Library is About People Encountering Each Other, Sez Starchitect

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Do you go to a library solely to sit down? Is your purpose to photograph yourself and your misbehaving friends? To harass and hamper people who are trying to accomplish something? If so, the New York Public Library system under the dubious leadership of board of trustees chairman Neil Rudenstine and president and CEO Anthony W. Marx is for you. If you are planning a big event in the next few years, give them a call because the library is rapidly becoming party space.

The latest evidence that this is true is a quote from Enrique Norten, the architect who has designed the Donnell Library Center on New York’s West 53rd Street, which will open in late 2015.  He describes his creation as “More like a cultural space, which is about gathering people, giving people the opportunity to encounter each other.”

His definition fits not a cultural center but the subway system and city sidewalks. Cultural spaces are actually where people experience art, theater and the written word. Such spaces could feature Picasso or Basquiat, Handel or hip-hop, Wilkie Collins or Erle Stanley Gardner, but they are not primarily meet-and-greet. That a supposedly educated man affiliated with the New York Public Library could make such a public statement tells us all we need to know. Ditto a statement comparing taxes to Hitler’s invasion of Poland made by library benefactor Stephen A. Schwarzman*.

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NYPL puts bleachers where books used to be, at cost to public

Norten’s Donnell Library Center will be embedded in a luxury hotel and has been diminished to a third of the size of the Donnell Library that it succeeds, but certainly does not replace. The main feature of Norten’s version, of which he is so proud, will be bleacher seating and steps. He seems to be copying the High Line and Times Square bleachers, but both are open-air, not contained in libraries. Architects must follow and serve the money, but surely they are supposed to be too educated, or at least too savvy, to make statements like Norten’s unless they know their patrons would approve.

A bit of background: the original and much-mourned Donnell library branch opened in 1955 and had the system’s largest collection of non-English circulating materials. It also housed the system’s largest collection of materials for teenagers.  As the New York Library’s second busiest branch it was clearly appreciated by New Yorkers. It lent a note of leniency and humanity to midtown. In 2008 (before Rudenstein and Marx took over), the library sold the Donnell and its space to developers. Norten’s largely empty area (see photo) will open in late 2015. The “new” Donnell is to the 1955 Donnell what a rhinestone is to an engagement ring.

Norten’s quote achieved prominence this week when N.Y. Times architectural critic Michael Kimmelman evaluated the anticipated destruction of the American Folk Art Museum building near the destroyed original Donnell. His piece offers an explanation of why midtown Manhattan will soon resemble a Stamford industrial park and shopping mall, and it also provides insight into current cultural leadership.

In sum, if you are a student or some other kind of knowledge seeker, or if you just want to read, the New York Public Library is decreasingly for you. However, if you want to make noise and socialize, and you are over-caffinated from Starbucks public spaces, by all means go to the New York Public Library, particularly the Stephen A. Schwarzman* Building, as the iconic library at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue is now known. A few months ago one patron (not me) in the Reading Room was so driven to distraction that he started screaming: “We are NOT zoo animals.” He lost when the tourist setting up a tripod to photograph him proved to be too much.  Last Saturday afternoon when I searched for an empty place at a reading room table, tourists were less in evidence. It was cold and rainy, and so only people who love and need the library were about.

Catch content-users while they last. People who use the New York Public Library as a source of knowledge are endangered. Rudenstine, Marx and Schwarzman, who have a big contested plan to renovate the library, are more geared to party people. The stone lions in front of the Schwarzman building are called Patience and Fortitude. Let’s adopt the library management’s spirit of update and call them Philistine and Barbarian instead.

[Search “public library” for previous posts]

*Stephen A. Schwarzman is chairman of The Blackstone Group and author of a 2010 statement about proposals to end the carried-interest loophole allowing executives like himself to pay taxes on only 15 per cent on income: “It’s a war; it’s like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.” He is a NYPL financial benefactor and trustee and his name is on the former Main Branch, but he is apparently not one who reads history books. He did apologize.

Federal Decision Lends Hope to The Ramarley Graham Case

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Police officer Richard Haste, who gunned down unarmed Ramarley Graham by his grandmother’s toilet in the Bronx nearly two years ago, may yet be indicted. U.S. District Court Judge P. Kevin Castel cleared the federal civil suit against him to proceed. Former Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and the New York Police Department are also named as defendants.

On Feb. 2, 2012, Haste and his partner pursued Martin from the street because they thought he was acting suspiciously. Without calling for back-up, the officers charged after him and onto private property without a search warrant. When the three stood before the toilet, Haste’s partner called out that the kid has a gun, so the Haste shot him down. Oops! Look, in fairness the police were onto something — frightened Graham was  flushing away marijuana when he died– maybe a plastic bag in his shaking hand gleamed like a gun.

This case deserves far more media attention than it has received, particularly by the major print media. However, the fact that this horrific incident has been so under-reported makes it more likely that many in New York have no opinion about the incident and could sit on a jury. The death of this young man is as worthy of nation attention and prolonged discussion as the Trayvon Martin case in Florida in which a black youth was killed by a neighborhood watch coordinator. [Enter “Ramarley Graham” on this blog’s search box to find two previous presentinthecity posts on the death]

A brief history of the policeman’s days in court thus far: Officer Haste pled not guilty to first and second degree manslaughter charges in June, 2012. In May 2013, the case was dismissed on a technicality when State Supreme Court Judge Steven Barrett ruled that the prosecution had not given proper instructions to a grand jury. Last August, a second grand jury decided not to indict, which led Graham’s family to ask the federal government to intervene. In a pending review, the U.S. Attorney’s office is considering whether Graham’s civil rights were violated.

As Jeff Mays of DNA Info reports in detail, Paulet Minzie, the owner of the building where Graham lived, has also filed suit against the police. She alleges that Haste and other officers terrorized and humiliated her and her family members when they banged on her door to gain admittance. Minzie says that she jumped out of the shower and grabbed a towel when she heard the pounding on her door. In the terror of the moment she says  she exposed herself to the officers and in fear urinated on herself.

In a full story on the latest developments, Khouri A. Atkinson of The Amsterdam News reports that Judge Castel asked the parties to consider whether they want the case decided by a mediator. They have until Jan. 14 to decide. The next court hearing for both lawsuits—filed by Graham’s family and Minzie—is Aug. 1.

I hope there will be a full trial with a detailed record. I want to know how Haste and his partner were trained — how did they come to be on our streets with loaded weapons making judgement calls? It is proper that Kelly is a defendant, because police are unlikely to be better, or even worse, than police policies.

I want to know Haste’s background — was he born and raised in New York City or is he a suburbanite come here to give multi-cultured city people what for? Am I far off the mark when the suburbanite police force, roaming this city where they can’t afford to live, make me think of Hessian soldiers hired by the British around 1776 to subdue unruly colonists? I honor the fact that the police are first responders — even though former Mayor Bloomberg did tell an audience at MIT that the police were his own army. Let us hope that the federal courts will help us sort this out.

Turning Off the Trickle Down Spigot

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These are the peak days for Mayor Bill de Blasio, who took office a day ago and has not disappointed New Yorkers yet. This high point provides an opportunity to reflect on his greatest achievement. No, it’s not that 33 years after the inauguration of Pres. Ronald Reagan, the notion of trickle-down economics has finally trickled out, or that Progressives are emerging from cover, or even that the media sniffs the change in the wind.

The astonishing thing is that de Blasio trusted middle class voters to finally recognize their economic interests. Candidate de Blasio’s stated platform was about standing up for the poor, but the middle class did not feel threatened or excluded. Assisting have-nots (and de-segregating the South) is how the Democrats lost their unassailed majority and they have been scrambling ever since. This time, however, in 2013 New York City, the middle class rallied to support a man whose name they barely knew a year ago because he proclaimed a fundamental truth they recognized: Giuliani-Bloomberg New York was fast becoming Dickens London, a place where only an unrepentant Scrooge could feel secure. This is the New York they have come to know. They are now in as much or more jeopardy than people in public housing.

With 46 percent of New Yorkers at or near poverty after the supposed recovery from the Great Recession, those in the middle have seen proof that they are one job loss, or one serious health crisis, from near-poverty and possible homelessness. Ask a 45 year old who has been out of work for seven months how he or she envisions the future. Most know at least one such person, and having a talk with them is painful indeed.

In contrast, those earning more than $500,000 a year tend to feel threatened when they hear about resources going to the less fortunate. The proof is that de Blasio’s opponent Joseph Lhota prevailed in the wealthiest zip codes, those where average income exceeded $140,000.*

The new mayor hasn’t given up on the wealthy yet — in his inaugural address, de Blasio pointed out that the tax he proposes to levy on them to fund universal pre-kindergarten enrollment would only cost them about three dollars a day. He cajoled that this was the price of a latte.  He got a laugh, possibly because such a tariff would cost the rich too little to drive them down to middle class level – unless $500,000 in adjusted gross income is what it takes nowadays to be middle class in today’s New York. This is a point that many do ponder. And a latte is the first thing to go.

The mega-rich have been silent about de Blasio since his blow-out win. The Catholic ones feel on safer ground denouncing the Pope. Billionaire Ken Langone, founder of Home Depot, told Cardinal Timothy Dolan that when Pope Francis warned  “Money must serve, not rule,” the rich were offended. One donor was so miffed that he threatened to retaliate by withholding a seven-figure donation to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Langone felt secure enough to offer this sentiment to CNBC.

This is the kind of billionaire mind-set that made middle class New York voters think.

*Click “average income” link in the lower right corner of the link for vote by personal wealth

Bloomberg Packs Heat, Obscures Light

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On January 1, 2014 Michael Bloomberg will no longer be mayor of New York City, but he will continue to pick at the threads of the nation’s social safety net in indirect and almost untraceable ways.

The question is whether Bloomberg does it deliberately or not. Clearly he is working against elected Democrats in red states and thereby he assists Republicans who are not friendly to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment benefits or gun regulation.

In 2006 Bloomberg co-founded Mayors Against Illegal Guns with Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and became its largest funder. Its admirable mission is to promote public safety by cracking down on illegal firearms. Spurred by horrific homicides in the intervening years, the group has grown from an initial 15 to one thousand mayors in 46 states, including four in Arkansas, a state that increasingly leans toward Republicans.

Trouble began when, with Bloomberg-like gusto, this group took shotgun aim at those who did not rally to their dictates. These included moderate politicians in red states who declined to support unpopular legislation to restrict gun ownership, including background checks. This story unfolded around the nation throughout 2013, but the N.Y. Times just reported that Bloomberg’s aides were warned that they are endangering Democrats’ political chances. If Democrats lose, Republicans win, and their platform is not friendly to gun restrictions.

Former President Bill Clinton phoned Howard Wolfson, Bloomberg’s Deputy Mayor for Government Affairs and Communications, to request that the Bloomberg group drop its ads against Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor, a beleaguered Democrat facing re-election in Clinton’s native state. Request denied. The ads ran. Pryor may have scored points with his constituents with his retort that he did not take orders from Bloomberg or New York City. We will find out next November when Arkansans either let him keep his Senate seat or award it to a Republican. I am betting that Pryor’s opponent won’t back gun restrictions either. Does Bloomberg think that far? He would if he truly cared about this issue or if he cared enough to hire people who could think effectively. Is Bloomberg aiming for gun restrictions or for a Republican majority? No one should count on his being a straight shooter, even with a $31 billion fortune in ammo. The people of New York City and the nation are not rid of him by a long shot.

Let There Be Peace on Earth — Decriminalize Pot Now

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White people of all ages have long been able to use marijuana legally, at least if they were careful. Outgoing mayor Michael Bloomberg regrets that he quipped that he had enjoyed pot, yet his frank flippancy did offer a beacon of truth about enforcement of anti-drug laws. White people, even before they become billionaires, usually get off fairly easily for drug use, if they are detained at all. Cases in point are celebrities and their offspring. Google Lindsay Lohan and Cameron Douglas, who got into serious trouble only after their flouting of laws became too egregious and too well documented to ignore.

If Ramarley Graham, whom police shot dead by his grandmother’s toilet early in 2012, had been Bloomberg’s white child, he would have known he had little to fear from New York City police, who probably would not have charged into his dwelling without a warrant and slaughtered him because, once they found themselves inside the house, they decided he was armed. Turns out, the reason the 18-year old fled was because he did have a small amount of marijuana, but no gun. In a note worthy of a Dickens novel, the officer who shot him was named Haste.  A Bronx grand jury declined to bring charges again the officers.

In this Yuletide season, there come a ray of hope that this will be less likely to happen in future. State Senator Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan) has introduced legislation to legalize, regulate, and tax marijuana under state law along lines similar to the state’s current system regulating alcohol. A spokesman for Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared her move a “non-starter”  but many legislators are working to see it pass. The fact that this is politically risky is clear enough to cut through any smoky haze, as is the fact that the war on drugs has been as constructive as the one Vietnam. Among the benefits of decriminalization are these: it would keep youth out of prison crime schools (this admittedly would not help upstate communities that depend upon prisoners from downstate); it would spare the lives of police who can be injured or slain in drug busts; it would preserve the characters of those corrupted by drug lords; and it would help taxpayers, if the $1.7 billion New York City pot industry were taxed. Recognizing the disaster of the drug war,  Uruguay just took a innovative step. Alarmed that drug-related murders accounted for a third of total homicides in 2012, its legislators passed a bill to legalize marijuana and put its production and sale under government control and President Jose Mujica will sign it, a brave move since two-thirds of Uruguayans say they oppose it.

Organized crime around the globe is surely hiring lobbyists to fight Kruger’s bill right now.

Sen. Chuck Schumer Is Harrassing Me

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In the recent election season I was subjected to harassing telephone calls from Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-NY). Before the Democratic primary, although I am on the Do Not Call Registry, Schumer robocalled me several times urging me to vote for his candidates — City Council Speaker Christine Quinn for Mayor and  State Senator Daniel Squadron for Public Advocate. His calls always came at inconvenient times when I was trying to eat a meal or balance on a stepladder. His endorsements were as ineffective as they were unwelcome. Both Squadron and Quinn lost their races decisively. In Brooklyn, however his candidate for District Attorney Kenneth Thompson prevailed. Schumer may be running out of juice in more ways than one — in previous election cycles he robodialed me many more times than he did this year.

So imagine my surprise when I learned that Schumer has proposed legislation to raise fines and increase punishments on telemarketers violating Do Not Call rules. Has he no self-knowledge whatsoever? Of course not. Does he not know he violates the spirit if not the letter of these laws himself? Obviously not. How could it be? Self-centered self-importance provides the thick hide that pols are always telling us they must have. Of course, Schumer is not the only pol to robocall. He has just made himself the most ridiculous.

The legislation that needs to be proposed is the expansion of the Do Not Call Registry to  include charities, political organizations, and telephone surveyors as well as debt collectors. In enacting the law, legislators gave the Do Not Call Registry no sway over these groups, which serve the politicians themselves. Chief among them are telephone surveyors, whose calls harass us as surely as robocall scam artists. They take the surveys that enable elected officials and wannabes to figure out which way the wind blows so that they can amend positions on public issues.

The Senator says the number of unwanted telemarketing calls has skyrocketed. His press release notes, “As of August 2013, the FTC was logging 140,000 to 200,000 robocall complaints monthly compared to 65,000 in October 2010, according to published reports.”

He is right about that, and I support whatever curtails telemarketers. Unfortunately, relevant laws now on the books allow Sen. Schumer and his ilk to call us whenever they wish and as often as they want. I would like to opt out of these as well. If politicians and non-profits believe their messages are important, let them use the mails, which they already do anyway. That way they would help the U.S. Postal Service (but admittedly add to junk mail to be recycled). They could also continue to spam us via Internet, which generates no paper waste. Meanwhile, I challenge Sen. Schumer to figure out the number of unwanted robocalls he is generating and stop generating them. It is for his own good too — the electorate is less likely to know that he supports candidates they don’t.

Biking with de Blasio – End the Cold War Against Pedestrians

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The other evening a 40ish delivery man artfully rode his bicycle between another woman and myself who were walking on a Lexington Avenue sidewalk. The cyclist frightened us both but did not physically injure us. He was breaking the law that forbids anyone over the age of 14 from riding on the sidewalks, but no matter. The police were elsewhere — frisking doctors, lawyers, job-seekers and others who are guilty of having too much pigment in poorer neighborhoods. Even if the police department decided to make its presence visible in “safe” neighborhoods, police don’t enforce N.Y. ADC. LAW 19-176. Through the years on those rare occasions when I have seen uniformed policemen walking through Manhattan’s East Side, I have seen adult cyclists weave around them. The police have never broken stride.

Terrorizing pedestrians in New York City is not regarded as serious if the person doing the terrorizing is on a bicycle and does not seem to be an Arab. It doesn’t seem to matter much that cyclists cause serious injury to pedestrians. Each year more than 500 NYC residents are injured badly enough to be treated in area hospitals, according to data collected between 2007 and 2010.

The Stuart C. Gruskin Family Foundation is working on this, partly because Stuart C. Gruskin was slain in an incident involving a cyclist riding the wrong way up a Midtown street. (Could this indicate that cyclists disobeying laws are a threat to public safety?) The foundation works to promote safety for cyclists and pedestrians and as well. In fact all of us, whether we are walking, riding a bicycle or operating a motor vehicle are supposed to obey the law. The cyclists have defeated me: I now stop on red. When I have the right of way I for one feel safer in the path of an approaching truck than I do in the path of a bicycle. Opinions can differ, but I have learned that the trucker will at least try to stop.

So here’s how we get to Bill de Blasio, who happily is New York City’s incumbent Mayor and who has promised to look out for people who have felt ignored for the last dozen years or so. He has said that if elected he would expand bike lanes and the bike sharing CitiBike program, with a goal of raising the percentage of city trips taken by bike to 6 percent by 2020. Fine, but he has another shoe to drop before it is knocked off by a speeding cyclist.  In addition, Mayor de Blasio, working with the City Council, needs to insure that all cyclists are subject to laws that govern commercial cyclists and he needs to insist that those laws are enforced.  He also must see that even non-commercial cyclists are licensed.

Cyclists should be required to wear  “a jacket, vest, or other wearing apparel” with a number printed in large type by which they can be identified. This number needs to link to CitiBike or to city records. If Citibank marketers have to create jobs and hire New Yorkers to issue licenses at their blue racks, so be it. Most cyclists already wear helmets, so let them sport license numbers as well. Motor vehicle drivers and dog owners need to buy licenses – why shouldn’t cyclists? Why does a toy poodle need to wear identification and not a human racing through red lights and over sidewalks? Such identification would help to apprehend those who do not properly follow city laws and it might even remind cyclists that they have responsibilities to others as well as to themselves. They seem to believe they are saving the planet…how about sparing pedestrians as well?

Outgoing Bloomberg Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, known to some as Bicycle Woman, spent tax dollars on education programs for cyclists – although you would think everyone everywhere knows that a red stop light or sign means stop and that enforcement of laws might have been the way to go. The next Transportation Commissioner, or whoever is supposed to be in charge, needs to put energy into making the privileged class that is cyclists responsible citizens as well. There is more to being responsible than donning a helmet for one’s own protection. No mention of bike lanes was made in this post — they have been good for CitiBike and Citibank, but I don’t see how they have helped pedestrians who use fewer public resources than cyclists when they are allowed to walk in safety.

Confessions of A Poll Worker

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I volunteered to work the polls to improve voting in New York City. Instead I became part of the challenge. If you meet me Nov. 5 I will do my best, but now we are using optical-scanning machines. I have not so much as seen one since I was trained on August 19 when 12 hours of training were crammed into six because we had to learn the scanner as well as the lever machine for the primary. My section never discussed write-in voting, but no matter. That wasn’t on the test.
Don’t despair. Assisting the first few voters on Election Day might enable me to get the hang of it, and I may have the guidance of a more experienced poll worker. I myself voted on a scanner last year when the confusion at my polling place during the presidential election inspired me to volunteer with the Board of Elections so I can help you this year.
You might remember me from the primary election, if you are one of the 22 percent of registered Democrats and 13 percent of registered Republicans who bothered to vote. Less likely, you encountered me at the Public Advocate run-off when only 6.7 percent of registered Democrats appeared. On that day to break the afternoon lull we poll workers broke into spontaneous applause when voters showed up. They must have known they were special because when they departed, they waved good-by in the grand manner of the British royal family.
Do you wonder what motivates us poll workers? Some believe in civic duty. Most are in it for the pay, which works out to about $13 an hour for a sixteen-hour day with two hours of breaks that are not always honored. We start at 5 a.m., sometimes far from home. One colleague, a social worker, told me that he volunteered after receiving a notice to tell his clients to sign up to be poll workers and earn extra cash.
Meanwhile, here’s a peek at a few things we’d rather you did not know: on primary day, one of the two coordinators at my election site whom we will call Susie told us to forget what we had learned in training. She observed that everything we were doing was irrelevant because “things are being decided at a very high level.” Whether her problem was corruption or medication levels, I will never know. However, detecting certain mood swings and her lack of interest my colleagues and I turned to the other coordinator, whom we’ll call Mary, who had conducted trainings and insisted on doing everything “by the book.” When the polls closed, Mary announced that as a result of working with Susie, she would never work the polls again. She may have meant it because when we returned a few weeks later for the runoff for Public Advocate, Susie was the only coordinator on site and she managed alone.
Also, the closing of the polls, when tallies and back-ups are recorded, gets a bit slapdash because we are all eager to leave. On primary night I ended up as chairman of my election district because no one else wanted to sign the time sheets and tallies. After hurried hubbub or retrieving forms, I signed and sealed support materials and gave them to a police officer who signed a receipt. But then Susie discovered I had left out something important. No matter. I snatched the package away from the surprised officer, peeled off the seals, inserted the missing item, and sealed it up again. Work done! A few weeks later on the night of the runoff Susie hurried me even more, herself pressured by the menacing woman collecting our blunt-end scissors who was ready to go.
If you don’t like our methods, you could demand that the New York City Board of Elections do a better job of training and recruitment, possibly calling for volunteers at places of worship, libraries and through public service announcements. Possibly outreach should be less about a payday for good people who need money and more about voting. However, what matters most is better training and improved management. You could write officials to demand a more organized process and back that up by actually turning out to vote yourself.
I swear it does matter. When I was a teenager in the segregated South people died fighting to claim the right to vote. Partly because of them, I saw candidates elected throughout the country who expanded possibilities for millions of Americans and for the mandate for peace. Then officials were elected who put the brake on those expansions. So that’s why I get a little serious about voting. Often I don’t like the candidates, so I write one in, which reminds me to check my manual to learn how you can do that too.

But whatever happens, I don’t think you have to worry about the accuracy of the vote unless it’s really close. Poll watchers from both parties and from all candidates check on us through the day and each writes down the final count at night. Checks and balances for an accurate count are in place, but they are above my level, which is not the level where I deal with you.

Your Identity or Your Life, Jobseekers, Submit to Abuse

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Target Corp. just announced that it would stop running criminal background checks on potential employees. Good, because among other things the practice discriminated against needy, capable senior citizens who committed minor infractions during the Summer of Love. Worse yet, job applicants must supply their Social Security numbers and birth dates to people who may expose them, however unwittingly, to identity thieves.  No one could quibble if responsible Human Resources personnel checked into those in the final stages of the hiring process on any level, but today a job application form with a low wage employer — or even a classy one — is like something one should fill out before being approved for a U.S. ambassadorship. This has disturbing implications for all of us.

Some (not Angela Merkel or Edward J. Snowden) would say we are paranoid to protect our little-people identity and guard the on-ramp to all our financial information, so let us monetize this issue. The Internal Revenue Service says it mistakenly pays as much as $5.2 billion annually in tax refunds to criminals filing false returns using Society Security numbers they have stolen. The IRS estimates that known identify fraud cases have grown by 650 percent since 2008. I suspect that is due in part to exposure of personal data on the Internet. I myself was amazed to obtain the foreign passport number of my pesky neighbor when I entered his distinctive name alone into a Google search. I, of course, will use this power for good, but protecting my own information from faceless or over-eager strangers has worked against me.

Three years ago I was dumbstruck when two sympathetic, responsible women at the New York Botanical Garden asked for my Social Security number and birthdate the first (and only) time they interviewed me for a position in their public relations department. Not having looked for a job in a while, I said I knew they would need that information if I became a finalist for the job. I never heard from them again. The request shocked me and felt like a horrible violation. Common sense indicated it was a terrible risk.

Yesterday to prove my point I applied for entry sales jobs at New York City stores. Target’s on-line application required my Social Security Number. When I did not supply it, I could not proceed. CVS asked for my date of birth explaining that it wanted to send age-appropriate ads (mascara and condoms vs. adult diapers and Medicare spam). Then CVS “proposed” that I take an optional survey. When I tried to take advantage of my proffered right to decline, pop-up boxes insisted that CVS really wanted me to take it. Then I had to agree to a privacy policy that would have permitted robocallers to “contact” me and would have allowed CVS to disclose my information to “third parties.”  I declined other CVS opportunities (I don’t know how many jobs they have anyway because they use check-out machines instead of cashiers).  Macy’s wanted me to take a tax survey. I declined, but after more coaxing pop-ups, I agreed because this was clearly the only way to apply. The first question on the survey was my Social Security number and my age — literally whether I was over or under 40. Then we proceeded to the question about the year I graduated from high school. I would hate to be a 41 year old single mother, unless I had a job in a human resources department. What do these people do nowadays or have they all been laid off? We might not be getting jobs, but we sure are getting ads and robocalls.

Color The City Black and Blue

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Delia Ephron wrote a wonderful piece Color Me Blue about Citi Bikes, Citibank and Mayor Bloomberg’s desire to mark and monetize every aspect of New York City. She pointed out that the jarring blue blight of the bike racks advertising Citibank is also an occasion to remember how banks pay scant interest to consumers and how they charge outrageous monthly fees . I also recall how Citibank drove me off as a customer when it raised its monthly balance requirements.  Maybe the increased minimum balance it requires from beleaguered middle class New Yorkers is how it sponsors the bike blight. Ephron also points out that Citibank’s $41 million sponsorship is billionaire chump change — it is about twice the $23 million recently paid for a co-op at 640 Park Avenue. While thinking about Citibank’s sponsorship of cycling, we might also remember the mortgage crisis and hasty foreclosures.

But let us always be mindful of public safety so that someone is. Last night I experienced stark evidence of how lopsided and contemptuous of the public Bloomberg’s cycling agenda has been. As I travelled from Manhattan’s East 70s to the Red Rooster on West 125th Street, crossing wide streets in the early dark of an October evening and changing buses and subways several times, I encountered many cyclists. All were dressed in black riding on black bikes in the black evening. It was hard to discern them, much less avoid them. No headlights, not even a red hazard reflector — certainly not visible clothing or sneakers — to provide a clue that moving objects were honing in. The Bloomberg bike explosion, of which he and his associates are so proud, has not been accompanied by a single rule regulating bikes — no requirement for licenses (make them large, readable white ones, please), headlights or even red reflectors. Cyclists might not care to see where they are bearing down on a human being, but pedestrians in the dark need to see that cyclists are coming. A short-lived program of posted reminders on bus shelters a few months ago observed that cyclists should follow traffic rules, but there has been no noticeable enforcement of any laws, certainly not the one that says no one over the age of 14 should ride on a sidewalk. Why can’t the police make streets safe and enforce laws on the books instead of stopping and frisking people of color standing in their neighborhoods? If all those men and women of color walking on sidewalks in their neighborhoods would just start cycling on them, they could move around with impunity.