Not In My Backyard!

New Yorkers overwhelmingly don’t give a shit about what happens with the Atlantic Yards development:

Brooklyn’s $4.2 billion Atlantic Yards project is supported by 60 percent of city residents, according to a poll in Crain’s New York Business.

Some neighbors of the proposed megadevelopment in Downtown Brooklyn have been trying to kill the project, a 22-acre complex that would include an arena for the NBA Nets, a hotel, high-rise offices, apartments and stores.

“The meaning of the poll is that New Yorkers are broadly pro- development, and that includes people in Brooklyn who are close to this project,” pollster Craig Charner told Crain’s.

Not surprisingly, opposition to the project was highest in Brooklyn, where 33 percent objected to the plan. That compares with 25 percent in the rest of the city.

Location Scout: Atlantic Yards.

Party Time, Excellent

The Princeton Review agrees, city schools are not known for their party atmosphere:

Three colleges of the City University of New York received high rankings for the least alcohol and drug use in the country. Hunter College ranked fifth for the more conventional “Diverse Student Population” category, but also sixth for “Scotch & Soda, Hold the Scotch (Hard Liquor Usage Reported Low),” and 11th for “Got Milk? (Beer Usage Reported Low).” Queens College ranked third in the “Got Milk?” category, fourth in “Scotch & Soda,” eighth in “Stone Cold Sober Schools,” and ninth in “Don’t Inhale (Marijuana Usage Reported Low).”

“Our students are very hardworking, and a very large percentage of them work and go to school as well,” a spokeswoman for the City University of New York, Rita Rodin, said. “They are really serious about their education. I’m not surprised to see this kind of a ranking.”

On the other hand, the Violets of NYU are smoking more than ever:

New York University regained a few places in the marijuana use category. The school ranked eighth in the country for “Reefer Madness (Marijuana Usage Reported High),” seven places higher than last year. A small school in Asheville, N.C., Warren Wilson College, was no. 1 in the category this year.

See also: That’s Too Bad Because Latin American Student Organization Functions Are Quite Exciting Blog Entry (March 29, 2006)

A Loose Coalition Of Antibar Activists Seeks To Halt The Assault On The Senses

The Villager’s Lincoln Anderson is on the verge of popularizing a new phrase — “antibar activists”* — in the course of profiling a woman who is raising children next to an East Village bar:

Last month, a few neighbors held a protest rally outside that bar, Boxcar, between 10th and 11th Sts. Their ranks were swelled by antibar activists who don’t live in the neighborhood, including individuals who had coalesced to push for the closing of The Falls, the Soho bar where Imette St. Guillen was last seen in February before her murder, allegedly by a bouncer.

Wearing a nightgown and robe, Liz Glass, who lives around the corner on E. 11th St. and whose first-floor apartment’s backyard abuts Boxcar’s backyard garden, organized the rally. With her were her three young children, ages 2 through 7, whom she says are kept awake by the bar’s noise, the older two of whom toted protest signs.

“We can’t sleep anyway. It’s a pajama protest,” Glass said, with a forlorn expression.

More than a year ago, Boxcar agreed to a curfew for its backyard of 11 p.m. on weeknights and midnight on weekends.

However, shortly after the bar agreed to the backyard curfew, Community Board 3 passed a resolution calling for the State Liquor Authority to close the bar’s backyard entirely. Glass, the bar’s primary critic, is asking the S.L.A. to follow through on the resolution.

Although Glass is the neighbor most affected by the noise, others say they are too.

“I moved to here to be by the beautiful park, and then I got this,” said Eden Fromberg, an OB/GYN doctor who lives on 10th St. whose rear windows face into the block’s interior. “Somehow, with the A/C on and a tape of a babbling brook playing, I can still hear them,” she said of her unsuccessful efforts to block out the bar’s noise at night.

A woman from Huntington House, a shelter for female parolees and their families on the other side of Avenue B, saw the protest and came over to briefly lend support and add her name to their petition.

“Let me sign it!” Haydee Figueroa said, a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth as she grabbed the clipboard. She said she was angry “because of the bullshit in the morning — 2 a.m., 3 a.m. they come out to talk and to fight. This one is worse,” she said, gesturing at Lakeside Lounge a few doors down from Boxcar. “A lot of women can’t sleep,” she said.

Although it’s unclear how much noise is too much noise, one’s threshold seems to lower when you involve a two-year-old:

Boxcar also built a sound-barrier wall between its backyard and Glass’s backyard — Glass called in a complaint to the Department of Buildings as the bar was building it because they didn’t have a permit. Spingola says they didn’t know they needed a permit.

Standing in Glass’s backyard around 10:30 p.m. the night of the protest, a steady mumble of voices could be heard from Gnocco, a restaurant on 10th St. with a backyard dining area. Less audible was the sound from Boxcar’s backyard. Inside Glass’s apartment, with the windows closed, it was hard to hear anything from either place.

“We have no violations — no noise violations, since she started her thing,” said Spingola. “The Department of Environmental Protection was here last Thursday night and we did not get a violation. And D.E.P. doesn’t mess around.”

*The first recorded (or at least Googlable) reference seems to be Anderson’s After ‘Falls murder,’ a flood of concerns about bar safety from March 2006.

That Was 40 Pounds Of Filet In My Fridge, Honestly

Mayor Bloomberg announced that Con Ed will reimburse customers for lost food and medicine without proof of receipts:

People who lost food or medicine because of the Queens blackout will be able to submit compensation claims of up to $350 without having to provide receipts or other itemization, Mayor Bloomberg said Wednesday, the day the last of the tens of thousands of affected residents and businesses had their electricity restored.

At a news conference in Queens, Bloomberg said Consolidated Edison would also be waiving a requirement that people fill out a specific form, and would instead accept written letters sent from a legimately affected address. Small businesses may apply for up to $7,000 in compensation, but will have to submit documentation.

When asked if there were concerns about possible fraudulent claims, Bloomberg said, “I would hope if people didn’t suffer a monetary loss they would not try to scam the system. New Yorkers are fundamentally honest.” At the height of the blackout, which lasted for 10 days, about 100,000 people went without lights, air conditioning and refrigeration.

Randy Cohen aside, how many customers — especially ones without power for ten days — do you think will hesitate to collect the full amount? And do you blame them?

But What’s The Right Temperature For $100 Bills?

Two Queens bank robbers find out the hard way that when it comes to exploding dye packs you should really send out your laundry:

Two men tried to launder money –literally — at the Metro Motel, 73-00 Queens Blvd., Woodside, last Friday, July 14, but were interrupted by police and arrested. The men, 51-year-old Anthony Digiosaffate and Paul Villaneuva, age unknown, had allegedly robbed a Queens County Savings Bank in Howard Beach of about $65,000 earlier in the week. A dye pack in the money exploded, covering the money and the two alleged robbers with red dye. The two checked into the Metro Motel and tried to clean the money in a washing machine in the motel’s laundry room, but were arrested. They are being held without bail.