In The City That Never Sleeps, A Corner Where Streets Are Never Sweeped

There are many amazing details buried in this story:

City Island, the last bastion of alternate-side-free parking in the Bronx, has been spared for now.

But the trade-off is another two years of road construction along its main thoroughfare.

At a public hearing last week, Community Board 10 voted to table a motion to add parking regulations along City Island Ave., which runs along the entire island.

The motion will probably not be brought before the board again until after a sewer project and the replacement of the bridge leading to the island are completed, according to those familiar with the issue.

“It probably won’t be happening for quite some time,” said District Manager Kenneth Kearns. “I would guess it’d be a minimum of two years.”

The Garden Club of City Island requested that alternate-side parking be enforced for 30 minutes twice a week to give street sweepers a chance to clean the road, which becomes traffic-congested, especially on weekends and during the summer, when hordes of visitors come to the island for its numerous seafood restaurants.

Until recently, the club paid two workers to sweep the mile-long street on foot, even though city regulations hold property owners responsible for cleaning 18 inches into the street in front of their properties.

One of those workers graduated college and no longer had time to clean. The other, a senior citizen, could not handle the whole road alone.

Is the most amazing detail A) there’s a little corner of the city where alternate-side parking doesn’t exist (a veritable Big Rock Candy Mountain for car owners); B) a two-man crew consisting of an elderly person and a college student has been cleaning the entire road; or C) alternate-side parking actually exists for the purpose of sweeping the streets?

Obviously the answer is C . . .

Location Scout: City Island.

It’s Hard Out There For An Executive Director Of An Arts Organization In East Tremont

It’s hard out there for an arts organization when prostitutes mistake your donors for johns:

The Bronx River Art Center tries to escape its noisy urban surroundings by facing the lush, green riverfront.

But it can’t escape the drug dealers, prostitutes, pimps and petty criminals who camp in front of its doors.

Visitors’ vehicles have been vandalized. Potential donors have been propositioned by prostitutes, and the number of parents bringing their children to free art classes is down in recent months, according to the staff.

“It’s an infestation,” said Gail Nathan, the center’s executive director. “We fear for the kids coming to the art center. We fear for our staff and visitors.”

She ought to know. Her car has been vandalized five times and her tires have been slashed. She now parks five blocks away from the center to avoid the wrath of criminals.

Then Again, If You Need A Map To Tell You Where To Look, Maybe Brooklyn’s Not Exactly Right For You

The Brooklyn Paper reports that real estate powerhouse the Corcoran Group is being accused of housing discrimination:

In a report released Tuesday, a coalition of 220 fair housing organizations charged Corcoran with ignoring black clients, offering more detailed financial options and incentives to white home-seekers and directing these white clients to white neighborhoods.

A “gentrification map” is a key piece of evidence in the National Fair Housing Alliance’s federal discrimination complaint filed this week with the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“This racial steering tactic is reminiscent of discriminatory conduct from the 1970s,” said Shanna Smith, president of NFHA. “Then, real-estate agents would [trigger] white flight by showing . . . where an African-American family had bought a house. The twist here is that the agent used a map to tell whites where they should [move] to.”

The map was uncovered in a sting operation at Corcoran’s Brooklyn Heights office on Montague Street.

Four white investigators posing as yuppie homebuyers were flashed the doctored street map — complete with hand-drawn boxes and red arrows identifying neighborhoods considered to be “changing” for the better as well as established enclaves of young professionals.

A Corcoran Group employee directed the undercover agents to Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn Heights and majority-black Prospect Heights, which fell in to the category of “changing.”

Four black investigators, posing as buppies, weren’t shown the map.

. . .

In a statement, the company said it condemned the conduct alleged by NFHA and would conduct an internal review of the individual agents involved.

The question is what investigators did to pose as yuppies . . . that would have been a fun one to plan!

New Yorkers Love Lines Even More Than Robert Downey, Jr.

Suggesting that it just may be a gyro* after all, the New York Sun invokes the halo effect:

The daily pita pilgrimage begins at 7:30 p.m., when New Yorkers — and a handful of in-the-know tourists — begin lining up at the corner of 53rd Street and Sixth Avenue. Within minutes, the line emanating from the fragrant gyro stand there stretches halfway down the block.

Two other gyro carts within a half-block radius have no wait at all. But city foodies contend that Halal Gyro and Chicken is worth waiting on a line that can exceed 45 minutes on some evenings. The stand’s $5 platter includes chicken, lamb, rice, salad, pita, and, most importantly, customers say, a tasty combination of white and red sauces.

. . .

In New York, a city of seemingly limitless choices, inhabited by famously fast-paced people, there are still some things for which residents are willing to wait in line. What’s worth the idle time? For some it’s a bargain; for others it’s a status symbol. For some, it’s a gyro platter; for others it’s a pair of sneakers, a basket of Buffalo wings, a museum exhibit, a stuffed toy, a cupcake, or two tickets to “Shakespeare in the Park.”

The heightened anticipation for what’s deemed worth waiting for can enhance the mind’s perception of those cart-cooked gyros, saucy chicken wings or buttercream-frosted cupcakes, a New York-based clinical psychologist, Robert Leahy, said, referring to a phenomenon known as the “Halo Effect.” “Today people are very insecure about getting the right thing, and the easiest way to make a decision is to seek out what everyone else is buying,” Mr. Leahy, who heads up the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy on East 57th Street, said. “If they didn’t feel like they had to fit in, and they just looked at what they value, they might make different decisions.”

*Or Buffalo Wings, Noodles, Buttercream Frosting or Cheese Omelettes.

Closing Of CBGB Completes “Cultural Rape” Of The East Village

CBGB has closed:

Last night was the last concert at CBGB, the famously crumbling rock club that has been in continuous, loud operation since December 1973, serving as the casual headquarters and dank incubator for some of New York’s most revered groups — [Patti] Smith’s, the Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, Television, Sonic Youth — as well as thousands more whose blares left less of a mark on history but whose graffiti and concert fliers might still remain on its walls.

After a protracted real estate battle with its landlord, a nonprofit organization that aids the homeless, CBGB agreed late last year to leave its home at 313 and 315 Bowery at the end of this month. And Ms. Smith’s words outside the club, where her group was playing, encapsulated the feelings shared by fans around the city and around the world: CBGB is both the scrappy symbol of rock’s promise and a temple that no one wanted to see go.

. . .

“It’s the cultural rape of New York City that this place is being pushed out,” said John Nikolai, a black-clad 36-year-old photographer from Staten Island whose tie read “I quit.”

Added Ms. Smith outside the club, “It’s a symptom of the empty new prosperity of our city.”

Meanwhile, the Daily News Don McLeanizes CBGB with a maudlin headline — “The Night Music Died”:

The birthplace of punk, CBGB, where bands such as the Ramones and Talking Heads got their start, threw its own headbanging funeral last night.

With rock poet Patti Smith offering the expletive-laden eulogy to the grungy Bowery icon, Mohawk-wearing mourners took one final twirl in the mosh pit.

“You know what’s sad? Turning New York City into the suburbs,” Smith said. “The whole thing’s sad. This is just a symptom of the empty prosperity of our times.”

You know what is actually sad? Fetishizing Manhattan and turning punk rock into a museum piece . . .