The Grim Cost Of Indiscriminate Playground Building, Or, The Cult Of The Dog Has Gone Too Far

Is Martin’s Fields in Queens a playground or burial ground? Some disagree:

Would there be a public outcry if people were allowed to walk their dogs in Ground Zero or the Flushing Cemetery?

That’s the question Bayside activist Mandingo Tshaka wants answered after he learned of a petition to allow Flushing residents to walk their dogs on Martins Field, a previously unmarked black and native-American burial ground in Flushing that is due to be dedicated by the city as a memorial park at the end of the month.

“They’re saying their dogs have more rights than the people who are buried there,” said Tshaka, who shares his ancestry with African Americans and native Americans. “They’re saying their dirty dogs can urinate and defecate on hallowed ground. How would they like it if I were to bring my dogs to where their loved ones are buried?”

But resident Tom Budzick, a 66-year-old third generation neighbor of the park, has a hard time believing that Martins Field still contains the remains of black and native Americans. He believes senior citizens in the neighborhood should not have to walk the extra three blocks to Kissena Corridor Park to walk their dogs when Martin’s Field is just outside their doors.

“I want to see a tombstone if you’re going to tell me it’s a memorial,” he said. “I’m sure when they dug up that place, they must’ve found remains then. You think they didn’t take them all out? Now all the sudden, it’s hallowed ground.”

For the last four years, Budzick walked his mixed cocker spaniel-beagle named Cookie in the park until the new signs were put up barring dogs earlier this year. He has gathered roughly 50 petition signatures from other like-minded neighbors.

“It’s fine if they want to call it a memorial,” he said. “Let my dog on the place. We paid for it . . . I consider it a park. It’s a public park that we paid for. If that Indian wants to make it a memorial for his people, we shouldn’t have to pay for it. He should. That’s the way I look at it.”

As to the question whether there are remains in the ground, believe it:

City records show that it had been used as a burial ground prior to 1934, when the city took it over to house a park, playground and a wading pool.

In 1999, a survey conducted by archaeologist Linda Stone determined the grassy fields hid two mass graves underground. City Councilman John Liu (D-Flushing) and Queens Borough President Helen Marshall secured $2.7 million to construct a perimeter fence and new playground on the north end of the site, while dedicating the field as a burial ground.

Meanwhile, the city hopes that a middle ground can be reached:

Liu, who will be attending the dedication ceremony [October 28] said he is supportive of Tshaka’s stance.

“There are plenty of places that people and dogs can enjoy,” he said. “This is not one of them. We’re not going to have anyone or anything defecate on this hallowed ground.”

When It Comes To Breaking In Pre-Schoolers, Some Claim Size Matters

Preschoolers don’t just seem older, they actually are older:

Children who turn 5 even in June or earlier are sometimes considered not ready for kindergarten these days, as parents harbor an almost Darwinian desire to ensure that their own child is not the runt of the class. Although a spate of literature in the last few years about boys’ academic difficulties helped prompt some parents to hold their sons back a year, girls, too, are being held back. Yet research on whether the extra year helps is inconclusive.

Fueled by the increasingly rigorous nature of kindergarten and a generation of parents intent on giving their children every edge, the practice is flourishing in New York City private schools and suburban public schools. A crop of 5-year-olds in nursery school and kindergartners pushing 7 are among the most striking results.

“These summer boys have now evolved to including girls and going back as far as March,” said Dana Haddad, admissions director at the Claremont Preparatory School, in Lower Manhattan, referring to children who turned 5 in those months but stayed in nursery school. “It’s become a huge epidemic.” In some corners, the decision of when to enroll a child in kindergarten has mushroomed from a non-issue into an agonizing choice, as anxiety-generating as, well, the private school kindergarten admissions process itself.

“It’s kind of crazy to hold them back,” said Jessica Siegel, 40, whose daughter, Mirit Skeen is back for another year at Montclair Community Pre-K in New Jersey, although she turned 5 in late August and the public school cutoff there for kindergarten is Oct. 1. “Someone’s going to be the youngest. Someone’s going to be the smallest.”

Ms. Siegel and her husband considered the decision for months, waiting until the week before public school started before making it final in case Mirit “suddenly had some kind of huge emotional shift.”

“I felt like her whole experience is about being the smallest and the youngest, and I wanted to change that experience for her,” Ms. Siegel said, adding, “The more people do it, the more people do it — partially because you don’t want yours to be the last.”

To stave off preschool fatigue, some city parents send their children to public school kindergarten for a year, hoping to transfer them to a private kindergarten the next year. Columbus Park West Nursery School on the Upper West Side is considering opening a “junior kindergarten” to accommodate children who in the past would simply have headed for the real thing.

Next You’ll Tell Me That Melanie Griffith’s Depiction Of Working Girl Tess McGill Was Inaccurate!

The Staten Island Advance is unimpressed with MTV’s recent “True Life: I’m A Staten Island Girl” episode:

If Staten Island girls are all club-hopping, mall-going, road-raging, tanning-salon-orange Italians, then last night’s episode of MTV’s True Life was so totally true to life.

If Staten Island girls all date spiky-haired losers and throw in extra W’s when they tawk, then the show, I’m a Staten Island Girl was also totally true to its billing as a documentary about young people and the unusual subcultures they inhabit.

Or, it was a totally vapid documentary about young people and the unadulterated stereotypes they exhibit.

Do Staten Island dads really warn their daughters they’ll be sleeping with the fishes?

Do 20-somethings seduce their boyfriends with lines like, Your spikes . . . they’re disheveled in all the right places.

And do they say to their parents, It’s not that I don’t like youse (sic). I just want to get out of Staten Island.

Apparently, sometimes they do, and yesterday, they did it on national TV.

“Big Willie Style” — Read: Two-Story Luxury Trailer

It eventually occurs to some that 31,000 film shooting days a year is a gigantic pain in the ass:

During a peak production day, more than 75 production assistants — the “breaking-in” job in the film industry — work to create the fantasy of an empty city by keeping pedestrians out of the sprawling set. Often filming simultaneously in two locations, “I Am Legend” has so far taken over a five-block section of Midtown for stunts, Washington Square Park, streets in Chinatown and SoHo, as well as the front façade and ramp of Grand Central Station. Everywhere the movie is, a caravan of trucks, support vehicles, and [star Will] Smith’s two-story, luxury trailer take up neighboring streets. The film started shooting on September 28 and will continue through mid-February, [publicist Carol] McConnaughey said.

This is the new New York — a town that had 31,570 days of film shooting days in 2005, and seven television shows picked up this season. The city had 23,321 shooting days in 2004, according to the Mayor’s Office of Film, Television, and Broadcast [sic].

Once a rare spectacle, the giant flood lights held up by cranes, the “Spiderman III” acrobatics on downtown skyscrapers, and the eerily empty scenes of “I Am Legend” seem as common as Con Edison construction work. According to some residents, so far a minority, these productions have also become an inherent obstacle in city life, as the sets can obstruct parking, delay traffic, and make it difficult to get home or to work.

. . .

DUMBO and Brooklyn Heights have been given temporary moratoriums on filming in the last year when the onslaught of productions was too much. Neighborhood associations lobbied the Mayor’s Office of Film, Television, and Broadcast for the temporary reprieve. (Ironically, both areas are in the district of the tax credits’ most enthusiastic supporter, Council Member Yassky.) After a recent surge of film sets in Chinatown, residents and business owners there are asking for the city to stop granting street closure permits.

“It doesn’t always work well with residential neighborhoods like this one,” the executive director of the Brooklyn Heights Association, Judy Stanton, said. “They can sometimes be very intrusive. They are sometimes very rude.”

Then there’s this:

Helen Uffner’s vintage clothing company may be adored by the costume designers who dress the characters in Broadway shows, but their support isn’t enough to keep her in business.

During her 28-year career, Uffner has offered bargain prices to theater groups on shoestring budgets, and wanted to expand her business to include more film clients who have fatter wallets. She hoped her company would be included in the city’s list of local vendors publicized to production companies. To be included in the “Made in NY” program organized by the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting, however, she would have to offer official discounts to films that would actually hurt her business.

“[The program] may be fine for retail establishments,” Uffner said, “but it’s hard for the small artisans. Looking at their list of wardrobe-related vendors I don’t see non-retail vendors. We can’t give a discount to the people who have budgets because we’re already giving discounts to the people who don’t have budgets.”

Nice!

Killed By Rudeness

This never should be done, no matter how inconsiderate your fellow passengers are being by not moving all the way into the car:

A man trying to board a crowded C train between cars was crushed to death last night when the train started moving and he became wedged against the platform, police said.

“It was an accident,” said a sobbing witness, Kristina Kremer, at the 14th St. station in Manhattan. “It wasn’t intentional. He was trying to get on the train. He was like, ‘Oh, my God!'”

The packed subway pulled in about 8 p.m., and the victim tried to climb over a gate between the first and second cars, police at the scene said.

When the uptown train started to pull out, the man became stuck between the platform and the train and was dragged about 50 feet, leaving a gruesome trail of blood along the train’s second car.