New York City
Warning: Undefined variable $category_id in /home/juanmonr/juanomatic.net/wp-content/themes/monroy2014/category.php on line 7
When Citi Field and Yankee Stadium 2.0 opened in 2009, there were inevitable and exhaustive comparisons between the two. The consensus was, at least among my friends, that the Mets park was much better than what the Yankees had built in that it felt more like a baseball stadium. It seemed that the Yankees didn’t build a baseball stadium as much as they openend an airport shopping mall with a baseball field in the middle of it, peppering it with a few hot dog stands. Also, Citi Field had better food offerings: a pair of Danny Meyer food stands, a beer garden, and vegetarian options.
Although both stadiums were built almost exactly where the old parks stood, the two parks were built as centerpieces of urban redevelopment in the South Bronx and at Willets Point in Queens.
The Yankees opened a Hard Rock Cafe that is open year-round, even when the Yankees aren’t playing. I don’t know a single person that would plan a trip to go there.
At Citi Field, however, there will be a much more compelling reason to schlep to Willets Point during the baseball offseason. Danish brewery Mikkeller is coming to Citi Field:
Mikkeller announced that it’s expanding, and will open its first East Coast Brewery this fall at Citi Field in Flushing, Queens. The forthcoming brewery “Mikkeller Brewing NYC” will be in a non-ticketed part of the stadium, and remain open year-round.
I think the Mets outdid the Yankees here, again. Mikkeller has a sterling reputation among beer nerds with their breweries in Copenhagen, Denmark and in San Diego, California and with two bars—also in California—in San Francisco and Los Angeles. This will be their first foothold in the US East Coast. And although the food options are “safe,” trafficking in established household names of contemporary cuisine, namely David Chang’s fried chicken and Pat LaFrieda’s burgers, it sure beats eating whatever passes for food at a Hard Rock Cafe these days.
Mikkeller NYC is due to open this fall, presumably shortly after the Mets have been eliminated from qualifying for the postseason.
I finally had a chance to see the New York City 2017 Bike Map, and it took me a while to realize that the cover pays tribute to longtime New York Times fashion photographer and cultural icon Bill Cunningham. Cunningham was a well known bicycle enthusiast and was known to enjoy riding his bike to photograph New York street life in his weekly “On the Street” columns for the New York Times.
Film still from Bill Cunningham New York. First Thought Films/Zeitgeist Films.
There are a few giveaways that show the cover illustration depicts Cunningham:
- it’s an older, white-haired man on cruiser,
- he’s snapping a photo from his bike,
- he’s wearing his trademark blue jacket and grey pants,
- most obviously, the map indicates a credit of “Cover illustration of Bill Cunningham, used with permission of the Estate of William J. Cunningham.”
Bill Cunningham passed away at age 87 a year ago today. He was extensively covered in the 2010 documentary, Bill Cunningham New York, which as of today, is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
One of the most infuriating aspects of having moved from Greenpoint-Long Island City to East Williamsburg–Bushwick, other than the difficulty of transporting household paper products in bulk, is that the area is decidedly hostile to bicycling.
Technically Williamsburg, Culturally Maspeth
The area is very industrial so there are a lot of trucks and commercial vehicles. Those vehicles are commonly double parked in the “bicycling margin” part of the roadways, forcing a cyclist into the middle of the road where motor vehicles travel. From my own observations, commercial vehicles also seem more likely to speed and engage in dangerous driving behavior for two reasons: First, commercial drivers are in a hurry to do their jobs and make their delivery schedules. Second, they also appear less cautious than other drivers often because they are driving someone else’s vehicle. And, as we know, because trucks and similar commercial vehicles are so heavy, they pose a greater danger to cyclists, pedestrians and even cars than a passenger vehicle in otherwise similar collision.
But it’s not just the trucks and commercial vehicles that make cycling so harrowing. Even private passenger vehicles engage in this kind of behavior, possibly because they are mimicking the behavior of their commercial counterparts. These drivers speed on side streets; they roll through stop signs, even when there are pedestrians present and are crossing the intersection; they make unsafe turns, failing to yield to traffic with the right-of-way; and on two-way streets, they will often cross the double-yellow line and speed against the direction of traffic in order to pass one of those double-parked vehicles that I mentioned earlier.
It’s not much better on the one-way streets. These streets, such as Scholes St and Montrose Avenue, are very wide. Cars will frequently drive side-by-side as if it were a two-lane road, except that it’s not a two-lane road. Those roads are designed to carry only one lane of traffic.
Every traffic engineer knows that road width determines driving behavior, especially speeding, and these wide roads encourage some very dangerous driving behavior. Cars constantly race each other, as one tries to pass a slower vehicle to get ahead of it before the road narrows back to only accommodate one lane of cars. Every single time I bike along this corridor, I hear a car zooming past me with the sound of an engine in full throttle. When the car does overtake me and the other slower vehicle, it will pass me with as little as a foot of clearance. What’s even more infuriating is to see that almost every time a car does this, it will reach a red light and have to stop anyway. I usually arrive at that same red light a few seconds later. Congratulations, asshole. All that dangerous behavior resulted in no decrease in travel time.
And if all this wasn’t bad enough, the road conditions in this area are atrocious for cars and bicycles alike. Potholes, debris, and even deteriorated railroad tracks plague users of these roadways.
Cyclists especially feel all of these pain points on the east-west streets that funnel traffic between the Williamsburg Bridge and East Williamsburg–Bushwick, specifically the corridor along Scholes and Meserole Streets.
Bike Lanes and Road Diet
Earlier this year, the NYC Department of Transportation planned a redesign of this corridor in anticipation of the looming L train shutdown in 2019. The DOT reasons that based on prior subway shutdowns, such as those after Hurricane Sandy and during the 2005 Transit Strike, the number of commuters crossing the East River by bicycle exploded as much as three-fold after Sandy and four-fold during the transit strike. The DOT is anticipating an increase in the number of cyclists in light of the L train shutdown and the the needs of commuters in neighborhoods between Bedford Ave and Myrtle-Wycoff stations on the L train route, specifically Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Ridgewood.
On Wednesday night, I began to see the new bicycle lanes on the aforementioned corridor along Scholes and Meserole Streets take shape. I am thrilled to see that this is coming to my neighborhood!
I can already imagine the reaction of area drivers who will claim that the narrower roadways will increase travel times. But this is simply not true. These lanes were only designed to carry one lane of traffic in each direction, and drivers will finally have to use them as they were designed. Just because some drivers once used the roadway to pass another vehicle—and now they can’t—didn’t help anyway. As I mentioned earlier, cars would race and pass each other only to arrive at the same red light within seconds of each other.
However, the efficacy of a bicycle lane and putting a roadway on a diet is only as good as the police enforcement. Although the new bicycle lane is not yet official, over the last two days, I already saw the most common problem plaguing bicycle lanes: cars using a bike lane as an automobile parking lane.
The DOT went through all this trouble to add a bicycle lane to improve traffic flow and increase safety, and all it takes is a few drivers to clog it up and force cyclists into the vehicle travel lanes, which then angers drivers who now must slow down for the bicycles that have to go around the parked cars.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
Earlier this week, Brooklyn’s Other Half Brewing celebrated their third anniversary, on the same week that they were named by Rate Beer as one of the ten best breweries in the world.
To commemorate their anniversary, they released cans of a special 3rd Anniversary IPA.
“You don’t save Other Half’s 3rd Anniversary IPA for a special occasion. The special occasion is when you drink it.”
I didn’t actually get to buy this beer, nor did I visit Other Half in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, on the occasion of their third anniversary. But I did see that this special brew is available at a local beer establishment down the street from me. And yes, I do plan on getting a can before they run out.
When I first saw the can, I didn’t correctly identify the producers. I didn’t think “Other Half Third Anniversary.” I thought “Threes,” as in Threes Brewing, another brewery located in nearby Gowanus, Brooklyn.
The case of mistaken identity is notable because, about a year ago, Threes Brewing was engaged in a dispute over their name with another brewery in southern New Jersey, named Three 3s. Brooklyn’s Threes even took their case to their Instagram followers, asking whether they should pursue legal action against Jersey’s Three 3s.
I chimed in and thought that the different names and wordmarks—as well as their very different sense of graphic design—were enough to distinguish one brewery from another. Also, the two don’t seem to compete in each other’s markets. Threes is primarily in Brooklyn, and Three 3s is in Hammonton, about halfway between Philadelphia and Atlantic City. But my initial confusion with Other Half’s Third Anniversary commemorative can suggests, at least to me, that there’s so much beer out there that it’s almost impossible to not inadvertently release that might run afoul of someone else’s creation or intellectual property.
As the late Umberto Eco wrote, “books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told.”
The purpose of a trademark is to prevent a consumer from confusing one product with another and to protect the reputation of the company that holds the legal right to that trademark. Again, I don’t see anyone reasonably confusing one brewery with another, as with Threes and Three 3s. Furthermore, I certainly don’t think that the fine folks at Threes Brewing would ask Other Half to cease and desist: it’s not a neighborly thing to do, and no one owns a trademark on the number three.
In any case, potential trademark clashes such as these are a sign that the craft beer industry is in really good shape. There’s a lot of beer being brewed right now and some day we’ll look back at this period as a golden age of craft beer. We can drink a lot of different beers, and we have no hope of ever drinking the same beer twice. This is a good problem to have.
But alas, the history of every Golden Age ends in one of two ways: with a spectacular crash or slow withering decline. Either way, Golden Ages don’t last forever, and the craft beer industry will be no exception. I can’t tell exactly why the Golden Age of Craft Beer will end, but here are some theories:
- People’s taste will change and they will stop drinking beer.
- There will be too many breweries, and the beer-drinking public will settle in to their choices. The others will die.
- Breweries begin to merge and consolidation will take hold of yet another industry.
- There will be a hops crisis like the one in 2008. Never forget!
- Teetotaling Trump will sign some executive order that will ban all beer that is not the same color of his skin. At least Schofferhofer will remain on the market.
All of this is to say that we should enjoy this period before all we have to drink is something from Goose Island and Ballast Point.
I’ll let you know what I think about that can of Other Half 3rd Anniversary IPA as soon as I get to enjoy one.
Earlier this week, my friend Danny had his bike stolen outside of his apartment building in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. In broad daylight. And with a security camera recording the whole thing.
Danny bought this bike at the end of the summer and just a few months later had it stolen. He’s experienced both the joy and agony of owning a bicycle in New York City. A bicycle provides an unparalleled level of mobility if you live in certain (expensive!) parts of New York City. A bicycle makes getting around a lot quicker and more pleasant, which is odd considering that the first emotion you probably feel when you ride a bike in the city is heart-stopping terror.
But with the dizzying high that accompanies bicycle ownership, there is the crushing blow that we all experience: the agony of having that bicycle stolen. It’s a surprisingly deflating experience, something much worse than losing your phone. I’ve described the emotion of having your bicycle stolen as somewhere between losing your wallet and the death of a cherished pet.
Because he has surveillance footage of the theft, he has attracted some attention from the local media. But despite the minor celebrity Danny has become, I feel his pain and further empathize with him for a couple of reasons.
- He believed in the kindness of witnesses to stop the crime. After reviewing the video, he noticed that his mail carrier walked past the theft in progress. Casey and Van Neistat taught us, back in 2005, that nobody will stop a bike thief in progress. Nobody.
I can attest to this as I had broken my bike key inside my lock some years ago, and I spent several hours picking the lock to remove the broken piece. I was on the corner of First Avenue and 61st Street, in front of the Bed Bath and Beyond store, where there was a lot of foot traffic. Only one person asked what I was doing. He accepted my explanation at face value and went on his business. No one else—not even the security guards at the store—took any action as I attempted to pick my bike lock.
Casey Neistat recorded an updated video in 2012 and found that some witnesses would intervene. In his video, he found that the police did stop him from stealing his own bike but only after he used a conspicuous angle grinder for several minutes mere feet from several police officers at Union Square. The officers he spoke to admitted that none of them had ever stopped a bike theft-in-progress until Neistat all but screamed “hey, I’m stealing a bike!”
-
He hopes that the police will catch the bike thief. NPR’s Planet Money did an enlightening story on bike theft in 2012. In the report, we learn that, on the streets, a bike is a form of currency. Cash, drugs, and sex are the others, and a bike can be exchanged for any of them. But unlike other crimes, bike theft carries no risk of being caught or punished. None.
As with death, taxes, and hard drive failures, having your bicycle stolen is sadly inevitable. One bicycling accessory entrepreneur claims that the ratio of bicycles sold to bicycles stolen is one-to-one.
And like all of us who have had a bike stolen, Danny has learned a hard lesson. Treat your bike like your wallet and your pet. Like your wallet, keep it within your control at all times. And, like your pet, and don’t keep it outside.
Or just sign up for the local bike share program.
Not quite two years ago, I learned that Starbucks was introducing a high-end line of stores known as Starbucks Reserve. At the time, I thought it was an exercise in brand disassociation:
For years, Starbucks has become more or less the default coffee shop in most of the world and certainly in America. However, there’s been competition coming from cafes that feature baristas with fancy hats among other accoutrements. That’s right, instead of serving coffee that has been “roasted within an inch of its life,” as The Awl’s Matt Buchanan refers to it, Starbucks will serve single-origin, small batch coffees that will be prepared by hand.
Indeed, the Reserve stores disassociate themselves from other Starbucks stores by largely “banishing” its green mermaid logo in favor of a more refined-looking star logo with an “R.”
Last month, I found one of these Starbucks Reserve cafes, located in the heart of NYU–New York, on the southwest corner of Mercer St and Waverly Place. Like the Green Starbucks-branded location a few blocks away on West 4th Street, the place was packed.
It also felt a lot like every other Starbucks location I can remember as it included a lot of what you see at each location: the drip pourers of their Verona Blend, the warm food offerings, and the same point-of-sale experience you’ve probably had at every other Starbucks location (Apple Pay, FTW!).
But unlike the Green Starbucks, this Starbucks Reserve location featured brewing equipment not seen at any shopping-mall location: a siphon pot, Hario pourover cone, a Chemex, and the infamous Clover cup-at-a-time machine.
Each method was available for the featured coffees, but the price varied according to the process. I inquired about a siphon pot but didn’t order it because it cost $10. The Chemex was a little bit less, and the Clover method was $5. Feeling more thrifty than picky, I opted for the $5 Clover-made cup.
The coffee came in a cup bearing the star-and-R logo and feeling heftier than other paper, coffee cups. The heftiness, I realized, was from two layers of paper, with a layer of air in between, that was designed to act as a heat shield, replacing the need for Java Jackets.
The coffee, however, tasted exactly as I remember Starbucks coffee tasting like. The roast overpowers any flavor the coffee might have had. The cup-at-a-time brewing method only made that unpleasant flavor all the more noticeable. Think of the taste less as Starbucks Reserve than Starbucks Plus. It reminds me of what Budweiser did with Budweiser Select: all the “flavor” of a Bud, just more intense.
If you drink Starbucks, you’ll feel right at home. The difference in the Reserve stores is that they use a lot innovative brewing methods made popular by indies over the last decade. But Reserve tastes like plain Starbucks, except you’re paying $5 for a Clover brew or $10 from the siphon pot.
Starbucks Reserve
With the crazy markup for the artisanal brewing methods, you’re better off visiting an indie.
Despite using Apple Pay since getting an iPhone 6 in 2014, I didn’t know until today that Apple maintained an offers page, or at least that they posted one for the holidays.
There’s some very compelling offers, such as…
That last one comes about a week too late for me. I did take an MTA Metro North train after Thanksgiving, returning from an short bike ride to Tarrytown, but this offer didn’t take effect until December 1.
Also, the offer expires on January 1, which is a shame. I would have appreciated a discount on the $36 round-trip fare to Greenport or Montauk when cycling season begins anew next year.
Earlier this week, The New York Post published a front-page propaganda piece about the reason why vehicular traffic in Manhattan has been getting worse. The story claims that it’s a conspiracy, between two different mayoral administrations, to “shift as many drivers as possible to public transit or bicycles.” Talk about blatant lies.
Of course, the story quotes two unnamed sources within the NYPD to base this conspiracy, and you should be really suspicious about the story. First, the whole story relies on anonymous sources. Who are these guys? Traffic beat cops? Second, these sources don’t point to any directive or mandate from one of their superiors or from the mayor’s office. They just know…like in their gut. Or maybe they overheard something at a station house. We don’t know because they don’t say.
Not only that, the article lets one of the sources claim that traffic is being engineered for partisan reasons to “blame congestion on President-elect Donald Trump, whose Trump Tower in Midtown is now ringed with security.”
But again, how do they know this? Do they have a proverbial “smoking gun” for a partisan plot to cause a massive traffic jam?
Clearly, the whole traffic-engineering conspiracy theory is partisan propaganda: to support the flooding of Manhattan streets with automobiles and reverse just about every traffic calming measure the city has undertaken to make the streets safer for pedestrians and bicyclists—and other automobiles, too.
Since what this story propagates is bullshit, what is the real reason for traffic? According to De Blasio spokesperson, Austin Finan, who was the only official source to go on the record, the increased traffic is a healthy sign of “economic growth, record tourism, construction activity and a growing population.” The streets, he continues, “are overburdened like never before.”
But since The New York Post is listening to crackpot theories, here is my list of reasons behind the insane gridlock on Manhattan streets:
- Deliveries: It’s the Christmas season, and there are an insane number of delivery trucks circling the streets to drop off your Amazon purchases. That’s a lot of additional traffic. And in Manhattan, it’s not like they can pull up to a parking lot. They usually have to double park.
- Double parking: I don’t understand how on-street parking is legal in Manhattan. When all those spots are taken, others resort to double parking to pick up and drop off passengers or goods.
- Dignitaries: And, even if Trump wasn’t President-elect, Manhattan streets were already crowded with all kinds of VIPs who drive and park as if they’re above the law. These dignitaries take up bike and car-traffic lanes to park their vehicles.
Those who complain about traffic forget that the purpose of streets is not to maximize the number of cars it can carry, but to transport a maximum number of people and goods.
One thing that certainly won’t ease traffic is to undo the pedestrian plazas and bike lanes to add more traffic lanes.
For example, Los Angeles learned this lesson after spending five years and $1.6 billion on expanding the perpetually congested Sepulveda Pass on Interstate 405. Adding 15% more automobile capacity on that stretch of freeway didn’t reduce commute times. They actually increased, on average, by a minute. How is that possible?
According to Juan Matute, who is the Associate Director of UCLA’s Institute for Transportation Studies and also spoke on the record, “increases in traffic generally correlate to economic activity. When construction on the Sepulveda Pass began in 2009, the country was in the midst of an economic recession. As the recovery progressed, more people began traveling for work or to go shopping or out to dinner.”
“Moving more people,” he says, “is a social benefit in and of itself.”
It’s not a conspiracy. It’s the economy, stupid…
New York City has a rich history of supporting experimental filmmaking. One major reason is that filmmaking is a collaborative effort, and the city is home to many artists and resources to nurture a filmmaking community. It’s one of the reasons I moved here: if not to produce such work, I was looking forward to being around it.
However, filmmaking has changed dramatically over the last twenty years, and now it’s almost impossible to find resources for making film.
Mono No Aware, a non-profit cinema arts organization founded a decade ago by a cadre of experienced experimental filmmakers, has sustained independent filmmaking in New York since 2006. They are currently nearing the end of their fundraising campaign to start the nation’s only non-profit film laboratory. This will also be, believe it or not, the only film laboratory in New York City.
The campaign ends on December 6. Support independent filmmaking in New York City. Otherwise, the only films made here will be cheesy rom-coms and indulgent HBO series that block access to your home and local bodega.
Contribute to Mono No Aware
I moved again. This time, I’ve moved further along the calming shores of my beloved Superfund site along the English Kills, a tributary from the Newtown Creek near Bushwick, Brooklyn. I think the area is named East Williamsburg, but it doesn’t feel like Williamsburg. It’s Culturally Bushwick.
One of the new challenges of living in this new industrial landscape is that I’m even further away from my regular Costco in Long Island City than I was a few months ago. For many years, I would shop there and carry bulk goods on my bike. It was reasonably convenient when I lived in Hunterspoint, and it was manageable when I moved to Greenpoint two years ago. But now it’s impractical to schlep rotisserie chickens, a half-dozen not-yet-ripe avocados, and bricks of Manchego cheese, much less cubic-yards of toilet paper and paper towels on my bicycle.
Lady Fleur shows one way to transport cubic yards of toilet paper on a bicycle.
The other day, we were running low on toilet paper and paper towels, but instead of renting a car by the hour, I went online. I remembered that I had signed up for Boxed about a year ago and that I had ordered toilet paper and paper towels before.
Ordinarily, I would be wary of a service like this because I already have a Costco Membership. But I simply didn’t have time to go all the way to Costco, and it didn’t make economic sense to get a car to transport paper. I ordered all this essential paper, along with some cleaning supplies, and I received the order the next day. The prices are competitive, but a little inflated compared to Costco. Also, the selection is limited, but there’s some items that aren’t available at Costco that I use a lot, such as food-prep gloves and Tate’s Cookies. These, by the way, cost at least double on Amazon Prime.
Right now is a good time to sign up for Boxed. Sign up with this link, and we each get a $15 credit. That’s a pretty sweet deal, but it gets better if you have an American Express card. Until January 2017, Amex Offers will tender a $15 statement credit on a Boxed purchase of $50 or more. And if that’s not enough, American Express enrolls you in the Boxed Bold loyalty program, exclusive for American Express members. I think you get a 3% reward on your purchases, which is a little more that you get with Costco’s Executive Membership.
As much as I feel like a shill for writing this post, I am doing so because I this really is a good deal. Back in the late 1990s, there were a bunch of dot-com companies that were basically giving away the store in order to show sales growth. This seems like one of those: a startup outfit that’s trying to rack up sales, even at a loss, to show their investors that they should keep investing.
You should take advantage and stock up on toilet paper before the bubble bursts.
Shop at Boxed
The above links to Zipcar and Boxed are referral links. Shopping through those links will kick back a referral fee to me. Thanks for your support!
