Hollis

A lovely neighborhood - went to check out the Jam Master Jay mural at 205th and Hollis Avenue and the Hip-Hop Museum at Hollis Famous Burgers at 203rd and Hollis. It was a hot day, people were barbequing every block, but no improptu invites - oh well. Hollis Famous Burgers claims Hollis is the most famous neighborhood in New York. What? South Bronx baby!

I was scoping out the joint as a potential dinner stop for my Going Places, Doing Stuff tour, which it ended up being. The museum part's a little sparce (read the Times article), but $4.50 gets you quite the fat cheeseburger. There's definitely something unorthodox about it, but it's good.

Neighborhoods: Hollis, Jamaica, Queens Village. Tracts Walked: Q400, Q402, Q404, Q500, Q502.01, Q502.02, Q504, Q506, Q508, Q510, Q512, Q516, Q518, Q520, Q522, Q524, Q532

What's the opposite of this project?

While Going Places and Doing Stuff with Matt Green and Jason Eppink last Saturday, I came across 13 people doing what is, perhaps, the exact opposite of my project. Instead of trying to see 2217 census tracts once, they were attempting to see one census tract 2217 times - and then another 3432 times for good measure.

The Self-Trancendence 3100 takes place in Queens Census Tract 452 - a sleepy, suburban area near St. John's University that's dominated by the Thomas A Edison technical high school and surrounding yards. The race involves running 3100 miles over almost 2 months around a single city block, bordered by Grand Central Parkway, 164th Place, 85th Avenue, and 168th Street - a total of 5649 laps. There is little that I personally would find more mind-numbing, although one person we talked to who had completed the race swore it wasn't boring. Doing one lap, plus hanging out in the park and walking around the corner for lunch was perfect for me, and quite enough to knock Q452 off the list.

We went on to climb abandoned gas cannisters, skip around a playground with this guy, and break several world records. Big thanks to Matt, Jason, Flux, and the Rude Mechanical Orchestra for putting together a great day.

Neighborhoods: Jamaica, Jamaica Hills. Tracts Walked: Q452

Little Korea

First up in our analysis of the "Little Neighborhoods" is Little Korea. Little Korea is generally considered to be the stretch of restaurants, hotels, and other business that cater to the Korean community on 32nd street between 5th avenue and 6th avenue. Almost all the restaurants are open 24-7 (if you're a businessman who just flew in from Korea, lunchtime is 3:00 AM here), the Karaoke is always a blast, and there's a decent rooftop bar above the La Quinta Inn with a nice view of the Empire State.

Now, I can tell you with absolute certainty that the absolute largest number of Koreans that live on 32nd street between 5th and 6th is 21. Most data is only available at the Census Tracts level, which in Manhattan is generally an area of something like five North-South Blocks by two East-West blocks. However, questions asked of everyone on the short form - 100% data - go as far down as the individual block. This isn't a great geographic division - a "block" is one square block, not one street. For example, "Block 1005 of Census tract 76" is the south side of 32nd street, the west side of 5th Avenue, the north side of 31st street, and the East Side of Broadway, not 32nd street between 5th and 6th.

Still, we can amalgamate blocks 1003, 1004, 1005, and 1006 of Census Tract 76 to encompass the Little Korea strip, plus the north side of 31st, the south side of 33rd, the west side of 5th Avenue, all of Broadway, and and the east side of 6th Avenue between 31st and 33rd streets (outlined below - the Little Korea commercial strip is in Yellow).


What we find is that there are exactly 21 people who describe their race as "Asian," either alone or in conjunction with one or more other races. Now, even if all of these Asians were Korean, and all of them lived on 32nd street, that's still 6 less than the number of restaurants I counted. So I'm calling it now for "restaurants" in Little Korea.

To be fair, however, only 70 people total live in this area. So let's take a little bit broader look at the neighborhood. Even if you just stretch "Little Korea" across 5th Avenue to encompass 32nd street between Madison and 5th as well, adding another two blocks, it makes a difference.


Now the total population of Asians rises to 65 - more than the number of restaurants on the same stretch. Still, that's out of 296 people, for a grand total of a maximum 22% Korean. And that's assuming all Asians on 32nd street are Korean. While we don't have an exact count of Koreans until the census tract level, we can do some extrapolating. In Census Tracts 74 (which encompasses 32nd street between Madison and 5th) and 76 (which encompasses 32nd street between 5th and 6th) 23.7% of people who checked "Asian" also checked "Korean." Extrapolated down to the block level, it would mean only 15 Koreans on the stretch of 32nd street between Madison and 6th - way less than the number of restaurants.

However, what if we count the surrounding area as "Little Korea" as well? After all, 32nd street is a commercial street without a lot of residents in general. Since we have to go up to the Census Tract level to get data specifically for "Koreans," we can use Census tracts 74 and 76. That encompasses the area from 28th street to 35th street, between Madison and 6th, as you can see in the map below.
This is a very, very generous definition of Little Korea. Using this definition we get 365 Koreans out of 6205 people - or about 6%. That's higher than the percentage of Koreans in New York City as a whole, but much less than other tracts, such as Queens Tract 1161 in Flushing, which is almost 1/3 Korean. A still generous, but slightly more realistic definition would be Block Groups 1 of Tracts 74 and 76, which is 31st through 35th between Madison and 6th.


Here we have to do some extrapolating. There are 503 Asians in these block groups. Using the information we gathered before - that in these two Census Tracts 23.7% of Asians are Korean - we're left with 120 Koreans in this area. You could up that number somewhat based on the idea that the Korean community in these Census Tracts might be somewhat concentrated closer to 32nd street.

So what do we have? At most, a few hundred Koreans in the general vicinity of what is called "Little Korea," representing less than 10% of the population. Not completely insignificant, but certainly not anything to portray as a Korean Neighborhood, per se. It's even less than the 515 Korean residents that the tiny Little Korea in the Bronx had in 2000.

As you can see, doing this kind of micro-demographic analysis is an imperfect science for a lot of reasons. And we're not even getting into what kind of Koreans live in Little Korea - old or young, recent arrivals or third-generation citizens, rich or poor. Still, in a city that's as concentrated and changes from block to block as much as New York, it's an analysis you have to be able to do. How else are you going to support claims like "there's more Korean restaurants than Koreans in Little Korea?"

Next up - Little Brazil.

Neighborhoods: Little Korea. Tracts Walked: M76, M74

The Little Neighborhoods

No, not the small neighborhoods - the ones that start with the word "Little." Over on my other blog I make the claim that "there are no Koreans in Little Korea, there are no Brazilians in Little Brazil, and there are definitely no Italians in Little Italy." I decided I should crunch the numbers for a claim like that, so we're going to check it out. Nate Silver would be proud. I'm also adding in Little Italy in the Bronx, Little India in the East Village, and a couple others that NYC & Co (the city's marketing arm) has invented for it's 9 in 09 campaign - Little Sri Lanka in Staten Island, and Woodlawn in the Bronx, which NYC & Co. insist is "Little Ireland."

Now, every New Yorker knows that while "Little This, That, or The Other" might not have people of that particular persuasion, is almost always has restaurants. So as part of this, one question I'm going to be answering for each neighborhood is "more restaurants, or more people?" My quick guesses:

Little Korea: more restaurants.
Little Italy: more restaurants.
Little Brazil: this is a tough one. More people. Both in single digits though.
Little Italy in the Bronx: more people.
Little Sri Lanka: more people.
Little India: more restaurants.
Woodlawn (Little Ireland): more people.

Now, the numbers will not be that accurate. These are all micro neighborhoods, meaning the largest (Woodlawn) is only 4 census tracts. We have to go all the way back to the 2000 census to get tract-level data, and we all know the city has changed a great deal since then. There are ways you can developed trending numbers based on the American Community Survey from 2007 and other sources, but not for such detailed data and small geographies. So keep in mind the question is not going to be "how many Italians are in Little Italy?" it's is going to be "how many Italians were in Little Italy in 2000?" And I'm going to be comparing this against the restaurants I count there in 2009, so the "more people or more restaurants" question won't be an entirely accurate comparison.

Second, there's the question of what constitutes someone who is "Korean" or "Italian" or "Brazilian." Is it someone who was born in the respective country? Someone who speaks the language? Someone who self-identifies as being of that particular ancestry? These are all questions asked on the census, and all questions that can be used to determine someone's ethnicity. Does a kid from Jersey whose great-grandparents were from Italy count as "Italian" if he's currently living in a Mulberry Street tenement with two of his NYU roommates? For purposes of this exercise, I'm going to be as liberal as possible in determining who is "Korean" or "Italian" or "Brazilian."

Third, we will have better data for some neighborhoods than others. This is because the Census gathers racial and certain ethnicity information on their short form that everyone gets, but gathers place-of-birth, language, and ancestry information from only the 1 in 6 households who get the longer form. The census bureau specifically counts "Korean" and "Asian Indian" as "races," but Italian, Irish, and Brazilian as ethnicities, so as a result we have 100% data for Koreans and Asian Indians, but only sample data for the others. Sri Lankan is interesting, because while the short form lists Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Asian Indian, Vietnamese, and Filipino as races under the "Asian and Pacific Islander" category, after that it goes to "Other Asian." So we have potential 100% data for Little Sri Lanka, but it has to be looked at pretty carefully.

We'll start with the easiest one, Little Korea, next post.

Ozone Park and Woodhaven

Queens, as you may have heard, is the most diverse county in the United States. And there's a lot of interesting and vibrant areas that are a result of this diversity - generally concentrated in the Northwestern part of the Borough. It's always fun to go visit Jackson Heights or Astoria or Elmhurst and see what kind of stuff you run into. This vibrancy and energy is a far cry from 20 or 30 years ago, when the neighborhoods were much more monolithic.

There are, however, some other neighborhoods that are just as ethnically diverse but are far more boring. Just because people now hail from all over the globe doesn't mean the nondescript sidewalks and houses of Woodhaven and Ozone Park are that different from a generation ago. The faces are different, the neighborhood remains the same.

Boring doesn't mean bad - the area's certainly pleasant, just not really the type of place to go looking for anything of note. But I haven't walked the whole area - maybe I'm missing something right around the corner. Between the J-train and Forest park there's a lovely area of Victorians that remind me of similar areas in Flatbush. It's fairly high on my list of areas I'd like to live in if I ever decide the quasi-suburban life is for me.

Neighborhoods: Woodhaven, Ozone Park. Tracts Walked: Q8, Q10, Q12, Q14, Q16, Q18, Q32, Q34, Q36, Q38, Q40.01, 40.02, Q42, Q52, Q54, Q58

East Side Access

I've walked through a lot of tunnels underneath Manhattan - rail, sewer, subway, aqueduct, and a few other assorted odds and ends. Even in the easy ones it's always at least a mild adventure - there's always the realization that you're not really supposed to be there.

This time however, it was much different. I got in three whole census tracts 120 feet below Manhattan by managing to tag along on an MIT engineering tour of the East Side Access tunnel - the one they're currently drilling from the LIRR railyards in Queens to Grand Central Terminal.

This project's benefits go well beyond just letting Long Islanders have a one-seat ride to the East Side. There's at least 5 other peripheral advantages that I can think of as well.

First, by decongesting the route to Penn Station, it will speed up LIRR trains going to the West Side as well.

Second, allowing more than one route into Manhattan from Long Island provides some much-needed redundancy to the LIRR routing. One of the two tunnels can be out-of-service for repairs or because of an emergency, and there's still a way to get to Manhattan from the LIRR.

Third, this will free up train slots at the currently at-capacity Penn Station, allowing Metro-North the possibility of running regular trains through the underutilized Riverside Park Tunnel into Penn Station as well as into Grand Central.

Fourth, the above new routing, combined with the new LIRR tunnel to Grand Central, will completely eliminate the "Manhattan Transfer," or people needing to get from Penn Station to Grand Central to continue their journey. Amtrak, NJ Transit, Metro North, and the LIRR will all have a one-station connector between any two train networks.

Fifth, the expanded options for suburban commuters will result in less taxi and subway congestion in Midtown (which ends up actually benefiting me, the non-suburban commuter) from less people needing to take cars and the subway from Grand Central to the West Side, or Penn Station to the East Side.

The tour itself was interesting, although heavy, heavy into the engineering aspect (you can read all about the various technical stuff here). The workers have three shifts each day (work is 24-7, weekdays, but usually off on weekends), which arrive via a small work train from Queens. We were scheduled to hitch a ride on this train from the vent shaft at 2nd Avenue, but since we were late ended up slogging down by foot to 50th and Park instead. That's where the interesting stuff is, including the TBM (Tunnel Boring Machine) responsible for actually making the tunnel. We got to climb in it a bit which was pretty fun.








If we had gone the other way (directly above), we would have gone through the lower level of the 63rd street tunnel, which was sunk for this particular project in the 1980s. The upper level is currently used by the F train, but the lower level is used only by the tunnel work train. Until they restarted this project, it was one of those great hidden yet accessible spaces, useful for all sorts or things - graffiti, raves, camping out, whatever. Of course, in these days of working sandhogs and emergency exit alarms, it's a bit tougher to get to.

One of the MTA workers along on the tour told me that the tunnel workers ask her about the graffiti in it, and that she wants to research and write an article about it for the MTA. It's not her fault, but it left a bad taste in my mouth. The MTA will not have anything to do with any outside filmmaker, journalist, or anyone else that even mentions the word "graffiti," much less wants to do a story that goes any deeper than "graffiti is bad." Doing a story on graffiti for internal use, while they still hold this policy, struck me as extremely hypocritical.

A lot of people have asked me how I got in on the tour, and how to hook it up. Talking with the Edward Kennedy (no, not that Edward Kennedy), the guy who conducted it, it seemed like about a once every month or two thing, was really focused on the engineering aspect, and was mostly set up through schools, with MTA employees getting to tag along if they were interested and knew who to ask. My best advice is to try and get a professor to set something up if you're in school, or find someone who is and tag along. Getting an elected official to write a letter for you asking to get in on the next tour might also work.

There's a lot of people who are interested in going, and the attitude behind not accommodating everyone seemed to be along the lines of "hey, we're trying to build one of the biggest engineering projects in the country here - we don't have time to double as a tourist site for everyone" which I can respect a lot more than the two other rationals I run into a lot - bullshit security excuses or a general disdain for the hoi polloi. You'd be amazed at how many bureaucrats feel a sense entitlement to the particular public works they're in charge of, and a sense of superiority in maintaining their exclusivity.

Better pictures than I have can be found here

Neighborhoods: Upper East Side, East Midtown. Tracts Walked: M110, M114.02, M112.03

Park Slope

I'm not a hater of all neighborhoods frequented by a certain income-strata or liberal political mindset. I love the Village. I love (and used to live in) Brooklyn Heights. I can even get behind the Upper West Side at times. But I just do not get the appeal of Park Slope.

Park Slope is an example of a strange kind of social ponzi scheme. The neighborhood has no intrinsic value - no decent trains (unless you're up by Flatbush), no real character, overpriced amenities - its only value for people is derived from having other, similar, people give it value. $2,250 for a one bedroom on 4th ave & 19th street (which is not really even Park Slope) to live by a local train that takes 45 minutes to get to Midtown? Pay half as much to live by the 36th street stop, where you can actually grab a decent meal for 5 bucks and have an express train.

Even though this was the first part of New York I visited in my adult life, and I have done my fair share of schlepping around the neighborhood, I can't really come up with much new to say about it. And anyway, this neighborhood is probably the blogged about, meta-online-analyzed place in the United States. Read what other people have to say about it. The only reason I'm writing this up is to knock off another dozen tracts. I'm leaving off the tracts north of Union which is an area that doesn't really apply to this post.

Neighborhoods: Park Slope. Tracts Walked: 133, 135, 137, 139, 141, 149, 151, 153, 155, 157, 165, 167