In which I rant about commuting and attempt to fix transportation in NYC

What’s wrong with commuting in NYC? The short answer: a lot. The long answer: it’s complicated. But with the third fare increase in as many years, it will now cost $104 to get to work each month, on increasingly crowded and late trains. A post of what’s wrong with the mismanagement of the MTA could easily run thousands of words and just scratch the surface but the fact remains that there is no way of schleping to and from your small overpriced apartment that is without its flaws.

Driving to work in the city is incredibly expensive, inconvenient, and impractical. Unless you live within a mile or two of your office, walking to work isn’t realistic. And biking in the city has it’s own set of problems:

Regardless of the miles of bike lanes that have been added in the last few years, New York City can still be a very unfriendly place to bike. A study last week of only 11 of Manhattan’s bike lanes showed what nearly everyone in the city knows: over 1,700 violations in 22 hours-- double-parked cars, delivery trucks, pedestrians and even police and city vehicles are clogging up the bike lanes, opening car doors forcing cyclists to swerve into traffic, and riders going the wrong way on way streets, or blowing through red lights, and though it all only two tickets issued.

Cops don’t care about cyclist safety—they are blocking the bike lanes – and drivers and pedestrians are hostile to cyclists and cyclists are hostile right back. Every cyclist has a story of a near miss with a car, but conversely every pedestrian and driver has a story of a jerk cyclist.

So here’s my solution to all of the city’s commuting woes:

1. Driving: Put congestion pricing into place—its main effect will be the final straw to force many people to not drive into the city during rush hours, making the streets less clogged and if it people still drive in the revenue can help improve the subway. Oh and save a few million by leaving inaccurate font on street signs and keeping the names of bridges.

2. Mass Transit: Make the subway and buses better. You can raise the fare without losing riders or pissing everyone off if people feel like they are getting what they pay for. Use the money from congestion pricing, cover everything in advertisements, then take the money and add more trains and buses to so it runs more regularly and isn’t so unbearably crowded at rush hours. What we can live without: wifi and cell phone service on the trains. What’s totally essential: electronic signs at on every platform that tell commuters when the next train in coming. The tube in London has it, the metro in DC has it, it is for me the most glaring common sense thing lacking in the NYC transit system. (it’s in the works for 75 stations currently, but it’s needed in every station and the city is decades behind on this)

3. Cycling: Everyone not on a bike stay the fuck out of the bike lane and all drivers and passengers, look twice before pulling out from a parking spot or opening a car door. There’s not two ways about it—it takes 5 seconds and ensures you won’t kill or hurt someone. If you ride a bike in the city, don’t be a jerk. When you are on a bike you feel like an odd cross between a vehicle and a pedestrian, and sitting for the duration of a red light when there are no cars coming and you know you you’ll likely get stuck behind a bus or other obstruction within in a block is frustrating. Most cyclists aren’t going to obey all the traffic laws (few drivers do and not all traffic laws are valid for cyclists), but if you are on a bike, you should at least do the following: a) wear a helmet b) have lights if you ride at night c) treat every intersection at least like a blinking red light; stop and look both ways—for cars, people and bikes-- before crossing d) have a bell but use your voice – so many times the polite “ding ding” work, so many others require a loud “HEY!” to be heard e) ALWAYS pay attention.

4. Pedestrians: Walk only on the sidewalk (see above re. stay out of the bike lanes), if you need to text/greet a long lost pal/look at a map/take a picture/read a book, etc. move to the side. Do not walk more than two people across, and look before jaywalking.

Yours truly,

Curmudgeonly commuter

In Which I Rant About Garbage and Attempt to Save New York City

The big event in my life right now is that my boyfriend is moving into my apartment August 1st, and my longtime roommate and good pal is moving out. With a move always comes the purging of many belongings from clothes and books to furniture and household goods and many things in between.

But what to do with all of this perfectly good stuff?

A) Spend the time and effort to hold a stoop sale hoping to make a little moo-la and find loving homes for your stuff
B) Donate it to a charity that will put it to good use
C) Put it all on the curb and hope someone takes it before it ends up in the trash
D) Throw it all away— the planet is already screwed and they’ll figure out how we can live on the moon soon enough!

At first I thought (A) was a good idea, but we are so hectic with the move, plus there’s not a lot of space or foot traffic on our street so I’d probably waste a lot of time to make $5 and still be left with tons of stuff. So I decided to opt of (B), which should be an easy enough thing to do right? Not in New York City.

Back in Michigan (and I’m sure in many other car-centric places in the US) when we wanted to donate things, we’d load up the car and drive to the local thrift shop where they’d always gladly take it. And here in the city there are plenty of places that will take your stuff but most New Yorkers don’t have a car (which is a good thing, right?!) which means in order to donate in person involves lugging bags and boxes of items and/or furniture on the subway or renting vehicle to haul it – both unlikely and totally cumbersome options.

So I searched for an organization that would come and pick up all of our great stuff. There were woefully few. I finally found one—the Salvation Army—after two days of trying to get through, I attempted to schedule a pick up for July 31, only to be told they are booked until the end of August.

Which means I’ll have to opt for option (C), which according to the city really amounts to option (D) in most cases. I hope that if someone does come to take our stuff they aren’t driving, because as came to light this week it’s illegal to pick up discarded items on the sidewalk if you're driving a vehicle at the time because once something is set on the ground it becomes city property. This has been in the news this week after a man is Queens was fined $2,000 and had his 73-year-old Aunt’s car impounded for attempting to take an AC some one was throwing out. Even the MAYOR of the city didn’t know about the law and thought it was insane.

(Image from NYT “freegan” article)

Recycling is not only mandatory in NYC because it’s good for the environment; it’s actually a revenue source for the city. And yes there’s a list of places to donate useable items on the Department of Sanitation’s site but again, good luck getting someone to pick it up.

And yeah there’s special events/locations/days when you can recycle un-useable hazardous things like electronics/light bulbs/batteries. But how realistic is it to expect people to store a bunch of old light bulbs and batteries for six months in their already cramped apartments and then remember which day and location to take these things?

Mandatory recycling is such a beneficial idea for all involved. (Speaking of Michigan, 95% of the people I know there don’t recycle because it’s not as easily available)
Sure people in NYC still throw out tons of easily recycled stuff, regardless of how required or easy it is to put glass/plastic and paper in separate bins. It’s impossible to make everyone responsibly dispose of items they no longer need, but the lack of options for passing along perfectly good stuff is a glaring opportunity for the city.

So here, free of charge, is my solution:

Once every other week, deploy a fleet of trucks to pick up useable unwanted items. Residents would put them on the curb just as they do now, but instead of the things that don’t get taken by passersby ending up in the landfill (which is totally costly for the city), they’d go to locations in each borough where they could be distributed to non-profits.

The same could go for hazardous/non-traditional un-useable items: every month (say on the 1st) there could be a collection of these items. Both of these options involve additional cost and infrastructure, but I think the benefits outweigh the costs, and with the right investment could turn into a program just as lucrative as the recycling program has been. Otherwise I’m just going to have to open that store that sells their neighbor’s garbage to yuppies that I’ve been talking about for years…

**Update: I put a bunch of clothes, jewelry, books, etc. out on the curb this Saturday and within an hour everything was gone, I was joyful...until I opened the garbage can and found all of my lovely and totally usable belongings covered in smelly trash--thrown there by the insufferable woman who lives in the front apartment of my building.

The Fair State of the World

It’s birthday week for me, and as such (especially since I’m unemployed) I’m trying to do something fun each day.

Today I biked from my apartment in Park Slope to Flushing Meadows Park in Queens (and back). The round trip was about 24 miles, but it was a beautiful day and although Google biking directions lead me astray a couple of times in Queens and a driver almost killed me in Brooklyn, it was a great trip.

The main appeal of visiting Flushing Meadow Park for me was to see the panorama of New York City (built for the 1939 World’s Fair) that includes (almost) every building in the city in tiny form (it’s updated from time to time), and the Unisphere (built for the 1964 World’s Fair). The Unisphere was cool and the disrepair of the New York State Pavilion was also worth seeing, and the park itself was beautiful and had a lot there (I saw a Bear at the Queens Zoo without even having to pay to go into the zoo!) Unfortunately the Queens Art Museum that houses the panorama was closed today. I’ll defiantly be back to see it, but in the meantime if anyone is searching for last minute birthday ideas for me, you can adopt a building in my name!

Visiting this former World’s Fair Site, reminded me of the other former World’s Fair Site that I’ve been to—one of the most beautiful man made spots I've ever been: The Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Although World Expos (as they are now called) kind of still exist, the grandeur of the World’s Fairs especially from the Industrialization era where new technology and inventions (like electricity) were first shown off holds a certain excitement that can’t be matched today were everything is (and yes I am aware of the irony) blogged and tweeted and facebooked to death before it is even released. World’s Fairs of the scale that once existed aren’t practical in today’s world, and it might not even be something worthy of being nostalgic for (truly there were a lot of not so great moments) But it’s an interesting part of history to visit on a lovely spring day.

Food for Change

It’s a topic I’ve been a-blogging about frequently in the last couple of months, so it’s only appropriate that I follow up with these recent more hopeful stories on the topic of making healthy food more available in food desert areas of the city and country.

Yesterday New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand proposed $1 billion in loans and grants Monday to help build 2,100 grocery stores in areas around the nation that lack access to fresh food.

It’s estimated that the proposal would help about four million New Yorkers who live in areas like the Bronx and East New York, where grocery stores are few and far between by providing the funding for more than 350 stores statewide. This proposal has the potential to solve the problem of access to healthy food in low-income areas and that’s the first step, but as I’ve said before, the second (and perhaps most important) step is making those healthy foods affordable—more affordable than junk food. That’s a more complex step that involves our entire industrial food system, but no measure of availability or education/awareness will have complete results until people can afford to buy the food.

There’s been some good news (not necessarily NEW news, but more new-to-me news) in the education/awareness area of healthy eating and cooking. On the heels of the after school cooking program I volunteered at last week, I found this story about a professional chef teaching kids about healthy cooking. I know firsthand how engrained poor eating habits can be in kids, how reluctant they can be to try foods they think are “weird” or “gross” but I’ve also seen how much (boy and girls, small kids, teens) really get into cooking, creating, and learning about new foods. It’s not going to fix the problem or change the world, but it does give you hope.

The Obesity –Hunger Paradox

Along the same lines as my recent posts about poverty and obesity, is this recent New York Times article, The Obesity-Hunger Paradox which points to poverty riddled South Bronx (the most overweight and least healthy part of New York City) as one of the areas in America with the biggest hunger problems. Hunger defined not by starving, but by the lack of access to nutritious food, and an inability to afford the basics, being referred to as “food insecure.”

Families with not enough money to get an actual meal, and no grocery stores to buy real food at anyways, so they fill up on calorie-filled food from bodegas (check out this video)

In fact a recent survey by the Food Research and Action Center, found that nearly 37 percent of residents in the South Bronx, said they lacked money to buy food at some point in the past 12 months. The article points to some incentives that sound like really good ideas (encouraging farmers’ market patronage through food stamps incentives and attempts to lure grocery stores to poor areas with tax breaks.

The figures are showing that the programs aren’t working, most likely because they aren’t wide spread enough, and the healthy options still aren’t cheap enough. Even if it’s the difference of a dollar between a filling and tasty healthy meal that you have to prepare and a filling and tasty junk food meal that you don’t have to cook, the choice is obvious when you’re poor, stressed, and busy. These programs are good steps but their clearly not enough, the structure of the neighborhood, the structure of minimum wage, and the structure of the industrial food system all need to be changed.

Fizzing Out

Related to my previous posts on the misguided fight against fatties, The New York soda tax has “fallen flat” and “fizzled out” some may even say it’s “evaporated.” Aside from being ripe for puns for headlines, the soda tax was another government idea that seems to have been thought up by a 7^th grader (an oversimplified, not thoroughly thought through solution to a complex problem). Sure the money from adding a penny onto the price of every ounce of soda would get a lot of money and that money could be used for health care.

But therein lies the first major failing of the idea: you are taxing soda to discourage people from drinking it because it’s bad for them, but you’re making it low enough that you can still count on people drinking it. Adding a one cent tax to soda doesn’t make healthier options any more affordable, it doesn’t even close the gap in any noticeable way between a 99 cent two litter of soda and a $5 bottle of organic juice.

The other major problem with these and other similar “sin taxes” is the people that you are taking the money from are usually those who can least afford to pay it. Smoking, drinking and eating crappy food are vices enjoyed by all classes but are about the only luxuries the poor can afford. Similarly, if you are admitting that a product is bad for it’s consumers, simply charging them more money to kill themselves seems more like a way to capitalize on it rather than help fix the problem. In short, the argument just falls flat.

Soda Tax Plan Evaporates

The Least Amount of Fun you can Have on Coney Island

I've loved Coney Island as long as I've lived in New York, despite of and sometimes even because of it's past and problems. It's one of the most interesting places in the city. I naively thought biggest problems the neighborhood faced were poverty/blight vs. disney-fication and condos.

This essay about the squalor of "Surf Manor" adult home from Mother Jones, points to a whole other world just one block from the boardwalk.

A Place for Us

A Decade of Kate

Oh year-end recaps! Oh decade rehashes! Oh listicles! Yes it’s that time of year and as lazy and self-serving as it is, I can’t resist the urge to look back on my own little life in the ‘00s. Unlike the two other decades of my life, this one seems like a decade without definition, I can’t really point to many cultural trends that tied 2000-2009 together except maybe the Internet and Reality TV. I graduated from high school in 1999, which means my entire adult life to this point has taken place in this odd ambiguous decade. So if you care to indulge me, here’s a snapshot of a 20-something in the 00s. (also stay tuned for a look at a decade of great taste, aka. my favorites in media and pop culture in the 00s, posting soon)

2000

I started the year and the decade off watching fireworks, police in riot gear, and the world not come to an end in Chicago’s Grant Park with my first love. It was really cold and kind of exciting. The year was all downhill from there. Chicago was thrilling to the 18 year old version of me who had barely been outside of her tiny home town, but several circumstances conspired to make me miserable there, and by March I dropped out of college and moved back home in what was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done.

That spring I had an extremely difficult break up, and that fall I swallowed my pride and started classes at the local community college. By the end of the year I was settled into life back at home: working at the mall, hanging out with my old friends, and going out flirting with dudes. I was moving towards being less depressed, but still felt like I was a million miles away from everything I had wanted for my life.

2001

The first few months of this year were an echo of the last few of 2000, I briefly dated someone a few years older, breezed though my classes, worked, and started to plan my next move. Shortly after my 20th birthday I went to work on Michigan’s Mackinac Island for the summer, even though the pay was low, and the conditions less than stellar, it was a fun escape that helped me to feel adventurous and less complacent again.

In the fall I moved to Ann Arbor and into what my family deemed a “hippie commune” (actually a co-op house of mostly privileged liberal University of Michigan students). Although I was nervous after my previous failed attempt, I dove head first into college life and quickly found a niche, joining several groups, writing for the college paper, going to parties, participating in poetry slams, and met a close friend, who eight years later I share an apartment with in Brooklyn.

Since you can’t mention the fall of 2001 without it, here’s where I was on September 11th: I was running late for my morning class, circling the parking lot looking for a spot when I heard what I first assumed was an odd morning radio show gag. I arrived to find classes cancelled and everyone gathered around TVs. It was an odd day that I felt pretty removed from.

2002
Again much like the last few months of 2001, I found myself enjoying college life and thriving in my classes and activities. Where I was a small fish in Chicago, I felt like a big fish at Eastern Michigan University. My passion for writing was renewed and I took comfortably to the role of overachiever. I also become dedicated to traveling more and went to work at a nature preserve in Florida during Spring Break. I followed that up with my 21st birthday, my brother’s wedding, and a cross country bus trip to work in Yellowstone National Park for the summer.

I long referred to that summer as life changing and while I’ve lived though a lot since then, it’s certainly still up there. The isolation and beauty of living in the wildness magnified the dramas of life: The over-the-phone break-up with my college boyfriend, the friendships formed and lost, the attack and rape of my roommate, the death of my father.

I came back to my college life in a much different place than I had left it three months prior. Still uber-involved, I began my school year as Editor in Chief of the campus magazine and capped it off with an honor from the Michigan Press Association, while being submerged in one of the darkest moods of my life.

2003
Thankfully this year worked the opposite of 2002; it came in on a low note and steadily improved. The first several months were spent again much like the ones before them; working hard and feeling low. But with the melting snow my mood and life started to change. I successfully completed my tenure as Editor in Chief, and decided to slightly delay my summer internship at Metro Times in Detroit to take a month-long solo road trip down south and then up the east coast.

It was just the freedom and head-clearing I needed, and the rest of the summer was among some of the best times in my life. While I interned and worked two jobs, I found my feet more as a journalist and found a powerful infatuation (that would end over a year later in another country). Reality set in that fall when that beau moved back to England, I moved into a not so collegiate apartment complex, started working full time, and in December, graduated from college. Still having never been on an airplane, let alone out of the country (except for Canada which used to not count), I got a passport, just in case.

2004
Now officially a college graduate, and not living the glamorous life I thought a 22 year old should be, quarter-life ennui started to set in. I was working a job straight out of Office Space. I started searching for anything and blindly and unwisely sent out over 100 cover letters and resumes to newspapers all over the country. I took my first trip on an airplane and visited San Francisco. I started working part time at night as a copy editor; I applied to a year long program in London.

Then just after my 23rd birthday I found out I had an interview in New York City for the London program and flew there the same week, I was told I might not hear for a month or more, but by the time I returned to Michigan I was accepted. That summer I prepared to make the biggest move of my life. Many in my life were sure it had something to do with a boy. It did not. Just before I left I revisited Yellowstone with a good friend, it was the same and very different at the same time.

That fall I moved to London. It was lonely and difficult and exciting and I loved every second of it, even when at its most thorny. I disliked my job (training and development at a large investment bank) but my devotion to the city never wavered. I traveled to Wales, Spain, and spent my first and only Christmas away from home in Hungry. My sister in law told me over the phone that she was pregnant. The British boy from the summer before broke my heart, a boy I had met very briefly came to visit me for new years and we foolishly decided to get involved across the ocean.

2005
I continued to hate my job and love London more and more, I traveled to France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Greece, and Scotland. I broke up with the boy back in American, I turned 24. My mom got engaged. I had an exciting romance with a co-worker. I met and became friends with a man whom understood me more than anyone I had ever met before; I made myself keep a distance because there were parts of him that scared me. I missed a train that exploded only minutes later on the morning for the July 7th bombings. I held on to every aspect of the city even as it slipped away and my visa expired. My mom put my childhood home up for sale, sold it and moved in with her soon to be husband, my brother became a father and I became an aunt.
In the fall I moved back to the US and into the house of my mom’s fiancé, a man I had met twice before. I met my awesome baby nephew, and saw all the people I had missed for a year. I started looking for jobs in New York City and ways to get back to London. I was miserable. I came to New York and slept on couches of friends for several weeks, turned down a high paying job I doing something I didn’t understand at an investment bank in Connecticut, I turned down a very low paying job as a copy editor at an Energy Trade publication, I took a job writing about things I didn’t understand for the communications department of a French Investment Bank. I found an apartment and roommate in Brooklyn and just before Christmas moved to New York.

2006
New York put me through the ringer. My drink was drugged at a party and I woke up the next morning in the hospital with cuts and bruises (and later a $1,000 hospital bill). I hated my job and started to look for a new one. I traveled back to Michigan for my mom’s wedding. The 3rd British boy in my life (the one I felt close to but tried to keep a distance from) visited me and I realized I loved him. I was hit by a car while riding my bike.

I turned 25. New York started to grow on me, but at the end of the summer I traveled back to London and (unwisely) decided to start a relationship (across the ocean) with the British man I loved who already treated me poorly (although I couldn’t see that at the time). I continued to hate my job, and looked for a new one. The boy and I made frequent trips across the ocean, I planned to move back to London in a year to go to grad school and be with him. A week before Christmas I was laid off from the job I hated, a few days later I was offered an Assistant Editor position at Popular Photography magazine, it was the type of job I had been waiting for since graduation. The boy came to visit for Christmas and it was clear I was going to delay moving to London, our problems increased.

2007
I started working at Popular Photography and loved it. My roommate moved out and my good friend whom I lived with in college in Michigan moved in. I continued to make frequent trips to London, the boy and I continued to have problems, we made plans for him to move to New York, but it became increasingly clear he wasn’t going to. I turned 26. The verbal and emotional abuse increased, I was miserable but in love in an intense way I never had been before. At the end of a horrible summer I traveled to London for the last time and we broke up.

I spent that fall angry, bitter, and busy. I did a 35 mile bike tour, I put myself on a strict regime to lose weight mostly to have something to do, and I signed up to become a Big Sister. I traveled to Michigan for my first Thanksgiving at home in years. My uncle was found dead in my grandparent’s basement a few days after I returned to New York. At Christmas my best friend announced that she was getting married to her long time boyfriend, I started helping her plan.

2008
I became a Big Sister to a 13 year old girl, my bitterness towards men softened a little, and I started dating. I traveled alone to Costa Rica and had an amazing time. I turned 27, and went on a date with a man whom I figured would be a summer fling. I had a fantastic summer and by the fall realized I wanted more than a fling with the man, and thankfully he did too. I did another 35-mile bike tour. My circle of friends in New York grew and I became for the first time happy and settled in the city, which made me fear that I was becoming complacent. My sister-in-law announced she was pregnant again.


2009
My sister in law lost the baby. My boyfriend lost a family member, my best friend lost her grandmother, and I lost my grandmother. I started having insomnia. I continued being a Big Sister. My boyfriend and I traveled to San Francisco together and I remembered how much I love everything about that city. I found out the magazine I worked for was being sold; our pay was cut 6%. I still liked my job, but felt like I was never going to advance in my career and was barely making any money. I turned 28. The man who I thought would be a fling turned out to be the most loving, caring and stable man I’d ever met. We fell in love. I traveled back to Michigan for my best friend’s wedding. My 10-year high school reunion happened and I didn’t attend.

My magazine was sold and our Editor in Chief left, lay offs began, we moved to new offices, we were told our jobs were safe. I was laid off two weeks later. I spent two months unemployed. I did a 55-mile bike tour. I started freelancing a lot, and took a full time freelance position at WomansDay.com (back at my old publisher). I had a wisdom tooth removed. I applied for Grad School for Journalism in both New York and San Francisco. I wrote a blog post about my decade.

2010-2019: TBD

Is Borders Racist?

Yes it’s a big corporation, but I've always liked Borders, it started as a small bookshop in Ann Arbor, MI, they carry Paperchase products that I loved in London…and I get free gift cards to their stores from my credit card. But today when I went to spend said gift card at the Borders in Columbus Circle something happened that made me wonder…is Borders racist?

I was buying my Little Sister the book Caucasia by Danzy Senna, a book that yes, is about race issues (amongst other things), a book I read years ago and bought in the general fiction section of a book store. But alas when I went to the fiction section to find this bestselling, award winning book…it was nowhere to be found. So I asked an employee, who looked it up and told me it was in the “African American literature” section…now this wasn’t the African American Studies section, which is totally valid and for non-fiction books…this is a section of novels….for black people.

How is this OK? They don’t put the Joy Luck Club in “Chinese American literature” as far as I could tell fiction books for adults were divided into general fiction, western, romance, (maybe thriller or mystery or something like that), and African American. This is like calling the Rap and R&B CD section “African American Music.” Just seems kind of offensive in my humble opinion. This is the first time I’ve noticed this, maybe other bookstores do it too, maybe it doesn’t bother other people…just seemed a little Jim Crow-y to me…

I might start watching more local TV news

If this is what's happening:

Life Expectancy, Poverty, and the (not so) surprising results

Last Summer New York magazine ran a “look-how-great-we-are” story about how the average life expectancy of New Yorkers had for the first time in history surpassed that of the rest of the country. You see, as the article took exhaustive pains and several thousand words to point out, there used to be crime here but now it’s totally safe.

Plus we walk, unlike all those stupid fat lazy bastards in the rest of the country. And we walk fast, unlike all those stupid fat lazy bastards the come here on vacation (boy, they sure are annoying and we sure are cooler than them aren’t we?). Plus, we go to really fancy doctors that are totally the best in the world, and we shop at expensive organic food stores. All of us. Well…..expect the Bronx, which oddly enough seems to be the only exception to the rule.

After devoting 10,000 words to patting it’s target demographic on the back (and yes that includes me to some extent), they finally got to the point in the last few measly paragraphs. It turns out that there was one part of New York City that bucked the trend, and (shock, gasp!) it was the area with little to no gentrification. They could have saved a lot of space and printed only this part of the article:

“Of course, the built environment wouldn’t have done New Yorkers’ health any good if it hadn’t been catalyzed by the city’s economic bonanza. Gentrification cut both ways. A more cynical—and possibly clear-eyed—explanation for New York’s life-expectancy gains is that gentrification drove many of the city’s poorest people out of town.”

Exactly. The city got healthier because it became filled with rich people who can afford fancy doctors and organic food, the problem didn’t get fixed. It just got pushed out.

And the story of the Bronx, the one borough where the life expectancy actually declined in the last 20 years, is in fact the none-to-shocking story of all of poor America. When you’re poor, you often can’t eat well, even if you wanted to, all the cheap food is the worst for you.

This week the New York Times took notice too, recounting a recent study the revealed that from 1983-1999 life expectancy (for women) in the US did not improve, and in fact, declined in hundreds of places in the country (for men life expectancy rose, but with a difference of 5.4 years between poor and wealthy). The lines along which life expectancy declined or stagnated? One guess: poverty. The shaded areas on the map double as some of the poorest in the country.

The links between poverty, health, and life expectancy are so painfully obvious (from prevention and management of chronic and fatal disease, unhealthy diet, smoking, drugs, alcohol (which are far from problems of poor, but are treated and dealt with differently), and of course stress).

The fact that we need these studies to bring the gaping income inequality to a discussion, or the fact that the more “advanced” we get the worst the situation gets is disgraceful. It’s so terribly embarrassing as a country, to be so rich, to pose as some sort of world leader, and at the same time be so woefully, cluelessly indifferent.

Key to Not Feeling Poor: Find New Friends

It’s a cute idea to try to put a happy face on the effects of the impending recession . But it’s horribly misguided. The author of the article laments how his hood (my own South Park Slope, although it sounds like he lives in the fancier more actually Park Slope part) has changed since he moved there, all the authentic shops getting pushed out for the yuppiefied ones. But, ahem, didn’t you start/continue the gentrification by moving there? I know I did, I know my block has changed a lot in the 2 ½ years I’ve lived there. And it’s not like I’m pro gentrification by any means, but you can’t really criticize your neighbors for doing the same thing you are.

And as he seems to be struggling with, you can’t call Wall Street types dicks if you secretly (or publicly) envy their fancy shit. So, yeah the guy on the subway was totally right about both of you. It doesn’t make you a better person just because you feel guilty about your materialism, nor does dissing your “poor” roots while waxing nostalgic about a time and place where everyone went without.

So my solution to save money on therapy trying to reconcile your wealth-lust/liberal guilt is this: Stop hanging out with such douchebags. Seriously, all of the friends mentioned in this article sound insufferable: $300 bottles of wine? Paying someone to decorate your apartment? Flying your friends to Mexico for your birthday? Here’s some insight, maybe the suffocating feeling of the “commodification” of New York has something do with the company you keep. These aren’t a good representation of your average New Yorker.


Oh and the joy of a cheap, uncomplicated life? Yeah unemployment and food stamps are super charming…

What’s a Canadian to do?

So, this post on Gawker points to an article that claims racist white people in the south use the code word “Canadian” to refer to black people when they want to say something racist but don’t want to overly offend (the logic I guess being that no one would be offended by dissing Canadians).

The article was based mostly on a memo from a Texas attorney, but seems to being used here as a way of saying, (to quote Gawker) “Dumbass American rednecks have finally caught on that racism and the use of ugly racist terms to call black people might no longer be palatable to the American ear.” But really, categorizing the whole of the south based on one memo and a few anecdotal examples might be a bit illogical. And making sweeping comments categorizing all white southerners as racists-mullet having “white trash” might in itself be just as racist.

Yes there are a lot of racist jerks in the south, and yes their brand of overt racism is disgusting. But what about the subtle covert racism of liberal white northerners? Isn’t that just as disgusting? For example, isn’t the abundant and widely accepted use of the term white trash offensive to people of all races?

New Yorkers should take a break from patting themselves on the back for their progressiveness to listen to the things they accept hearing. I could provide a few anecdotal examples of both subtle and overt racism that I’ve witnessed in my few years in the alleged capital of progressive thinking, but I wouldn’t want to categorize millions of people based on a few examples.

Another Thing Wrong with Health Care in 'merica

A side effect of not having health insurance is that you can go decades without visiting the dentist. Probably people with insurance still do that, it’s not a very pleasant place. Not me, I’ve been taking full advantage of the costly privilege of not letting my teeth rot out of my head. So imagine my surprise today, when I went to the dentist after only six short months to discover that since my last visit they had installed flat screen TVs with cable at all of the patient chairs. Fancy. But mostly disturbing and wrong.

For the following three reasons:

1) How much money does my dentist have? The answer is of course a lot more than me, but probably still less than my insurance company. None of which is surprising, yet still, you can’t sit in a chair outfitted with a spittoon and a flat screen TV and not feel like those extra charges for your fillings didn’t help pay for it.

2) Are we this desperate? No one will argue the point that TV is getting worse and worse, even the people on TV seem to be shrugging and saying “well, what do you expect?” Is there some sort of mathematical formula that says that the worse TV gets the more inescapable it should become? If I wanted to I could watch TV at home, at the gym, at work (online), on the subway and walking (on an MP3 player), in a taxi (one of those new fancy ones), on a plane (Jet Blue), and now while having dental work done. What next? Bathroom stalls? Probably…


3) You can’t actually watch TV while having dental work done. Because you have hands and arms in your mouth and in front of your face, not to mention loud sucking, drilling, picking, sanding equipment. Looks like doctor money bags didn’t think that one through…

If this is the World’s Capital, What does that say about the World?

1) Sure, in any densely populated place people will wait in line for ridiculously long amounts of time for often ridiculously stupid things (i.e. products with a lower case i in front of them) But that’s their own damn problem, because if you are misguided enough to camp out or stand in the rain/snow/sleet for an overpriced piece of plastic, you are both a sucker and a fool and deserve everything that rains down upon your head.

Waiting hours in lines around the block to get into family court, is another thing all together. Sure, The New York Times could do a story on some of the million billion other problems with the justice system (especially the family justice system) but at least they have finally written a story somewhat about poor people that actually points to how f*cked the system is that aims to keep them completely demoralized.

Here’s a thought, if you can’t let people on the stairs, and can’t figure out how to fix the elevators, maybe you could let the few people at a time that are missing a court date while standing outside the building use the sacred elevators that the judges use, so they will have a case to judge. I'm just saying.

2) Completely unrelated, but also absurdly ridiculous: Pillow Fight Club. It sounds like something I would have made up with my friends when I was 7-years-old. But these people are adults, and aren’t living in quaint Midwestern town in the 1980s. Plus even as a small girl I wouldn’t have been so one-dimensional to think of a tie-breaking rule like this: “Fighters have been known to get eliminated at this point (a tie) based on outfit choice alone.”

Update: Turns out "pillow fight club" is not a New York invention (although I'm sure they'll try to claim it like everything else). There's even a website: www.pillowfightclub.org and a wikipedia page.

It really does seem more and more that Devo was right.

We're #1, We're #1!

It’s been a big month for the mitten state. In what has been called "an irresponsible misuse of crime data,” a private research group's report based on annual FBI crime statistics rank Detroit as America’s most dangerous city (and good ol’ Flint, MI as #3).

The main criticism is that simplifying such a complex issue as crime into handy “move out of or don’t move to this already ailing city, it really sucks” rankings does a lot more harm than good to everyone involved. Besides, according to the AP article Detroit “Murder Capital” has lost 1 million people since 1950, and real estate agents attempting to sell the new condos aren’t likely to use the “most dangerous city in the US” tagline in their listings.


(Prime, affordable real estate in Detroit)

The most concise commentary of the report that I’ve read came from Gawker:

“The annual list helps reinforce the cycle of poverty, white flight, and neglect that is killing post-industrial America while the rich create unsustainable fantasy worlds on the coasts. And it provides a nice way for a news anchor to fill up 45 seconds.”

New York, by the way, ranked 130-something. Whatever, tell that to my two stolen bikes and my old roommate’s snatched purse. I’ve never had anything stolen in D-town.

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Selling Out

So, journalism students at NYU did a poll of 3,000 NYU undergrads' attitudes about voting, and I think we are supposed to be horrified/surprised/confused with the results.

70% think that one vote can make a difference (cute huh?) and think voting is important, but 70% are also willing to give their vote up for free tuition, even though 60% of the people who said that also said that their families had lots-o-dough and most likely were paying some or all of their tuition anyway and so they probably just wanted the extra cash.

But what I really wonder about is the 20% who will sell their vote for an ipod touch of all things (do they think they’ll get their vote back when the thing breaks in 18 months?)

Even if voting doesn’t make that much of an impact, it's just dumb to sell yourself out like that. Then again I guess the argument could be made that if you're the kind of dumbass who is willing to sell off your constitutional rights, maybe it's for the best that you remove yourself from the political process, kind of like the Darwin Awards of social involvement.


Or maybe they think selling your vote is like selling your soul and you can just buy it back from the Comic Book Guy.

And in my best behavior, I am really just like him

The Village Voice’s review of Sufjan Stevens’ BQE Symphony started off with this:

“All my friends who don't live in New York hate New York. Near as I can tell, they imagine the city as one giant, loathsome American Apparel ad, a crass, joyless, narcissistic, careerist, emaciated, insincere, hopelessly uptight, suffocatingly twee cesspool of white-privilege Williamsburg hipsterdom.”

This description prefaced the review to describe not only the trying-to-hard-cuteness of the show, but no doubt its audience too. My desire to go probably puts me in at least three of those categories if not all in some people’s eyes.

Sufjan’s symphony about an expressway sold out so quickly though that I didn’t get a ticket and as much as I love him wasn’t will to pay the $150 asking price on craigslist.

Still, without actually attending, I can mostly agree with the review. Sufjan is helluva talented, and yeah some of his songs make me get a little teary, and damn if he isn’t cute. Which is exactly the problem, he sometimes over does the cuteness, and sometimes gets a little too ambitious (even he had to know the 50 state thing was going to get old fast), or overkills a good thing (the wings, the Avalanche CD). Still though, he tries, which is more than you can say for a lot of people. Sooner of later he’ll realize that when he doesn’t try so hard he makes some pretty amazing music.


(Sufjan trying too hard)

As for me, well that’s in the eye of the beholder I guess. I think the description of New York isn’t totally off base, but then again I still don’t think I consider myself a complete New Yorker. I’m more of a citizen of the world…

Saying Things are Over is so Over-Rank Them Instead!

So evidently The New York Times thinks Brooklyn is over because Heath Ledger moved, which is nothing short of the lamest reasoning ever. I would argue that it’s not Brooklyn, but the whole of New York City that’s over because it can’t stop talking about itself as if it was the only place that mattered. But I digress.

And besides, that’s not the only reason why The New York Times is wrong. Some group of urban planners named Park Slope one of the ten best neighborhoods in the country (take that Williamsburg!) It turns out though that they’ve decided that Park Slope officially ends at 17th Street, meaning I missed it by four blocks. But that’s ok, I’ll enjoy being slightly on the outside looking in, afterall, paying to live in a “named” neighborhood is so over.
(Above: an artist’s rendition of Park Slope)

Show a lot of things in a Little Time...MONTAGE!

This is the "montage-o-rama" of the bike tour I did a few weeks ago. (Even Rocky had a montage)