White People Dine Finely, But What About Black People . . . ?

The New York Times notes that fine dining establishments are almost exclusively patronized by white people:

With summer drawing to a close New York diners will soon begin their fall migration back to the city’s top restaurants. But if they fly to pattern, only a few blacks, at most, will join the flock.

That helps explain why at Chanterelle one night, I almost became my own worst nightmare. The sight of a black couple strolling in struck me as so bizarre that I swiveled in my seat, bug-eyed, to trail them through all that creamy quiet. I say “almost” because my husband put an end to it with a merciful hiss: “Stop staring.”

Whoa! What kind of condescending, clueless Times piece is this? Don’t worry, writer Diane Cardwell is black! And this is a first-person account! Phew:

Well, yes, I was staring, but not just because they were black. Suddenly, for a change, I was not the only black customer in the room.

Still, is this sort of inquiry “asking the tough questions” or is it just . . . weird? Observations like steakhouses are more integrated than Nobu and Babbo, both of which are still more integrated than, say, Chanterelle? I say “weird”:

All those lobsters in pumpkin-seed-fenugreek broth, for example, have not drawn a strong black following. “That kind of chichi food doesn’t have long roots in the African-American community,” [president of the Multicultural Food Service and Hospitality Alliance] Mr. [Gerald] Fernandez said.

But they may soon sprout. One night at a gala at Chelsea Market for the Black Culinarian Alliance, a racially mixed crowd sipped fine wine and nibbled elaborate hors d’oeuvres and specialty cheeses, enjoying an event billed as bridging the cultural divide among different ethnic groups and their cuisines.

Well, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way . . .

How Not To Get Rid Of Unwanted Animals

People, if you have an unwanted sheep please do not just dump it in the cemetery. Not only is it cruel but it also makes for bad puns in the Daily News, like “Ewe won’t believe this: Sheep was on the lamb.”

Please, Please Tip Your Cabbie

With gas prices hovering near four dollars a gallon, cab drivers must work that much harder, and you cheap-asses aren’t helping any:

New York cabbies say outrageous gas prices have squeezed their wallets thin – but passengers aren’t helping them out with fatter tips.

“Hah! Forget about tipping better,” laughed cabbie Ruben Abramov, 38, of Fresh Meadows, Queens. “Somebody gets in a cab, they want to spend as little as possible. So I have to spend more time on the road.”

Cabbies said yesterday they pump about $45 a day into their gas tanks – up $10 or so from a week ago and as much as $20 from more than a year ago.

But fares – and tips – have held steady. So the drivers are spending more time behind the wheel and still going home with less money in their pockets.

Abner Simon of Queens Village described filling his tank for $3.59 a gallon, waiting three hours at LaGuardia Airport, driving a woman into Manhattan for a $27.80 fare – and getting only $30 for the trip.

Cheap And Easy Low-Hanging Fruit

With primary campaigns heading into their final week, mayoral candidates score cheap and easy political points by slamming the President’s response to Hurricane Katrina. Grandstanding works!

Meanwhile, one of the like 19,000 candidates for Manhattan Borough President scores even cheaper and easier points by mentioning George Bush in television spot, then getting the unbelievable good fortune to have the local Fox affiliate refuse to run the ad. Huge, huge coverage ensues:

A local television station, WNYW/Channel 5, is refusing to run a provocative advertisement promoting a Democratic candidate for Manhattan borough president. And the campaign of the candidate, Brian Ellner, is charging that the station is doing so because the spot takes a swipe at President Bush.

The 30-second ad features Mr. Bush’s face superimposed upon a middle-aged man’s naked torso as Mr. Ellner says of the president that “the emperor has no clothes.” Mr. Ellner also introduces his partner, Simon Holloway, in the spot – which the campaign says is the first time in city history that a gay candidate has introduced his or her partner in a campaign commercial.

Mr. Ellner said in an interview yesterday that representatives of Channel 5, a Fox affiliate, had told his campaign that they would not show the advertisement because it was “in poor taste.”

“It’s pretty clear it’s an anti-free speech decision because of our criticism of the president,” Mr. Ellner said.

“It’s untenable and in my view it’s anti-American.” He added that the rejection of the ad was “disrespectful to voters.”

After giving the story big play, the Times, to its credit, calls a spade whatever they call spades:

Mr. Ellner, 35, a lawyer who advised Mark Green’s mayoral campaign in 2001, is not considered a favorite to win the borough president’s race and his advertisement was devised in part to jar voters into paying attention to his candidacy in a field of nine Democrats running for Manhattan borough president in next Tuesday’s primary. Mr. Ellner’s team devised the spot in large part to appeal to gays and lesbians, and the borough’s more liberal voters in general. Fox’s refusal to run the ad is likely to help Mr. Ellner’s aims.

Where’s Bernie Goetz — post-vigilante, shorthand for loopy public relations stunts — when you need him? Oh, that’s right, he’s running for Public Advocate, too!

Those Outer Boroughs Are Looking Pretty Good Right Now

The Times studied the situation and determined that Manhattan has the widest income gap of any county in the nation, confirming that the borough is for the very rich or, I guess just the very rich:

Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue is only about 60 blocks from the Wagner Houses in East Harlem, but they might as well be light years apart. They epitomize the highest- and lowest-earning census tracts in Manhattan, where the disparity between rich and poor is now greater than in any other county in the country.

That finding, in an analysis conducted for The New York Times, dovetails with other new regional economic research, which identifies the Bronx as the poorest urban county in the country and suggests that the middle class in New York State is being depleted.

The top fifth of earners in Manhattan now make 52 times what the lowest fifth make – $365,826 compared with $7,047 – which is roughly comparable to the income disparity in Namibia, according to the Times analysis of 2000 census data. Put another way, for every dollar made by households in the top fifth of Manhattan earners, households in the bottom fifth made about 2 cents.

That represents a substantial widening of the income gap from previous years. In 1980, the top fifth of earners made 21 times what the bottom fifth made in Manhattan, which ranked 17th among the nation’s counties in income disparity.

Of course you can’t mention Trump Tower in the first paragraph without setting up something special in the last paragraph (see Chekhov’s gun). Something special like a quote from The Donald himself (!), who is put in the untenable position of having to defend the income gap:

“The income gap, while supposedly increasing, seems to be a natural phenomenon,” said the developer Donald J. Trump, who lives in Trump Tower. “Times have been good, but times have been good for many people and many classes of people. I think there is a very large middle class – but not in this section, by the way.”