God Help The Tenants Who Depend On The MTA To Find Them An Apartment

The MTA joins countless other douchebags searching for “no fee UES” on Craig’s List:

If you’re looking for a cheap apartment on the Upper East Side, you’ll likely be competing against the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Second Avenue Subway construction will claim 59 units in mostly rent-stabilized buildings around 72nd and 86th streets. As apartments in these buildings become vacant over the next two years, the MTA will attempt to stockpile as many units as possible, renting the empty residences on a month-to-month basis until the property is acquired through condemnation or negotiated purchase with the landlords. The landlords are not obligated to rent to the authority, explained MTA director of real estate Roco Krsulic yesterday, but the authority is reaching out to the landlords to avoid relocating tenants in rent-stabilized apartments.

That’s because under federal law the MTA must find replacement housing for all of the displaced tenants.

“The rules are rather specific,” Krsulic said. “We have to find them comparable housing and preferably in the same community board, which is Community Board 8 in this case. So we are trying to do all we can before the time comes about that we have to accommodate the housing needs.”

This means signing leases on rent-stabilized units now.

Just think — by 2013 the MTA will not only have delivered 33 whole blocks of subway but a tighter rental market too!

This, however, is brilliant:

The “T” train — which someday will run on the Second Avenue line — won’t begin service for years. In fact, the tunnel isn’t even dug.

But a prankster created a realistic T train “service announcement” and hung it in the Canal Street station yesterday. It reads: “No trains between 63 St. and 42 St., 9 AM to 5 PM, Until 1/22/17.”

Sound Smart And Start Talking Up Right Now The “Rising Political Influence Of 10065”

10021, the 90210 of Manhattan, is set to be split into three new zip codes, confounding demographers*:

The U.S. Postal Service has plans to announce that the affluent neighborhood now identified by the 10021 zip code — stretching between East 61st and East 80th streets, from Central Park to the East River — will be divided into three zip codes in July, leaving 10021 for roughly a third of its original area.

“Too many people” is a reason for the change, Rep. Carolyn Maloney said, adding that was also why the Upper East Side needs the Second Avenue subway. She met with a postal district manager, Robert Daruk, on Friday. Ms. Maloney said, “Pretty soon the other two numbers will be just as honored and prestigious” as 10021.

Not everyone agrees. “This is a puzzle to me,” said the co-chairwoman of Defenders of the Historic Upper East Side, Teri Slater. Ms. Slater said 10021 was widely considered “the zip code” to live in on the Upper East Side. She joked that like Gaul, it was being divided into three parts. She said the post office would have to demonstrate a real need. “I don’t think this is going to sit favorably with many people,” she said.

An Upper East Side resident and president of a co-op on East 79th Street, Theodore Siouris, said people in his neighborhood have expressed concern over no longer being in the 10021 zip code.

. . .

A spokeswoman for the USPS, Pat McGovern, said the growth in the number of addresses and the volume of mail in the neighborhood are prompting the two additional zip codes.

Without describing exactly where the cutoff will be, she said the middle area would remain 10021; the area to the south would be 10065 and to the north would be 10075. She said the mail for all three zip codes would still operate out of the Lenox Hill Station on East 70th Street.

*E.g., “Post Office Politics: The Political Influence of Zip Code 10021 Residents”

Manhattan Pastoral

While so many discount them without even trying them, William Neuman actually negotiates a fare and pronounces the machines “oddly bucolic”:

You feel every jolt and bump of the potholed streets. You feel a communion with the pigeons that swoop down and dart just overhead. A yellow parade of taxicabs rushes by close enough to touch. A double-decker bus looms suddenly alongside, seeming, in contrast to your puny status, like a skyscraper on wheels. Look up, and the real skyscrapers soar above you.

But for all its urban grittiness, there is something oddly bucolic about seeing New York from the back of a pedicab. It reduces this most bustling of cities to human-powered speed. There’s an almost tranquil feeling as you float lazily through traffic: Huck and Jim on a raft.

It is a feeling that the fellow pedaling the bike seems to share as well. “It’s a great gig,” Sean Devin, a veteran pedicab driver, said yesterday as he pedaled down Fifth Avenue south of Central Park. “You’re outside all the time. You start when you want, quit when you want, take whatever days off you want. You’re pretty much your own boss. It’s one of the last bohemian jobs left.”

But the unfettered world of pedicabs is about to change. . . .

That’s M’all, Folks

Shouldn’t at least someone out there mourn the potential loss of the Pier 17 mall? Or not:

South Street Seaport’s Pier 17 probably will be razed to make way for a retail, residential and open-space development, a spokeswoman for the property’s leaseholder said yesterday.

Though the company is exploring a range of options, the three-story shopping mall named for the pier upon which it was built likely will be demolished, said Cheri Fein, a spokeswoman for General Growth Properties, a Chicago-based real estate company that owns and operates more than 200 malls nationwide. Fein did not elaborate on the specific plans.

Asked how high a new structure might go, Fein said: “The lower you go, the less open space there is — but nothing has been decided.

“There is also the recognition that it is not just a land-bound place,” she said. “We want to make it 360 [degrees], so that it can be reached by the ferry as well.”

According to one person familiar with the developer’s initial plan, General Growth is considering a tall building for the site, and would build a ferry landing and relocate the landmark Tin Building of the former Fulton Fish Market. The rest of the pier would be left as open space.

. . .

Most waterfront advocates would not shed tears over the loss of the Pier 17 mall, a mix of chain stores, restaurants and specialty shops completed in 1983. The mall is a cumbersome structure, said Lee Gruzen of SeaportSpeaks, a group of local stakeholders.

Location Scout: Pier 17.

Life Goes On Bra!

The great thing about the brassiere trade is that women will always have breasts, and in many cases, up to two of them:

For generations of New York women, one destination has loomed large when it comes to finding The Perfect Bra.

At Town Shop, the venerable Upper West Side institution, thousands of lacy, silky unmentionables are kept in boxes near a fitting area marked “Ladies Only.” Famous for saleswomen who measure with their eyes, and sometimes their hands, the store is a rite of passage for many girls on their way to womanhood, and the store, on Broadway and West 81st Street, boasts a legion of faithful customers. Before her death in 2003, the store’s beloved proprietor, Selma Koch, became something of a local celebrity after appearing on television to discuss the lost art — not science — of fitting a brassiere.

But competition is heating up for the famous store, and with the recent opening of Bra Smyth on Broadway and West 77th Street, there is a veritable bra war brewing on the Upper West Side. So far, both sides have shied away from discrediting the other. On a recent afternoon, Town Shop heir and a grandson of Mrs. Koch, Danny Koch, answered a reporter’s query about neighborhood rivalries with a coy remark. “Are there?” he said.

. . .

Among Town Shop’s loyal customer base, few believe another store can compare. Diana Berrent, 32, said she bought her first training bra there when she was 11 years old and recently returned for a nursing bra. “I’m a true devotee and I’ve referred many friends,” she said.

Not too long ago, Mrs. Berrent and a friend visited Bra Smyth and walked out with nothing. “At the end of the day, I want a bra that fits,” she said, acknowledging, however, that Bra Smyth’s new location is a “bold” move.

Maybe bra shops will cluster on the Upper West Side — a store in the neighborhood specializing in nursing supplies calls itself the Upper Breast Side — the same way that, say, lighting stores cluster along the Bowery and theaters are on Broadway near Times Square.