Bridge and Tunnel Club Blog Home
Bridge and Tunnel Club Blog

Look, It Could Be Worse — Instead Of Making A Tasteless Comparison To Beirut, You Could Actually Be In Beirut

If Manhattan is the playground of the rich, the Battery is the spot over in the back where the older, cooler kids set off M-80s late into the evening:

On a mid-July night in Battery Park City, the architect David Rockwell threw a loft party for 400 friends in celebration of his 50th birthday.

There was food put out from about 20 of the city’s top chefs (many from restaurants that Rockwell had designed). Clowns and players from Cirque du Soliel performed and circulated through the crowd. And at exactly 9:30 p.m. a spectacular fireworks show was launched into the Lower Manhattan sky in honor of the birthday boy.

The party recieved a glowing account in Business Week magazine. Local reviews were less kind. Alarmed by the sound of unannounced exploding fireworks on a Wednesday night, Battery Park City residents began firing off e-mails.

The emails were addressed to Jim Lauer, the chief inspector of the explosive’s [sic] unit for the New York City Fire Department, which handles the permits for all fireworks shows in the city. For the past year, his office has mass e-mailed Downtown residents a listing of the times and locations of the shows. The monthly list and mailing began at the urging of Community Board 1.

“This is B.S,” one e-mailer, a Gateway Plaza resident, wrote. “I am really pissed. There is NO mention of ANY fireworks event in this neighborhood in this sheet.”

Another wrote: “Sounds like Beirut. What idiots are behind these fireworks?”

The unfortunate Beirut reference aside, there’s not much the inspector can do about it:

Later called before CB1’s Quality of Life Committee, Lauer brought the letters with him and read them aloud.

“I don’t need this,” he said.

Anyone with enough money or political pull, he told the committee, can get a permit for a private fireworks show with little more than a day or two notice.

“These people have money to burn” Lauer told the Trib. “What am I going to do, say no?”

According to the list, there have been 18 permits approved for shows in New York Harbor so far this year, three of them launched from a barge just 1,000 off shore near Battery Park.

“Is there any way that we could get less fireworks?” asked Pat Moore, the committee’s chairwoman.

“You could move,” said Lauer.

Posted: September 6th, 2006 | Filed under: Class War, Manhattan, Quality Of Life
Five Years On, Seinfeld Reruns Still Rating Poorly In Metropolitan New York Area »
« You Couldn’t Maybe Have Saved This For Some Other Time?

Recent Posts

  • “Friends And Allies Literally Roll Their Eyes When They Hear The New York City Mayor Is Trying To Go National Again”
  • You Don’t Achieve All Those Things Without Managing The Hell Out Of The Situation
  • “Less Than Six Months After Bill De Blasio Became Mayor Of New York City, A Campaign Donor Buttonholed Him At An Event In Manhattan”
  • Nothing Hamburger
  • On Cheap Symbolism

Categories

Bookmarks

  • 1010 WINS
  • 7online.com (WABC 7)
  • AM New York
  • Aramica
  • Bronx Times Reporter
  • Brooklyn Eagle
  • Brooklyn View
  • Canarsie Courier
  • Catholic New York
  • Chelsea Now
  • City Hall News
  • City Limits
  • Columbia Spectator
  • Courier-Life Publications
  • CW11 New York (WPIX 11)
  • Downtown Express
  • Gay City News
  • Gotham Gazette
  • Haitian Times
  • Highbridge Horizon
  • Inner City Press
  • Metro New York
  • Mount Hope Monitor
  • My 9 (WWOR 9)
  • MyFox New York (WNYW 5)
  • New York Amsterdam News
  • New York Beacon
  • New York Carib News
  • New York Daily News
  • New York Magazine
  • New York Observer
  • New York Post
  • New York Press
  • New York Sun
  • New York Times City Room
  • New Yorker
  • Newsday
  • Norwood News
  • NY1
  • NY1 In The Papers
  • Our Time Press
  • Pat’s Papers
  • Queens Chronicle
  • Queens Courier
  • Queens Gazette
  • Queens Ledger
  • Queens Tribune
  • Riverdale Press
  • SoHo Journal
  • Southeast Queens Press
  • Staten Island Advance
  • The Blue and White (Columbia)
  • The Brooklyn Paper
  • The Columbia Journalist
  • The Commentator (Yeshiva University)
  • The Excelsior (Brooklyn College)
  • The Graduate Voice (Baruch College)
  • The Greenwich Village Gazette
  • The Hunter Word
  • The Jewish Daily Forward
  • The Jewish Week
  • The Knight News (Queens College)
  • The New York Blade
  • The New York Times
  • The Pace Press
  • The Ticker (Baruch College)
  • The Torch (St. John’s University)
  • The Tribeca Trib
  • The Villager
  • The Wave of Long Island
  • Thirteen/WNET
  • ThriveNYC
  • Time Out New York
  • Times Ledger
  • Times Newsweekly of Queens and Brooklyn
  • Village Voice
  • Washington Square News
  • WCBS880
  • WCBSTV.com (WCBS 2)
  • WNBC 4
  • WNYC
  • Yeshiva University Observer

Archives

RSS Feed

  • Bridge and Tunnel Club Blog RSS Feed

@batclub

Tweets by @batclub

Contact

  • Back To Bridge and Tunnel Club Home
    info -at- bridgeandtunnelclub.com

BATC Main Page

  • Bridge and Tunnel Club

2023 | Bridge and Tunnel Club Blog