[facts about new york]

Topic: Around Town
Here are some fascinating facts about New York City, courtesy of the US government (via CoolGov):

 

  • New York City is 44.7% white, 27.0% Hispanic or Latino, 26.6% black or African American and 9.8% Asian.
  • We’ve got 5,430 “Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander persons.”
  • 35.9% of New Yorkers are foreign-born. In Queens, it’s 46.1%.
  • Mean travel time to work is 40 minutes.
  • 21.2% of New Yorkers are below the poverty line. In the Bronx, it’s 30.7%.

 

 

[don’t believe the hype]

Topic: Politics
The received wisdom at this point is that Bush has built an indomitable lead since the Republican National Convention: look at those giant leads Time and Gallup have given the president. But before you fold up shop, here’s a corrective from Alan Abramowitz, via Ruy Texeira:

The Gallup tracking poll … gyrated wildly in the weeks leading up to the [2000] election, sometimes showing sizeable leads for Bush, sometimes showing sizeable leads for Gore, and sometimes showing a close race. Indeed, only 10 days before Election Day, Gallup’s tracking poll had George Bush leading Al Gore by 13 points — similar to Bush’s lead over John Kerry [among likely voters] in Gallup’s most recent 2004 poll.

That’s about 14 points off for Gallup, considering the final vote count in 2000. A similar margin this time puts Kerry in the White House.

Keep an eye on Ruy Texeira for thoughtful (if partisan) insights into what polls actually mean. They’re not as simple as they sound.

[the american taliban]

Topic: Politics
From my friend Daniel Kleinfeld:

From Jimmy Swaggart’s sermon this weekend:

“I’m trying to find the correct name for it … this utter absolute, asinine, idiotic stupidity of men marrying men. … I’ve never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I’m gonna be blunt and plain: if one ever looks at me like that, I’m gonna kill him and tell God he died.”

Fundamentalist death threats aimed at 10% of the population — imagine substituting any other minority in there (easy to imagine, actually: “If a nigra looks at my daughter like that, I’m gonna kill him and tell God he died”).

Hard to believe? Watch the video: http://www.oliverwillis.com/stuff/swaggart.wmv

And don’t stop until the very end, when he gets a big round of applause with the words “our president, George Bush” and his proposed constitutional amendment. This is the face of the base, and it’s terrifying.

I have several things to add:

1. Jimmy Swaggart is in little danger of being hit on by a homosexual.

2. What the fuck is an “abomnation”? There’s an i in there, genius. All three times.

3. As for these “abomnations,” it always bugs me how selective the Christians are with that. They seize on Leviticus 20:13 (“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”) and on Leviticus 18:22 (“Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.”) But a search for “abomination” (with an i) in the King James Bible comes up with a lot of results, many of which lead to the inevitable question, why don’t fundamentalist Christians keep kosher?

Some favorites:

Leviticus 11:10-11: “10 And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you: 11 They shall be even an abomination unto you; ye shall not eat of their flesh, but ye shall have their carcases in abomination.” (Note that that’s two abominations, as many as homosexuals get. No more lobster dinners, Christians!)

Deuteronomy 22:5: “The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.” (No more pants suits for you, Christian ladies!)

Deuteronomy 27:15: “Cursed be the man that maketh any graven or molten image, an abomination unto the LORD, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and putteth it in a secret place. And all the people shall answer and say, Amen.” (No more Franklin Mint goodies for you, Christians! In fact, no more coins at all!)

Proverbs 11:1: “A false balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is his delight.” (Make sure your bathroom scale is calibrated, or it’s hell for you!)

Proverbs 12:22: “Lying lips are abomination to the LORD: but they that deal truly are his delight.” (Guess Dubya and Colin Powell and all them folks are an abomination to the LORD.)

And none of this even begins to get into the zillions of weird Levitical laws that Christians are more than happy to ignore. Basically, if you’re gonna start throwing around lines from the Books of Moses as your justification, you damn well better be an Orthodox Jew, because Orthodox Jews are the only people crazy enough to follow each and every commandment in that wacky Ancient Near Eastern epic. (No, they no longer sprinkle blood around with their thumbs in the Tabernacle, but at least each missing sacrifice is replaced with a prayer.)

If you can stomach shellfish, you have no business condemning other people’s Levitical “abomnations.”

[from flesh to fleisch]

Topic: Around Town
Okay, this is just weird: Al Goldstein, founder of Screw magazine and longtime professional asshole, has taken a job as a greeter at the Second Avenue Deli, where my family has been getting exquisite sandwiches since the place opened in 1954. Apparently a homeless and destitute Goldstein showed up at the deli, which was founded by his longtime friend Abe Lebewohl, and asked Abie’s brother Ira for a job. (Abe was murdered several years ago in a robbery.) The Villager has details.

[international day of peace]

Topic: United Nations
In case you were looking for a reason not to shoot anyboday today, here’s one: today is Peace Day, [Correction: Peace Day is September 21, so shoot away until then] which the UN declared should be “observed as a day of global ceasefire and non-violence, an invitation to all nations and people to honour a cessation of hostilities during the Day.”

If you’re keen on irony, you can celebrate by buying yourself an assualt weapon for “for target shooting, shooting competitions, hunting, collecting, and most importantly, self-defense,” as the NRA puts it. Because they’re legal now. You might also be interested in the awkwardly named National Police Shooting Championships, which sounds like some sort of gangsta-rap fantasy camp. But it isn’t.

[untitled]

Topic: Politics

Josh Marshal has pointed out that a key tactic for John Kerry is convincing voters that he has a plan for Iraq. So far, his arguments have been for internationalizing the conflict. While I think that this is a useful and realistic approach to Iraq, I also think it’s a loser with the electorate: it smacks of passing the buck, and it plays into the Republican attack on Kerry as vaguely un-American and in thrall to foreign powers.

After reading Peter W. Galbraith’s scathing critique of the reconstruction in Iraq in the New York Review of Books, I found that a different approach suggested itself. Kerry should argue that the occupation and reconstruction are a disaster because they’ve been run by Bush’s cronies and political supporters — the same people who gave you Enron, the blackouts in California, and today’s stellar economy. Kerry should offer an alternative: hiring the best people for the job — people with the right experience, regardless of their political affiliations.

This approach is valuable on several fronts. It reinforces one of the more widely held negative views of Republicans in general and the Bush Administration in particular, which is that they are greedy and susceptible to cronyism. It is actually a sensible approach to Iraq. And it’s not hard to boil down to pithy slogans.

“We need the best people supporting our soldiers in Iraq. We need people with experience and integrity. Doers, not donors.”

I don’t think any of that’s political gold exactly — those are just off the top of my head — but it does manage to wrap a plan and a critique into one, and also to avoid the trap of sounding like you’re waiting for France to rescue us.

[harry smith]

Topic: Culture
Yesterday was my birthday — I’m now 30, thank you very much — and along with an awe-inspiring chocolate mousse cake from Balducci’s, my wife gave me the Smithsonian Folkways Anthology of American Folk Music, a reissue of the famous Harry Smith collection, first released in 1952. From the Harry Smith website:

The Anthology was comprised entirely of recordings issued between 1927 (the year electronic recording made accurate reproduction possible) and 1932, the period between the realization by the major record companies of distinct regional markets and the Depression’s stifling of folk music sales. Released in three volumes of two discs each, the 84 tracks of the anthology are recognized as having been a seminal inspiration for the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960 (the 1997 reissue by the Smithsonian was embraced with critical acclaim and two Grammy awards).

[doesn’t the MTA have an umbrella?]

Topic: Around Town
So, did you enjoy yesterday’s commute? An early morning downpour brought sections of the subway to a halt, leaving commuters stuck for extended periods in nonmoving trains, or else waiting endlessly on hot, sticky platforms for trains that weren’t coming. I managed to make it to work just a half-hour late, riding the 2 train, which normally runs on the West Side, from Brooklyn into Grand Central. For others, the commute was worse.

As the New York Times notes, yesterday’s episode was eerily similar to a subway tangle on August 26, 1999. I remember it well because I was leaving the city that day for California to attend my sister’s bat mitzvah. At that time, my commute was from Forest Hills, Queens, to DoubleClick’s offices near Madison Square. Hauling a suitcase and a garment bag with my suit in it, I spent two-and-a-half exhausting hours getting to work, including an ill-advised transfer and much walking around Court Square in Queens. When we finally crawled into Manhattan and just stopped, I climbed out of the subway to try for a bus, but they were all full, so I made the final stretch in a shared cab. And the whole time, I kept thinking how ridiculous it was to work this hard to get to Manhattan, when I’d be leaving at 2:30 to go back to Queens for my flight out of LaGuardia.

All of this raises the question: why hasn’t the MTA prepared for this sort of thing? It’s sort of worrying that a heavy downpour can paralyze New York. It’s going to happen again, guys. Can we maybe thing about how to improve things the next time?

Oh, and that picture you see in the Times of the flooded street is just a couple of blocks from my good friend’s new apartment, and also close to a giant Lowe’s store that is mysteriously full of Chassidic Jews late at night. If anyone can explain either the flooding of Smith and Ninth or why the spiritual descendents of the Baal Shem Tov shop nights at Lowe’s, let me know.

[west indian day parade]

Topic: Around Town
Yesterday I went to the West Indian Day Carnival and Parade on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. I saw much booty and ate jerk chicken and generally had a fabulous time at this giant but surprisingly mellow event, wandering through the crowds from Grand Army Plaza all the way to Kingston Avenue, then back again on side streets to which I will have to return for some serious Carribean eats.

Check out pictures of the day’s festivities. [via Gothamist]

[steam]

Topic: Around Town
Have you ever wondered why New York City streets leak steam, usually from manhole covers and occasionally from barricaded orange-and-white stacks? It’s an iconic NYC image, and lots of movies and TV shows have used a quick shot of people walking through street steam to establish location and a certain urban noir feeling. But what’s the steam doing there in the first place?

Powering the city, that’s what (or at least powering Manhattan up to 96th Street, which is why you never see the steam vents out in Brooklyn). Or as ConEd puts it:

Steam power from Con Edison is as much a part of Manhattan as subways and Times Square. The first steam generation plant began operating in 1882 – six months before the first electric service. Today, steam power has grown to play a major role in the life of the city. More than 100 miles of mains and service pipes make up the Con Edison steam system. The pipes deliver this clean, efficient energy source to about 2,000 customers from the Battery to 96th Street. In fact, the Con Edison system has become the largest steam district in the United States – larger than the next four U.S. systems combined as well as the largest steam district system in the world.