Let Me Put It Next To You

The New York (football) Giants are feeling like “second-class citizens” again as plans for a giant entertainment complex next to the Meadowlands begin to take shape. The complex is called Xanadu:

The New York Giants have gone to court to try to block their neighbor, the planned $1.3 billion Meadowlands Xanadu family entertainment and retail complex, from operating on game days, on the grounds that it would turn a trip to a Giants game from a mere traffic problem into a traffic nightmare.

The fight among the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, which owns the land; the Giants; and the developers of Meadowlands Xanadu appeared to be over last May when the team and the state agreed to a plan for a new privately financed $750 million football stadium on a separate parcel nearby.

But in papers filed in State Superior Court in Bergen County on Aug. 23, just a month before the team is to provide details about the new stadium, its lawyers sued, asking a judge to immediately restrict the operations of Xanadu, now under construction.

According to their court papers, the Giants say their fans’ No. 1 complaint involves getting into and out of the stadium grounds on game days – a feat that involves 24,000 cars and as many as 80,000 fans. With Xanadu, 12,000 cars will be added to the mix, both sides agree.

Some of the cars will be shunted to Xanadu’s garages, affecting those fans’ ability to indulge in that parking lot tradition, tailgate parties.

But lest you think it’s just about parking spaces, know that we’re talking about something more. About respect:

The Giants say they are actually losing parking spaces. But the lawsuit is about more than parking, the team concedes. With details of the new stadium to be worked out, the suit is an attempt by the team to gain leverage in talks with Xanadu’s developers and to strengthen its hand in dealing with the sports and exposition authority. In particular, the team wants court enforcement of a provision in its lease that makes its consent required for any changes in the complex that affect the team’s operations on game days or compete with them.

The issue seems to have become a matter of pride for John Mara, the executive vice president of the Giants. In an interview, Mr. Mara spoke wistfully about the decision his father, Wellington Mara, made in 1971 to move the Giants from Yankee Stadium. There, they were “second-class tenants.” To get the true football stadium he desired, he decided to move his team to what was then a vast marsh and vacant expanse of filled-in dump.

One editorial cartoon at the time depicted the elder Mr. Mara, cloaked like George Washington on a snowy winter night, standing at the prow of a boat, being rowed by football players onto a shore strewn with broken bottles, crushed cans and litter. There was wide speculation, apart from New York-centric chauvinism, that the move to New Jersey would be a disaster for the team.

It was in that atmosphere that the Giants managed to get provisions in their lease that gave them a virtual veto over alterations at the site that might affect their operations. John Mara says those provisions are crystal clear, but Carl J. Goldberg, the chairman of the sports and exposition authority, insists they are not.

. . .

Mr. Mara said the Giants feel they must invoke the provisions to protect their interests. “It was a decision by my family that gave rise to this entire complex,” he said. “And to be honest, we are starting to feel like second-class citizens over here.”

Wah, wah . . .

You’ll Have To Go Sideways

You do realize that New York is also susceptible to hurricanes, don’t you? It’s actually quite frightening:

Two decades have passed since the last significant hurricane hit New York – Gloria, in September 1985 – but local officials have been preparing for another one for years.

A Category 3 hurricane could bring a 25-foot storm surge crashing over the financial district, Kennedy International Airport, southern Brooklyn and eastern Staten Island; inundate dozens of other low-lying areas; and force the evacuation of 400,000 to 2.4 million residents.

. . .

Michael E. Wyllie, the meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service’s local forecast office, in Upton, on eastern Long Island, said the region was due for a strong hurricane within the next decade, based on a 20- to 30-year hurricane cycle.

“We’re only 10 years into an active, multidecade cycle that will probably last at least another 10 years,” he said. “Most likely we’re going to get hit with something in the next several years, if not this year. Our time is coming. I’m not trying to be an alarmist; I’m trying to be a realist.”

(Dude, the New York Press was freaking us out about this months ago! Well OK, a month ago, but still.)

I Wanna Destroy You

You know rock music is fossilized when the mayor comes to the aid of CBGB:

CBGB – the punk rock mecca facing eviction from its East Village home – picked up an unlikely booster yesterday in the pinstriped form of Mayor Bloomberg.

Hizzoner, while conceding he has never set foot in the famed club, said the city was hoping either to keep CBGB from getting bounced out of 315 Bowery or find it a new home.

“It’s more than just another club,” Bloomberg said of the dank bar that helped launch Blondie, the Ramones and the Talking Heads.

Christmas Is Almost Here!

The only thing more depressing than Labor Day weekend is contemplating the holiday season in August:

Yes, Virginia. A sweaty army of New Yorkers is already toiling to deck the halls.

Retailers are ordering their fixin’s and trimmin’s. Macy’s is racing to complete a construction miracle on 34th Street, preparing for the onslaught of 300,000 visitors to Santaland on its eighth floor in Herald Square. Workers are making way for new displays at North Pole Town Square, including the animated teddy-bear marching band. The one with eight teddy-bear musicians.

Currently, Santa is helper-challenged. “We’re sending out letters to elves who’ve worked in the past,” said Bob Rutan, the director of event operations. He needs 140.

Calling David Sedaris. Anyway, Christmas marches on elsewhere:

Paul Olszewski, whose title is director of windows, is coordinating the efforts of 65 workers to fill said space at Macy’s with “something no one has ever seen before in the city,” he pronounced ominously. Not space aliens or even Parson Brown, he insisted, but that’s about all he would reveal, save that the team started working to fill the 40 windows in February, “and we feel as if we’re behind schedule.”

In the heavy air, there’s a feeling of Christmas at Rockefeller Center, bracing itself for the invasion of 400,000 to 500,000 visitors per day from late November through the first week of January. “It’s fourth quarter here with six minutes left in the game,” said Thomas A. Madden Jr., a managing director of Tishman Speyer Properties, owners of Rockefeller Center.

About the Christmas tree hunt (by helicopter, throughout the metropolitan region): “We’re down to several finalists,” said Mr. Madden, who refused to say how many, or where. After all, the felling of the lucky pine cannot be breathlessly announced until November.

Rockefeller Center Zamboni tuneup? Check. Gourmet magazine Christmas cookie photo shoot? Check. Satin-lined, zipper-front Santa Claus suits? Check! And on and on and on it goes until the dreary winter months fall upon us . . .

Do Greenmarkets Suck?

Greenmarkets are either great resources for supermarket- and fresh food-starved neighborhoods or the quickest way to be parted with $30 or $40 outside of Atlantic City (or both!). Now we have to worry that vendors aren’t just going to Costco and selling a bunch of wholesale junk. Bastards! The Times’ City section does its part to continue the whispering campaign:

The city’s greenmarkets have lately brimmed with August’s familiar bounty. At 54 markets, tables are piled high with bulbous eggplant, luscious blackberries, and at least a dozen precious varieties of heirloom tomato. But behind the selling booths, a rumor persists at a low din among farmers that some in their ranks sell items they neither grew nor produced themselves, in violation of the strict “producer-only” rules put in place by the city Greenmarket program.

At the market at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza last week, Tammy Osczepinski of S. & S. O. Produce Farms in Goshen, N.Y., said that such hearsay was typical among greenmarket sellers.

“I’ve heard these rumors floating around for years,” she said with a shrug while bagging a head of escarole for a customer. “But this is a grow-your-own market, and that’s how it should be.”

. . .

. . . Rachel Faber Machacha, Greenmarket’s farm inspection coordinator, said it was rare but not unheard of for a farmer to augment his own supply with produce grown by another farmer, or even bought from a wholesale market. During August and September, her busiest months, Ms. Machacha travels from farm to farm verifying that what producers submit to Greenmarket as their annual crop plan is what they are actually growing. If something doesn’t add up, she investigates further.

“We’re slow to accuse, but pretty quick to respond if we hear concerns,” she said. “We thoroughly look at something before we issue a violation.”

Only a handful of violations are issued a year, Mr. Strumolo said. The most recent came a couple of weeks ago, when a mushroom producer who worked at multiple markets was found selling morel mushrooms and suspended for a month. Morels, Mr. Strumolo explained, grow in the New York region only in the early spring, so the producer must have been buying them elsewhere.