And If You Think This Is Bad, Imagine What It’s Like North Of 14th Street

“Virulent racism” hits Tribeca:

I am still shaking. I, perhaps naively, thought the blatant racism, which I know exists elsewhere, had ceased to flourish in the enclave where I live. Tribeca has become a haven to those of us who formed it in our wild, youthful artist days and to those who cherish what we created and now have the bucks to buy in. Either way I believed we were a community of Blue State beliefs. I am wrong.

I went to my local bike store, a place I have frequented for over a decade. I needed a little spring tune up and since the sun was shining and the bench outside was empty, I took my 1968 Raleigh in for a new gearshift. I left the “Greenie” and settled into the spring sun.

A gray haired employee, a man who never really chatted with me, came out to do some work on the rental bikes. I was seated next to one of the old time guys and we were talking about kids, divorce, you know the conversation that connects us in middle age.

Let’s call the guy working on the rental bikes Mike, because he reminds me of too many of the angry, bigoted Irish uncles I grew up with. Mike began a tirade about seeing “a Chinese delivery boy” who was “seriously doored by a car the other night. If it was going to be anyone, I am glad it was some Chinese delivery boy and not me. He had no helmet and not even a basket for his bags, I mean what did he think.”

I waited not wanting to release my quick draw temper, but when Mike’s rant continued, “Now my taxes are gonna pay to fix this guy up, can you believe it.”

It gets worse:

I just wanted to retrieve my bike and get out of there. It was a sensation akin to the desire to flee a burning building. So when Jeremy, the manager, came out to announce the steed was ready to roll, I ran in to pay.

When I entered the store there was a youngish African-American man looking at bikes and inquiring as to the price. Under his breath, as he rolled another rental bike out the door, Mike muttered, “Why ask, he won’t buy anything anyway.”

I exploded.

“You are a terrible racist,” I said. “It is awful to speak about Chinese people, black people, anyone the way I just heard you rant in the last ten minutes.”

“What me? I didn’t say anything,” Mike countered sheepishly.

I firmly believe he is unaware of the hatred that spewed from his mouth and spirit. I continued, “In 2006, after everything this city and country have been through, it is unacceptable to espouse this kind of racism. And if you have those thoughts, you should, at the very least, learn to keep them to yourself. This is an outrage.”

I began to cry. I was burbling over with anger, hurt and disbelief that there are still people out there, working on my bike, or wandering my streets who are thinking like that. They are conspiring under their breath with hatred toward my family, my friends, the tapestry of diversity that makes me downright adore this city.

. . .

I am still shaking and perhaps that is a good thing. We all need to have our cores rattled until virulent racism is eradicated.

Now Diane Von Furstenberg Is Only One Degree Removed From Kevin Bacon

Hate to say it, but the High Line makes Yankee Stadium seem like a bargain:

An abandoned elevated railroad that slices through the West Side of downtown Manhattan is on track to becoming the 1.5-mile-long park that activists, public officials and even some celebrities have envisioned for years.

Monday’s groundbreaking on the park, which is expected to open in 2008, drew a crowd that included fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, actors Kevin Bacon and Edward Norton, plus Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York’s senators, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer.

Standing as high as 30 feet, and 60 feet wide in some places, the High Line parallels the Hudson River before it cuts over and juts through Chelsea, ending on Gansevoort Street in the trendy Meatpacking District.

The railroad was built in 1934 for freight trains carrying dairy products, produce and meats to refrigerated warehouses and factories. The goal was to eliminate trains from the growing street-level hum, where the mix of rail traffic, cars and pedestrians led to so many accidents that 10th Avenue was known as “Death Avenue.”

The increase of interstate trucking cut down on rail freight, and the railway was last used in 1980. But much of the structure remains, beginning at 34th Street and zigzagging south. For years its fate was a subject of debate, with property owners underneath arguing the rusty spur was nothing more than a blight.

And just so you know, Diane von Furstenberg supported this project long, long before she invested into the neighborhood:

“The one thing we should all take out today is that dreams come true,” von Furstenberg said. She and her husband, the media mogul Barry Diller, have long championed the High Line. The couple donated $5 million to the project, which is estimated to cost $170 million.

Organizers have about $130 million on hand, including about $100 million in public money. They hope to raise the final $40 million in private donations.

See also: “Furstenberg has designs on Meat Market building,” The Villager, April 28-May 4, 2004.

A New Use For 2 Columbus Circle

The facade of the unlandmarked 2 Columbus Circle Lollipop Building now features a giant billboard for the Da Vinci Code:

When the Museum of Arts and Design bought 2 Columbus Circle last year, its director, Holly Hotchner, defended the decision to reconstruct it, saying, “I think nearly everyone would agree 2 Columbus Circle is a tremendous eyesore.”

Now it is a tremendous ad.

Billboards for “The Da Vinci Code,” the film version, cover construction scaffolding at the 10-story building, the former Gallery of Modern Art, which has been stripped of most of its original marble facade.

“There are advertisements like this throughout the city and in other countries,” said Alan Yamahata, the vice president for development of the museum, at West 53rd Street. He cited the landmark Apple Bank for Savings at Broadway and 73rd Street for one. “We’re a not-for-profit, and this was a creative way to generate capital.”

Construction costs are estimated at $40 million. Mr. Yamahata said he did not know how long advertising would cover the scaffolding or how much revenue it would generate.

There is some question whether the billboards are legal. A sign is allowed on scaffolding, said Ilyse Fink, a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Buildings. “But it must comply with zoning, and a permit should be obtained. There’s no sign permit in our database that I could find for 2 Columbus Circle.”

Those who fought unsuccessfully for landmark status for the 42-year-old gallery, built by Huntington Hartford, were not happy yesterday.

“This institution supposedly dedicated to culture and stewardship destroyed the most important work of art in its collection,” said Kate Wood, the executive director of the Landmark West group. “Then they went and replaced it with a gigantic billboard, which they didn’t even bother getting legal permits for.”

But Would We Still Have The Same Dim Sum Experience If The Push-Cart Ladies Were Unionized?

If you wondered whether the ass-busting waitstaff at Chinatown’s Jing Fong was underpaid rest assured that the management definitely screws them over:

It is where Chinese families and hungry tourists flock on Lunar New Year, braving hourlong waits to savor plates of dim sum plucked from steaming carts. It is always one of the first restaurants to become fully booked on Thanksgiving, the busiest day for weddings in Chinatown, with multiple banquets over multiple shifts. It is where the daughter of Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese leader, was honored in 1995.

It is Jing Fong, whose dining room has a capacity of 1,300, making it the largest restaurant in Chinatown and perhaps New York.

But a lawsuit filed by six waiters in Federal District Court in Manhattan yesterday charges the restaurant with violating the minimum-wage laws.

. . .

Under New York State law, waiters who are paid hourly rates below the minimum wage, now $6.75, are supposed to keep all their tip income, though it can be redistributed among the waiters.

But the six waiters charge that Jing Fong has been using money from the tip pool to pay the women who push the dim sum carts, without paying them an hourly wage. In addition, the waiters say that the restaurant has been taking up to 35 percent of the service charge that is added automatically to the bills of large groups.

They also say that about $2,500 is inappropriately taken each week from the tip pool. The waiters say they earn $20,000 to $25,000 a year and have no benefits.

The owners of the restaurant say they abide by the labor laws, having hired labor lawyers in the 1990’s to inspect their operations.

“Our way of practice is 100 percent legal, otherwise my attorney wouldn’t let me do it,” said Ming Lam, whose family is an owner of Jing Fong. Mr. Lam says the dim sum women do receive an hourly wage in addition to the money they get from the tip pool. “They have a base salary the same as the waiters and the busboys and the captains, and they get their tip share from the tip pool,” he added.

He also said that while the restaurant did take 35 percent of the service charge from large groups of 30 or more, the law permitted them to do so for reservations that were considered banquets. “When a reservation is done through management, when the menu is done through management, that is a banquet,” he said.

Mr. Lam said he did not know that the waiters were complaining about the service charge policy. “They should have brought it to my attention, but they never did,” he said.

That’s A-L-L-E-G-E-D-L-Y

The Village Voice’s Tom Robbins does nothing to disprove the axiom that good Italian food necessarily involves mob links:

Most nights Ron Straci helps run Rao’s, the city’s most exclusive restaurant, a place favored by society swells and hoodlums alike, where you’ve got a better chance at getting a table if your name is Frankie Brains than if it’s Madonna. But in his day job, Straci is a labor lawyer and the work is far less glamorous. For instance, one of his recent tasks has been to handle a group of dissidents who challenged their union’s recent election as undemocratic and unfair. In February, Straci sent a letter to the members explaining that the union he represents had considered and dismissed their protest.
“All of the challenges were investigated by the committee appointed by the Secretary-Treasurer,” wrote Straci. The committee had recommended, and the executive board had voted, that the challenges be dismissed. The decision was then ratified at a meeting of the general membership, “without questions or objections from the floor.” Case closed. Straci made no mention that the secretary-treasurer in question who oversaw this inquiry into democratic procedures was a spry 83-year-old, an alleged veteran mobster named Julius Bernstein, who goes by the nickname “Spike.” Nor that the meeting of Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Union had been presided over by president Salvatore Battaglia, 59, another reputed mob associate. Nor that both men, along with the woman overseeing the union’s $268 million in pension funds (the girlfriend of said Spike Bernstein), are currently accused by federal prosecutors of conspiring with an acting boss of the Genovese crime family to obstruct justice and extort a union medical vendor of $100,000.

. . .

Those are stories that get told regularly and with gusto at Rao’s (pronounced Ray-ohs), the restaurant that constitutes Straci’s second job. Together with his better-known cousin, restaurateur turned actor Frank Pellegrino, Straci is co-owner of the much coveted East Harlem bistro, which they have made into a destination for everyone from presidents to movie stars and Wall Street tycoons. Bill Clinton has tucked in a napkin there, along with New Jersey’s Jon Corzine, George Pataki, and ex-senator Al D’Amato, who wooed a girlfriend or two over dinner. But the pols get fewer glances than celebrity regulars like Woody Allen, Leonardo DiCaprio, Billy Crystal, and Rob Reiner. And the stars make room for such corporate titans as Jack Welch and Ron Perelman, and the steady stream of moguls who dine with tough-talking ex-detective turned private eye to the stars Bo Dietl, who holds down a weekly table.

For sure, part of the attraction is a reputation for excellent red sauce, chicken limone, and seafood salad. There is also the fact that Rao’s is a charming and cozy little place, with just 11 tables, lit by perpetual Christmas lights. It is located on a remote corner at East 114th Street and Pleasant Avenue, across from Thomas Jefferson Park and the old Benjamin Franklin High School.

But even more important than its ambience and clam sauce is the unmistakably strong aroma of Cosa Nostra. As the late author and Rao’s regular Dick Schaap wrote in his preface to Rao’s Cookbook: Over 100 Years of Italian Home Cooking, one of the lures is “the suspicion that every other diner is the Godfather of something or other.”

And of course Robbins gives the reader ample reason to remain suspicious . . .