On The Platform In Trenton On The Northeast Corridor Line, I’m In A SEPTA State Of Mind

Welcome to New York, where even our unrelentingly bubbly and indefatigably upbeat real estate professionals get burned out and consider about leaving:

So it was that wonderful week between Christmas and New Years I spent with family and old friends at home: morning walks with my dog along the Delaware River; going to parties with my younger brothers on small cobblestone streets in Philadelphia; breakfast with my mom, and puzzles with my dad. I can’t help but ask myself: Can I come back now? Can I set up a life here and make it my new old home? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a yard, a house, an upstairs or just some goddamned space in which to think and move?

No one moves to New York to fall in love or to build a home.

It’s Not So Much A Quota As It Is A Make-Work Plan For Its Enforcement Agents*

A Department of Sanitation representative tries to explain the five cigarette butt rule to a tough crowd:

When it comes to giving tickets, the city’s Department of Sanitation (DOS) does not have quotas.

That was the word from the agency’s citywide community affairs officer, Ignazio Terranova, who was in the hot seat as he responded to claims that the agency is more than eager to give out summonses, during the December meeting of the Friends United Block Association (FUBA).

Speaking to the group gathered at Temple Shaare Emeth, 6012 Farragut Road, Terranova acknowledged that DOS enforcement officers could make mistakes, but insisted that the agency is not writing tickets simply to make up a certain number and fill the city’s coffers.

“We do not have a quota, whether people choose to believe it or not,” Terranova asserted. Nonetheless, he added, “But we did not hire 56 new enforcement agents to go out and sit in a car and drink coffee all day. Their job is to find summonses, whether five or 50 in a day.”

There are perameters that must be exceeded, said Terranova, for a ticket to be written. “You’re not going to get a summons for one item,” Terranova contended. “If there’s a cap on one water bottle, you’re not going to get a summons. What constitutes a summons is five things wrong with the garbage or five things on the floor. On the sidewalk, it could be one plastic cup and four cigarette butts. That constitutes five items.”

Keeping your sidewalk and 18 inches into the gutter clean, Terranova added, is a matter of making sure it is free of debris two hours a day — from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. and from noon to 1 p.m. That is actually an improvement, he told his listeners; before a relatively recent law was passed, residents could be ticketed at any hour of the day or night, seven days a week.

*At least he didn’t call it “productivity goals”!

Future Shock: One Miiilllllion People!

The Mayor, noting that the city’s population will grow by one million people by 2030, says New York will face dire infrastructure problems unless something drastic is done about it:

New York’s population will grow by nearly 1 million people by 2030 — pushing the city to the breaking point unless there are huge investments in energy, housing and transportation, Mayor Bloomberg warned yesterday.

New homes, jobs and better transit will be needed to deal with an influx equivalent to the populations of Boston and Miami combined, and it will cost billions, the mayor said at a Queens planning symposium.

“This growth could bring incredible benefits: Billions of dollars in new economic activity will be generated by new jobs, residents and visitors,” Bloomberg told an audience at the Queens Museum of Art.

Immigration is a big factor behind the projected growth, but experts also said the city’s success in reducing crime and improving services already is reversing decades of suburban flight.

The city must support the boom by building new infrastructure, including tunnels, energy plants and schools, Bloomberg said. Even more challenging, it must do so while reducing environmental damage, he said.

Planning experts at the forum offered suggestions, including taxing vehicles that drive into Manhattan’s most heavily trafficked neighborhoods, called congestion pricing, and charging residents by the pound for the trash they throw out.

Among the 10 goals the mayor laid out for the city to meet over the next 23 years were creating homes for 1 million new residents, huge upgrades in mass transit, adding parks, finishing the water tunnel, improving the efficiency of power plants and cleaning the city’s air, land and waterways.

Census figures (via Encyclopedia of New York City):

• 1930: 6,930,446
• 1940: 7,454,995
• 1950: 7,891,957
• 1960: 7,781,984
• 1970: 7,894,862
• 1980: 7,071,639
• 1990: 7,322,564
• 2000: 8,008,278*

Ooh, a demographic crisis is upon us because New York finally caught up with 1970 population levels. Scary.

That million new people are going to come from where exactly?

But of course as we know from recent world events, the best way to encourage action is to create a crisis.

*Sorry, the 2004 estimate was a shocking 8,085,742.

Noises Off

A virtual quack at the Times Square recruiting station has done little to tamp down the site’s persistent pigeon population:

Last month the contractor who maintains the little metal-and-glass building between 43rd and 44th Streets installed a noise-producing contraption that was supposed to shoo the pigeons away.

The device came with four speakers, fewer than some home-theater setups have, but enough to blast bird noises every 10 minutes or so. The noises — the calls of predators, even the sounds of pigeons being attacked — are supposed to scare the pigeons, or at least make them pay attention.

Everybody does pay attention to the noise, it seems — everybody but the pigeons. Pedestrians shake their heads at the idea of woodsy sound effects in the urban jungle. The pigeons, having abandoned the southern end of the recruiting station roof, where the speakers are, stay put on the northern end.

. . .

The Air Force recruiter assigned to the Times Square recruiting station, Tech. Sgt. Danny Ulch, said the bird sounds made him laugh — and think of London. Mayor Ken Livingstone has put a premium on evicting pigeons from Trafalgar Square, spending $423,000 since 2003 on two hawks and a handler.

“England pays big money, but they get predatory birds,” said Sergeant Ulch, who arrived in Times Square last month after three years as a recruiter in the Chicago area. “We took the nonharmful route, and it’s not working very well. It seems like there are a hundred million pigeons here.”

I know the military has a sort of, you know, image problem when it comes to using force against life or limb, but perhaps they ought to think about trying what New York City Transit has done in Queens . . . just saying!

Bay Ridge Likes Its Fish* Exotic, Not Its Women

You say “erotic” and he says “exotic”:

The sign said “exotic dancers.” The only visual was a silhouette of what appeared to be a scantily clad young woman, beckoning passersby into the new Club Shadows.

No wonder, then, that Bay Ridge residents thought they were about to get a strip club. No wonder, then, that panic ensued, that the community board office was flooded with calls from people who didn’t want to see a “gentleman’s club” open in their backyard, and that the community board raced to check the zoning on the site, as well as all other relevant data.

But, it was never his intention to open a strip joint, said the club manager, Joseph Domovsky, who told this newspaper that, after learning about the community response, he had tried to eradicate the problematic phrase from the sign announcing the impending opening of the club on November 30.

“Exotic is not the same as erotic,” he asserted, in a phone interview with this newspaper, contending that what would be opening at 9013 Fourth Avenue would be no more and no less than, “An upscale bar for adults 21 and over. We will be bringing in DJs and performance artists. We are going to run a high-fashion, upscale club.”

*Or its meats.