The Post Is Saying What The Times Is Thinking

Foreign-born New Yorkers make up 37 percent of the city’s population, according to the latest census data:

Immigrants have continued to surge into metropolitan New York since 2000, according to census figures released today, and that increase, combined with high birth rates, has elevated the foreign-born and their children in New York City itself to fully 60 percent of the population. The rate of change was even more pronounced in the 24 suburban counties around the city, where a record 20 percent of the residents are now born abroad.

The figures, while showing that the city’s gains from immigration were not nearly as marked as they were in the 1990’s, are nonetheless striking in their detail and magnitude.

In the city, the number of people who identified themselves as Mexicans, here legally or not, soared 36 percent in five years, and not merely as a consequence of improved counting. More than half the residents of Queens and the Bronx do not speak English at home. Nearly one in three black residents in New York City was born abroad.

The trends are reported in the American Community Survey, a new annual version of the federal Census Bureau’s long-form questionnaire designed to capture the nation’s demographic profile in a more timely moving picture, rather than a once-a-decade snapshot.

Meanwhile, the Times buries the Post’s lede (note the descriptive word the paper uses in the URL for this story):

Among children younger than 15, white residents who are not Hispanic have become a minority in the metropolitan area, an indication that within just a few years the New York region will become the first large metropolitan area outside the South or West where non-Hispanic whites are a minority.

The Post, on the other hand, doesn’t bury the Post’s lede:

The number of whites in New York City has been shrinking the last five years, while the Asian and Hispanic populations have been climbing, according to new figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Then again, the Post’s headline is “Whites Decline In City” . . .

Other interesting or notable data:

New York ranks first in the proportion of men and women — 35.2 percent and 30.2 percent, respectively — who have never married. The median age for first marriages by women is highest in Connecticut, at 27.5, and for men in New York, at 29.3. New York State also has the lowest proportion of households composed of married couples, 45 percent. Barely half the children in the city, 53 percent, are being raised by a married couple.

As ever, within the borders of the city there were great differences. In Manhattan, where the number of black and Hispanic residents declined, married couples with children living at home made up about 10 percent of households, but the rate is 27 percent on Staten Island. In the Bronx, more than half the families with children are headed by women.

The census counted more American Indians, about 33,000, than in any other city. Chinese is spoken by more than 350,000 New Yorkers, Italian by 103,000, Yiddish by 77,000.

While the number of Puerto Ricans in the city declined slightly, they remain the largest group among Hispanics, with 787,000. Dominicans, who number 532,000 — the largest number among foreign-born — are catching up with Puerto Ricans. More city residents still identify their ancestry as Italian than any other group, but West Indians are closing.

You Rerouted Traffic For This? Or, Another Weekend, Another Fucking Funnel Cake

After studying the issue, the Center for an Urban Future finds that across the city, street fairs are uniformly lame:

A report issued by the Center for an Urban Future this week finds the city’s street fairs generic, dominated by a small cadre of vendors selling identical items like funnel cakes, discount makeup and designer-knockoff purses.

The report says New York’s street fairs could be an excellent showcase for the city’s diverse businesses and artists, and urges the Bloomberg administration to overhaul the system governing the fairs.

At present a high percentage of vendors are not even based in the five boroughs, according to the report. The Center’s analysis shows that in 2005, just 20 vendors held nearly half of all street fair food permits, with seven vendors possessing more than 200 permits each. And of the 20 largest permit holders, nine were based outside of New York City.

Similarly, one quarter of all vendors with permits to sell merchandise other than food at this year’s fairs hail from outside the city. According to the report, one problem is that three large production companies are in charge of more than 200 of the 367 fairs in the five boroughs this year and have no incentive to diversify the mix of vendors. Meanwhile, many local businesses don’t know how to get involved with the fairs, and those that do often face bureaucratic obstacles.

Hey, Asshole, Your Fucking Car Stereo Bumping Shitty Pop Music At 3 A.M. Is Topping The List Of Problems For New Yorkers

I suppose there are worse things to have happen, but hearing your fucking car stereo bumping shitty pop music at 3 a.m. is the city’s biggest annoyance:

Street noise is so out of control that frustrated and sleep-weary New Yorkers cite it as the Big Apple’s No. 1 problem, a new survey has found.

Horn-hunkers, blaring music, drunken rabble-rousers and other noise replaced potholes as the most vexing problem, according to the poll of 600 civic leaders conducted by Citizens for NYC/Baruch College.

Neighborhood activists ranked litter as the second worst problem, the same as last year.

“There’s too much noise and too much litter,” said Peter Kostmayer, president of Citizens for NYC.

Kostmayer said that if half the drivers who needlessly honk their horns stopped, neighborhoods would be significantly more peaceful.

“What we’re talking about is unnecessary noise,” he said.

He blamed selfish behavior of violators — not the lack of government enforcement of noise abatement and anti-littering laws — as the principal problem.

“I don’t think horn-honking is the mayor’s fault,” Kostmayer said.

Then again, it’s significant that we’re carping about your fucking car stereo bumping shitty pop music at 3 a.m. instead of, say, violent crime:

Kostmayer said the fact that New Yorkers are most worried about irritants like noise and filth is not so bad.

Violent crime, for example, is barely on the radar — ranking a lowly 24th.

And 47 percent of New Yorkers said their neighborhood had improved. Only 25 percent said they had worsened. The other 28 percent said the conditions were about the same.

That’s a significant improvement over last year, when 39 percent cited improvement and 32 said conditions had deteriorated. The rest said things were about the same.

“The city is doing well. The fact that we’re not talking about homicides, rapes and assaults says a lot,” Kostmayer said.

By The Numbers

The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene released its life-and-death statistics study, and the Post summarizes the data.

Neighborhood where you are most likely to have a baby: Borough Park, Brooklyn, with 4,523 births in 2004 (24.4 per 1,000 residents).

Neighborhood where you are least likely to have a baby: Bayside, Queens, with six per 1,000 residents (700 total).

Neighborhood where you are most likely to be dead: East Harlem (10.9 deaths per 1,000 residents).

Neighborhoods where you are least likely to be dead: Queens Village (4.6 deaths per 1,000 residents), Bayside (4.7 per thousand) and Greenwich Village (5.3 per thousand).

Neighborhood where you are most likely to have cancer: Throgs Neck in The Bronx.

Neighborhood where you are most likely to have heart disease: Coney Island.

Neighborhood where you are most likely to get murdered: Brownsville (28.1 murders per 100,000 residents).

Neighborhood where you are most likely to die from using drugs: Hunts Point, The Bronx.

Neighborhood where you are most likely to die from AIDS: Morrisania, The Bronx.

Meanwhile, the Post profiles a “typical procreative” Borough Park couple:

Faye and Shlomo Cisner are a typical procreative Borough Park couple: They have eight kids, and more could be on the way.

“It is a possibility,” Faye Cisner. “Thank God. God gives. We accept.”

Faye is 33, Shlomo 35.

They have six boys and two girls — including a set of twins.

The youngest, Chaim, is 10 months old. There’s also Joseph, 2; Reuben, 4; Rachel, 5; Meir, 7; Jacob, 8; and twins Nisson and Yocheved, who are 10.

The Cisners, who are Orthodox Jews, said they are carrying on the Jewish tradition of having many children. And that’s what many do in Borough Park.

. . .

Faye starts every morning doing the never-ending load of laundry for 10 people.

The kids eat in two shifts, and she likened the experience to serving people in a restaurant. The six older children board four different buses to get to and from school.

“There’s juggling. It gets a bit overwhelming. But it’s an amazing experience,” Faye said.

See also: New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s “My Community’s Health” Pages.

The Grand Experience Traveling 13 Feet In The Air Through The City Of New York

If you’ve ever wondered whether the tours in the red double-decker buses were informative rest assured that they are not:

“People are not looking for a history lesson,” said David Chien, Gray Line’s director of marketing. “They’re looking to be entertained and to have a grand experience traveling 13 feet in the air through the City of New York.”

Among the many fibs the Daily News uncovered:

• Rudy Giuliani is still mayor
• New York is called Gotham because of its abundance of gothic architecture
• Tenements on the Lower East Side still exist along with “beatniks” in Greenwich Village
• Flappers went wild for Frank Sinatra in the Paramount theater during the 1890s