Leaving The Kitsch To Brooklyn, Queens Civic Leaders Prefer Their Art Sincere, Free Of Irony

Unfortunately, there are lies, damn lies, and elitists:

The Sunnyside Arch, on Queens Boulevard at 46th/Bliss Street, below the No. 7 elevated station, is perhaps an object only Sunnyside could love; therefore, Sunnyside might be forced to defend it against the Municipal Art Commission of the City of New York, which evidently wishes it would fall apart or be torn down.

At the November luncheon meeting of the Sunnyside Chamber of Commerce, Joseph Conley, chairman of Community Board 2, told the chamber members he had recently attended a commission hearing that looked into the case of the arch. Those who would preserve it have money in abeyance for needed repairs, but the Art Commission, which has existed since the consolidation of the city in 1898, must approve of such repairs. Conley said that the Art Commission had nothing but disdain for the arch, and suggested that those interested in preserving it should get an artist to redesign it. Somebody from the commission told him the arch should be more “kitschy” — a term he said he could not understand. And though the arch may be shabby at the moment, it is not dilapidated; the Department of Transportation inspected it, Conley said, and declared it “overbuilt”, so its basic structure is sound.

(They want more kitsch?)

Location Scout: Sunnyside Arch.

Stoops To Conquer (It’s Literally Beneath You!)

Teams of the Mets’ supposed stature (not to mention payroll — $116 million in 2007!) shouldn’t be selling bricks like they’re raising cash for a church rec room, but then there are the Mets, selling bricks like they’re the Minnesota Twins or something:

Diehard fans of the New York Mets will get the chance to get in on the ground floor of the billion-dollar Citi Field stadium — literally. Last week the baseball club unveiled plans for the Citi Field Fanwalk, a plaza outside the planned Jackie Robinson Rotunda paved entirely with custom-engraved bricks purchased by baseball fans.

Three brick types are available: a $395 8-by-8-inch brick engraved with the Mets’ interlocking “NY” and four lines of text; a $340 8-by-8-inch brick with six lines of text; and a $195 4-by-8-inch brick with three lines of text. Each line of text can hold up to 15 characters, including spaces and punctuation.

Welcome To New York . . . Hey, Nice Bike

What you would do with — or who would buy — a motorcycle designed for a circus act is beyond me:

A gravity-defying act has come to a screeching halt since thieves in Jamaica left a circus family without a vital piece of equipment.

The motorcycle heist took place Sunday night in Roy Wilkins Park, where the Espanas are headlining in the Firehouse Circus.

The bike in question, a specially engineered Honda CR85 that Govian Espana has been trained to ride since the age of six, was stolen from the Espana family trailer while they were busy performing.

“This place, maybe eight minutes, tops, is (unguarded),” said Lisa Woodman-Espana. “We think (the perpetrators) must have been casing us.”

. . .

[The Espana family] traveled from their home in Florida this fall to participate in the Firehouse Circus, the brainchild of Bronx District Leader and former “Rappin’ Fireman” John Ruiz, who was performing Sunday night when the theft occurred.

“It is depressing,” Ruiz said, wearing blue-sequined fireman’s garb and a rhinestone helmet, “It was part of the act, the kids loved it. Everyone loved it.”

The “Globe of Death,” as it is known, is typically performed by 14-year-old Govian and his father, Ramon Espana. They each ride a motorcycle in a series of dizzying circles around Asia Espana, who bravely stands motionless at the base of the giant steel cage.

How Dare You Barge Right In Here!

Discarding large objects (cars, appliances — what have you) in city parks is nothing new, but who dumps a barge (two whole barges!) in Jamaica Bay? This guy:

Firefighters, the U.S. Coast Guard, and state environmental agents have been hard at work trying to unravel a bizarre mystery in Jamaica Bay.

Broad Channel residents have been reporting to the Fire Department since Sept. 23 that an unidentified tugboat abandoned two old barges in the Barbados basin in the bay. After weeks of phone calls, firefighters responded to the site last week and found that one boat had sunk while another was half under water, according to a Coast Guard command duty officer.

“We’re not sure if it was sunk on its own,” Coast Guard Lt. Craig Toomey said Saturday as officers launched an investigation in the boats’ origins.

Toomey said the Coast Guard did not know who owned either of the boats, but had determined that the half-sunk ship was an old city Sanitation Department barge.

A license number had been painted on the half sunken boat, which had an official license number of DS74, according to Toomey.

Residents said they saw a suspicious tugboat bring in the rusting barges. Several community members said they had not seen or heard from the pilot since he dropped off the barges.

“They knew right away that something was wrong when they saw that guy,” Jamaica Bay Eco Watchers member Dan Mundy said of his neighbors who spotted the tug boat.

Stray Cat Hunt For JFK Cats

Hey man, that’s that — the Port Authority plays the role of the shoe-throwing mean old man and leaves it to the imagination who the “proper authorities” may be:

To the alarm of cat rescue groups, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has started rounding up feral cats that live in a colony deep in the secured cargo areas of Kennedy International Airport. The several dozen cats have been tended for years by sympathetic airport employees.

The cats sleep in makeshift cubicles made of plastic packing containers nestled in cargo carts that once carried transcontinental luggage but have been long retired from Kennedy’s runways. They gather under and around a rusted old fuel tanker truck.

“It’s just a happy cat camp,” said Ashot Karamian, president of the Urban Cat League, which specializes in rescuing stray cats in New York and whose members had visited the site in the past.

But now the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which manages the airport, has blocked cat rescue groups from approaching the cats.

“The cats are being rounded up in the coming days, and will be held in a safe place until they’re turned over to the proper authorities,” Pasquale DiFulco, an authority spokesman, said yesterday.

. . .

Yesterday morning, there were piles of food on foam plates held down with stones next to an old British Airways cargo crane. Jet engines roared nearby and the AirTrain glided silently by.

A woman in an airline uniform appeared and began opening cans of food and dumping the contents onto paper plates. She refused to be photographed or to discuss the cats for fear of causing problems with her employer.

Scruffy cats dashed out of old cargo equipment, rusted snowplows and underbrush to eat the food.

Each year scores of dogs and cats are lost and found on Kennedy’s 5,000 acres. Some pets that are being transported may get loose. Also, people who live locally can easily drive onto airport property and get rid of their pets, and travelers facing exorbitant kennel costs may opt to simply abandon their pets before catching their planes. Some animals wander in from nearby.

Mr. Karamian, 49, estimated that there were hundreds of feral cats across the airport. He said volunteers from his group had trapped and then spayed or neutered perhaps 30 cats from the colony in the past few months, but lately had been told they must stay off airport property.

“These cats reproduce and kill rodents,” he said. “But someone keeps trapping and killing them. We want to stop the slaughter.”

Buried lede: people actually abandon their cat at the airport before that big trip to Bermuda . . . wow.

Location Scout: JFK.