Why your city sucks

Football season is fast approaching and Magary is on the Jets today. Not every city in America is New York. But New York's problems are basically urban America's problems amplified to Nth degree.  For example, see if you recognize a little bit of your city in this.

Nothing works. The only people left are billionaire dipshits and angry men in construction helmets. All the new real estate in town consists of 71-story luxury condo towers with one apartment per floor, each occupied for three weeks a year by the hideous nephew of some Uzbek cobalt magnate. New York City, itself, has become the Jets of cities: an expensive, boring wreck.

What a time to be alive. 

First world problems

What it's like here in the richest nation on Earth where the people and the laws are very civilized and freedom loving and such.

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — A Louisiana prison brutally punishes suicidal and mentally ill inmates by isolating them for months or even years, chaining them to wooden chairs and opening windows to expose them to extreme cold, a federal lawsuit claims.

The class action, filed Tuesday, asks the court to rule that prison officials are subjecting inmates at David Wade Correctional Center in Homer to unconstitutional “cruel and unusual punishment.” It also seeks a court-ordered end to the “extreme, abusive conditions” at the north Louisiana prison.

LOL, very funny, Jeff. You had us going there. But see, that is Louisiana which everybody knows is only technically part of First World America where they have the common decency to let the bounty hunters do all the criminal justice stuff for them. 

Two interesting facts about the NYC bombing case over the weekend

One: The act of "domestic terrorism" seems to have been inspired by a small business owning family becoming frustrated by the meddling power of the neighborhood association brought down up on them through City Hall.

Mr. Bollwage, speaking at a news conference on Monday morning, described how the Rahami family had issues with the city in the past, mainly surrounding the operation of their family restaurant, First American Fried Chicken.

Mr. Rahami’s father, Muhammad, opened the restaurant about a decade ago and employed his sons, the mayor said.

It was open 24 hours a day, but neighbors complained about rowdy crowds that would gather at the place, often after midnight.

Dean McDermott, who lives near the restaurant in Elizabeth, said he found patrons loitering in his yard and urinating in his driveway.

Responding to the complaints, the City Council passed an ordinance that would force the restaurant to close late at night, the mayor said.

Two: The case seems to have been cracked (and further violence prevented) thanks to the intercession of some local street criminals. 

The day Ahmad Khan Rahami allegedly planted two bombs in Chelsea  — one of which detonated on West 23rd Street — two thieves accidentally helped to disable his second pressure cooker bomb left inside a rolling suitcase on West 27th Street, sources said.

The young men, who sources described as being well-dressed, opened the bag and took the bomb out, sources said, before placing the explosive into a garbage bag and walking away with the rolling suitcase.

In doing so, investigators believe they inadvertently disabled the explosive, sources said. That allowed investigators to examine the cellphone attached to the bomb intact and discover that it was connected to the family of Rahami.

Making a federal case out of the rent being too damn high

What's driving up real estate prices in so-called destination cities? The US Justice Department wants to find out. 

Concerned about illicit money flowing into luxury real estate, the Treasury Department said Wednesday that it would begin identifying and tracking secret buyers of high-end properties.

The initiative will start in two of the nation’s major destinations for global wealth: Manhattan and Miami-Dade County. It will shine a light on the darkest corner of the real estate market: all-cash purchases made by shell companies that often shield purchasers’ identities.

It is the first time the federal government has required real estate companies to disclose names behind cash transactions, and it is likely to send shudders through the real estate industry, which has benefited enormously in recent years from a building boom increasingly dependent on wealthy, secretive buyers.

The Mayor should invite them to New Orleans as well. Sort of like the NOPD consent decree but for real estate.

Keeping the brand out there

Whole Foods really is ripping you off.  At least, they are in New York. 

The city has launched a probe of Whole Foods Markets after investigators nabbed the upscale food purveyor for routinely overcharging customers on groceries during dozens of inspections dating back to at least 2010, the Daily News has learned.

The most recent spate of violations came during a sting operation the Department of Consumer Affairs conducted in the fall that specifically checked the accuracy of the weight marked on pre-packaged products.

This isn't new. Whole Foods was fined for similar violations last year  in California.

A couple of years ago, Whole Foods executives were a little bit worried that they were "diluting their brand" with a pilot program to expand into impoverished neighborhoods designated as so-called "food deserts" in New Orleans, Chicago, and Detroit.

Really, what they were doing was taking advantage of federal Fresh Food Retailer Initiative grants in order to launch stores in rapidly gentrifying markets.  That's worked out well for them. And they've managed to keep the brand intact as well.

Imagine it

Imagine a city filled with empty super-condos, money vaults in the sky. Our streetscapes will be sleek windows on the dead space of bank branches and real-estate offices.

There will be no more bookstores, no more theaters, no more places for live music. No more places to sit on a stool and drink a beer with regular folks.

When that day comes, and in some ways it is already here, what city will this be? It will be a hollow city for hollow men.

That guy is writing about New York but, yeah, we can imagine it.

Real life is not like the movies

In the movies, Jack Nicholson's character covered up a brutal murder by beating and was held accountable for that by the justice system.   In real life, he's a hero to unaccountable brutes who beat people to death.

Motivational Monday- courtesy of Jack Nicholson in "A Few Good Men". pic.twitter.com/Dge6qMZAti
— NYPD Midtown South (@NYPDMTS) December 15, 2014

Body cameras are for them not for you

Congrats on agitating for this innovation.  Now we have a situation where police can not only kill you with impunity but they are also always filming you.

Nobody actually lives here

Look at all the vacant housing in New York City.

In a three-block stretch of Midtown, from East 56th Street to East 59th Street, between Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue, 57 percent, or 285 of 496 apartments, including co-ops and condos, are vacant at least 10 months a year. From East 59th Street to East 63rd Street, 628 of 1,261 homes, or almost 50 percent, are vacant the majority of the time, according to data from the Census Bureau’s 2012 American Community Survey.

“My district has some of the most expensive land values in the world — I’m ground zero for the issue of foreign buyers,” said State Senator Liz Krueger, whose district includes Midtown. “I met with a developer who is building one of those billionaire buildings on 57th Street and he told me, ‘Don’t worry, you won’t need any more services, because the buyers won’t be sending their kids to school here, there won’t be traffic.’  ”

The developer told her that the buyers basically would never be here, Ms. Krueger said. “He said it like this was a positive thing,” she added. “You can’t make this stuff up.”

In New Orleans, we're seeing rents and real estate prices skyrocket right now. Short-term rentals and "Pieds-a-Terre" litter... and in some cases... blight the landscape.

The owner of the Royal Street building is Elaine Petrie, according to city assessor's records. Petrie did not live in the building, a portion of which was rented to a Baton Rouge couple as a pied-a-terre. Petrie could not be reached for comment, but neighbors said the building's interior had been crumbling for years.

Lousteau said the condition of the Royal Street property is a classic example of the demolition-by-neglect that can take place beyond what can be seen by the naked eye.

But we encourage this.  The city's development and budgetary strategy is dependent on wealthy property owners who can pay high property taxes.. even if they don't actually live here.  All that's left to do now is legitimize AirBnB and tax that too. (That is coming, by the way.)  Then nobody has to actually live here at all.

The circular argument that takes place in the middle of all this would be funny if it weren't also so depressing.

The rent is too damn high

Well the housing supply is too low

Ok then let's build more housing

Sure, here are a whole bunch of new luxury condos for rich people

The rent is too damn high.

And on and on like that until nobody actually lives here anymore.

Refugees

This is what the folks driving up rents in Bywater these days are running from.

Recently I asked several old friends — all, like me, born-and-raised middle-class New Yorkers — if they still liked living here.

I was curious because, a year ago, as a freelance magazine writer unconstrained by workplace, I headed west to a small town in Colorado, where rents are low, life is relaxed and the landscapes are wild and beautiful. A beer at a bar runs a buck-fifty, a big meal for two at a decent restaurant $15.

My poll produced some very angry commentary about the outrageous cost of living in a city Mayor Bloomberg once described as “a luxury product” and about the takeover of neighborhoods, especially in parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, by the super-rich, who drive rents up and character out.

“The city is almost entirely about money now,” said Dave, 39, a Manhattan contractor. “A dead place full of people so tired and overworked they don’t remember what it feels like to feel good.”

The problem is that this is how the infection spreads.  Shouldn't we have some sort of ebola protocol in place? 

Poor door

They should migrate this concept to New Orleans so that Jackie Clarkson has a place to retire to.

Deja Vu

Unfortunately the Sandy scenario isn't likely to be the last uncomfortably familiar repeat of what Louisiana and Mississippi have been through.

Sixteen months after Hurricane Sandy, homeowners are still waiting for help rebuilding.

Of the 19,920 people who applied for the city’s Build It Back program for home repairs, which started in June, not a single homeowner has seen construction work start.

And only 110 — or 0.55% — had inked a deal on how much aid they’re going to get as of the end of January, according to city data analyzed by the Alliance for a Just Rebuilding in a report to be released Monday.

Sixteen months is nothing. Y'all come back in eight or nine years and see how it's going.  Also what's missing is the serious discussion about whether or not displaced victims are "better off" not coming back... or if their hometowns are better off without them being a "drag on the economy"  and whatnot.   Not so many outsiders questioning whether whole neighborhoods should be rebuilt at all either.

But even so it is very familiar and we do sympathize.

Behind the Bloomberg curve

With Bloomberg on the way out, Atrios thinks the opinion-makers in New York might not be quite so in thrall to the #AspenIdeas platform as they once were. 

I don't have a fully fleshed out thesis here, but I do think there's been a big change over the past few years in the tone from the New York chattering classes, as the bright (not so) young writers are beginning to recognize that shit is fucked up and bullshit for them, too, as their dreams of owning a place with a dishwasher in NYC recede and that house in the Hamptons that all of their senior colleagues own is a couple of lines below "unicorn pegasus" on the list of things they're likely to possess one day.

And, you know, maybe.  But I don't trust anyone who reaches adulthood with an inability to see the world for what it is beyond their own petty career interests to ever really come around.  Besides, there's always another crop of young climbers and more places where they can go and live the dream.

Outsiders, not locals, revitalized New Orleans. Rich or poor, long-term residents can’t see the diamonds in the rough. Hurricane Katrina washed out the parochial thinking that was killing Big Easy. Lessons for Detroit:

“After a tragedy is one of the few times you can be trying to reimagine a city rather than just trying to go back to what you were before,” said Scott Cowen, the president of Tulane University, who is writing a book examining the remaking of New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. “What you really need is transformational change, not just incremental change to get back to where you were,” he said in an interview. “That’s been very important to resurgence of this city, and Detroit has to do the same thing.”

All of this is, of course, bullshit. What has "revitalized" New Orleans (if we must use that term) has been a massive influx of state and federal investment in rebuilding.

Rigamer said the city could be back to pre-Katrina levels by 2020.

“What’s going on in New Orleans is you started out with decreased base from Katrina and you are also seeing a lot of federal money pumped into the city,” Rigamer said. “There is a lot of recovery spending occurring right now. A lot of FEMA projects under way.”

Allison Plyer, a demographer with the nonprofit Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, said New Orleans continues to grow annually in large part to job opportunities.

“The number one reason people move to areas is because of the jobs. Some might choose to live in the city, others choose the suburbs. I think the amenities of New Orleans can be attractive,” Plyer said.

Plyer said there is no doubt the billions in recovery money being spent in New Orleans are a strong stimulus for the city.

Plyer also said post-Katrina housing in New Orleans, while lower in cost than major cities such as New York City and San Francisco, is more expensive now than in the past.

“It’s no longer inexpensive to live here. Between taxes, insurance and utilities, the cost of living is higher now,” Plyer said.

Now it's fair to say that the recovery stimulus has attracted many new people to the city to chase the opportunities it affords. The challenge for local leadership in such an environment should be ensuring the benefits of the boom accrue equitably so that, at the very least, the actual victims of the disaster participate in the rebirth. 

But that isn't what's happened.  Instead our leaders have preferred the Aspen strategy of fostering "public-private partnerships" and implementing an austere "zero sum" approach to budgeting  that sets the highest priority on "slaying sacred cows" such as pensions for firefighters.

So, for the time being, it's still possible to see New Orleans a success story provided you care only about the lives and lifestyles of the young entrepreneurs and associated hangers-on midway through the adventure of figuring out what's in it for them. Which is why Bloobergism may have run its course in New York City but, in New Orleans, it's really still kicking into gear.

Ed Blakely: Buffoon

Dorothy: Oh please, Professor, why can't we go with you and see all the Crowned Heads of Europe?

Professor Marvel: Do you know any? Oh, you mean the... thing. Yes


More than likely the "rumor" that Blakely was going to be on this commission originated with Blakely himself.  He's built a career out of being the traveling carnie who sells snake oils and advice from the beyond to disaster-prone marks.  As always, the way one gets these jobs is by hustling.  Blakely hustled his way into a job in New Orleans.  But New York must not have been Kansas anymore.

Oh God help them

New Orleanians have had a lot of advice for victims of Hurricane Sandy as they embark on the long road to recovery. But one commonly expressed sentiment we could not possibly have stressed enough was, whatever you do, do NOT hire Ed Blakely to direct or advise your efforts.

And yet.

The University of Sydney (USyd) has sent Honorary Professor in Urban Policy, Edward Blakely, to New York to help its recovery efforts caused by October’s monster storm Hurricane Sandy.

Professor Blakely, an American academic working at USyd’s United States Studies Centre, is a seasoned veteran in dealing with disaster recovery efforts aftewr he earned the unofficial title of ‘Recovery Czar’ within the New Orleans Office of Recovery and Development Administration for his efforts to ameliorate the destruction inflicted by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Oh dear. He must have been attracted by the dangling "cranes on the skyline."

I'm busy watching the LSU game right now.  But this is another good opportunity to review the Ed Blakely Timeline. 

Also, throw Ed Blakely's name out on Twitter and it doesn't take New Orleans very long to start talking about their favorite archetypal con men.

@dakinikat @skooks @the_gambit Ed Blakely is like the Monorail guy from The Simpsons. bit.ly/Taw5Q7
— Nate Thompson (@NolaNate) November 23, 2012

And we think we're kidding for a moment but then we start reading his recent comments just to get an idea what he's thinking.

After Sandy, we need to reposition and not merely rebuild. Sandy presents the ideal opportunity to think about reorganizing Lower Manhattan with stronger, smarter—and higher—transportation modes. Building tidal barriers around the tip of the city is important, as well as creating better links between New York and New Jersey so evacuation and train travel can create more options for human movement in good and bad times.

And then the whole song starts playing.

Meme watch

"What do you mean they didn't have flood insurance?"

Yeah... we know

Not trying to be insensitive or anything but the more the national news outlets cover the situation in New York City as though it has never happened to anyone else before in the history of the Earth, the more annoyed I start to get.

Meme watch: Nobody could have predicted

First, the obvious one.

For nearly a decade, scientists have told city and state officials that New York faces certain peril: rising sea levels, more frequent flooding and extreme weather patterns. The alarm bells grew louder after Tropical Storm Irene last year, when the city shut down its subway system and water rushed into the Rockaways and Lower Manhattan. 

On Tuesday, as New Yorkers woke up to submerged neighborhoods and water-soaked electrical equipment, officials took their first tentative steps toward considering major infrastructure changes that could protect the city’s fragile shores and eight million residents from repeated disastrous damage.

And then, Kevin points out in an earlier comment thread, some fine foresight on the part of Mike Bloomberg on Sunday. 

President Obama asked Craig Fugate from FEMA to call me earlier in the day and offer any help. I assured him that we had, we think, everything under control but we appreciate the effort.

No thanks, we're all good here!

All of these health care facilities are taking additional precautions to prepare – including bringing in more staff. A lot of them do have backup generators and any outages are not expected to be more than hours or at most a day or so, so they'll be fine, they think

They thought wrong. 

At a news conference Monday night at the city's Office of Emergency Management in Brooklyn, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the back-up power at the hospital had failed, prompting the emergency evacuation of patients.

"The one thing that we had not counted on, New York University's hospital back-up power—in spite of them making sure, ensuring us that it's been tested—stopped working. And we're working with them to help move people out," Mr. Bloomberg said

The one thing they hadn't counted on was the one thing nobody could have predicted. Oddly, they seem like they're still kind of counting on it even today.

The failed backup power generators that led to the evacuation of the New York University Langone Medical Center in Manhattan are adequate, a spokeswoman said Tuesday.

"Our generators are fully compliant with all state and federal regulations and, using good prudence, we test them all the time as we have to do anyway," Lisa Greiner told HuffPost.

So they stand by their failed generators. How long before they admit they were "generators in name only"?

Anyway despite what Bloomberg says above, this was not the "one thing they hadn't counted on." There was also this.

"We have visited every crane site and every construction site in the city, and with the winds that are expected we think they have appropriately tied down all of the equipment. But if there's a gust that's a lot more than anybody had counted on, things could start to blow."

The gusts must have been "a lot more than anybody had counted on"

A partially collapsed construction crane dangling ominously from the top of a unfinished New York City skyscraper is "stable," but the site's construction company and a crane expert worry that its heavy boom could smash to the street below.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said today that "the Department of Buildings has determined that the crane is currently stable," but winds remaining from superstorm Sandy remained too high at the top of the 90-story luxury high rise building for crews to work on it.

There's an awful lot here that Bloomberg said he was on top of just a few days ago and yet is suddenly turning out to be a heavy load of nobody-could-have-predicteds. Why isn't Bloomberg being subjected to the same heavy (and unfair) criticism others have received?

Getting the band back together

It's not quite been 24 hours after landfall but already some of our old friends are offering their critiques of Hurricane Sandy and the federal response.

Here is Arabian Horse enthusiast, former FEMA Director, and best selling author, Michael Brown speaking to the Denver Westword  (link via Gambit)

Brown expects that in the coming days, there will also be comparisons between Obama's quick response to Hurricane Sandy and his slower response to the attacks in Benghazi, which has become a challenging campaign issue for the president.

"One thing he's gonna be asked is, why did he jump on this so quickly and go back to D.C. so quickly when in...Benghazi, he went to Las Vegas?" Brown says. "Why was this so quick?... At some point, somebody's going to ask that question.... This is like the inverse of Benghazi."

 Yes, the response was too quick. Hard to believe Obama had them mobilized on an empty stomach.

Ray Nagin has been tweeting some benign well wishes to the victims. Most of us think that's nice. But at the same time, his name has been unfairly drawn into the spat between New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Atlantic City Mayor  Lorenzo Langford. We are not often quick to defend Ray Nagin but here's Jarvis DeBerry explaining that these comparisons are based on persistent and damaging myths about the evacuation of New Orleans prior to Katrina.

Those criticizing Langford accuse him of encouraging people to hang around, which they say makes him like our former mayor. Nagin's failures are myriad, legendary even, but those accusing him of not properly warning New Orleanians of Katrina's danger are either misinformed or lying on purpose.

Given that the city is largely poor, that no storm had struck in 40 years, that it has only one interstate highway and that a 2004 evacuation nightmare had led many to say "never again," you might consider it a marvel that on the Monday morning Katrina arrived the overwhelming majority of New Orleanians were gone. We hadn't even given the storm a thought till late in the day Friday.

Now maybe later when Langford inevitably tells us rebuilding Atlantic City will depend on getting some casinos up and running, there might be something to this. But for now leave C. Ray alooone. He's got enough to worry about.

Also, the dangling crane on the NYC skyline has brought forth Ed Blakely like some sort of ill-advised bat signal. But if Blakely is angling for a job this time, it looks like he's going for political pundit rather than disaster consultant.

US political legend holds that there will be an incident, a surprise in late October in a presidential election year, which will separate the candidates at a point where one moves so far ahead that he wins by more votes than anyone anticipates. Is Hurricane Sandy the 2012 October surprise for Obama?

Given the close race, it will take a deciding deed or moment for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney to pull away in the last dash to victory. There is no doubt Sandy is a political storm and not just a weather event.

Ugh. Well, the good news is when he sucks at this stuff, nobody suffers.. I mean, unless they read it.

Anyway, if the citizens of New Orleans could offer the people affected by Sandy at least one bit of our own advice, it would probably be, whatever you do, do not hire Ed Blakely.  A few years ago, as he was preparing to leave us, I put together a helpful timeline of his tenure here just in case someone might need that information for later.

Meanwhile, is Veronica White's book still in print? This seems like the moment it was written for.

Meme watch

How soon before we begin to hear any of the following:

1) Why would they build a city in such a dangerous place?

2) Why did they not evacuate? Didn't they hear the warnings?

3) Should they be allowed to come back? Wouldn't those people be better off with a fresh start?

4) Why would anyone who lives in such a place not take the personal responsibility to own a car in case they need to evacuate?

5) Doesn't this present New York city with a "silver lining"? A "blank slate" upon which to re-imagine itself?

6) Why should a cab driver in Detroit care about rebuilding a city in a flood zone?


Tanker run aground by Sandy. Staten Island, NY.


Barge pushed through Industrial Canal floodwall. New Orleans, LA 2005.