The Marxist-Gowanus Tautology

Artists standing tall with the workers against the gentrification of the Gowanus Canal:

Even without variances, landlords are finding illegal tenants to live in their lofts or seeking out artists and artisans to work in the lofts, trends that often presage eventual conversion to residences. Two years ago, a group of artists bought a box factory at 543 Union Street for $3.1 million and legally converted it into 16 studios. Twelve artists live in a former factory building at 280 Nevins Street that was legally converted in 1986.

One of those is Margaret Maugenest, who moved from SoHo in 1984. Now that she is in Gowanus, she wants to make sure the neighborhood stays the way it is.

“SoHo was an interesting neighborhood,” she said. “You had the trucks and the rag industry. You had the artists, who are workers also because that’s what we are. Now you have a neighborhood that doesn’t have much character.” [Emphasis added]

It’s Endemic, Pandemic, This Epidemic

The Times follows up on the bedbug scourge, reported last spring in the New Yorker (Bug Off Pest Control Center proprietor Andy Linares is perfecting his soundbites!), and finds that it has only gotten worse:

They’re the scourge of hobo encampments and hot-sheet motels. To impressionable children everywhere, they’re a snippet of nursery rhyme, an abstract foe lurking beneath the covers that emerges when mommy shuts the door at night.

But bedbugs on Park Avenue? Ask the horrified matron who recently found her duplex teeming with the blood-sucking beasts. Or the tenants of a co-op on Riverside Drive who spent $200,000 earlier this month to purge their building of the pesky little thugs. The Helmsley Park Lane was sued two years ago by a welt-covered guest who blamed the hotel for harboring the critters. The suit was quietly settled last year.

And bedbugs, stealthy and fast-moving nocturnal creatures that were all but eradicated by DDT after World War II, have recently been found in hospital maternity wards, private schools and even a plastic surgeon’s waiting room.

Bedbugs are back and spreading through New York City like a swarm of locusts on a lush field of wheat.

To make matters worse, there’s nothing we can do to stop them:

“It’s becoming an epidemic,” said Jeffrey Eisenberg, the owner of Pest Away Exterminating, an Upper West Side business that receives about 125 bedbug calls a week, compared with just a handful five years ago. “People are being tortured, and so am I. I spend half my day talking to hysterical people about bedbugs.”

Last year the city logged 377 bedbug violations, up from just 2 in 2002 and 16 in 2003. Since July, there have been 449. “It’s definitely a fast-emerging problem,” said Carol Abrams, spokeswoman for the city housing agency.

In the bedbug resurgence, entomologists and exterminators blame increased immigration from the developing world, the advent of cheap international travel and the recent banning of powerful pesticides. Other culprits include the recycled mattress industry and those thrifty New Yorkers who revel in the discovery of a free sofa on the sidewalk.

And that new mattress delivered from a reputable department store, which kindly hauled away your old one? It may have spent all day in a truck wedged against an old mattress collected from a customer with a bedbug problem.

Once introduced into a home, bedbugs can crawl into adjoining apartments or hitch a ride to another part of town in the cuff of a pant leg.

And now the Times adds a twist — we can now blame bedbugs for more of society’s ills, including licentiousness:

Kellianne Scanlan, 30, a hairstylist who lives in Washington Heights, has been living like a nomad since last month, when she spotted a bedbug on her pillow, and then whole families ensconced in the frame of her platform bed. Despite the visit of an exterminator, the problem has not been vanquished, and every last item of clothing is sealed in plastic bags and piled up on the living room floor.

“My life has become all about bedbugs,” she said as an exterminator arrived last week.

. . .

“The psychological damage is probably the worst thing about it. I mean, how long will it be before I can sleep soundly and not worry about some creature sucking my blood?”

Still, for Ms. Scanlan, there has been a silver lining. The night after she discovered the bugs, she went out drinking, intent on avoiding her own bed. That evening she met a man at a bar, and, contrary to her usual instincts, accompanied him to his apartment.

They Paved Over The Front Lawn And Put Up A Parking Lot

As much as it pains me to say it, only in Queens is a paved-over front lawn considered a major selling point:

When Christina Groza moved from an older building in Astoria, Queens, into a recently built one in College Point, the new home had a major selling point. Unlike the modest front lawn of her Astoria home, the original lawn outside the new building had been paved over with concrete.

That suited Ms. Groza just fine. Parking is scarce in the area, and although she loves nature as much as the next person, she also likes a guaranteed spot near her front door at the end of the day.

“Anyone who says they’d rather have a lawn than concrete never tried parking a car around here,” said Ms. Groza, 48, who cleans office buildings in Manhattan.

“If you’re looking for a lawn, you should move to Long Island or New Jersey.”

But the phenomenon seems to go beyond practicality into the realm of aesthetics:

The grassy front lawn, once a staple of the American dream, is steadily being usurped by the pave-over. Many homeowners, opting for grayer pastures, are pouring concrete over their patches of green.

Often the reason is practical – to make room for additional parking, or to create a low-maintenance home without lawnmowers or landscapers.

But the trend against turf also represents an aesthetic shift, a decision that grass has lost its class, and that a tastefully paved yard, front and back, is much more elegant.

“Not everyone wants that beautiful green front yard anymore,” said Martha Lucia Marin, a sales agent with listings mostly in northern Queens.

“A lot of people are saying the house looks more elegant with nice brickwork instead of grass. It’s also an economical decision. You can park in front of your door, and you don’t have to take care of a lawn. It saves work and makes for a low-maintenance home.”

But it’s not until they start actively fearing nature that this all gets to be a little too freaky, a little too weird and a little too puritannical:

Jack Casaro, 31, a technology systems executive, recently completed a major reconstruction, turning a modest house on a 40-by-100-foot plot in Whitestone into a brick fortress of a domicile. Now he is spending $25,000 to pave the property in brick.

Mr. Casaro stopped short of paving the entire front yard, as his next-door neighbor has done. He is keeping two small patches of grass out front.

“I want to keep a little grass, but a full lawn is too much maintenance,” he said. “The grass absorbs the rain, and when the water table gets full, it seeps into the basement. Now, with the brick pitched the right way, the rain runs right off.”

His mother, Angela Casaro, stepped outside to voice her preference for brick over grass.

“Lawns have ticks and disease and worms and stuff,” she said. “This way, it’s safe and sterile. It’s a cleaner area for the children to play. I love nature and I love grass, but I don’t want my family exposed to disease.”

We Need A New Smokey!

To all you all who throw your shit on the subway tracks, Hey, Moron, Give A Fuckin’ Hoot, Why Don’t You? (boom — instant T-shirt idea!):

The Transit Authority has identified the dirtiest subway stations in the city, where enough trash to fill more than 6,500 large bags of garbage has been collected off the trackbeds so far this year.

TA cleaners carrying 55-gallon bags pick litter by hand from the trackbeds at busy stations once or twice a week – yet within days, debris once again litters the rails, officials say.

“There’s no way you can stay on top of it,” said William Johnson, a veteran cleaner assigned to the 125th St. and Lexington Ave. station, which has the dubious distinction of consistently being the city’s most trash-filled station.

And it’s getting worse: From January through September, transit workers hauled 37,000 bags of rubbish from station tracks systemwide – a nearly 32% increase over the same period last year, the TA said.

. . .

The garbage is more than an eyesore. It’s also fuel for fires sparked by trains. Those blazes force firefighters to descend into a potentially dangerous environment. Underground fires can require the evacuation of riders and regularly result in delayed service. And trash attracts the sturdy breed of rats that make the underground warren their home and dart out of the darkness between trains to feed on the refuse.

And leave it to the transit workers union and them Straphanger whiners to blame the MTA on this one when we all know that the problem is with your stanky asses — you who throw wrappers, cans, cups and bags onto the tracks:

Critics charge that the TA has unwisely trimmed the workforce assigned to cleaning platforms over the last several years, and has been slow to deploy more workers to remove debris from tracks. Still, critics and straphangers concede that there are too many litterbugs – rude riders who toss empty coffee cups, newspapers, fast-food wrappers and other refuse aside without regard for their fellow travelers.

Law-abiding subway riders called upon those who are less civil to do the right thing. “We all use it, so we should take care of it,” Roberto Rios, 18, of the Bronx, said at the 125th St. and Lexington Ave. station. “If we didn’t throw garbage to the floor, it wouldn’t be a problem. People should be more considerate.”

The Perfect Way To Spend $50 Million

So about those holiday bargains the MTA doled out like Santa Claus (announced just before a crucial vote on a $2.9 billion transportation bond), of course people are taking advantage of the deal:

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has begun handing out commuter train passes as holiday gifts, and the festive response from some recipients has been: “Hmmm. I wonder how much I could get for this.”

Distribution of the passes, good for 10 rides during off-peak hours on the Metro-North Railroad or the Long Island Rail Road, began this week. They were sent out at no additional charge to buyers of December monthly passes, and already some of them have popped up for sale on the Internet, heralding a nascent black market.

“Leave it to New Yorkers to figure out how to make money from something that’s free,” said Mitchell H. Pally, an authority board member from Long Island.

The tickets, which can be used between any two stations on either rail system, have no face value but would normally sell for $36 to $123.

. . .

The authority is giving regular riders on Metro-North and the Long Island one free pass each, which is good for 10 trips during the middle of the day and late at night before March 1.

Those passes are transferable because the authority intended for its customers to give them to family members or friends. The admonition “not for resale” is stamped in the middle of each pass, and those words are clearly legible on one of the postings on eBay that seek to resell a Metro-North pass.

That pass, which went up for auction on Monday, had reached a price of $24.50 (plus $1 for postage) when the bidding closed last night. It drew 15 bids, starting at $15. Another pass was offered for a minimum bid of $19.99.

. . .

Mr. Pally, who voted against the holiday bonuses because he thought they were inappropriate and provided a better reward to subway riders than to suburban commuters, laughed like Santa Claus when told of the resale efforts.

“The hope is that somebody will use them; otherwise we will have gone through this whole thing for nothing,” he said. “From the M.T.A.’s perspective, it really doesn’t matter as long as somebody uses it and somebody benefits from it.”