Walking The Plank

Here’s some of what all your stimulus money is going toward:

Newly rebuilt chunks of the famed Coney Island Boardwalk are already starting to fall apart, advocates said.

On the stretch of the Boardwalk fronting Coney’s amusement area, where the Parks Department finished installing new planks last spring, there are now screws popping out of their holes and planks coming loose and protruding.

“It’s not even a year old, and we’re right back to square one,” said Todd Dobrin, chairperson of Friends of the Boardwalk.

The new planks are part of a $30 million project to rebuild 15 blocks of the fabled 42-block stretch.

Location Scout: Coney Island Beach & Boardwalk.

Now You Tell Us?

31 years later the thing is there, and folks are puzzling over exactly what to sue for, though that is a nice way to close a huge budget deficit:

[Lower Manhattan’s Verizon] building is actually one-third larger than allowed, a city agency claims — but no one noticed for 31 years.

The city’s Educational Construction Fund filed a suit alleging it sold Verizon construction rights for a 771,003-square-foot building in 1972.

. . .

The fund is suing Verizon and the developers for fraud, breach of contract and unjust enrichment, seeking $53 million plus interest and a court declaration that the proposed renovation would be illegal.

About That Cord That You Should Never Ever Pull . . .

In case you ever wondered exactly when you should pull the cord, since it’s unclear from the sign when you should ever be pulling the cord:

A rider on a Bronx-bound D train pulled the emergency cord Saturday after Gerardo Sanchez allegedly stabbed Dwight Johnson to death in an argument as the train traveled to the Seventh Avenue station.

But passengers should never pull the cord when the subway train is between stations, said NYC Transit spokesman Charles Seaton.

. . .

If a passenger witnesses a crime or a passenger becomes ill, the cord can be pulled if the train is still at the station but not when it’s already departing.

NYC Transit says the cord is mainly to stop a train from leaving a station if someone gets caught between closing car doors and is being dragged.

Some Of Your Friends Are Probably Already This Fucked

It will cost $1 billion to replace the Kosciuszko Bridge:

The pricetag for a state plan to replace the crumbling Kosciuszko Bridge by 2017 has ballooned to more than a billion bucks to accommodate the eight-year inflation expected during the long-awaited and long-needed replacement.

For that price, we might get something truly stunning — a concrete cable-stayed straight out of a science fiction movie (or the downtowns of many other cities). In layman’s terms, the futuristic bridge resembles two space-turkey wishbones standing upright with diagonal connection cables.

Last month, the Kosciuszko Bridge Stakeholders Advisory Council — a Department of Transportation-appointed panel of local activists — chose three final designs for the new 1.1-mile span.

In addition to the front-runner [. . .] were a simple box girder design and a crescent arch similar to the Bayonne Bridge.

They would all cost a lot, but Adam Levine, spokesman of the state Department of Transportation, said the cost was expected.

“For a bridge that is a mile long in New York City, $1 billion is the going rate,” he said.

No, This Is Not A Metaphor For The Team’s Game 5 Meltdown

“Cracks Emerge in Ramps at New Yankee Stadium”:

The concrete pedestrian ramps at the brand-new $1.5 billion city-subsidized Yankee Stadium have been troubled by cracks, and the team is seeking to determine whether the problems were caused by the installation, the design, the concrete or other factors, according to several people briefed on the problems.

The ramps were built by a company accused of having links to the mob, and the concrete mix was designed and tested by a company under indictment on charges that it failed to perform some tests and falsified the results of others. But it is unclear whether work performed by either firm contributed to the deteriorating conditions of the ramps.

. . .

One person with knowledge of the matter said the cracks and deterioration were unusual.

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium.