Author: Josh Philip Ross

So the World Cup, the UN and Carroll Gardens have all made their way into one wandery, unfocused Slate article, in which Troy Patterson describes his experiences watching World Cup in various places around “Manhattan,” as the headline has it, though Bar Tabac is pretty firmly in the Boerum Hill section of Brooklyn, where it makes a fine contribution to the freakishly high standard of affordable quality cuisine.

Posted by: Josh

Gothamist has picked up on a Daily News investigation into the financial improprieties of 13th District Representative Vito Fossella, a Republican who is being opposed by Democrat Steve Harrison this November.

Highlights:

• From 2001 through this winter, Fossella spent $25,124 in campaign donations to fly himself and his family to Vail each January.

 

• Fossella failed to disclose that in February 2002 he flew to Miami and back on a private jet owned by a corporate donor.

 

• Fossella failed to disclose who paid for a Feb. 25-28, 2001, trip with his wife and children to a conference outside Palm Springs that cost $2,082.

 

• In early 2003, Fossella traveled to La Hague on the coast of France for a “fact-finding trip.” He did not say who paid.

 

• After returning from La Hague, he took a “fact-finding trip” to Miami, revealing that Nasdaq paid $3,037 for transportation, lodging and meals.

 

• In 2004, the New York Stock Exchange paid $648 for a Fossella “fact-finding trip,” including a $323 hotel stay in Manhattan — just a ferry ride away from his home.

These are petty individually, but they add up to a contempt for regulations that are meant to prevent corruption among our elected officials.

Let’s hope Vito keeps making it this easy.

Posted by: Josh

Salon points out that the name “Taepodong” is simply what US intelligence analysts designated North Korea’s long-range missiles when they were first discovered in the Taepodong region.

The official North Korean name for the missiles is Paektusan. They’re named after the highest mountain in Korea, which also happens to be the locus of Korea’s mythic founding, not to mention the place where Kim Jong-il was supposedly born, though he was actually most likely born in the Soviet Union.

Thanks for the link, Daniel!

So everyone wants to know what’s going on at the South Korean Mission to the UN now that North Korea has grabbed global headlines by testing its Taepodong-2 long-range ballistic missile, which fortunately didn’t work.

The answer is not much. Or at least there’s not much that involves me. One of the diplomats complained in passing that the North Koreans are keeping him and his colleagues busy, but so far there’s no statement for me to work on. 

That makes sense: the Security Council is meeting today in closed session, which means South Korea has no participatory role, and they will announce their results this afternoon. Until that happens, there’s really no reason why the UN Mission should be speaking up — as opposed to the South Korean government, which has been plenty vocal and today suspended food aid to the North, though they have stopped short of calling for economic sanctions, which would force South Korean companies to suspend their operations in the Kaesong Industrial Region. The Ambassador might make a statement tomorrow at the Security Council, and this might be written without my participation, largely on the guidance of officials in Seoul. 

In terms of my own views on the missile tests, I think that they have once again shown the impotence of all sides in the North Korean situation. China can’t reign in its troublesome pawn. The US can’t cow the North Koreans into backing down any better than we could win them over by being nice. The Russians and Japanese have little to offer, while the South Koreans have been flailing for decades. And North Korea proved that its most threatening weapon doesn’t actually work, reminding the world that the only proof we have of their nuclear weapons is their declaration that they have them.

What happens next will be a lot of bluster and very little consequence. The DPRK may or may not get hit with economic sanctions, but they’ve shown themselves to be fairly uninterested in any kind of realistic economic development anyway, and certainly they’re ready to wait out sanctions. Unless they do something way more provocative, like a nuclear test, I can’t see much more happening. 

And even then, what do we do? If you have an idea, tell me and I’ll pass it on to people who might have some influence. As it is, short of a vast and devastating war, we’ve got few options other than haranguing, cajoling, bribing or sitting on our hands.

I suppose I might’ve mentioned more clearly that I was going on vacation, which is why this blog has been so quiet of late. But I’m back now, and I should have wonderfully insightful things to say about Maine over the next few days.

Here’s a curious story of a Korean-American woman who committed suicide by driving her car off a cliff at Bear Mountain — with her two children in the back. Her husband supposedly heard her threaten suicide, which has led to charges that he aided her, but the Korean community feels this is a misunderstanding. In Korean culture, apparently, threats of suicide are common, much as Americans say “I could kill you!” without any murderous intent.

This Saturday, Jenny and I will depart for our first vacation on our own, without family, since we got married. We’re headed up to Bar Harbor, Maine, next to Acadia National Park, and we’ll be staying first at the Open Hearth Inn, then at the Acadia Hotel.

This morning I discovered the Haze Cam Polution Visibility Camera Network, which takes pictures and measures particulates in both Acadia and Newark, New Jersey, among other places. I note this because Newark is up on the edge between medium and high, while Acadia, despite some current haziness by local standards, is way down at the lower levels.

In other words, we get to spend a week in cleaner air. This should be lovely for both of us, and especially for Jenny.

Topic: Around Town

Daniel McKleinfeld today alerted me to a Slate article by Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn and Fortress of Solitude, decrying Bruce Ratner’s plans for a massive collection of Frank Gehry-designed towers in the heart of Brooklyn.

I have until now been ambivalent. There are always groups opposed to any kind of development anywhere in New York, and often this opposition is reflexive and silly. I’ve heard Mr. McKleinfeld himself condemn the new project because it would replace the Fulton Street Mall, though it’s actually being planned for some distance away, mostly on a desolate unused rail yard. So we might find ourselves with hideous, windswept corporate plazas on an inhuman scale, but it’s hard to see how that would be worse than an uncrossable rail yard. That’s not to say that something vastly superior might be done with the space instead, but I do think it’s relevant that unlike the territory appropriated by the World Trade Center in Manhattan, the proposed Atlantic Yards site won’t be ripped from the fabric of the surrounding communities, because the site is already a gaping hole.

Another point raised by Ratner’s opposition is that the towers will dwarf the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower, as if this quirky Downtown Brooklyn oddity were a holy object that all Brooklynites must be able to spot from their front doors. We live in a city that dwarfs the once-towering Statue of Liberty, and I don’t think this has been a disaster. I believe that the Great Phallus of Brooklyn can lose some of its stature without destroying the manhood of my borough. The insistence that we should never, ever allow anything to be built that might block views of the thing strikes me as arbitrary, sentimental and reactionary.

So then why am I suddenly on Lethem’s side? Because the proposed development that will be 8.66 million square feet. That’s more than a million square feet more than the World Trade Center towers, which remained partially vacant for most of their existence. Granted that significant chunks of this massive development would be residential, while 10 percent would go to the Nets arena. Even so, that’s just a ginormous project. I mean, really fucking huge. Stupidly huge.

I hadn’t quite grasped until today just how enormous this thing would be. If nothing else, it raises terrifying questions about the already inadequate transportation infrastructure. And who exactly is going to be renting out this massive new glut of office space? Assuming the Freedom Tower eventually gets built (not a sure thing, but never mind that), the two developments together would put vast quantities of office space on the market in a relatively short period of time, depressing prices and possibly leading to damaging vacancies.

Far more than an arena for the Nets, the Atlantic Yards project is a massive, centrally planned intrusion into a borough whose best districts — many of which are near the proposed site — are among the most elegantly organic, human-scaled urban spaces in the United States. These kinds of projects were all the rage in the 1960s, and they gave us disasters like the original World Trade Center and Lincoln Center.

The project site is currently awful, and a smaller development there — even one as bad as Bruce Ratner’s hideous Atlantic Center Mall — would be an improvement. But I think Lethem is right: a project on such an enormous scale can’t help but harm the surrounding neighborhoods.

Topic: Humor

There’s a fabulously weird Folgers commercial (click on the TV set) making the rounds (Milk and Cookies, Boing Boing), and it should be watched by all. No, really. Especially you, Jenny.