Borough President Of Maps

Scott Stringer shows how the office of borough president stays relevant:

[T]he Manhattan borough president is charged with keeping all the official maps of New York County dating back to 1748, many of which have faded and begun to crumble to the point that they are in dire need of preservation.

Last week, Stringer put out a request for information from preservationists for ideas on how to save the crumbling maps, which are still publicly accessible. He also wants to digitize them and possibly put them online.

This is not merely a matter of interest to historians. The old maps detail the 21 lakes or ponds, 61 miles of streams and countless hills that marked the island of Manhattan before they were reshaped, expanded upon, or wiped clean over centuries of hubris.

In fact, the maps are still consulted whenever development or construction is being done.

“This is the history of the center of the universe,” Stringer said. “These maps should not be in this condition — they should be in a museum.”

The Map Room of the Topographical Bureau — just down the hall from Stringer’s 19th-floor office at 1 Centre St. — contains a collection of 4,000 maps, 800 of which are being targeted for major restoration.

Some of the maps have already been removed from the large, bound volumes that are kept in a series of tall filing cabinets and placed on archival paper, but many are too vulnerable to be handled any longer.

I’d Hate To See What Her Honor Student Would Do

“My dog will rip you apart”:

Tim, an 85-pound, 3-year-old German shepherd with a kindly demeanor, was taking his 7:30 pm constitutional near the corner of Clinton and DeKalb avenues with companion Nancy Peterson on Nov. 15 when a man walked by with what appeared to be a thick gold chain concealed under his jacket.

“And then I heard this woman behind me screaming and crying,” recalled Peterson, the president of the Fort Greene PUPS. “I don’t know how, but I knew he had stolen something from the woman.”

And then Peterson got mad.

“I thought, ‘How dare you do that to somebody in this neighborhood!'”

And so Peterson and Tim raced off after the apparent mugger, with Peterson screaming, “My dog will rip you apart!”

. . .

Afraid for his life, the young man dropped the item . . .

Good Reigns Over Evil In Another Of A Long String Of Skirmishes Between Irony And Sincerity

It’s not so much a “classy restaurant in a retro location,” as one of the original investors once obnoxiously promised, but something better — an actual diner:

When last spotted in its ancestral home, there was the Munson Diner, steel and chrome shining off the streetlights, noirish blue exterior like a ghost from the ’40s, loaded onto a flatbed truck and lumbering toward the George Washington Bridge, bound if not for glory, at least for Liberty, a faded resort town in the Catskills.

It was May 5, 2005, and, as it turned out, getting a 50-foot-long, 30-ton diner onto a truck was the easy part. One of its new owners and a cameraman were taken off the George Washington Bridge by the police as they tried to film the big event without a permit.

The diner hit not one, but two highway bridges on the way up. And when it finally arrived, dinged up but more or less intact, the crew lowered it triumphantly onto its new foundation . . . backward, with the vintage neon sign and steel facade facing away from Main Street.

And then for two and a half years, the 15 local investors behind the diner transplant considered and discarded ideas from at least 23 potential operators. A Catskill kosher deli! A Catskill history museum! The site for a reality show featuring a talking diner and chatty patrons reflecting on city and country life!

All of which explains the sign by the entrance (“Come in. We’re finally open!”) and the somewhat disproportionate expressions of contentment on the face of patrons — not to mention investors — when the Munson finally reopened to big crowds last week, a lesson in comfort food, diner lore and other themes that could have been explored had anyone been nuts enough to greenlight the reality show.

. . .

The Munson might still be closed if not for Fred LaGattuta, 47, a retired diesel mechanic turned populist entrepreneur whose projects have included a bowling alley in Callicoon ($7 unlimited-time bowling, $2 beer, $1 pizza slices) and a motel and diner near Parksville (rooms at $49.99). He leased the diner with an option to buy it, along with a partner, Tom Russell.

Mr. LaGattuta figured the old diner should just be a diner, and worked every weekend for eight months with his 18-year-old son, Paeden, to fix it up.

There’s a new tile floor, new and bigger red booths, a new kitchen, a new ceiling, new laminate on the tables and the counter to go with the old facade and neon sign, old menu boards and old twirling stools.

The whole project will cost about $300,000, not the $125,000 the investors originally planned on, but at least it’s open, with two eggs, potatoes and toast for $2.50, $5.20 ziti, and a 12-ounce Monster Munsonburger with three cheeses, bacon and other extras, plus fries and cole slaw, for $6.

“I’m a fatso who likes to eat, and I thought this little town needed a restaurant like this,” said Mr. LaGattuta, whose family moved to the Catskills from Yonkers in the early 1960s. “You go to an old diner and you get, I don’t know, a warm feeling. That’s what I wanted.”

Spitzer The Ankle Byter . . .

Elliot Spitzer learns the hard way that executive experience is not at all like the “rollicking discussions” he once enjoyed as a youth around his parents’ dinner table. Less than a day — or if you believe the Sun, just hours — after details emerge about the governor’s proposed Amazon tax, he clumsily retreats:

In a second major policy reversal in less than a day, Governor Spitzer is backing down from a plan to require Amazon.com and other online retailers to charge state and local sales taxes on all purchases from New York.

Yesterday, just hours after The New York Sun reported on the new revenue collection scheme, the Spitzer administration announced that it was burying it for the time being — at least until after the Christmas shopping season. The move saved New York City shoppers from having to pay an additional 8.375% on many Amazon.com goods.

“Governor Spitzer believes that now is not the right time to be increasing sales taxes on New Yorkers,” Mr. Spitzer’s budget director, Paul Francis, said in a statement. “He has directed the Department of Tax and Finance to pull back its interpretation that would require some Internet retailers that do not collect sales tax to do so.”

The turnabout came just hours after Mr. Spitzer said he was dropping his plan to allow illegal immigrants in New York to obtain driver’s licenses.

In this latest instance, Mr. Spitzer wasted little time before pulling the plug on another controversial policy, aborting it before it threatened to snowball into a distraction for his administration.

And do you really believe this part?

Mr. Francis, in an interview, said the governor was unaware of the new tax policy, which the tax department quietly issued with a memorandum on Friday. It was supposed to go into effect next month, in time for the holiday shopping rush.

“The governor really wasn’t aware of this. My focus is to raise revenue, and the governor has a broader perspective,” Mr. Francis said. “It’s a big government, and in hindsight, we probably should have made sure he focused on it. It’s one of those things, so you live and learn.”

And a new political axiom is born: if there’s one thing the netroots hate, it’s taxing crap they buy on Amazon (and all for a lousy $100 million . . . that’s somehow using political capital wisely?).

You Know This City’s Full Of Hawks? That’s A Fact . . . They Hang Around On The Top Of The Big Hotels . . . And They Spot A Pigeon In The Park . . . Right Down On Him

Terry Malloy blubbers, “Kid, this ain’t your night” because while pigeon is a delicacy in France, in New York, not so much:

Council Member Simcha Felder, a Democrat of Brooklyn, will announce legislation today to ban the feeding of pigeons anywhere in the city. He will also call for the appointment of a pigeon tsar to manage the population of the birds. In addition, he will recommend looking into further action, including introducing pigeon-killing predators or providing the birds, like New York City school children, with artificial means of birth control.

“The people of New York are sick and tired of dodging pigeons and their droppings as they walk around the city,” Mr. Felder said yesterday. “The sidewalks, parks, streets and bridges of our City are littered with evidence that something needs to be done. The government needs to take responsibility for this issue and end the free rein of pigeons in our city.”

. . .

“I know sometimes this doesn’t pass the laugh test,” [Minority Leader James] Oddo said yesterday. “And it’s easy for cynical people to say ‘Don’t they have anything better to worry about than pigeons?’ But I’m not worried about pigeons — I’m worried about commuters having to bob and weave to dodge these birds swooping and pooping.”

You know, when you think about it, tackling this issue is not the worst use of the City Council’s time . . .