Reading the City

The craziest thing I've seen in a newspaper lately

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Schwarzfeld, Freelance writer.) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:34:00 +0000

From the NYT story on the Somali pirates who are holding 25 members of an oil transport ship hostage:

Once pirates get aboard, however, the ship is theirs, because crews on commercial vessels are rarely armed, according to Mr. Choong and other maritime experts. “They are not mentally or physically fit enough to handle weapons,” he said.

I guess the mental part goes without saying, but not physically fit to hold guns?

What Happened Last Night

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Schwarzfeld, Freelance writer.) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:50:00 +0000

We were dancing in the streets last night. We were throwing arms around strangers’ shoulders and talking earnestly about what we’ve been called to do, all of us. We were lined up facing each other, maybe once it was a firing line but last night, no, it was dancing, cheering as cars processed between us. We were cheering the garbage men, the hipsters on bikes, even the cops (cheering even when they gave us citations for public drinking)—in short, we were cheering ourselves, because we did this, we—not our parents and not our grandparents, but we—made this happen.

Everything was spontaneous but still had a feeling of a being on a stage. First we stood on Flatbush and cheered and cars honked back their love. We stopped people on the street and gave our love; we gave high fives and what-the-fucks and hosannahs and maybe-it-aint-all-shits.

There was talk of Going East, where the Black People live, because we all knew this is theirs first. Then we got it in our heads: Go East!: because one day we all went West, but we bounced off a wall a hundred years ago, and since then been we’ve been reverbing in Wasilla or some such shithole Wal-Mart parking lot. But now we go Back East: we reclaim. It’s ours. Or so we all thought last night. So we went East, so far as Vanderbilt and Soda Bar at least, an ersatz outpost now certifiably New Brooklyn. And they, Old Country, came West, they whose this is. And we stood on opposite sides of the streets for a while, then we crossed over and we loved and danced and cheered.

When we woke up this morning, we knew we had something: This is ours, all of ours. But more important, for the first time in our lives we knew that such a thing as we actually exists. The birth of the Obama Generation.

Reappropriating industrial New York

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Schwarzfeld, Freelance writer.) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:38:00 +0000

A neat article in the NYT on a forum at the Municipal Arts Society for finding new uses -- including low-income housing -- for abandoned industrial buildings.

This is a truly remarkable statistic, if it's true. ("She" is a real estate historian from the Municipal Arts Society.)

"Demolition is incredibly wasteful,” she said. “In New York City, 60 percent of our waste stream is demolition and construction debris which is significantly higher than the rest of the country, and we have to ship our demolition debris to other mid-Atlantic states."

60% of our trash is from demolition! Our trash is, quite literally, historical debris!

All that needs to be said about the debate

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Schwarzfeld, Freelance writer.) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 03:11:00 +0000

Well said, by Andrew Sullivan:

At no point have we seen a grace note from McCain. When dealing with the negativism of the campaign, it would not have killed him to seem genuinely horrified at calls for violence rather than offended that anyone dare criticize him or some of his supporters. Or to wish Obama well. It's this lack of generosity of spirit that he lacks and that people want in a president. Obama still manages to say when he agrees with or admires McCain. In this whole dynamic, Obama seems more secure, more self-controlled, more mature. He is the Alpha Male on this stage, and McCain the bristling teen - aged 72. No wonder women seem to be so disproportionately pro-Obama.

The Perfect Storm?

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Schwarzfeld, Freelance writer.) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:56:00 +0000

From the NYT:

New York, of course, has over the last 15 years seen an extraordinary drop in crime, from the most serious to the mildly irritating. But across all those years, economists and sociologists have debated how much of the success was attributable to new trends in policing and how much to other factors, including a robust economy.

Now, if the dire predictions of economic hardship prove accurate, the city may be poised to find out in a real-time experiment. And it will have to conduct that experiment with thousands fewer police officers than it had in 2001.

Impact on low-income banking?

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Schwarzfeld, Freelance writer.) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:49:00 +0000

Anthony Weiner expects bank consolidation to mean closed branches in poor neighborhoods.

Bloomberg's War on Ciggies, High and Low

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Schwarzfeld, Freelance writer.) — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 15:09:00 +0000

A (somewhat) unanticipated consequence of NYC's War on Smokes - stemming the flow of cigarette bootlegging into the city. The administration is suing several Indian reservations, which it says is the behind the smuggling operation.

A pitch-perfect piece of reporting

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Schwarzfeld, Freelance writer.) — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 00:49:00 +0000

William Finnegan in the New Yorker tells the tragic story of the suicides of an Iraq veteran with debilitating PTSD and his brother, himself long suffering from mental illness.

It is simply perfect reporting: Finnegan interviews the veteran's widow, the brothers' parents and other loved ones, as well as marine buddies -- all this within 3 months of their deaths. He perfectly captures the veteran's charm and wit, and the depth of love his wife had for him; as well as the clinical experience of PTSD and the men's path towards self-destruction.

There are just some wrenching quotes. A sampling:

He and Kellee planned another family weekend, but Travis didn’t show up. Kellee was furious. When he finally arrived, on Sunday evening, he was drunk. She wouldn’t let him in the house, or allow him to see the girls. Instead, they sat together on the front porch and talked for half an hour. Her regrets from that night are ferocious. “If I had just brought him inside,” she said. “Just taken him upstairs and made love to him, or tried to. Just told him it would be O.K., played that role.” She never saw him again.

and

Nancy [the mother] recalled a letter Travis had sent from Iraq to be read at his younger sister’s wedding. “It said, ‘You may not be able to see me, but I’m there.’ I thought of that when we saw him so messed up. We could see him, but he wasn’t there. It just wasn’t him.” Douglas said, “None of us had ever seen him like that. It was like he was in a trance. He didn’t sound like himself. He was flatlining, like he had no personality. He had lost all that stuff of his, that love of trying to fool people. He said, ‘Dad, I think I’m very sick.’

Please, read this article. It'll mess you up right.

Another interesting and disturbing detail: the Pink Floyd cd "The Wall," about suicide and trauma, was found in the car in which the men killed themselves. Trauma breeds trauma: I wonder how Roger Waters will cope with this impact of his music?

Only 5 of 17,000 NYC-sponsored affordable housing mortgages in foreclosure

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Schwarzfeld, Freelance writer.) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:34:00 +0000

It's a pretty responsible lending program, especially compared to its peers. This seems to add some weight to increasing calls for Bloomberg as the next Secretary of the Treasury - or of the World.

Death By Taser

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Schwarzfeld, Freelance writer.) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:10:00 +0000

The NYPD used a taser on a mentally ill man, who subsequently fell to his death. The department's Emergency Services Unit - a modified crisis intervention team, which for reasons not warranting explication I know a hell of a lot about - again failed to do its job: mediate the conflict.

MTA: Bigger Assholes Than You Thought

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Schwarzfeld, Freelance writer.) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:59:00 +0000

From a City Room article on a Council hearing on the MTA's customer complaint protocol:

Remember the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board member, David S. Mack, who justified the free use of E-ZPasses and MetroCards by authority board members, saying it encourages them to take the subway and call in complaints? He said that complaints from average riders are not heeded. “If you saw something and called it in, it goes right there,” Mr. Mack reportedly told reporters at a committee meeting, kicking a garbage can.

Good, clear pitch for the bailout

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Schwarzfeld, Freelance writer.) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:50:00 +0000

From the Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein:

The basic idea is to use special auctions to recreate a market for these securities with many competing sellers and one buyer (the Treasury), so that a credible "market" price can be established. If that price turns out to be below what those securities are now valued at on the banks' balance sheets, then banks will have to take the loss. If the price turns out to be higher, then banks may be able to record gains. The point isn't to bail out institutions that have made bad bets and suffered credit losses, but to provide a buyer of last resort so the market can begin pricing again.

Pearlstein makes clear that the time to act is now:

The financial situation is now downright scary. Don't look at the stock market -- that's not where the problem is. The problem is in the credit markets, which are quickly freezing. I won't bore you with technical indicators like Libor and Treasury swap spreads, but if you talk to people who work these markets every day, as I have, they report that the money markets are in worse shape than they were last August, or even during the currency crises of 1998.

Banks and big corporations and even money-market funds are hoarding cash, refusing to lend it out for a day or a week or a month. Even the best companies are having trouble floating bonds at reasonable rates. And the shadow banking system -- the market in asset-backed securities that ultimately supplies the capital for most home loans, car loans, college loans -- is almost completely shut down.
People are so nervous, and there is so much distrust, that all it would take is one more hit to trigger the modern-day equivalent of a nationwide bank run. Financial institutions would fail, part of your savings would be wiped out, jobs would be lost and a lot of economic activity would grind to a halt. Such a debacle would cost us a lot more than $700 billion.

House Republicans have a very simple decision to make: fix the problem or try to teach Wall Street a lesson. Pearlstein makes an apt point: sometimes you have to let the experts just do their jobs:

The reality is that these guys will be operating in uncharted territory, making things up as they go along. That means there are no assurances that any particular approach will work and no assurances that this will be the final solution. It also means that, just as we entrust generals to fight a war, we are going to have to trust the Treasury to find a way out of this crisis.

Easy money

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Schwarzfeld, Freelance writer.) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:51:00 +0000

First the mayor threatens to raise property taxes, now they're going after the pizza guy.

Goodwill couture

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Schwarzfeld, Freelance writer.) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:12:00 +0000

Thrift shops are the new Manolo Blahnik, according to the Washington Post.

Does this mean that if Carrie Bradshaw were around today she'd be rocking a threadbare t-shirt with a fading silk screen tiger imprint on it? Probably.

A good rundown on the state of Bloomberg's homelessness prevention plan

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Schwarzfeld, Freelance writer.) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 20:53:00 +0000

In short, a failure.

From the Coalition for the Homeless:

Perhaps most importantly, the mayor and administration officials remain mired in the false notion that family homelessness is a behavioral problem, not what it primarily is: a housing affordability problem. Thus, addressing it must involve proven, housing-based solutions.

Mayor wins legal control over family shelters

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Schwarzfeld, Freelance writer.) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 14:19:00 +0000

A two-decade legal standoff between the mayor's office(s) and the Legal Aid Society over access to and conditions in family homeless shelters appears to be resolved. The two sides struck a deal, with LAS ceding the judicial oversight it had established through dozens of court petitions; and the administration making certain baseline guarantees, such as a right to shelter and improved intake.

This seems a major victory for Bloomberg, winning a free hand to run the system as he sees fit.

AMAZING New Yorker piece on Mayor Mike

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Schwarzfeld, Freelance writer.) — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 21:45:00 +0000

While researching a story on a Bloomberg poverty program, I came across a priceless New Yorker piece on Bloomberg written shortly after his election. I particularly howled at the outspoken-yet-diminutive billionaire's attitude towards journalists: in short, extreme and justifiable disdain. Here are some choice excerpts below (sadly New Yorker's archives are atrocious - let me know if you'd like to read the whole article and I can send):

Speaking, as usual, without notes, he continued, "Oscar Wilde once said we are dominated by journalism. And that is both the good news and the bad news. The good news is that journalism is what keeps us a free society. If it wasn't for a free, aggressive, investigatory press, we really would have totalitarianism, and we should never forget that, no matter how many times we get annoyed with the press for intrusiveness, or whatever. And I do think sometimes, and this is my personal experience-you have a right to ask, but the great thing about the First Amendment is I have a right not to answer. You have a right to write it; I have a right not to read it. And that was the way I got through my campaign. I basically said I wasn't going to read any of this stuff anymore, and it's amazing, if you don't read it, life goes on." He concluded, "Anyways, congratulations to all of you."

In general, Bloomberg has a hard time masking his feelings toward the journalists who now trail him. Not long ago, he went record shopping, to demonstrate his support for merchants in lower Manhattan, and flipped through a rack of CDs as the cameras clicked away furiously. I happened to be standing nearby when he muttered, to no one in particular, "The dumbest things in the world, they're taking pictures of." (He bought two CDs by Crosby, Stills and Nash.) On another occasion, he was heading into a routine press conference at a Manhattan middle school when he ran into someone he knew. "You're not joining this gaggle!" he exclaimed.

Doubtless it is aggravating to be covered by the New York press, and while Bloomberg has been widely praised for his budget, his appointments, and his restructuring of City Hall, he has also been taunted. The first time he suddenly dropped out of view for the weekend without letting reporters know his whereabouts, the Post ran a picture of a milk carton with his face on it, asking "HAVE YOU SEEN ME?" The next weekend he disappeared, a Post photographer showed up at the home of the deputy mayor for operations, Marc Shaw, in Queens. The paper ran a picture of a dishevelled-looking Shaw, who appeared at the door in jeans and a T-shirt, above a caption identifying him as "the man in charge when the mayor's gone." The conceit was then picked up by David Letterman, who broadcast Shaw's photograph as the lead-in to a Top Ten list of the "Ways New York City Is Different When This Guy's in Charge." No. 1: "First city official since Koch to take a leak in the Hudson."

Yet Bloomberg's disdain for the press clearly goes beyond the missing-person gags. "If I had a heart attack in the sales department, everyone would come around and immediately give me CPR," he once announced to a group of reporters at Bloomberg L.P. "If I had a heart attack in the newsroom, you assholes would stand around and scribble notes." During the mayoral race, I asked him for his reflections on the campaign, and his response was to reflect on the stupidity of reporters. "I don't know whether it's just that they're not all that smart, or maybe they just don't think it sells," he told me. "But there is a focus on finding something wrong."

An Anarchist Ice Cream Truck

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Schwarzfeld, Freelance writer.) — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:40:00 +0000

From the City Room:

Inside, the ice cream shared freezer space with emergency gas masks, and the condiment shelves held equipment for protesters at demonstrations to use when confronted by the police. The ice cream inventory is limited, because cabinets are used to store rolls of film for documenting police action, Ibuprofen for billy-club headaches and rain ponchos in case of fire hoses and water cannons. There were pepper spray treatment kits and the counter-weapon of choice: water balloons.

Two old haunts on Atlantic Ave.

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Schwarzfeld, Freelance writer.) — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 01:20:00 +0000

For Brooklynites - ever wonder what the deal with the Long Island Restaurant and Montero's is? Why are there these two extremely anachronistic establishments right across the street from each other, and do they have any connection?

Looking into a story along these lines, I realized the NYT covered it about two years ago.

And if you've been wondering why the LI Restaurant is always closed, here's the answer.

Walking that fine line

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Schwarzfeld, Freelance writer.) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:48:00 +0000

A city ordinance in a mostly black rural town in Arkansas imposes a curfew and allows police to stop and frisk with neither a warrant nor probable cause.

And this odd detail:

But it wasn't a violent murder that inspired the curfew. It was in response to, as city officials and residents alike describe, a small-time card game and some stray bullets.

The story goes like this: A guy from Third Street lost a bet to a guy on Second Street. When the loser refused to pay, the Second Street man roughed up the one from Third Street. A group from Third Street then went to Second Street, where 10 bullets landed in the side of a house. No one was injured.

MI GOP Foreclosing Foreclosed Voters

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Schwarzfeld, Freelance writer.) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:40:00 +0000

In what appears to be a typically cynical swing-state vote-blocking tactic, the Michigan GOP is using lists of people who lost their homes in foreclosures to deny access to polls (since the listed addresses are no longer legal residences). The presumption, it appears, is that those hit by the foreclosure crisis are more likely to vote Democratic. Gross.

This just happened to me...

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Schwarzfeld, Freelance writer.) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 15:20:00 +0000

I sat down to blog about this strange conversation I just had, and realized it could make a good article. It just so happens that it also fulfills a class assignment, due Friday. Two birds!

Returning from dropping off my laundry this morning, I was harangued, for the first time, as an agent of the gentrification of historically-black Brooklyn.

It just so happened that at that very moment I was thinking about my childhood nanny, an immigrant from Barbados named Rosemary. I had seen her a week earlier, the day of the West Indian parade, which was also the day I moved into my Crown Heights apartment. I've always struggled with the fact of my privilege, most notably through my relationship with Rosemary. That I spent time with her the very first day of my new life—for years, while I wrote about police interactions with the mentally ill for a public policy research firm, I lived on a quiet street in Park Slope; it was perhaps the single-least diverse block in Brooklyn—had a symbolism and poignance which did not escape me.

"Now why you want to live in a black neighborhood?" asked a man, around 40, who was leaning against the brownstone wall in front of the house next door to where I rent a room from an elderly Jamaican family. The man wore a green guerilla cap, slightly askance. His face was matted in short silver stubble, and his eyes, bloodshot, had a manic look. He was drunk. Based on the time of day and where he stood, I guessed he had just been turned out of the shelter in the Atlantic Armory two blocks away.

I paused. I wanted to be thoughtful. But the man didn't wait. "Because if I was me in a white neighborhood, you know I wouldn't be there like that."

I had a response formed, but regrettably I took his bait.

"Now why do you say that?" I asked.

Immediately I felt foolish. I thought about what I was wearing: gray running shorts from my alma mater, Wesleyan University, and a green Teach For America t-shirt. (A friend of mine likes to drunkenly award "Liberal Arts Student of the Year" awards when someone goes on about "institutional racism" or Evo Morales or Talk of the Town pieces. I no doubt would have won an honorable mention for best-dressed.)

"Come on now, you know why." Realizing my mistake, I eagerly nodded ascent. He continued: "You know now, if I was in Bay Ridge or something like that..."

I thought, 'Thank God he didn't mention Park Slope,' but decided to go another direciton.

"I live here because the people here are friendly, and because it's a nice place to live."

If he was caught off-guard, he didn't show it. "Well thank you for saying that," he said. "Now not everyone…" he started, then trailed off. He then mumbled some thoughts about the police, which I didn't understand, and the shelter, which indeed had kicked him out.

Perhaps sensing that he was losing me, he abruptly cut himself off, straightened up, and looked me in the eyes. "Well, you have a nice day," he said, and staggered away.

I turned the other way, smirked, and hurried up stairs to write about it.

Talk about mission creep

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Schwarzfeld, Freelance writer.) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:33:00 +0000

The NYC Teaching Fellows program either has a serious problem vetting its applicants, or supporting them once they're selected:

A Harlem teaching fellow who vanished nearly two weeks ago may have gone into hiding because she was afraid to return to the troubled school where she was assigned, sources told The Post.

Berg: Times, Don't Do It!

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Schwarzfeld, Freelance writer.) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 13:28:00 +0000

Joel Berg of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger calls for the New York Times to reconsider its plan to eliminate the stand-alone Metro section.

This is a city with eight million residents, after all. Given that I see fewer and fewer people on subways reading the Times, surely it harms company profits when you lose local circulation wars to far inferior publications, which provide more coverage to the type of local news that city residents crave to read.

Berg mentions the Times' often excellent reporting on the City Room blog - where the paper runs most of its local political and social coverage - but argues that this is little more than relegating the local beat to where fewer people will read it, and abdicating coverage to the tabloids.

Read Berg's letter here.

Stop hating on guvment

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Schwarzfeld, Freelance writer.) — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 22:53:00 +0000

Research shows that the economy grows in times of higher tax rates and government expenditures, contrary to popular (mostly Republican) opinion.

Rather than harm the economy, the evidence shows that government spending, when done well, contributes critically to economic growth. Americans rely on the government for the free primary and high schools that educate the workforce. The government subsidizes college education and has built the immense transportation infrastructure that moves goods across the country and gets people to work. Federal, state, and local government have been essential to the nation's health, building clean-water systems and developing vaccines that have eliminated or minimized diseases like diphtheria, tuberculosis, and polio. The government can waste money, too. But the national rhetoric about the economy needs to stop focusing on how to shrink the government, and start focusing on how best to use it.