New York’s Humblest

Combining the bicyclist’s smug cluck with the businessman’s argument that everyone is entitled to make a buck, we have the pedicabs:

The law cuts the number of pedicabs by a third, from 500 to 325; bans them from bike lanes and bans their use of an electric-assist motor the size of a hair dryer. Police can also ban the bike taxis’ operation from any area determined to be congested, which covers most of Midtown.

The law also forbids pedicabs from traveling on bridges, meaning operators living in the outer boroughs would face the expense of hiring a truck to transport their wheels into and out of Manhattan.

Doug Korman, co-founder of Green Transporters Association, was wearing a cap with the number 326 on it.

“I’m number 326,” he said as drivers stood behind him on the steps. “Three hundred and twenty-five for a city of 8 million is unfair and un-American.”

. . .

After the rally, George Bliss, a founder of the New York City pedicab movement, stood by his green pedicab on Broadway. Bliss suggested that as the police, firefighters and sanitation workers are known respectively as New York’s Finest, Bravest and Strongest, the city’s pedicab drivers are New York’s Greenest.

“Politicians can’t keep green transportation from happening,” he declared.

This Comes On The Heels Of The Company’s Announcement That It Will Open Its Latest Flagship Store On Haifa Street In Baghdad

New Era, the supplier of Major League Baseball caps, is accused of exploiting gang rivalries in designing new merchandise:

Angry East Harlem activists took to the streets yesterday, demanding that New Era baseball caps designed with the colors and symbols of three notorious gangs be pulled from shelves.

The protesters say the headwear, which they claim evoke the Bloods, Crips and Latin Kings gang colors, will add to the violence that already plagues their neighborhood.

“Young people who don’t know the meaning of these hats will fall prey to gangs and wind up beat up, shot or worse,” said Johnny Rivera, who led the group of 20 protesters to apparel stores along Third Avenue near East 107th Street.

. . .

Rivera first discovered the caps while shopping with his son for back-to-school gear last week.

He offered to buy his son a black New Era baseball cap with a gold Yankee logo and embroidered crown. The 11-year-old explained to his then-clueless father that the hat was “a gang thing,” and wearing it would put him in danger.

“This is not something I was aware of as a 45-year old father buying a hat for my 11-year old kid,” he said.

His son pointed out two other New Era-brand Yankees hats, both white with red or blue bandannas wrapped around the sides, that he said represent Bloods and Crips.

“Track Your Every Move” Just Doesn’t Scare Us Like It Once Did

In an era where people are eager to find new ways to compromise their privacy, it’s difficult to see how striking over ostensible civil liberties concerns will appeal to the masses of people who only care about getting across town:

New York cabbies are threatening to go on strike for two days next month — an action that could wreak havoc across the city.

The union representing Yellow Cab drivers said yesterday cabbies should strike for 48 hours to protest Taxi and Limousine Commission orders that they put Global Positioning System devices in their cars.

Cabbies claim the devices rob them of privacy by letting the city track their movements, and cost them money.

“This is an issue that is affecting every single taxi driver on the street,” said Bhairavi Desai, executive director of strike organizers the New York Taxi Workers Alliance. “I have never seen drivers this angry before.”

The union yesterday told drivers to stop work for 48 hours starting at 5 a.m. Sept. 5, unless an agreement is reached before then.

The last time city streets were emptied of yellow was in May 1998, when an estimated 11,500 of the 12,187 licensed cabbies stayed home. That strike, also led by Desai, aimed to take on then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s attempt to introduce more ironfisted rules for licensing cabbies.

The city’s Office of Emergency Management yesterday confirmed it was drawing up a contingency plan to ease chaos the strike could cause.

Remember, even the TWU couched their arguments in terms of “preserving health care for all working Americans” and look what that got them.

But at least one of the taxi driver unions gets that:

In competing Manhattan press conferences yesterday afternoon, rival advocacy groups said that (1) there could be a citywide taxi strike in September, and (2) there would not be a strike.

. . .

“We are ready to have a 48-hour strike on Sept. 5 and Sept. 6,” said Bhairavi Desai, the executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, as she stood near a line of taxis outside Pennsylvania Station. “We are ready, willing and able to walk out.”

The Taxi Workers Alliance said in a press release that it wants to work out a resolution with the Taxi and Limousine Commission to avert a strike.

Two hours later, Fernando Mateo, a spokesman for the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, said no walkout was ahead.

Standing in front of the Taxi and Limousine Commission office on Rector Street in Lower Manhattan, he said: “Read my lips: There will be no strike.”

. . .

Ms. Desai said drivers had also complained that they were required to pay 5 percent of credit card fares to their garages as a service fee, and that meters sometimes malfunction when they are connected to global positioning systems.

Mr. Mateo praised the credit card systems, saying they would encourage more trips and higher tips. He dismissed concerns about the tracking systems.

“We don’t have to be radicals,” he said. “You want privacy, you don’t drive a cab.”

“Ready, Willing and Able” — nice way to co-opt a good cause! That’s Bush-like!

Earlier: Privacy Concerns — Quaint Like A Checker Cab.

Come On, You Don’t Think I Already Understand The Risk Of Eating Ceviche I Bought In A City Park?

When the story of who killed the Red Hook Ballfields is written it will turn out that we are all guilty:

Honduras Maya, a restaurant owned by one of the vendors that serves Latin American food on weekends at the Red Hook Ball Fields, was closed down by the Health Department this week after an inspection stemming from the city’s crackdown on the vendors.

The shutdown could merely be a taste of what’s to come if the 13 food vendors at the ball fields fail to meet strict health code requirements by this weekend. And the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation may not extend the vendors’ temporary permit — which officially expires after Labor Day — until the soccer season ends in late October, as earlier promised.

. . .

Cesar Fuentes, executive director of the Food Vendors Committee of Red Hook Park, said health inspectors are expected to start issuing fines — or shutting down vendors — this weekend for not meeting requirements like providing hot and cold running water, refrigeration, and preparing food in commercial kitchens rather than at home.

Suany Carcamo, the owner of Honduras Maya, has been operating a Honduran food stand specializing in baleadas at the ball fields for more than a decade. Fuentes said her restaurant was investigated by the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene as a follow-up to a letter she submitted to prove that she was preparing her food for the stand in a city-certified commercial kitchen — her own restaurant.

The Park Slope restaurant received 122 violation points, compared to the citywide average of 14 points, according to the inspection report. Among the 20 violations listed were: missing Choking First Aid, Alcohol and Pregnancy, and Wash Hands signs; evidence of flying insects and mice; toilet facility not maintained and provided with toilet paper; and wiping cloths dirty or not stored in proper sanitizing equipment.

The owners were not available for comment by press time. An employee, when reached by phone, confirmed that the restaurant had been shut down.

But Carcamo could be viewed as one of the lucky vendors. She is one of only two that also owns a restaurant, while many of the others are struggling to find a commercial or community kitchen certified by the Health Department where they can prepare their food.

“The report from my vendors is that it is basically very, very difficult to do,” said Fuentes. After word traveled that Honduras Maya was shut down, “a lot of people were denying vendors the use [of their facilities] out of fear that the Department of Health would enforce harshly.

“Anyone who doesn’t have that letter wouldn’t be allowed to sell,” he said.

(The vendors do nothing to conceal it, we visit there because we want to eat it, we blame the Health Department for being there, but we are all there . . .)

I guess it’s back to those old reliable subway churros for us . . .

How About An Eau De Landfill For Staten Island?*

The Brooklyn brand is sometimes freaky, sometimes brash, sometimes pizza and yet strangely evocative of a home-brewed melange of essential oils:

Brooklyn, that icon of industry, labor and pollution, now has its own scent. Not a smell (we always had that), but a scent, a nice one, one that Coco Chanel herself may approve of — Eau De Brooklyn.

. . .

“It all started in the kitchen . . .” explained Dr. Emilio Oribe, who began mixing essential oils purchased from health food stores with his wife and kids about a year and a half ago.

“It seemed whatever we liked, others didn’t like and whatever others liked, we couldn’t reproduce,” he recalled.

So after much consultation with friends and neighbors the Oribes got an idea of what they wanted and brought it to professionals, “to make sure it had a shelf life and all those chemistry details that are very important.” By last July, Eau de Brooklyn was on the shelves of area boutiques.

. . .

“You tell me, what should we do with it? Should we really go beyond Brooklyn?” he wonders. Right now, the product line, which consists of two different scented soaps and a perfume, is only retailed in boutiques in southern and western Brooklyn and on their Web site. “We never thought there would be interest anywhere else,” he says.

*Just kidding! They totally don’t find that funny.