a big component of this - the area houses both the highest and lowest points in the Bronx. The lack of any real street grid is another part. But it's the variety of use that really does it. There are streets that would be at home in Scarsdale, and others that would fit right into Washington Heights. There are parks of the woodland variety and ballfield variety, two colleges in its borders, sleek highways and horribly maintained winding asphalt. The Bronx itself is like this - it's the borough that's most patchwork, where you're most likely to find a wood-frame house, 1970s concrete tower, pre-war art deco building, and recent Fedder-crap condo all inhabiting the same block.

But throughout all this physical diversity, a certain character to the neighborhood remains. A character where I'd be not the least but surprised to turn the corner and see my mother or father walking the dog or shlepping home a bag of groceries.

Neighborhods: Riverdale, Fieldston, Spuyten Duyvil
Tracts Walked: Bx285, Bx287, Bx289, Bx293, Bx295, Bx297, Bx301, Bx307, Bx317, Bx319, Bx323, Bx329, Bx333, Bx339, Bx341, Bx343, Bx345, Bx351

Jamaica Bay

Three years ago I took a rowboat with Marie Lorenz out to North Brother Island, the most desolate census tract in New York. Last month we took the same, albeit slightly more beat up, rowboat out to the second most desolate census tract in New York - Jamaica Bay. Check out the pics and commentary here.

The Jamaica Bay islands are actually split between Brooklyn and Queens - as a result they're divided into three different tracts: the populated part of the islands (which is Broad Channel, Queens), the unpopulated parts of the Queens side (which are home to Cross Bay Boulevard and the Jamaica Wildlife Center), and the Brooklyn side. The Brooklyn side has no residents, no industry, and no land connection, save for a tiny sliver of the island that hosts Cross Bay Boulevard. I'm calling it the second most desolate tract because, unlike North Brother, it's legal to visit most (but not all) of the islands, and we also actually ran into a guy walking his dog on one. When we asked how often he saw people out here, his answer was "hmmm... the last time was probably about a year ago."

Altogether we visited one Brooklyn island, one Queens island, and one split between the two boroughs (mostly in Queens, with a small sliver in Brooklyn). We also made two stops on the Rockaway Peninsula: once right past the CrossBay Bridge, where we grabbed a beer at a bayfront bar and lunch at Rockaway Taco (this was a weekday, so thankfully minus the lines); and once at the end of the trip on the tip of Far Rockaway, where we ditched the boat and hoofed it back to the A-train. If we had just gone a slight bit further, we would have landed in Nassau, making it a three-county boat trip. Oh well - next time.

The most interesting thing about Jamaica Bay is how shallow it is. We literally walked through the bay from one island to another.       

Neighborhoods: Jamaica Bay, Far Rockaway, Rockaway Park, Seaside
Tracts Walked: B703.03, Q1702.02, Q942.02, Q1008

Numeric Extremes Walk - Part II

39,038. This is as high as you can go in Five Boroughs. And we’re going to walk there. From 1.

Meet this Sunday, September 18th, at 9:45 AM at the Southeast corner of 1st Avenue and East 1st street in Manhattan - which, at 1, is the lowest product of two intersecting streets in the five boroughs.

20 miles later we’ll hit the corner of 262nd Place and 149th Road in Rosedale, Queens. Multiply those together and you get 39,038, the highest product of any two intersecting numbered streets in NYC.

A warning - this walk is doubling as me knocking off another 24 tough-to-reach Queens tracts. I've arrainged the route so it's not adding any distance to the walk, but this will be your answer for all "why are we turning here" type questions.

After our destination, we’ll have a about a mile walk to the LIRR, which will cost you $3.75 to get back into town.

For those of you for whom 20 miles is a bit much, we'll be hugging the subway through about mile 5, and then staying reasonably near it through about mile 11. It's 2011 - bring a five-borough atlas or a smart phone if you're planning on ditching early and need to figure out how to get to the train. No time to give directions - we're walking here!

Frames of Reference, cont.

Following up from the last post, I want to address some of Alec Baldwin’s specific claims regarding the Upper West Side. It turns out, by the letter of the law, he’s generally not really that far off. For instance, his claim that "The Upper West Side, particularly above 86th Street, has a lot of public housing,” is pretty accurate. The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) houses about 7,500 people between 86th street and 106th street on the West Side. This is about 1/12th of the slightly less than 90,000 people total who live in the corresponding area. To provide some perspective, NYCHA houses about 500,000 of the slightly more than 8 million New Yorkers, or about 1/16th of the population. (NYCHA has an interactive map of developments here).

But his main contention involves the class composition of the Upper West Side. To his credit, he’s not trying to claim that he himself is middle-class, or his building is middle-class, just that “the Upper West Side is the most middle class part of Manhattan where I have lived.”

Now, given that Baldwin later goes on to state he’s lived between Central Park and the Hudson River for the last 25 years, I don’t really know what he’d be comparing it to, so instead let’s take his other claim, that “in terms of what I see, day to day, in Soho, TriBeCa, Upper East, Chelsea, the West or East Village, Flat Iron, the UWS is more middle class than any of those areas.” As I mentioned in the previous post, I’m going to give Baldwin the benefit of the doubt and extrapolate this to mean Manhattan including and below the Upper East and Upper West Sides.

There are six Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs) that make up this geography: 3805 (Upper East Side and Roosevelt Island), 3806 (Upper West Side), 3807 (West Side and Midtown between 14th and 59th) 3808 (East Side between 14th and 59th), 3809 (East Village, Lower East Side, part of Chinatown) and 3810 (The rest of Manhattan below 14th). And the Upper West Side, in terms of income, is smack dab in the middle of these – two PUMAs (3809 and 3807) have lower median incomes, two (3805 and 3810) have higher, and one (3807) is not different in a statistically significant way. Average per capita income and median family income are much the same, except that in each case there’s one PUMA that’s higher and two that aren’t different in a statistically significantly way. So I suppose, in the data set Baldwin’s using, the Upper West Side could be considered middle-class. After all, the median family income for the area is just $169,815 as opposed to the hoity-toity Upper East Side’s $180,289.

The Median Income for “212” – the island of Manhattan – is $79,522. For the United States it’s $62,363. For the Five Boroughs of New York it’s $55,562.

So is the Upper West Side the most middle class of the Manhattan neighborhoods Baldwin is referring to? Sure, insofar as it’s also the most suburban, and most Mormon, and most Senegalese of these neighborhoods.

At the heart of this whole thing though, is that it really seems like Baldwin somehow wants props for not living in Scarsdale or Greenwich or the Upper East Side, or maybe the 7th arrondissement, even though he could afford to - instead opting for the "middle-class" Upper West Side. OK. But he should realize that even if the Upper West Side were middle-class, this is still the equivalent of buying a Rolls-Royce to drive to work and then noting he's chosen to take the "middle-class" way to the office because hey, he could have flown there in a helicopter.

All income numbers are from five-year (2005-2009) American Community Survey Data.

Frames of Reference

Over on the Huffington Post, Alec Baldwin attempts to make the argument that where he lives (The El Dorado, located between 90th and 91st on Central Park West) is in a middle-class neighborhood. In doing so he uses a lot of phrases like "appears to have" and "seems to me" and not of lot of actual evidence (to his credit, Baldwin does admit to not being "an expert in the field of the economic and social demographics of NYC").

I'll be examining some of his specific claims up close in the next post. But for now, I want to address his frame of reference. Two quotes are telling:

"While I have lived in the area from CPW to Riverside Drive and 96th Street to 72nd Street, the Upper West Side appears to have a more visible diversity in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, diversity of income, and age than any other part of 212."

"...in terms of what I see, day to day, in Soho, TriBeCa, Upper East, Chelsea, the West or East Village, Flat Iron, the UWS is more middle class than any of those areas."

First off, what Baldwin "sees from day-to-day" is the much different from "212." I will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume a broader definition of what he means when he says "any of those areas:" namely Manhattan south of and including the Upper East and Upper West Sides. 1,040,938 people live in this area, which is two-thirds of the 1,577,385 people eligible for a 212 area code. I encourage you to visit the other third and see for yourself if it has more "visible diversity in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, income, and age."

Second, and more importantly, if Alec Baldwin was considering a run for Manhattan Borough President, I would say his take on the "212" might be worth half a Huffington Post column. But Baldwin is not considering this office - according to the NY Times "Mr. Baldwin seemed focused on the mayor’s office but allowed the possibility that he would consider other positions. He is clearly aiming high, however, dismissing the idea of serving as a local judge or in the House of Representatives." Being the Mayor involves being elected by the 8,175,133 people who live in the 5 boroughs of New York City.

Would you vote for someone for mayor whose frame of New York City was limited to the Bronx north of the Cross Bronx Expressway (population 1,010,751)? Or the swath of Brooklyn from Bed-Stuy down to Canarsie (1,078,524)? Or Queens east of Flushing Meadows Park and the Van Wyck Expressway (929,404)? Could you imagine how the media would treat someone who said "...in terms of what I see, day to day, in Douglaston, Hollis, College Point, Flushing, Jamaica or Jamaica Estates, Rosedale, Bayside is more middle class than any of those areas?"

Or to put it another way, how about someone whose frame of New York City was limited to Non-Hispanic Asian and Pacific Islanders (1,030,914)? Or people who drive to work (1,049,396)? Or women over 55 (1,084,349)? Or kids in Brooklyn and the Bronx (1,021,836)? Or people making less than $25,000 (1,054,140 - wait a minute, I probably would vote for this person).

Baldwin is considering enrolling in a master’s program in politics and government. I think this is a great idea. I'd like to also suggest a parallel educational path for the next two years. Go get to know the places where the people whom you're asking to vote for you live.

All data is from the 2010 Census, except journey-to-work and income date, which is from the 2000 Census.

Walking from Heathrow

Last month I flew to London, landed at Heathrow, and started walking. 19 miles and 8 hours later I reached the center of town. You can read about the walk over on Polis.

Afterward I met a bunch of weirdos and spent the night in a storm drain under Hyde Park, where I finished second in the first-ever Bazalgette pull-up challenge (photo by Luca Carenzo).

But that's another story for another time.

Tract 1237

Following up from my last post, out of the 16,000 new white residents that have arrived in Bed-Stuy in last decade, which this NY Times article references, 4,569 (28.5%) - of them are concentrated in just one census tract: Brooklyn Tract 1237. 1237 is bounded by Taffe Place, Nostrand Avenue, Flushing Avenue, and Myrtle Avenue.


View Bed-Stuy and Tract 1237 in a larger map

Take a walk through this area. You will find a lot of new apartment buildings with scores of small balconies jutting out awkwardly. You will find a lot of signage written in a strange, but somewhat recognizable alphabet. You will find a lot of guys dressed in black suits, a lot women dressed in long skirts, and a lot of children running on the sidewalk. You will not find very many people like the Jazz musician Arthur Kell, or Lawyer and Coffehouse owner Tremaine Wright, or anyone else the Times references in the article.

The Times quotes four white residents who have moved to the city in the last decade, one black resident who they imply, but don't outright state, is a lifelong resident, three academics (one of whom is also a resident of the neighborhood who is black, although it doesn't say when he moved there), a local real estate agent, the Community Board chair, and the neighborhood Assemblyperson.

There are no quotes from longtime white residents, or new black arrivals, or any other type of resident. There is no mention of the quarter of the people in the neighborhood who are neither black nor white. While this could perhaps be forgiven, given that the article is specifically about the growth of the white population and the decline of the black population, there is not even a passing mention of the role the Hassidic Community played in this, much less an attempt to interview any about the changes in the neighborhood. When you only talk to certain people, it's not a surprise when you construct a certain narrative. 

What's Really the Story?

Two NY Times articles:

Under 18 population in NYC is becoming more white

Bed-Stuy is becoming more white

As I've written here before, I appreciate Sam Roberts and the NY Times' demographic coverage, which is much more intensive and in depth than you find in most other large papers. That being said they very, very often report with a strange set of blinders on.

First of all, the Times completely misses a gigantic factor in both these stories, which is the growth of the Hassidic population Brooklyn (and in Northern Bed-Stuy between Myrtle and Flushing as it specifically relates to the Bed-Stuy story), in favor of their general gentrification narrative.

But more importantly, the Times seems to think the story of the city is that of young, white people with disposable income and their varying migration patters, and the impact of these migration patters on the rest of the city (the flaws of which I wrote about here). While this is certainly A story, it is not THE story. It is not even a large story.

Check out the map showing white population change in the last decade. The areas where there is high growth of the white poplation are small and very specific parts of the city, limited to about half of Manhattan, a quarter of Brooklyn, the south shore of Staten Island, and a few other isolated census tracts. And many of these have nothing to do with the Hipster/Yuppie gentrification pattern - they're growth in the Hassidic, other religious Jewish, Eastern European, Central Asian or other populations that are pretty far from the MacLaren stroller-pushing couple or fixie-riding hipster that the Times seems to think are so important.

I would love the next story about Demographic change in the city to be about the growth of the South Asian community in Ozone Park and East New York, or the Korean population in Bayside, or the diversification of the North Shore of Staten Island or Jamaica Estates or Bensonhurst. Or just something other than this same old story.

Sometimes you have to look at the NY Times more like one of New York's ethnic newspapers - their ethnicity being, essentially, "Yuppie." Once you look at it like this, the biases in these types of stories become understandable and less frustrating. Still, if you're going to call yourself the "New York" Times, you should try to focus on the citizens of "New York," about 3/4 of whom live well beyond the geographic and social confines that the Times' demographic reporting has been limited to so far.

3/4

A recent walk in Forest Hills Gardens took me over the three-quarter mark. 1668 out of 2217. Forest Hills Gardens is a really pleasant walk - heading by the West Side Tennis Club, which hosted the US Open until 1977. The main stadium has been abandoned for a while (and is the subject of preservation fights). It would be a great candidate for inclusion in the Open House New York weekend.

3/4 seems like a lot, but the reality is I've already collected all the low-hanging fruit. The hardest part of this project isn't walking the tracts - it's getting to the tracts. Most of the ones I have left are in Eastern Queens and Staten Island - areas that will take me an hour+ to get to on bicycle or public transportation.

Still, I'm confident I'll be done with the other three boroughs this summer or early fall. And then maybe I should move to Hollis next year.

Neighborhoods: Forest Hills, Forest Hills Gardens
Tracts Walked: Q717, Q709, Q711, Q713.02, Q725, Q727, Q729, Q731, Q733, Q735, Q757, Q769.01, Q769.02, Q771.

The Mysterious Case of the Ghost Zip Code

In doing our walk from the lowest zip code in New York (10001 in Midtown) to the highest (11697 in the Rockaways), we came up against a problem – one member of the group had heard of an even lower Zip Code: 00083, which is Central Park. I had never heard of Central Park having its own Zip Code, and decided to look into if this a little deeper. Evidence is mostly negative. To note:

1) Looking up all Zip Codes for "New York, NY" on the United States Postal Service Zip Code Lookup doesn't return 00083.

2) Downloading the GIS shapefile for NY State Zip Codes clearly shows no separate Zip Code for Central Park, instead dividing it up amongst several different Upper East and Upper West Side Zip codes.

3) The NYC Parks Department Headquarters, which is actually within Park boundaries, does not use the 00083 zip code, instead having Zip Code 10065. Likewise, the NYPD Central Park Precinct uses 10024. Others places, like the Central Park Boathouse and Central Park Zoo don’t list zip codes at all.

4) Entering “00083” on Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, Mapquest, or Weather.com yields nothing.

5) Googling “New York, NY 00083” yields 290 results, most of which are property listings through Real Estate Websites on Central Park West or South, which are obviously not correct. To contrast, Googling "New York, NY, 10001" yields about 28 million results.

The only mitigating evidence I can find in favor is that if you enter "00083" on OasisNYC it directs to Central Park (I don't know what base files Oasis is using for Zip Code data). To a lesser extent, there are also a few websites (myplayground.com, openwifinyc.com, citi-date.com) that list places in Central Park as having a "00083" zip code.

On the surface, it looks like there's nothing official about 00083 at all, but that it somehow has gained a toehold in the general public consciousness. If anyone wants to look into how Central Park got an Urban Legend Zip Code, it’d be an interesting story.

Numeric Extremes Walk, Part I

This Sunday, June 19th, I’ll be leading a walk from the lowest zip code in the New York, 10001 in Midtown, to the highest, 11697 in the Rockaways. In doing so we’ll also walk the length of Flatbush Avenue, the second longest street in Brooklyn. We’ll end at the beach in Ft. Tilden Park, so bring your bathing suit. 15 miles. We should be done around 6, where the options will be eating, drinking, swimming, going home, exploring Ft. Tilden park (there's some cool stuff in there), or joining me in walking Queens Tract 916.01 through Breezy Point to the tip of the Rockaway Penisula.

Meet at 11:45 at the tip of Herald Square (the intersection of 34th, Broadway, and 6th Avenue).

I'll be doing at least one other "Numeric Extremes Walk" this summer, maybe more if I can think of them.

Meadowmere

Leading a recent walk through Queens, we passed through Meadowmere, a tiny area of four streets nestled at the end of a long finger of land belonging to Queens which snakes around the East side of JFK airport. Take a quaint wooden footbridge over Hook Creek and you're in Meadowmere Park, Nassau County. 

I told the group that this was the "most remote neighborhood in New York."  But upon being challenged, I couldn't really substantiate the claim. It's not the furthest neighborhood from Columbus Circle, where New York's mile 0 is (that would be Tottenville). It's not the neighborhood furthest from any other in the five boroughs (that would be City Island). It's not the neighborhood furthest from public transportation (that would be Breezy Point, although it wasn't between 2008 and 2010 when it had Ferry service). It's not even the neighborhood with the worst city infrastructure - unlike this area, it finally got sewers and drainage a few years ago - although each household had to pay $5000-$10,000 for the privilege.

It is the neighborhood furthest from any other in the five boroughs that isn't an island. But that seems like a pretty big caveat. Still, the feeling of remoteness is greater than in any other area I've been to. If you find yourself there, grab dinner or drinks at the Bayhouse Restaurant (actually in nearby Warnerville), displaying it's proud "A" rating from the New York City Board of Health and Mental Hygiene, which proves it is indeed still in the five boroughs. If you've got a boat, you can kick it under the Crossbay Bridge and up the head of Jamaica Bay, and tie if up right on their patio.

Neighborhoods: Meadowmere
Tracts Walked: Q664

Book

I have a deal with Tarcher (an imprint of Penguin), to write a book which will be out Fall of 2012.   It's a travel memoir, mostly about me and this guy's urban exploration adventures around the world, but will have lots of other observations on cities and generally funny and interesting stories. A few of these, which will probably find their way into the book in greatly expanded form, can already be found by digging around this site but most can't. I have no good title yet - if you come up with something brilliant please let me know.

I have a good story to tell, and am pretty excited to be able to do it. But to use a baseball analogy, when it comes to the international urban adventure game I've always kind of thought of myself as a decent hitting backup utility infielder - just one that's lucky enough to play on the 1927 Yankees.  I've been along on a great ride, and will give myself credit for managing a home run or two along the way, but really - you should check out some of the All Stars.

So anyway, in addition to actually writing the thing, my job now (or so I've been told) is to build a "platform."  This is industry shorthand for "try to be as famous and popular as possible by the time the book comes out."  Since we are currently living in the age of social media fascination, this means everyone is focused on twitter followers, facebook likes, and website hits. These three things are now taken almost as a sort of currency. Someday pretty soon someone is going to make a ton of money by offering a pay-service setting up fake Twitter accounts to follow you. Seriously - get 10,000 Twitter followers and apparently the world is yours.

As such, you'll notice there's now a Twitter feed on the righthand side of the blog.   So follow me on Twitter! I truly, and sincerely, apologize to everyone for the preceding sentence.

It was suggested to me to do live Twitter updates from Urban Exploration sites. This will not be happening with anything too extralegal for obvious reasons. Still, I will try to make the feed as interesting as possible.

Second, be my friend on Facebook! I can't quite bring myself to do the "like me!" thing as opposed to a regular facebook page though. You'll just have to get my updates on local politics and obscure European soccer teams also (Viva Rayo! Congratulations on promotion to La Liga! Vallecas siempre!)

Third, I'll be blogging more here (RSS link on the right), mostly just about places and topics of interest to me.  Sometimes that's getting to hidden or off-limits places by a variety of means, both in New York and wherever else I happen to be, but a lot of times it'll be about demographics or other urban planning topics. As an aside, you might have noticed that the "Stories" tab has been changed to "Explorations and Adventures." I figured that as this site is linked from a lot of Urban Exploration sites, I should probably make it easier for the people who come here to find that part of the site instead of a post about what the 2010 census says about the changes in Ozone Park or something.

One more housekeeping thing - if you are currently wondering "hey, am I going to be in this book?" and haven't heard from me, the answer is almost certainly "I'm not sure yet." If it looks like you will be, I'll be in touch.

Huge thanks to my agent Alyssa Reuben of Paradigm and my editor Sara Carder of Tarcher for believing in a first-time author with somewhat less than 10,000 Twitter followers.

Undercount

Finally, a good article on the undercount that has some attempt at serious investigative journalism, instead of making up ridiculous headlines based on the probably misquoted conjectures of a City Councilwoman (may I suggest this shirt for Diana Reyna?).

It would be interesting to see if the undercount is more of a New York phenomenon - in which New York-centric things like illegal subdivisions would probably be the culprit - or if the undercount is consistent among cities with high immigration (and especially looking at similar immigration patterns as New York), which would point to immigrants becoming even more reluctant respond to the census in the wake of increased immigration enforcement since 2001.

The Times article itself also focuses on a third culprit though - mistaking occupied apartments for vacant ones. This one is kind of strange, and apart from the "possible processing glitch" explanation that Census provides (we'll see if that's it when the review is conducted next month) the only culprit I can come up with immediately would be simple laziness on the part of the Census' field staff.