Jen and I took some time during our lunch the other day to visit the Target America: Drug Traffickers, Terrorists and You traveling exhibit at One Times Square. The exhibit’s message is obviously a serious one, but I have to say that it was a real hoot to see that crack den!

USA Today explains what the Drug Enforcement Administration, who put together the show, intended with its hard-hitting displays:

The overriding theme of the exhibit, visible from Times Square through plate-glass windows, is the link between drug trafficking and global terrorism.

The exhibit invites visitors to trace the path of cocaine and heroin from drug labs in Afghanistan and Colombia to the pockets of insurgents in Colombia and Peru and to such terrorist organizations as Hezbollah.

But it also makes a more controversial link between terrorism and the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The exhibit includes a large display of debris collected from both sites. The exhibit does not specifically tie the attacks to drug trafficking, but it uses the events to explain how terrorists use the drug trade as one of several methods to fund attacks. It cites U.S. intelligence linking the Taliban in Afghanistan, and by extension its thriving heroin economy, to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

“Someone who thinks he or she is making an individual choice that won’t harm anyone else is not seeing the larger picture of where their money eventually goes,” says Anthony Placido, special agent in charge of the New York division of the DEA.

While I’m not opposed to drawing attention to how personal responsibility plays a role in geopolitical affairs — if one should be concerned about Nike sweatshops, then he or she should certainly be concerned about Afghan poppies or South American coca — I question how well the DEA’s logic holds up. Because if illegal drugs are bad, then why not just legalize them?

The libertarian Reason Magazine agrees:

In the end, the exhibit’s reason for being is to equate casual drug use with “narco-terrorism”—and it’s that equation which sets a new standard in government mendacity. (Well, perhaps not exactly new: This message was pioneered by a post-9/11 series of television ads produced by the Office of National Drug Control Policy that rightly elicited widespread derision.) The idea here is that terrorist groups sometimes traffic in illegal drugs to fund their deadly activities; if you use illegal drugs, then you are complicit in terrorist actions.

Like any good propaganda claim, it’s not so much flat-out wrong as it is woefully—and purposefully—incomplete and misdirected. Some terrorist groups have indeed trafficked in illegal drugs because of the huge, black market profits involved and the lack of legal oversight. Similarly, drug traffickers (especially in Latin America) have committed acts of terrorism to protect their trade. Needless to say, the one clear solution to such problems is nowhere discussed in “Target America.” If the drug trade were legalized, black market profits—and violence—would disappear. When is the last time terrorists used, say, the tobacco trade to finance their operations?

Not counting Hezbollah’s cigarette smuggling, the point is well taken!

Don’t miss out on your chance to vote for MTA’s Ms. Subways 2004 (isn’t 2004 almost over?) at the New York Post.

Highlights from the four finalists’ answers to why they deserve to be Ms. Subways include:

• “Like a best friend, I can depend on the subway no matter what time it is.”
• “I truly believe I represent New York and would be a great Miss Subways, in that I have taken full advantage of the opportunities that this wonderful city has had to offer me.”
• “I would prefer a different word than deserve; I believe one earns success through hard work and diligent effort.”
• “I deserve to be Ms. Subways 2004 because I believe in the strength of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.”

Proving that New York is all things to all people, The Villager reports that Sept. 11 conspiracy theorists gathered just miles from Ground Zero last week to discuss unmanned drones and CIA plots:

Actor Ed Begley, Jr., hosted a succession of speakers and panels of little-known authors, reporters and documentary filmmakers who treated the capacity crowd to five hours of juicy details. Attendees bought self-published tomes, commemorative T-shirts and documentary DVDs that promised to once and for all indict, convict and hang a White House administration they say stole the presidency, laid demolition charges in the trade towers and launched an unmanned drone aircraft at the Pentagon.

The quirkier attendees bandied their laser beam theories amid serious discussions of puffs of smoke seen emanating from small explosion points or “squibs” on the towers as evidence of controlled demolition; video clips of New York firefighters describing successive explosions they heard in the buildings’ cores that preceded the pancake collapse; an interview with W.T.C. leaseholder Larry Silverstein interpreted as an admission that he authorized the demolition of W.T.C. 7 and enough slow-motion footage of unidentified explosions just before the planes hit the towers to numb the Warren Commission.

But more importantly, who knew Ed Begley, Jr. (St. Elsewhere, Six Feet Under, among other things) was part of the tinfoil-hat brigade?

The Museum of Modern Art is finally leaving Queens and Queens says “don’t go!”

MoMA QNS was a point of pride for Queens boosters like ourselves, but as Jen points out, now that it’s $20 to visit MoMA, it’s unlikely we’ll go more than perhaps once to see the new place (and then probably only on a free Friday evening . . .). Relevant quote:

As Melissa Dale, a first-year student at the Parsons School of Design who was visiting the museum’s Queens outpost last week, said: “If it cost us $20, we probably wouldn’t come. It’s, like, food for three days for us.”

Exactly!

Following the much-needed change in the absurd liquor laws that prohibited liquor sales on Sunday, and the subsequent weird middle ground that allowed stores to open on Sunday provided they closed on one other day a week (Wednesday? Monday? How does one decide?), the state has once more changed the law to allow liquor sales seven days a week. Huzzah! Next step: liquor sales in grocery stores (otherwise known in the rest of the civilized world as “supermarkets,” which helps one understand the sublime concept of “supermarket vodka”).

Jen and I noticed this last night at a store in Brooklyn and I forgot about it until I saw this Gothamist post today (credit where due).

Funny related anecdotes:

1. Before I lived in New York State, my brother and I went out to a friend’s house on Long Island for a Sunday barbecue. After arriving in our friend’s town, we searched for a place to buy a bottle of wine. Not seeing a liquor store, we happened upon a beer distributor. We stopped and inquired as to where one could pick up a bottle of wine. “New Jersey,” he replied. (Why does that sound like a Metropolitan Diary to me?)

2. Jen made dinner one Sunday evening. Realizing she forgot to get wine, she picked up a bottle at the local bodega, not realizing it was that watered-down cheap-shit 6-percent stuff. If you’ve ever had it, you know what I’m talking about . . .

Last week I got a chance to see Masayuki Sono’s “Postcards” memorial. Postcards is Staten Island’s memorial to the 252 Islanders who died on Sept. 11. The memorial is located on the waterfront in St. George. It consists of two concrete postcards (I think they evoke a bird’s wings, too) that frame the Lower Manhattan skyline. Granite is embedded in the wings, into which is carved a profile of each of the Staten Island victims.

I’m pretty sure Postcards is the first Sept. 11 memorial in the immediate area. The city has taken a slow approach to the process of making a memorial at the World Trade Center site — obviously it is still many years away.

It’s not a bad memorial — elegant, really, in the site-specific way it frames where the towers stood. Out of curiosity, I’d like to see more artistic criticism of it.

Here’s a Staten Island Advance story about the memorial’s dedication:

“We wanted to make it as personal as possible,” said Borough President James Molinaro, who stayed at the site for almost three hours after the dedication ceremony had ended. “It’s very comforting to everyone I’ve spoken with.”

The design of the monument, the brainchild of Japanese architect Masayuki Sono, is supposed to be two 40-foot postcards, stretching out into the sky. But almost everyone had their own take on what it represents — from wings carrying their loved ones to heaven, to the pages of a book turning to a new chapter.

“I spoke with someone who lost his brother, and he said it reminded him of sails,” said Molinaro, “because his brother loved to sail.”

For Diane Boland, an emergency room registrar at Staten Island University Hospital in Ocean Breeze, “Postcards” gave her the chance to put names — and faces and occupations and birthdays — on some 9/11 victims she only wishes she had gotten to know.

“We were waiting in the halls — doctors, nurses, environmental people with stretchers and wheelchairs — desperately wanting to help,” said Mrs. Boland, crying as she reflected on the sheer frustration of being so powerless. “We waited and waited and nobody came. It still hurts. But this helps with the healing.

“I’m so impressed with what Staten Island has done to honor all of these people. But as I stand in the middle and look out across the bay … this kills me. It still just devastates me,” said Mrs. Boland, looking past the monument out to the Manhattan skyline, highlighted by the two beams of blue light that rose from the vicinity of the World Trade Center, a picture that invited professional and amateur photographers alike by the dozens.

Reasonable people should recoil at the thought of living in a 250-square-foot studio, much less living with one’s spouse in a 250-square-foot studio, yet this couple actually lives in a 250-square-foot studio:

Blood-red dahlias were obligingly photogenic in the pool of light thrown by an alabaster lamp. Indeed, all 250 square feet of this bento box of an apartment glowed and winked, every inch of it a lesson in trenchant urban survival.

“The overriding ethic, here and everywhere,” said Mr. [Maxwell] Gillingham-Ryan, who speaks in a cool, hushed tone that tends to lower the pitch of any conversation, “is to get rid of any excess: clothes, furniture, doors. I find that most doors, particularly closet doors, you can do without. New York is a hard, mineral environment — all concrete, steel and glass — so I try to get rid of as many hard elements as possible and replace them with soft things.”

Mr. Gillingham-Ryan has thrown out his dresser and armchair and all his closet doors. There are lots of soft things here instead: canvas or sheer curtains instead of doors, a bedroom floor/platform padded with gymnastic matting (you can buy it on Canal Street by the yard and slice it with a razor, Mr. Gillingham-Ryan said) wrapped in oatmeal-colored raw linen.

It’s a room designed like a boat, with six padded compartments making up its platform “floor.”

“Here’s our office,” Ms. [Sara Kate] Gilligham-Ryan said, opening one, “and his socks,” she said, opening another.

Let me just say that again: it’s a 250-square-foot studio.

Comparing living spaces is a sport and, as someone who shares a 482-square-foot studio with his loved one, it’s not often that I get to experience the satisfaction of housing schadenfreude, so do me a favor and read the article!

[Gilligham also runs a consulting business/website called Apartment Therapy which I need to check out . . .]

Jackson Heights’ Arepa Lady is featured in a Times story about “Street Corner Cooks”.

The Arepa Lady is covered obsessively at chowhound.com. Chowhound has a good primer about her which is worth a read:

When people ask me to name my favorite food in New York, I inevitably answer–without hesitation–”arepas from the Arepa Lady”. This saintly woman grills Colombian corn cakes on her street cart weekends after 10:30 pm, and they are magical.

I don’t know her name; such knowledge would detract from my appreciation of her as an archetype. While I speak pretty decent Spanish, I’ve never been able to fully follow her conversation, but it doesn’t matter. I go when I’m feeling blue, stand under her umbrella, and feel a healing calm wash over me as she brushes the sizzling corn cakes with butter. Zen master-like in her complete absorption in the task, she grills the things with infinite patience and loving care.

Everyone adores the arepa lady. The people on the street treat her with reverence and respect; there’s always a small entourage of hangers-on standing around her cart or sitting on folding chairs. Fast cars and smoke-billowing trucks zoom down the street, the 7 train crashes by overhead, partying Latinos cavort up and down the block, but the arepa lady’s peacefulness absorbs it all, transforms it, and gives back…corn cakes.

The arepas themselves are snacks from heaven. Coursely ground corn, fried in pancakes about 6 inches in diameter and an inch thick, slathered with butter and topped with shredded white cheese, they’re brown and crunchy, chewy and a little bit sweet, the butter and cheese imbuing the whole with salty dairy meltiness.

And thanks to the Times, we now know her name — Maria Piedad Cano:

Ms. Cano is known to many as the Arepa Lady, which amuses her deeply. She didn’t prepare these traditional snacks until 1986, two years after she fled her home in Medellín. She was a judge, she said, and the drug wars made her beautiful town, and her job, too dangerous.

She reminisced, through a translator, about her former good life, before turning to the subject of her culinary accolades. She cited articles on the Internet about her and scoffed at a cookbook author who claimed to have published her recipe. “She didn’t have the right proportions,” Ms. Cano said.

No matter how she makes them here, it’s hard to match the flavor of the arepas in Colombia. The corn here is of a different variety, she said, and not as sweet. Still, the demand is high for her arepas, including the inch-high pancake of cornmeal, mozzarella, milk and sugar that she makes at home.

“Restaurant food is very industrialized,” Ms. Cano said. “It loses much of the flavor that’s made at home.”