{"id":3033,"date":"2008-01-04T17:58:45","date_gmt":"2008-01-05T01:58:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2008\/01\/taking_contrarianism_to_new_heights.html"},"modified":"2008-01-04T17:58:45","modified_gmt":"2008-01-05T01:58:45","slug":"taking_contrari","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/01\/taking_contrari.html","title":{"rendered":"Taking Contrarianism To New Heights"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even with the best ideas<\/a> there is always someone who wants to naysay<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Greenwich Village Pigeon Club use lighters printed with their logo as their business card because “lighters change hands more than anything else.”<\/p>\n

Although the club brought the lighters to a City Hall rally in November against legislation proposed by Brooklyn Councilmember Simcha Felder that is aimed at curtailing the pigeon population, they were not as popular as the T-shirts that read “I [heart] NY” followed by a red pigeon symbol.<\/p>\n

“It wasn’t really a lighter crowd at City Hall,” said Jackie Mock, 21, a founding member of the group.<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

“This club started as a fun experiment, but it turned into something a lot bigger,” said Mock. “The pigeon ban really brought us out into the open. In a way it is the first really serious thing we have done.”<\/p>\n

Felder’s proposed legislation recommends creating a “pigeon czar” to oversee the pigeon population, fining people for feeding pigeons, feeding the pigeons birth control, “dovecotting” — or replacing pigeon eggs with fakes — and reintroducing hawks and falcons into the urban habitat, as well as experimenting with the use of robotic hawks.<\/p>\n

“There is a real sci-fi twinge to the methods proposed,” said Millholland. “Releasing hawks to kill the pigeons seems a lot worse than just having pigeons. And replacing the eggs with fake eggs is just mean.”<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

Millholland said that, in her view, the pigeon ban does seem like a “publicity thing” for Felder. Felder did not respond to requests for comment for this article.<\/p>\n

Similar attempts at pigeon population control have been enacted in London, Basel, Switzerland and Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

“We got an e-mail from someone in Germany who said that he liked coming to New York because, unlike where he lived, there are no laws against feeding pigeons here,” said Mock.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even with the best ideas there is always someone who wants to naysay: The Greenwich Village Pigeon Club use lighters printed with their logo as their business card because “lighters change hands more than anything else.” Although the club brought the lighters to a City Hall rally in November against legislation proposed by Brooklyn Councilmember […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-youre_kidding_right"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3033\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}