Manhattan, Eminent Domain, Robert Moses . . . Does It Get Any Better Than This?

It’s the American Songbook . . . and it always goes back to poor old Robert Moses:

The city wants to use its power of eminent domain to push out an almost-finished arts venue in Fort Greene to make way for a Manhattan-based dance troupe and 150 new housing units that comprise the centerpiece of the so-called BAM Cultural District.

“Our goal was to create a live music-and-arts venue,” said Todd Triplett, one of the three friends behind the Amber Art and Music Space, which is being built in a former liquor store at Fulton Street and Ashland Place.

Lured by the promise of the burgeoning “Lincoln Center of Brooklyn” that the city envisions for the area around BAM, Triplett and his partners invested more than $1 million, and spent a year and a half turning the run-down, three-story space into a performance venue, recording studio and an arts non-profit.

That grand idea was shattered on Aug. 21, when Jack Hammer, the director of Brooklyn Planning for the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, informed the three partners that the agency wants to seize the site by eminent domain to make way for the Dancespace Project, a Manhattan-based dance group.

“We were four weeks away from completion, and we get this letter. The city is f–king us,” said Triplett, who has already gotten a liquor license and booked musical acts into 2008. “I’ve never seen anything this egregious. This is in the tradition of Robert Moses.”

The partners claim that no one — including the broker who secured them the space and the landlord, who let them sign a 10-year lease and has collected $200,000 in rent so far — informed them of the city’s plans for the site.

“We refinanced our homes to do this,” said Triplett, standing shell-shocked amid construction materials in the area that would have housed the main lounge. “We took second jobs.”

Things You Don’t Really Need A Think Tank To Study Include . . .

. . . the lameness of art trolleys:

A think tank cited the Queens Culture Trolley, which was shut down in October 2005 due to poor ridership, in a recent study as an example of how the city’s cultural trolleys hold great promise but need to better address conceptual and operational issues.

. . .

The Queens trolley, which carried passengers for free on weekends around a 90-minute loop of arts and culture stops in and around Flushing Meadows Corona Park, was discontinued after it drew a mere 2,144 riders during its 17 months of existence, a study by the nonprofit Center for an Urban Future found.

The trolley, which was owned by the Parks Department, made stops at the Queens Museum of Art, New York Hall of Science, Queens Zoo, Queens Theatre in the Park, Queens Botanical Garden, Louis Armstrong House, parts of Jackson Heights and hotels near LaGuardia Airport.

“It had wonderful potential, but the practicalities were problematic,” Queens Deputy Borough President Karen Koslowitz said. “It was a great innovation, but as a practical matter you can’t do that with one trolley given the size of the park.”

The study found that when the trolley was launched in May 2004, it “debuted to high hopes and a slew of press coverage, but the sponsors realized that very few people were actually riding it and most of the institutions felt the trolley had no impact on their attendance.”

The capacity for the trolley was 40 passengers per trip, giving it the potential to transport 240 people during its six weekend trips. But the average weekend ridership was a mere 32 people, the study found.

(What’s the civil service title for “art trolley operator”?)

UNMOVIC ‘s Revenge

Apparently the previous employee left a bunch of crap in his desk:

U.N. inspectors found vials of poisonous gas in one of their offices near U.N. headquarters, a spokesman announced today.

Two plastic packages containing gram-sized amounts of liquid were discovered last week as U.N. inspectors were archiving old files in a room at 866 East 48th St. Yesterday, an inventory report revealed that the packages contained the chemical agent phosgene, an old warfare agent that was used in a majority of chemical deaths during World War I.

The chemicals were recovered in 1996 from a former Iraqi chemical weapons facility, Al Muthanna, and sent to the wrong office, the U.N. said in a statement. Normally, they would have been sent by military transport to a laboratory equipped for analysis.

The U.N. said that chemical weapons experts had sealed the packages and placed them in a secure location on the sixth floor. The floor was evacuated this afternoon as a Hazardous Materials unit responded to remove the materials and bring them to a military facility outside of New York, police said.

Squirrel Hover

Baseball people may be superstitious, but baseball writers are just out of control:

If a scholar of Norse mythology had been in the stands of Yankee Stadium on Tuesday night, he or she probably would have advised Yankees fans to not make too much out of the 5-3 victory against the Red Sox.

The result, after all, still left the Yankees trailing Boston by an imposing seven games in the American League East. But more significant, perhaps, was the pesky and distracting squirrel that scampered up and down the right-field foul pole during the game and that, according to Norse mythology, just might have foretold that the Yankees will not prevail over the Red Sox this season.

Believe it or not, the squirrel’s actions closely resembled those of Ratatosk, or “gnawing tooth,” a squirrel in Norse mythology that climbed up and down a tree that represented the world. Snorri Sturluson, an Icelandic scholar and poet, recorded the story in his 13th-century work “Prose Edda.”

As the story goes, Ratatosk carried insults as it traveled to opposite ends of the tree, fueling a rivalry between the evil dragon residing at the bottom of the tree and the eagle perched at the top.

. . .

The Yankees said the squirrel came down about 20 minutes after Tuesday’s game and was allowed to go on its way. It joins a cast of baseball creatures that includes the black cat that crossed in front of the Chicago Cubs’ dugout during their ill-fated pennant-race battle with the Mets in 1969 and the bird that Dave Winfield killed with a throw in Toronto in 1983.

Terrorists Love Transportation Infrastructure Even More Than Spalding Gray

This should be easy to monitor because it’s not like the Staten Island Ferry is one of the three top tourist attractions in New York City or anything. Yup, right:

Taking pictures aboard the Staten Island Ferry? Watch where you’re pointing that camera, bub.

The recent scare in Washington state — two men, apparently of Middle Eastern descent, were spotted photographing sensitive areas of the ferryboats that ply Puget Sound — has triggered heightened sensitivity to shutterbugs.

Photography is officially permitted onboard and in terminals here, and with so many tourists enjoying the views of New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty from the boats each day, “picture-taking is a part of the experience,” acknowledged city Department of Transportation spokeswoman Molly Gordy.

An official memo sent to ferry staff in 2005 indicated that crew members were “not to prohibit anyone from taking photographs in any areas open to the public,” while remaining vigilant and informing security and supervisors if anything seems unusual about a passenger’s photo op.

“If pictures are being taken that seem suspicious, just as if a person is acting suspicious, NYPD on board would be alerted and the parties would be questioned,” Ms. Gordy said.