New York’s Bravest Poles Removed

The Times investigates how firehouses are being emasculated, their poles ignominiously and unceremoniously removed. Impossible to escape juvenile humor:

Of all the tools associated with the dangerous but sometimes romantic world of firefighting, few capture the spirit of the job quite like the shiny firehouse pole, that simple brass delivery system that relies on little more than gravity to get a fireman to his truck a few seconds faster.

In New York City’s firehouses, veterans have a deep affection, even a zealous sense of protection, for their poles.

Heh. “Pole.”

But now, the department has begun shrinking their number sharply as it builds new firehouses and remodels old ones to bring them up to current building codes. In many cases, ventilation systems have been installed where the poles and their surrounding holes used to be.

The trend is no different around the country, as cities build one-story firehouses and update older firehouses. “It certainly is without any question that firehouse poles are becoming, with each new firehouse, a thing of the past,” said Harold A. Schaitberger, the general president of the International Association of Fire Fighters. “The new firehouse or station would be built with stairways and no poles.”

It is an ignominious slide into obscurity for a century-old tool that has served a fire company perhaps as many as a dozen times a night. As the first daring step before any derring-do, the pole, with its 20-foot-or-so plunge, became a striking emblem of firefighting like the walrus mustache and the Dalmatian.

And while other tools like wooden ladders and horse-drawn engines have been updated and improved over the decades, the pole, true to form, remains the fastest way down.

A new firehouse in the Rockaways in Queens was built without any poles at all. A vast firehouse on Staten Island opened in the spring with a single cast aluminum pole tucked into a corner. (On a recent visit, firefighters, momentarily forgetting it was there, said they did not have one.)

Firehouses under renovation in Brooklyn and Manhattan have had many of their poles removed. And the fire academy stopped teaching new recruits to slide down poles some years ago.

And Always Tip Your Cabbie

The New Yorker’s Ben McGrath attends an off-duty book party in honor of a publication about neoliberalism in the taxicab industry (don’t ask — that’s not what’s interesting here) and discovers what cabbies hate most about their clientele:

Exactly what the full range of party chatter was is tough to say, because a variety of languages were spoken, but an interloper, with a little persistence, was able to discern that most drivers would probably disagree with the cheery characterization of the yellow cab (made at a recent design forum at Parsons) as “New York’s movable public space.” A fairer, if blunter, slogan might be: “Our workspace, where you annoy and disrespect us.”

“They treat the car like they’re slobs,” a driver whose handle on the Bengal Cabbie Association’s CB radio channel is Babar said of his passengers. He added that those who sit in the front seat, and who make radio requests, are usually drunk. Drunk passengers occasionally throw up, and the smell lingers for weeks.

Said interloper (McGrath) learns more; for example, who knew that multiple stops were a problem? Not I:

“There are so many things,” Rizwan Raja, a Pakistani driver, said, rattling off a list of his pet peeves: putting one’s feet up on the partition, smoking, crossing the street lackadaisically. Requesting multiple stops is also frowned upon. “These people come out of expensive, posh bars, where one beer is twenty dollars, but they make groups together so they can share a taxi and save a couple of dollars,” Raja said. “‘Three stops’—that really, really blows me off.” Tips, ever since the fare increase, have been meagre: “Sometimes forty cents, sometimes twenty cents.”

Raja went on, “The worst is when they ask, ‘Where are you from?’ Once you answer that question, then it’s ‘What is the relationship between Al Qaeda and the Pakistani government?'” Raja, who says he is asked that question “almost every day,” has recommended that his passengers see “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

Slow Death By Slurpee

Even as it cannibalizes its own past, New York remains steadfastly opposed to the “continuing corporatization” of rustic Manhattan. Yet the hopelessly provincial still cannot stop 7-Eleven from penetrating the moat:

For a swath of America, nothing says summer like a Slurpee from 7-Eleven.

But Manhattan has always been an island unto its own, so the imminent opening of a 7-Eleven on Park Ave. South and 23rd St. – the first in the borough in more than a decade – isn’t exactly being treated as the next big thing.

“I’d much rather have a coco gelato,” said model Kristine Szabo, strolling down Park Ave.

A 7-Eleven is an unlikely backdrop for her walk, but as she said yesterday, “Why not? There’s already everything else here. It’s a lost cause.”

The “lost cause” is the continuing corporatization of Manhattan, as mom-and-pop drugstores are replaced by Duane Reades and coffee shops have all become Starbucks.

For some, however, the Vermontization of Manhattan has no appeal:

. . . [N]ot everyone is so disdainful of the 7-Elevens.

Marcos Rodriguez, 23, of Corona, Queens, is a club promoter who’s happy a 7-Eleven’s coming to town, and not just because “they have everything.”

Does a 7-Eleven ruin the character of the city? “No,” he said. “These little newspaper stands and stuff, they ruin the character. Makes the street ugly.”

Gossip Girl

New York Magazine profiles the author of our favorite books about super-obnoxious, hyper-privileged Upper East Side teens. We have several Gossip Girls and anxiously await the latest.

This part was great:

From the beginning, Von Ziegesar added her own raw and distinctive touches, not all of which went over with Little, Brown. In Gossip Girl No. 1, Serena falls serendipitously into modeling and—like Carrie Bradshaw—ends up pictured in bus ads all over Manhattan. However, unlike Carrie, the shots (at least in Von Ziegesar’s initial draft) were artistic close-ups of her anus—part of a series of shocking celebrity portraits. Little, Brown suggested Von Ziegesar substitute a belly button. She chose a compromise that works hilariously well—the orifice is itself a mystery, even to Blair, who is tortured by her former friend’s sudden fame. “Was it her belly button? It looked like the dark pit at the center of a peach . . . Blair could never get completely away—Serena was fucking everywhere.”

The Refugees

Is it possible to find satisfaction in the suburbs? The New York Times investigates “Is It Worth It?”:

It’s a springtime ritual: Like pollen shaking loose from the trees, many young Manhattan families are preparing to scatter toward the suburbs and a new phase of life. Others are merely thinking about it, wondering about the tradeoffs, and the psychic toll.

Is there any way to know in advance whether moving to the suburbs will work out – or be a big, expensive mistake? Will fine schools, backyards and breathing room compensate for tedious commutes, fewer conveniences and a possibly somnolent lifestyle? Will the suburbs be populated by like-minded transplants or insular unsophisticates? Are the restaurants really that bad?

The answer to that last question is an emphatic “no”:

But one thing many transplants never adjust to is the food. Barbecues aside, “the food in New Jersey is some of the worst food I’ve ever eaten in my life,” Mr. [Nick] Aloe said, citing the generic quality of many restaurants. “How can you explain a 40-minute wait to eat at Chili’s?”

Beth Little of Summit, N.J., said a good selection of restaurants is “the one thing we always say we miss.”