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Take a Hike

Soon to be a bit more likely

Well, it’s official: I’m getting a raise.

I shouldn’t put it in a traditional sense, since all of us who drive a yellow cab in New York are getting one too. The vote passed yesterday and once the end of September comes, it will take effect across the board.

Lots of people have asked me about it and had I not had previous commitments the last two days, I would have gone to the rally and meeting down in Lower Manhattan to watch the process continue to unfold but regardless of time constraints, it’s been an issue I’ve kept up with over the last few months.

Personally, I’m completely in favor of this. A lot of the comments on various publications covering this story were from irate people who were tired of the garbage that they put up with in Taxis – rude drivers, talking on the phone, aggressiveness on the streets, a lack of knowledge of city landmarks and geography, and an unwillingness to take anyone who required a crossing over or under a body of water. While this is true to some extent, I’ve said time and time again that not all of us are like that and a great deal of drivers take care of their passengers and only want the best for them, even if it’s easier said than done during the peak periods of traffic.

For all the legitimate gripes about the lack of raises over the years and silent erosion of our pay via inflation, it’s ultimately about the passenger; as it should be with any business. No one has to take a Taxi in a place that’s so well-covered by mass transit as New York but tens of thousands still do every day, even with all of the other options out there competing for their money. To drive a cab in New York is to run your own business in a sense. No, there aren’t any employees under my watch and I don’t have to pay for land and raw materials but in theory, how well I run it should determine how well I do and how long I can keep my head above water for. Because of the medallion system and the limited barriers of entry for owners, it’s a lot more complicated than it sounds and the high turnover rate among drivers is proof that it takes a bit more than elbow grease and an understanding of the city to make it in the long-term.

Will it help that my average fare will go up by $2 and the ride to JFK will increase by $7? Sure. I have no idea whether Taxi plan for the outer Boroughs will go through or if the extra medallions will be sold and on the streets, nor what the price of gas will be in two years. In spite of the (amazingly) good intentions of the TLC and the Mayor, there’s only so much that is in our control when it comes to this profession. So many have fought hard for our rights and a fair share of the revenue that flows into the coffers of the owners and operators. Now that we have a victory under our belts, we still need to remember that the fight for fair treatment and respect from all parties is still far from over.

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Life Underground

A typical week on the Subway in New York

“Hey there, where to?”

“Orchard and Rivington, on the Lower East Side.”

“It might take a while, there’s quite a bit of traffic. Someone got pushed onto the L train tracks.”

“Well, that’s not going to mess things up on a Saturday night, is it?”

“Nope, it’s just you and half the city trying to get across the Willy B. at this hour.”

You might find it unusual that a Taxi driver would want to think about, let alone write, an entry about an alternative form of transportation in New York. I find it odd that I’ve gone this long and haven’t elaborated on the real lifeblood of the Big Apple. For all the ranting and raving that I do about my job, there’s no doubt that the trains that run under (and over) the streets of the city are just worthy of my attention. The two forms of transit have an intertwined existence that most people don’t know about up front, but becomes more readily apparent when looked at underneath the surface.

First off, there’s the state surcharge that gets tacked onto every fare. Heading anywhere in the 5 Boroughs or surrounding New York Counties? You’re paying 5o cents extra to the MTA. It’s a subsidy that the (mostly) richer Taxi passengers pay to help those who have to take public transportation and it continues the tradition set up in 1968 when the Triborough Bridge Authority was absorbed into the region’s crumbling mass transit system. It marked the end of Robert Moses’s rule as head of various city and state transportation, housing, and parks agencies but more importantly, it set the stage for the rebuilding of the region’s infrastructure and the return of its economic competitiveness. Even though most cabdrivers prefer to take free crossings over those with a toll, there’s no doubt that the MTA Bridges and Tunnels today are the ones that are maintained the best in New York. Many older drivers will probably wince in pain at the thought of the lower East River crossings being completely shut down for emergency repairs but such was the case in the late 1980’s when there were proposals to tear down the Williamsburg Bridge in favor of a more modern cable-stayed span. Fortunately, the turn-of-the-century crossings were kept at the expense of years of repairs and closed lanes. Yes, the MTA crossings are newer but the work has been kept up on them over the years and there’s never been any talk of a new span replacing the Triborough or Verrazano Bridges.

Then there’s the hole in the ground on the Upper East Side and by that, I’m referring to the Second Ave. Subway. It’s the most ambitious public works project in New York in generations and promises to revolutionize transportation and Real Estate values across large swaths of Manhattan. Whether it will or not remains to be seen but as in so many other instances, the project is behind schedule and over budget. Even if I didn’t know or care a damn about the tubes being bored up to 96 St., it would be impossible to dismiss since the chaos that it has caused on the neighborhood is unavoidable. I’ve had enough fares specifically request not to cross or go down 2 Ave. in spots and there have been countless stories written about the disruptions to residents along the future route and the businesses that have barely made ends meet due to the decreased foot traffic. Yes, a completed transit line would result in less Taxi fares in the area and better air quality but the inconveniences in the meantime have made many feel that the construction is not worth the long-term benefits to the neighborhood and City at large.

No discussion of the Subway would be complete without mentioning the Transport Workers Union. Arguably the most powerful in the city, they brought the region to its knees twice – once in 1966, again in 1980, and 25 years later in a strike that defied legalistic orders. In every case, the finger-pointing got nasty as both sides accused the other of not acting in good faith. The labor dispute in the Lindsay Administration has been cited as the cause of Union President Mike Quill’s untimely demise but it was enough to push a City that had a skyrocketing crime rate and lowering quality-of-life over the edge. Yes, there were not blackouts or garbage strikes in the later labor impasse’s but when the trains and buses weren’t running, it reflected poorly on all levels of Government to properly serve the people of New York.

Time and time again in recent months, I have been asked about the proposed fare hikes and rate increases for the yellow cabs of New York. Many people are shocked to find out that drivers such as myself are not part of a union, do not receive overtime when we surpass 40 hours in a week, and do not pay into a 401(k) or health insurance program. For the majority of us, we do this job for the money and the chance of steady work and if we love what we do, that’s just an intangible bonus. It is so difficult to feel sympathy for bus and train operators that can retire with a full pension and are nearly untouchable when it comes to passenger complaints and grievances. I am NOT talking about those who have been assaulted but rather, those who have had valid complaints brought against them by a riding public tired of fare hikes, service cuts, and rude employees. When it comes to our job, we do not have the luxury of a Union to protect us and a pension system to help us out of problems that may arise. Should we have to go to Taxi court down on Beaver Street, odds are we will lose, even if the problem brought into question is not our fault. To be a cabdriver in New York is to truly stake out on your own, in a legal as well as an occupational sense.

When I drive passengers around the City, I admit that I do not know all the streets, restaurants, and landmarks. I do my best to learn them all as well as the fastest way to get around. Much of what I accumulated in knowledge over the years was not because I was a local, as I have never truly called any neighborhood in the Big Apple home. Rather, it was because I took the Subway to as many places as I humanly could. Because New York’s system is so extensive and transfer-friendly, it was relatively easy to plunk down change for a token and take off for a neighborhood that was begging to be explored. I even went so far as to ride the entire system on one fare when the original Contract 1 Line turned 100 back in 2004. For someone in their late teens exploring a place that was just pulling out of the dark days of the 70’s and 80’s, the Subway was an outlet to much of the city that was otherwise inaccessible on the cheap.

So as the price of a typical Taxi fare appears to be on the rise for the first time in years, I tell many of my passengers that the rise in price of a ride on a MTA Bus or Subway has gone up numerous times in the last decade. The next hike appears to be in January followed by one two years after that, since it’s now pegged to the inflation rate. That too will affect us, as future operating deficits many have to be partially covered by increased revenue from the Taxi industry; which will include every driver in the City. It’s a shell game that will eventually screw someone in the end, since there are so many laborers in the transportation field and so much revenue for the pigs to raid in the trough of revenue via future fares.

In the poster above, a typical week’s worth of service diversions are shown in all their complicated glory. I make it a point to remember the ones that will affect me – in both my commute to and from work and the neighborhoods that I most frequent during a typical shift. There’s been plenty of times where I’ve found people who needed to go home late at night but the train that would normally take them there was either not running or rerouted. Whether drivers will ever admit it or not, all forms of transportation in New York are affected by how the others are running, if they’re even operating at all. For those of us that realize that and keep up with the changes, it’s more money in our pockets at the end of the night. More importantly, it’s a realization that so many people in the Big Apple are depending upon the riding public for their livelihoods, in a time where not many other fields are guaranteed steady demand for their services. All of us who drive are in this together, whether we’d like to admit it or not.

Colored bullets over Broadway

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Let Freedom (Tower) Ring

Rendering of the new WTC – looking northeast

“Hey there, where to?”

“The 4 of us are going down to Bay Ridge.”

“No problem. Want me to take the Battery Tunnel?”

“That’s fine. We don’t mind paying the toll.”

“I’m gonna take the West Side Highway down, traffic should be good.”

Sure enough, we wove our way through the stilettos and roadwork of the Meatpacking District before flying down the Hudson as the sun descended to the west.

“Wow, is that the Freedom Tower? It looks great.”

“Sure enough, it is. It was topped out a few weeks ago and should be open sometime next year.”

“Wasn’t that supposed to be the World’s Tallest Building?”

“When they first planned it, yes. 1,776 feet isn’t anywhere close to what’s going up in Asia but it will be the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere when it’s completed.”

“I see. Are they putting up an identical one next to it?”

10 years after 9/11, there’s little doubt that the concept of a pair still rings true in Lower Manhattan, even if what’s going up now hardly resembles what once stood on those hallowed 16 acres.

With the possible exception of the Second Ave Subway, there’s currently nothing under construction in the Big Apple that has captivated and polarized so many New Yorkers as the army of cranes hard at work down at Ground Zero. In the midst of economic imbalance that has New Yorkers working harder than ever to pay rents that are at an all-time high, the sight of Lower Manhattan’s skyline returning to prominence has many optimistic about the future of Lower Manhattan and the office market as a whole.

The old saying that time heals all wounds might not hold more than at the site where the Twin Towers once stood. Shortly after the terrorist attacks that brought the original World Trade Center down, many thought that skyscrapers such at those were a 20th century relic and that the whole 16-acre site should be turned into a memorial for the thousands that perished that day. Rebuilding seemed so far off given the 1.25 million tons of debris that had to be cleared away, the human remains that had to be sorted out and cataloged, and the recession that nation was plunged into around the time of the attacks. Tall buildings were seen as the ultimate sign of hubris and arrogance, and who could forget the sight of innocent office workers leaping to their deaths, unable to reach lower stories and setbacks in a structure that was the epitome of modernism gone cold and impersonal?

If time is the ultimate judge of historical events, the act of War that took place on that September day turned out to not be as bad as was first thought. The thousands that were thought to have their lives ended in the towers was reduced down to 3,000 as more peoples whereabouts became available.  Even though the stock market had a few rough sessions, there wasn’t a second coming of the great depression as a result of the attacks. Additionally, the cleanup defied the odds, as it became the only major construction project in modern Big Apple lore to be completed on time and under budget, as the last steel beam from the foundation was removed in March of the following year. All of positives after that were nowhere to be found, as the real problems arose and lingered for years.

There still isn’t a site in the city limits where so many agencies and egos clash on such a massive scale. The Original World Trade Center was a pet project of David and Nelson Rockefeller (some even gave the towers those nicknames) to help revitalize Lower Manhattan. In the postwar years, Midtown was taking over as the economic and business heart of the city. Newer Towers, a more efficient street layout, and easier access from much of the Metropolitan area allowed new office corridors to spring up on 3, Park, and 6 Aves. While the design of the towers left much to be desired, the resulting corporate canyons resulted in a fundamental shift of the city’s economy from manufacturing to the late 20th century buzzword of FIRE (financial, insurance, and real estate) as well as the competition it gave to the Financial District. The Chase Manhattan Tower of 1960 brought an end to the wedding-cake/ziggurat towers that helped romanticize Lower Manhattan’s skyline but it was a harbinger of things to come. By the time of the late 1960’s, the dominoes had already been set in motion.

Enter the Port Authority. Originally created in the 1920’s as an agency to build a freight rail tunnel under the Hudson/Narrows (still not fulfilled to this day), the agency did create a series of spectacular river crossings and port improvements that added to the region’s mobility and economy. They were also the operators of the Hudson and Manhattan tubes, later rechristened as the PATH system. Sure enough, the Lower Manhattan terminus for the line was where else, at Hudson Terminal…which later became the site for the World Trade Center.

Like the United Nations, Lincoln Center, and so many housing complexes around the city, Urban Redevelopment and Eminent Domain were the final piece of the puzzles for the 16-acre Superblock imposed on Lower Manhattan. The old Hudson and Manhattan Terminal, the Syrian Quarter, and Radio Row, along with the streets that ran through the site, were obliterated in order to make way for the 7 Towers and the Vista Hotel that eventually took their place. Minoru Yamasaki’s plan was grand on a scale that nothing in New York had ever seen and it was tragic that like his Pruitt-Igoe complex in Saint Louis, they did not stand the test of time. Although their demises were the result of a different set of circumstances, the imagery of modern architecture failing to accomplish the goal of the betterment of humanity through an international style held sway.

Flash forward to the 21st Century and what we have for the site that formerly housed the Twin Towers called home can be seen above. Even with all the decades and two terrorist attacks since the sites original inception, there are a ton of similarities between the first and current World Trade Center projects. Big tenants will call the site home – Conde Nast has agreed to take space in 1 WTC while Cantor Fitzgerald and Port Authority were the companies that suffered the biggest losses on 9/11. Daniel Libeskind and David Childs were the architects most responsible for the master plan down at Ground Zero and should the site be fully developed, Santiago Calatrava, Richard Rogers, and Lord Norman Foster will be those who leave their imprint on Lower Manhattan. The Rockefellers and the Port Authority will be joined by the victims families, Larry Silverstein, and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation as the sides vying for influence over what will ultimately be constructed in Lower Manhattan as well. With so many big shoulders and egos vying for influence in the reconstruction process, it should come as no surprise that the National September 11th Museum, the new PATH terminal, and two of the four major skyscrapers have yet to come to fruition, nearly 11 years after the attacks. The original World Trade Center was complete by 1973, with the exception of the Vista Hotel and 7 WTC Building which were started later and not complete until the 1980’s.

For now, 1 and 4 WTC are like so many other construction projects around New York. They make for interesting conversations between my passengers and I but most New Yorkers don’t think twice and about the larger ramifications of what’s being built around them. I need to admit to myself that people don’t give a second thought to that design of the built environment around them but they need to think about the bigger questions: What do I want to go up where the World Trade Center was? Why aren’t the families of the victims able to go to a museum that commemorates one of the darkest days in American History? Why is the Port Authority allowed to jack up tolls and fees that everyone will ultimately pay for, to cover a project that’s billions over budget and years behind schedule? Do companies need subsidies and tax breaks to move to Lower Manhattan when millions in the city aren’t receiving help for rent and food?

I was not in New York on 9/11 and would have been there the day before on my 25th Birthday, had it not downpoured the entire day. In the days and months after the attack, I read so much on what went into the creation, and ultimately, the destruction, of the World Trade Center. The timeline, sequence of events, and the players involved were each worthy of a story of their own, but when combined, served to write one of the most complex and tragic tales of modern New York. As I see the lights of 1 WTC on each night as I make my way around the city, I can’t help but think that the parties involved and the families who lost loved ones deserve a better narrative than the one that’s being poorly constructed all these years later. For all the glass and glitz being shown to the world, New Yorkers deserve at least a full audit of the finances of all the parties involved in the rebuilding currently taking place.

Anything less would be a slap in the face for those still hurting from the attacks, even after all of this time.

A view down Fulton Street of a red, white, and blue 1 WTC under construction

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Sliding Doors

Mind the gap!

“So where do you go when you’re driving this? I”m guessing Manhattan.”

“Well yes, that’s where I spend a majority of my time. Of course, I go wherever my passengers ask me to take them.”

“Which is anywhere in the 5 Boroughs, right?”

“Correct.”

“And you can pick up anywhere in New York as well, right?”

“Correct, that’s what yellow means – licensed to take street hails anywhere in the City of New York.”

“Unlike the Livery Cabs (black cars).”

“That’s also correct, but you don’t want to get me started on them.”

I’ll admit, I don’t go to the movies. Ever. I can’t remember the last time I plopped down $10 of my hard-earned money in order to have the pleasure of sitting in a dark room with sticky floors, random cellphone conversations, and unruly kids. I don’t get a lot of free time during the week and when I do, I tend to be a bit more interactive with the forms of entertainment that I enjoy.

However, I *did* see the movie that is also the title of this posting. Most of you are unaware that I attended Vanderbilt University in the late 90’s before I was unceremoniously asked to leave for academic reasons. During my 3 years in the buckle of the Bible belt, I struggled with many facets of my life, including my studies, my social life, my identity, and dating. On one of the few occasions that I headed off-campus with someone  I was interested in, we went to the movies and of course, the feature we ended up seeing was Sliding Doors.

The premise was simple – Gwyneth Paltrow plays a young Londoner who got fired from her job and had to take the Tube home afterward. The plot splits in two as she made the train in one scene and when it was replayed, she ended up missing it. The concept of a parallel universe came to life as the rest of the film alternated back and forth between the two tales that result from the incident in London’s underground. What started of as an incident that millions of urbanites endure on a daily basis reverberated throughout her life, affecting her image, love life, and vocation following her termination of employment.

The film itself was interesting and came out at the height of Paltrow’s Shakespeare in Love-induced popularity. While I can’t remember every detail about the movie or the person I was with that day, the idea behind the plot stuck with me. Every day, there are tons of decisions and services that rely on a set schedule that I use to traverse the Big Apple and surrounds. Most of these run like clockwork but in an imperfect world, obstructions and unplanned events always seem to throw a monkey wrench into the best of my intentions.

Then of course, there’s my work environment. From the moment I pull out of the garage and start my shift, there are big decisions to be made. Car Wash? If so, now or later? Queensboro or Willy B. to enter Manhattan? Uptown? Downtown? Should I just follow the traffic and not fight it? Many people think that drivers such as myself have a set pattern that I follow to start my day out but more than any other job that I’ve had, this vocation quickly puts to death the notion of monotony and normalcy.

The conversation that I penned above is one that I have quite often. As I’ve mentioned before, passengers love to ask me questions once they realize that I’m not typical and the ones dealing with where I go when I’m available is one that comes up often. Each day has a different pattern when it comes to human and vehicular traffic. If every person and form of transportation could be tracked, I’m sure that it would be easy to see where everyone went after work, and how the social life in the City proceeds on a given night. In an ideal world, all the cabs would start off in Midtown or Downtown and eventually work their way to the residential and cultural areas before heading to the trendy neighborhoods that people eat, drink, and socialize in.

Of course, that’s much easier said than done. Nights don’t progress linearly like that. Where my first fare takes me determines where I go pick up my second one, and that one has a hand in determining where my third one will be found, and so on. Since I average 30 fares in a 12-hour span, it’s easy to envision how the beginning of my shift can determine where I’ll end up physically and financially at the end of the night.

Last week, the traffic was some of the worst I had seen since Christmas. 20 minutes and change to cross the Willy B, only to have my first fare hop into my cab and send me back across the bridge to Williamsburg. I had a feeling that I was going to a less-than-desirable locale during the rush, given that the cab in front of me sped away from the couple when they told him where to go. Sure enough, I cut through the narrow grid of lanes that the Lower East Side consists of and 10 minutes later, I dropped them off.

The beauty of all of this was that my next fare was only a block away and wanted to go to the Upper East Side. At that hour, the Queensboro Bridge was starting to free up and since I had very little turnover time and traffic to impede me, I brought my two passengers and their bags up to 1 Ave in decent time. Within an hour, I was flipping my fares over relatively easily and on my way to a solid weekday night.

So many times, I’ve had to take someone that I despise. Too many people have zero patience during the time of day where many of the arteries of the city are clogged up. Now that I’m pushing a year of doing this job, I let most of it slide off but I have to constantly remind myself that everything evens out in the end. For every bad fare or passenger that has absolutely ZERO idea where he or she is going, somebody will come along later in the night to make up for it. What always amazes me is that I hated having the person early on that added to the Hell of Rush Hour but without that first or second domino being pushed, the ride that made me laugh, smile, and think at 2 in the morning would never have fallen into place.

Even when I don’t have someone, there are always decisions to be made that have ramifications. Touching down on Delancey Street from the Willy B brings a plethora of choices when it comes to where to turn. A majority of the vehicles will be headed crosstown to the Holland Tunnel so my objective is to move away, and toward a street without any empty Taxis on it. This is how I work for much of the night – separating myself out from the pack. More often that I first would have guessed at, marching to my own beat has resulted in finding a fare that was so close, and yet so far from the nearest available Taxi. Waiting in line has its benefits late at night but for the most part, avoiding the lemmings pays off in the end.

People think that my job is easy, since Manhattan is just “one big grid” and most of the streets are numbered and logical. To some extent, that’s true. However, what was an open way could have an accident, a parked bus, or a work truck on it the next time I have to go on it. Like a giant maze with movable partitions, the city is always changing. It brings new meaning to the term “rat race” since all of us are always trying to get ahead on a playing field that is constantly testing our memory and patience.

Some of my most memorable rides have come when I had an instinct to turn the corner, wait a minute in front of a busy establishment, or go a certain way just because nobody else was cruising in that direction. Whether it’s fate or divine intervention, those fares often tell me how I came at the right time and how lucky they were to have finally found someone. It’s on those nights when I feel that everything falls into place, and I don’t have to worry about any numbers that I need to hit.

A few years after the movie came out, there was an episode of my favorite show called Sliding Frasiers. Instead of the train, it’s clothing that makes Frasier’s day split into two. One day in the life of Doctor Crane has a wildly divergent sequence of events that are shown in alternating scenes until the end of the episode, when both parallel takes converge into the same end result. For all of the time making a decision and the  effects of it, Frasier still ends up at home, content at the end of the 24 minutes and change. In a way, it’s similar to how my day winds down. Every morning at around 4:55, I end up at the gas station. There, I break down the contents of my cab while filling up and then head over to the garage to cash out for the night. All of the runs around the Big Apple and surrounds, even with the accidents and wild rides tossed in for good measure, still tie up nice and neat when all is said and done.

Like my passengers, I always arrive at my destination safely – even if I never take the same way twice to it.

Stand clear?!?!?!…

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Skyward

157 W 57 – under construction

Skyscrapers. It’s nearly impossible to picture Manhattan without them. Most cabdrivers find them annoying because their construction and maintenance will clog up a street for weeks and months on end. Ask any hack what gets in the way besides the tent cities and closed-off lanes that pop up every night and tall buildings would probably be one of the answers that you’d hear first. Most people in the city have no idea what’s where aside from the Empire State Building and a few other landmarks but as you’ve probably guessed, this cabdriver isn’t quite like all of the others.

When I was little, nearly every major tower that wasn’t pyramid-shaped or designed by Gustave Eiffel was in the United States. The Sears Tower was #1 in height while #’s 2, 3, and 4 resided in the Big Apple. Like the cars that Detroit churned out or electronic patents that fueled automation and innovation, the United States was home to the tall buildings that those in other countries could only be envious of and emulate.

As many people know, that is no longer the case in the 21st Century. On the day that Towers 1 and 2 of the World Trade Center were destroyed, the United States had already ceded the title of the World’s Tallest Building to a structure in Asia. Rapid urbanization was unable to fully assimilate and integrate the masses of laborers that were flocking to cities in search of a better life but the concrete and steel shoots of bamboo that sprouted up in city after city overseas was enough to get the world’s attention. If not full, the skyscrapers in Kuala Lumpur, Dubai, and Taipei accomplished the feat of putting their respective cities on the World Map. No longer could anyone not know where these places were or not recognize any landmarks in them, even if they were involved in a race to the sky that had no end in sight.

What makes New York unique is that even though it will never house the World’s Tallest Building again, the sheer volume and length of time that it took to construct it’s current skyline has enough history in it for anyone so inclined to look into it. Over the decades of the 20th Century that the Big Apple has had enough buildings that once held the title, with one overtaking the other until it became surpassed within a few years. Newspaper row was over by City Hall on Park Row and to this day, the buildings on it reflect the first attempts to take a horizontal building form and extrude it vertically. The results may not have been great but like any adolescence, the adulthood that resulted gave us works that were worthy of being the highest-built man made objects.

The dome of the Singer Building was dwarfed by its many of its neighbors by the time it was demolished in 196, but it was still noteworthy for being one of the first tall buildings to fully incorporate the tripartite idea of base, shaft, and capital. Other works that came later like the Woolworth Building, (original) Met Life Tower, and 40 Wall street incorporated this in a seamless manner while donning the guises of a church or bell tower. Capitalism on a big scale still needed something that people on the ground could relate to, even if the form that was used was irrelevant to the tenants that were housed in that particular building.

America was, and still was, a land of importation. The first people here were from foreign lands along with the labor that was brought here to perform many of the menial tasks of the young Republic. It should come as no surprise the Greek Revival, French second Empire, and Art Deco all found a home here in many of the buildings that have held monumental roles since their completion. All of this reached an apex in the roaring 20’s when anything was possible, even constructing Towers of Babel that were built without tenants in mind. The zeitgeist of the age could be seen in Midtown, which had finally wrestled the title of New York’s business district away from downtown during the Chrysler and Empire State Building’s race for the World’s Tallest Building. Never before nor since would a spire be hoisted into place in a matter of hours or a mast be built for air travel, defying conventional wisdom of architecture’s role of form and function on a fixed budget.

Unbeknownst to the people of the 1930’s and 1940’s, they did not realize at the time that they were living witnesses to the excesses of the Jazz Age. Manhattan’s skyline would be nearly frozen in time for 15 years until the end of World War II. “Wedding cakes” abounded in masonry and when the building resumed in the Postwar period, new forms, materials, and functions would alter not only what was vertically constructed, but how the people on the ground flowed through the city.

Sir Winston Churchill once said that “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us” . It was only apt that the person most single-handedly responsible for Allies’ Victory in World War II would describe what would happen to the city that most prospered from the freedom ensured by their victory. New York was the largest city on the planet in 1950 and many of these others were digging out of the rubble of the World’s Worst conflict ever inflicted by man. Companies wanted to be in New York and the great wave of Suburban migration had yet to encompass the ubiquitous Office Park and campus that many communities encircling the Big Apple can claim today.

A list of seemingly disparate factors combined to give New York a skyline that was radically different in 1970 than from 1950, in the sense that what was gained in largesse was lost in aesthetics. Mies Van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, and Le Corbusier looked to America for site and projects where their Bauhaus School creations could be realized in three dimensions. Advances in glass and steel could allow for glossy-skinned buildings to be constructed with less planning and time to construct their skin and frames. Air conditioning made larger floorplates possible as well. Open space moved to the forefront with the revision to the city’s Zoning Law in 1961. The result was the ransacking of classic streetscapes on 3, Park, and  6 Ave with rows of glassy boxes that featured uninterrupted sides all the way up to the roof, set in barren plaza that was only built to garner a zoning bonus. Watching Mad Men or a Hitchcock film of the era may be the cool thing to do now but imagine living in that era, where every man in the gray flannel suit worked the same type of job in the same type of cubicle farm in the same type of building as every other man in the grey flannel suit. Only an lag in the unbridled growth of the nation’s economy brought a halt to the madness, which devoured such gems as the aforementioned Singer Building and Penn Station in the process.

This was the skyline that was familiar to me when I was a lkid and was lucky enough to get a glimpse of the Big City to the East. The land of shoeboxes that could be seen during the opening montages of Barney Miller or Rhoda told viewers what City the shows took place in but also as a reminder that the triumph of Modernism was too haughty not to see how dated the style would end up being withing a matter of years. Cramming as much rentable space into a building envelope may have made technological and economic sense but the overwhelming sense of scale that resulted on Water Street and major Midtown thoroughfares served as a constant reminder that bigger was not even close to always being better.

Recent years saw a full revival of older styles in garbs that weren’t quite up to par with their earlier century counterparts. To be fair, new colors, forms, and styles were used in an attempt to modernize, brighten, and humanize the City Skyline. Subway entrance improvements and plazas that were enclosed, midblock, or landscaped were constructed in an attempt to engage passerby instead of being a means to an end for the developer. All three of these ideals converged in David Child’s Worldwide Plaza, which anchored the redevelopment of 8 Ave from a porn-laden Avenue to the home of the “Starchitects” that were increasingly leaving their footprint on the Big Apple. It was at this time to that the skyline began to flatten out, as many towers were topping out in the 750-800 foot range, right before increasing heights led to a diminished level of return on the investment in construction.

1 Worldwide Plaza

What’s important to remember from the end of 20 Century was that as Postmodernism gave way to High-Tech architecture, was that the styles were increasingly en vogue for shorter amounts of time. As the world sped up, each movement that designers expressed their ideas in became shorter and shorter. Unfortunately, planned obsolescence only works for some durable goods and certainly not for many of the buildings that they were housed in. From a functional standpoint, it should come as no surprise that huge swaths of the city were turned into Historic Preservation Districts as many corporate corridors were becoming prohibitively expensive to upgrade to Class A (top of the line) Office Space.

Just last week, I picked up a fare that was heading uptown to a fashionable street on the Upper West Side. On the way up, I had this conversation:

“So, you said your husband has a hand in shaping this city. What does he do?”

“He works for FXFowle”

“Oh wow, that used to be Fox and Fowle. I remember when they designed 4 Times Square. Heck, I watched that go up!”

“Yes, my husband was involved with that.”

“What did he do for them?”

“He was their urban planner.”

Like so many others in New York, this continued as we discussed his job and the construction of one of my favorite late 20th Century towers in Manhattan.

What’s important to remember in the midst of all of this building and rebuilding is that the Towers that are leaving their mark on the skyline today are increasingly residential. As New York is increasingly a playground for the rich, they are the only ones who can afford the sky-high rents that these premium living spaces command. While not as exciting as the World’s Tallest Building race, watching the chase for the title of the city’s tallest residential structure has been just as exciting. Trump World Tower ruffled a few cages when it wrestled the title away from the Cityspire Building in the late 90’s. Frank Gehry’s new tower by the Brooklyn Bridge then held the title but the building pictured at the top of this post will hold the title when it’s completed sometime next year. Like all records, it will probably be broken and in a manner deserving of a story all its own.

As office space per worker shrinks in an era of automation and austerity, building New York’s supertalls of tomorrow will become that much harder. With the exception of Hudson Yards on the West Side, large building sites have been hard to assemble as well. Coach’s new Headquarters on 10 Ave has yet to commence as of this writing and each additional planned will need an anchor tenant before any of the serious earth-turning can begin.

Each of my shifts takes me around the city and like driving past a tree every day or week, it’s hard for me to notice the change taking place in buildings that are under construction in various neighborhoods. Eventually, the sidewalk sheds will come down and the cranes will be lowered to the ground, only to be brought across town to their next site ready to be developed. Most cabdrivers will be too busy cursing in Farsi on their Bluetooths or admonishing passengers for having the guts to use a credit card to pay for a fare. Such a shame too – all they’d have to do is look up at the city that is still doing its best to pull the rest of the nation out of a recession. How many other places are so adept at telling America’s architectural and economic story while still writing it at the same time?

1 WTC from the West Portal of the Battery Underpass

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Honk if you’re Corny

Posted at the garage

“Is it true that you can get a $350 fine for honking?”

“Yeah, and they can give fines for jaywalking as well.”

Lots of people ask me lots of questions when I’m driving them to their destinations. Sure enough, the honking ordinance always seems to come up. I haven’t ever seen anyone get a ticket for it but ask anyone trying to cross a busy Midtown Street at rush hour what he or she hears the most and odds are, it will be the chaotic din of car horns drowning each other out.

Like any big city, New York has so many rules and regulations that it’s almost impossible to keep track of them all, even though all drivers (in theory) review the TLC rule book during their time in Taxi School. Quick, guess what the speed limit on a street is? Yup, it’s 30. What must you do if you see a disabled vehicle or someone pulled over on the right lane/shoulder of a highway? Move over to the left and give at least one lane’s worth of cushion as you drive by. Wipers on? Better have your lights on as well, but that always fell under the “Don’t swing on 3-0” type of rule that’s unwritten. Here in New Jersey, “Keep right, pass left” is posted on every major highway as well but let’s face it, do the State Troopers really have time to enforce that one?

Without a doubt, the biggest pet peeve that this cabdriver has when it comes to traffic rules being blatantly disregarded has to be “No turn on red”. In most of America, it’s legal unless a sign is posted at a particular intersection. Of course, that is not the case in the 5 boroughs. One of the first signs you see upon entering the City after the obligatory “Welcome to New York” sign that has the Mayor and Borough President’s name is the sign stating that right turns on red are completely, totally illegal on city streets. Violating that law and getting nailed for it is the equivalent of running a red light.

Since last weekend was a holiday, lots of funny-looking license plates were floating around the city as I ensured that the throng of tourists, overtime workers, and fleet week sailors made their way around during the 3-day holiday. Along with seeing 3 red lights run and a minivan going the wrong way down the middle of 10 Ave over in Hudson yards, there were tons of vehicles turning right on red after stopping. This is the same as standing in Times Square with the subway map totally unfurled as your fanny pack-clad family members crowd around and attempt to figure out the labyrinthine routes while waiting in line for a table at a Riese Restaurant to open up. It’s a dead ringer that you’ve not from around these parts and when I see people tap my window to remind me that “your light isn’t working”, I know that they didn’t bother to brush up on the lay of the land. My passengers and I always get a kick out of that, even when they’re from out of town too and understand how the Taxis in the city operate.

Going back to the horns, it’s almost impossible *not* to honk over the course of a shift. I had one car a few months back that worked fine from top to bottom but the horn fuse was broken the entire time. Was I frustrated? Yes. Flashing my high beams to the Taxi or Livery vehicle in front of me that was dozing off at 3 in the morning just wasn’t the same and every time someone cut around me without a signal or dropped someone off in the most random of spots without using any flashers, I pressed down on the steering wheel where the horn would be. It’s all I could do to take my frustrations out.

Horn honking isn’t a right but it’s something that’s just as ingrained as making late-night food runs or getting in line to wait for someone to come out of work or a nighttime establishment when the streets turn to airport runways. Us drivers have our own odd subculture that I didn’t pick up on until I got behind the wheel of a yellow vehicle for 50 or 60 hours a week. Like anything else, there was a quick adjustment period but some of the customs that once seemed odd to be are now as routine as my 7 A.M. dinner or “pre-game” ritual of cleaning my vehicle out before I hit the road every evening.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to blow my horn. You’re in the way of my next fare!

Don’t Honk – West Side

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Fare deal

The current fare structure

Much was written this week about the proposed rate hike that could go into effect over the summer. Most New Yorkers shudder when they see a service that they frequently use go up in price but many have also noted that there hasn’t been a rate increase since ’06 and an across the board hike since ’04. Although I’ve only been driving since late July, this is welcome news. Usually, I like to ask questions of my passengers, learning about what they do for a living and where they’re from. As soon as I stop, it’s their turn and many of the ones they will ask me will deal with what my shift entails and what I take home at the end of it. I’m taking a wild guess that many people reading this are thinking the same thoughts to themselves, so I may as well go through it on here for clarity’s sake.

Your average cabdriver will *not* own his medallion, for starters. As I’ve stated on here before, the cost of one has gone up dramatically in recent years. The typical one will now fetch well over 3/4 a million dollars and even with a down payment and financing backed by the revenue generated during shifts, it’s still out of reach for most drivers. Therefore, a majority of drivers (like myself) lease their cabs. Shifts are simple – 5 ’til 5 and even though we don’t have to keep the cabs for a full 12 hours, lots of us do to maximize our earning potential. As I work my way down 2 Ave. in the later hours, there are hordes of empty Taxis making their way over the Queensboro Bridge to go back to their respective garages, which is my way of getting a handle on how much the activity in Manhattan has tailed off for that particular night.

Leases involve a fee or as so many of my passengers put it, it’s what I pay in rent every night. It averages between $110 and $130 for the night drivers at my garage with the ones who work during the day paying slightly less for the privilege of driving a Taxi. All of the surcharges that go to the State and the MTA are added in automatically to each fare depending on the time and the destination and of course, we never see a dollar of them when the numbers are totaled up. Then there’s a $4.77 tax or as I look at it, another 1/2 fare deducted from my night’s take and finally, there’s the big misconception that so many people have about our industry:

You don’t pay for your own gas, right?

Don’t I wish!

The last thing I do at the end of a shift, right as the sun starts to come up, is top the tank off across the street from the garage. I’ll toss my extra receipts out, take my license out of the holder, and clean up if need be while I’m filling up, and then dig in to my take for the night to shell out the amount that it took to get around the city for 12 hours. If I’m driving a Crown Vic, it averages out to $53. Transit Connect? $35. The Hybrid SUV? Only $22. The vehicle I drive makes a big difference as to how my night goes since it’s found money if I can save on gas or be behind the wheel of something that will help me do the job more cheaply. Along with the Times, AMNY, Metro, and Crain’s, I almost always read the Economist, if for no other reason to see how the oil market is faring. Gas peaked at a notch over $4 a gallon a few weeks back but thankfully, it has slowly retreated as the summer driving season has started to take shape.

Most people have no idea of the little things that we also have to shell out for all the time. Dirty vehicle? Congratulations, a visit to the car wash is in order. I’m reimbursed $4 for each one but some cost more than that and yes, I do tip the workers who dry it off afterwards. Speaking of tipping, dispatchers and gas station attendants get some from us too. I don’t know and I don’t care what they make but handling the game of musical chairs that takes place around changeover time every day is much more stressful than anyone unfamiliar with the industry would ever realize. Taxis break down, need minor repairs and fluid changes, have broken meters, are regularly due for inspection, and the people who drive them are also prone to lateness and calling out. Not all taxis come back in the same order in which they leave so whatever is dispatched out depends on what’s on the lot and what needs to get off of it first. Only steady drivers get the same car every shift, which can be a pain when a certain driver is late getting back to the garage for the switch-off at changeover time.

Sure enough, I’ve had my unexpected surprises in the months that I’ve been behind the wheel. Broken ball joints, flat tires, a dead battery, and a ticket for having a headlight out have all thrown monkey wrenches into various nights that were running smoothly before the incidents took place. There’s no worse feeling than having to head back to the garage for repairs, knowing that the time lost can never be regained back and as the old saying goes, time is indeed money. Everything will average out over the long run but so many of us tend to look at what we make per night and forget that the big picture is what counts when earning a living as a driver.

Going back to the issue at hand, I’m in favor of a hike as long as a few stipulations are met. The first is obvious, and that’s whether the Mayor and TLC Chair are in favor of it. Last I heard, Bloomberg and Yassky were on board with this because of the rising costs of gas and lease fees the last few years that we’ve had to fully eat. Second is whether those lease fees will also concurrently go up as well. If the garage and medallion owners take out too much of a chunk of the increased revenue, then there isn’t a benefit for those who drive at all. Owners were up in arms when the Outer-Borough Taxi’s were formally introduced recently and should the plan go through, they will have the right to take street hails anywhere in the city outside of Manhattan below Central Park North. Since that’s expected to cut into medallion revenue, the owners were bitterly against this plan when it was proposed and now that seems to be coming into fruition, they will need to come up with a way to make up for the lost income…which naturally, would have to come out of our pockets somehow. It’s an endless battle that will only intensify once these apple green-hued cars hit the streets in the not-so-distant future.

Finally, there’s a meeting this week. This bleary-eyed driver will probably drag himself into the city and down to Beaver Street to see what the city, drivers, and any passengers who bother to make it in will have to say about the changes. There’s a chance that I’ll speak, if for no other reason than to toss my two cents in for the drivers who won’t even bother to make it or do anything about their salary. Even though many of my “coworkers” could use a few more lessons in etiquette and civility, I know a ton who work their asses off to earn a living and only want the best for themselves and their families. Hopefully, this hike will be a first step into making it easier for us hacks who provide so much for a city that isn’t always grateful to us in return.

Taxi TV – Lots of revenue but none for the driver

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Where you from?

No sleep ’til Brooklyn – regardless of neighborhood

Fashion Night Out. For most New Yorkers, the Thursday on which it falls each year tends to be an occasion to go door-to-door in the Meatpacking or Madison Ave. shopping districts and take a look at the latest styles fresh off of the runway. Two years ago, it fell on my birthday but last year, it was the first major test that didn’t fall on a weekend for yours truly. Saturday night ended up with its own rhythm and cadence, as crushloads of tourists and nightcrawlers made their way out each week until the wee hours of the morning. The second Thursday in September was a different beast though, as throngs of drunken, overdressed, and uninhibited New Yorkers made their way out, clogging certain parts of town without a care in the world. Unfortunately, I still had a job to do, and I sure got anything I had coming to me that night.

One fare wanted to go to the heart of the Upper East Side, right through where Tiffany’s and Cartier call home in the Big Apple. Another one dragged me from Pastis all the way down to Battery Park City, only to realize that she forgot her iphone and *had* to get back uptown for it, freaking out the whole way. I have no idea why the bitch just left my cab on 14 St, only to stick four rumpled $1’s in my hand because “that’s all I have”, as I sat in traffic helplessly wondering why she couldn’t pony up the other $12 and change that I was owed. The area of 6 Ave. in front of Radio City Music Hall was down to one lane because of roadwork and crosstown traffic blocking the street, leading the cop directing traffic to yell “Move the fuck out” when it was my turn to go. All of that paled in comparison to what happened in front of Penn Station.

I dropped a fare off there so he could catch his train back home in the suburbs. Sure enough, the dispatcher in front of the line was out there late that night but with all the horns blaring and people out and about, I wanted to get out of the area ASAP. Sure enough, a red light ensured that that wasn’t the case. As I sat there, he walked over:

“You didn’t hear me”

“I didn’t hear a lot of things, it’s busy out here tonight.”

“Well, I whistled you over and you didn’t come. Are you deaf?”

“I’m listening to you aren’t I?”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m writing you a ticket for refusing to enter the dispatch line. Where you from?”

“What? That doesn’t even matter. I’m from New Jersey for your information.”

By now, the couple that had entered my cab and requested to go downtown got a big kick out of this but I sure as hell wasn’t laughing. This wasn’t the NYPD that I was talking to and anyone wearing brown was not on the same level in my book.

“You’re supposed to enter the line and now you’ll be getting a ticket from me.”

Sure enough, he walked right around the cab and entered the medallion number down.

“Great, I’ll know that for next time.”

“You should have known that for this time. Where you from again?”

“What the hell does it matter? It’s New Jersey, alright! I grew up around here and I don’t know what  your problem is with that. I didn’t ask you where you’re from.”

“It doesn’t matter. Have a nice day.”

“You too.”

With that, I went through the light and was on my way to my passenger’s destination.

If there’s one thing that defines New Yorkers more than what they do for a living, it’s where they’re from and just as importantly, where they call home in the five boroughs.

No one would argue that America deserves the moniker of “Melting Pot’ when assigning nicknames and identities to the nations of the world. Ever since the days of the Pilgrims, Vikings, Chinese, or whoever got here first, migrants from faraway lands have come to the shores of America, seeking a better life. Where they ended up became the real crux of the story, as neighborhoods of tightly-bound ethnic and socioeconomic groups formed in New York, only to dissolve upon the inhabitants ascendance up the economic ladder, or voluntary removal upon arrival of a different group.

Little Italy? It may have been home to the Gangs of New York that were so brutally depicted in Scorsese’s film of the same name but now, you’re more likely to find buildings with Mandarin on the signs than anything Italian once you’re away from Mulberry Street. The Lower East Side Tenement Museum calls Orchard Street home but the blue-collar Jews that lived in the squalid conditions shown there are long gone; their slow migration starting as soon as the Williamsburg Bridge opened in 1903. Across the island, it was the same story. Hell’s Kitchen was once deserving of that moniker as most people would dare not trek west of 8 Ave. unless they had to. Much of the manufacturing and activities on the docks were performed by the Irish, their gangs having been called the Westies. Ultimately, the fate of the West Side was tied in redevelopment of blocks that had become slums, with the nadir of the rebirth having been depicted via musical numbers in West Side Story. Behind the Rumble and the Dance was the undeniable truth that the Puerto Ricans were moving into areas long outside of their Spanish Harlem mainstay, as their numbers swelled in the 1950’s. LBJ’s Immigration Rights Act was signed not too long afterwards, paving the way the “browning of America” that still continues on to this day.

One of my perks of my job is that I get to see many parts of the city that I rarely made it too when my preferred mode of transportation was by foot or subway. Both of those can get you far, but certainly not quickly or to underserved areas like Eastern Queens or Alphabet City. Having a set of wheels opened up a lot of new frontiers to me, in a different way then the frontiers of a new neighborhood are opened up for those who sail past the Statue of Liberty and wish to call New York home. Astoria may still have some of the best Greek restaurants and diners in the city but it’s also home to a burgeoning Egyptian population as well now. Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst was the home of Saturday Night Fever but in the 21st Century, you’re much more likely to find Halal food there than someone walking down the street in a Leisure Suit or praying to a statue of the Virgin Mary.The area has changed so much so that I recently had this discussion with one of the senior players with the La Boule New York:

“So how’s work?”

“It’s good. Been at it for over 6 months now. I get to see the city and the money isn’t bad. You’re still in Sunset Park, right?”

“Indeed. Been there a long time too.”

“I drop people off now and then there. Isn’t that area mostly Polish and Hispanic?”

“Used to be. Now, it’s lots of Chinese and the Arabs are coming up from Bay Ridge.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Things change quick in New York.”

And so it goes.

Even Harlem, which has a name of Dutch origin and was once Manhattan’s traditional seat of black culture, is starting to see the minority community there becoming a minority. It hasn’t happened yet, but other ethnic groups searching for cheaper rent, decent subway access, and proximity to Central and Morningside Parks, are moving into the area. Those who have been entrenched are now being forced out, victims of an internal migration from other parts of the city.

And so it goes, again.

Cities, by nature, must be dynamic places in order to survive. When they stagnate, as was the case in the 1960’s, and 1970’s, the spiral of urban decay and decreasing property values takes hold and with it, the loss of the tax base. What New York is going through now is the opposite, as huge areas have become renewed in the last 20 years both by newcomers from areas not traditionally represented in the city’s ethnic composition and from those looking to move away from the suburbs and back to an urban lifestyle that their forefathers had perhaps enjoyed in a previous century. This constant change makes New York unique in the pantheon of America’s urban cores, as many cities are struggling to find prosperity after the collapse of housing prices and loss of a manufacturing base that has decimated population centers from coast to coast in the last few decades.

Thankfully, that’s not the case in Gotham. What was recognizable to me in the 1980’s has become totally different now and will also be the case when future generations return to familiar areas of New York; only to find that the cycle of change has repeated itself once again. It should come as no surprise that the United Nations, formed after the deadliest conflict of the 20th century, was placed in New York after a extensive search for a permanent home. The flags that fly in front of it represent nearly every nation on Earth, as much as the city that surrounds the General Assembly and Secretariat Buildings (the UN is international property and therefore, is not technically considered part of New York City) is also home to immigrants from nearly every corner of the globe. Just as it has been the case since the founding of New Amsterdam, how those groups migrate and settle forms the basis for much of the drama that plays itself out every day across the Big Apple.

A few months ago, I ended up pulling into the driveway of a hotel in Times Square that shall remain nameless. Of course, I was looking for a fare and came across yet another, friendly dispatcher:

“Did I tell you to come in here?”

“No, but I figured that looking for a fare here wouldn’t hurt.”

“I didn’t whistle you in and unless you have someone, don’t drive through here. Where you from?”

“New Jersey. Why do you have to look in my trunk, there’s nothing in there but my bag…”

I popped the trunk and let him have his look, waiting for the relief on his face when he would realize that I didn’t have a bomb with me.

“Well, be on your way and don’t come in here again unless you have someone or one of us calls you in.”

“Duly noted.”

With that, I took a deep breath and was on my way back onto the streets, hoping that my next fare would give me a better insight to the ever-changing mosaic that still characterizes New York.

Rockefeller Center flags

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Prince of Broken Hearts

Etan Patz

In an average shift, I’ll put on around 140-170 miles on the particular Taxi that I’m driving that night. Lights and corners eventually melt into runs, which melt into hours, which eventually melt into my 12 hour blocks of work. The chorus of sirens, traffic jams, and human obstructions that I’ll inevitably face will add some hue and tone to the composition of the night but once I turn in around 5 in the morning, it just becomes another pile of transactions on the receipt that adds up my fares and charges for the night.

It was with somewhat large fanfare a few weeks back that Prince Street in SoHo was blocked off with flashing lights and yellow tape. Most of us in New York were well aware of the reason for the extended investigation that the police and the FBI were conducting. What many were previously unaware of was the story behind the reopening of one of the city’s daunting and saddening cold cases that anyone could remember. Like an old wound that fully refused to heal, anyone that went by Prince Street during that week was reminded of the 6 year old that captured the City’s, and ultimately, the nation’s attention back in 1979.

Etan Patz set out for class on May 25 of that year, like any boy who was looking forward to the end of his school week. It was only a two block walk to his bus on West Broadway but somehow, he never made it to his ride or to school that day. When it was discovered that he hadn’t returned home, a frantic hunt for the child was undertaken, triggering a sizable response that was somewhat reminiscent of the Son of Sam episode nearly two years earlier. Before the internet and social media took hold as forms of communication, the evening news became the go-to source for updates on this story and the hysteria that this caused led to Etan becoming the first child pictured on the side of a milk carton. Kids were missing and exploited long before him but it was his disappearance that changed how society responded to this problem and dealt with it, even if it wasn’t the most prudent or helpful solution possible.

I remember when I was growing up how “Just Say No” was the hot topic for kids both in school and on the news, as everyone from the First Lady on down campaigned to dissuade people from using drugs. What was an anti-drug slogan would ultimately be seen as one of the first sound bites for millions of us that were starting to come of age at the time. Eventually, the people and cases that rocked the city and the country at large in the following decade were reduced down to the victim or the locale in which they took place. Adam Walsh, Bernie Geotz, Howard Beach, Lisa Steinberg, the Preppie Murderer, the Central Park Jogger, Crown Heights, and Rodney King became synonymous with crimes that sensationally became worse than the one that preceded it. Nearly all ended in trials, tears, and piles of finger pointing, with the larger issues of race relations, civil conduct, and respect for fellow man remaining on the back burner throughout all of the ordeals. By the early 90’s, the United States had become a more violent, segregated, and stratified society where certain groups and races were still unable to assimilate and fully participate in the American Dream.

Lost in the midst of all this was Etan Patz.

It was no coincidence that the year in which he disappeared also saw Kramer vs. Kramer win Best Picture. No, Etan’s parents were not divorced but much of the film focused on the fight for the child. By that time, divorce and the breakdown of the postwar nuclear family was already in full effect along with an accompanying rise in the crime rate across the board. At the same time of this malaise, the SoHo that had characterized industrial and commercial New York for generations had been accidentally been preserved thanks to Robert Moses’ unbuilt Lower Manhattan Expressway. Loads of cast-iron gems were saved from the wrecking ball or from massive alterations due to the state of limbo that the highway was in for a quarter of a century. All of these factors converged at the time of Etan’s disappearance as the area was in a state of rebound, full of artists colonies that produced such seminal creative incubators as The Kitchen. When those became priced out, the Soho of today took hold as Prince Street is now known for such haute couture boutiques as Baby Phat, Miu Miu, and Nicole Miller. The neighborhood at large has become the go-to high end mall when shoppers want to avoid the crowds and tourists that zealously flock to Madison Ave. in the 50’s and 60’s or to the bottom of the High Line. The old industrial buildings lend an air of grittiness to a set of streetscapes that’s clearly targeted for the now-infamous 1% but thankfully, there remained one outlet of the old ‘hood that has withstood the gentrification and upward climb in rents:

Fanelli’s.

Years ago, an ex of mine and I went there for dinner after running a bunch of her errands down on Broadway.The neon sign, old wooden bar, and pressed tin ceiling were a throwback to the restaurants that had once dotted much of the island. As we ate our meal on the red and white checkered tablecloths, I couldn’t help but wonder how much history that place had seen throughout the decades of surrounding change. I still remember the meal of chicken parmesan and our walk to the eatery through a part of town that at the time, I had hardly ever seen foot in but now, it’s obviously a different story. Like so many streets in SoHo, I cut down Prince to avoid the traffic on Houston Street or Broadway when the shoppers are out in full force. The police tape and investigators are long gone and once again, Etan Patz’s disappearance has been relegated to the cold case files as it was for so many years. On my way out to head to the subway with my girlfriend at the time, the thought going through my head that night was the same that I have today, as I yearn for the day when the Patz family can finally learn the truth and move on from their heartbreaking ordeal:

If only those walls could talk.

Prince Street, looking west from Fanelli’s

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Red Light/Green Light

Waiting for the first domino to fall – Madison Ave.

“Traffic lights restrain your freedom to cross a street whenever you wish.”

-Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

When I was little, I used to be like all the other kids in the suburbs and play games – real games that didn’t involve a Wii console and a connection to my friends in other houses. Much has been written about the demise of outdoor play and surely I miss those innocent days when a backyard and a set of imaginations were all that was needed in order to have some fun and quality time spent with friends. Among the games I miss were Red Rover, Hide and Go Seek, and simple tag .None of them involved hundreds of dollars of prep or waiting on line overnight at the local big box store for the latest edition to be released and when one round was over, another could begin without any hard feelings of serious implications of cheating.

All of those games involved people chasing, evading, or finding one another…which could loosely translate to what I currently do for my job. Even Frogger (which to be fair, was a video game), runs through my mind ever since I’ve had to cross a street in New York City. Anyone who’s ever seen the classic Seinfeld episode will be reminded of George’s effort to dodge traffic at the end, and how seemingly random gameplays end up translating to real life years after one first plays them.

Nowhere was this more true for me than when it came to Red Light/Green Light.

For those of you that never attempted it, the premise was simple. One person would stand facing the wall and yell “Green Light”. All the other kids would start out on a line and run towards the end of the room or playing area. When the caller yelled out “Red Light”, all the runners had to stop by the time the caller turned around and looked. If you were moving, you had to go back a certain number of steps or even to the starting line. First person to cross the end during a “green light” phase became the next caller, and so it went.

Needless to say, I wasn’t very good at it. Oh sure, I could run but when “red light” was called out, I stumbled. Stopping on a dime was never my forte and if I held back, someone would inevitably beat me and take the turn as the next caller. For the record, I did win once in a while…but that was my first realization that even blind squirrels find their nuts every now and again.

Flash forward 20 years and change and now, I get to play those games every day during work. Red Rover and Frogger when I have to maneuver across an Avenue to reach a crosstown street, Hide and Go Seek when I wish to evade the N.Y.P.D., and Red Light/Green light during the day, and evening, and night, and…always.

Objectivists who have read Ayn Ran will cringe at Elsworth Toohey’s above quote since it’s the epitome of his philosophy of selflessness. Much as the TLC is needed to regulate the industry, traffic lights are needed in order to provide sense and order to the chaos that characterizes the city streets. For many years, I was a pedestrian when it came to navigating the city and never gave much thought as to the rhythm and cadence that the tricolored machines imposed on surface travelers but once I took the wheel last summer, all of that changed as fast as a red to green phase.

Most of my fellow drivers probably don’t give much thought to how the lights in New York work but people like me that can’t shut their overactive brains off are always pondering the complexities of life and how to tie seemingly disparate threads together in ways that others can’t visualize. Like some odd form of string theory, what goes on in Midtown can affect the flow of vehicles scores of blocks away.

Don’t believe me? Here’s how.

On the major north-south avenues, each light has a red and a green phase. If a light going uptown turns green, the next one will turn green six seconds later. That’s 10 lights in a minute if you’re taking someone to Harlem from the Lower East Side and since 20 blocks north-south equals one mile, the flow of traffic will be regulated, at 30 miles per hour. Seems like some easy piece of social engineering, right?

After a few weeks of driving, I noticed that loads of lights in the mid-30’s bucked this trend. Big time. There are tunnels on either end of those streets and so the green phases on the avenues crossing those streets was shortened in order to allow for crosstown traffic to flow easier. Diagonal streets like Broadway will also cause havoc when intersecting with two other arteries, as is the case right in front of Lincoln Center. The result? A three-phase intersection that has to accommodate everyone but ends up pleasing no one. This is another reason why I *never* take 81 St coming out of the Central Park Transverse that leads onto it. You could write a book in the time it takes to wait for the light at Columbus Ave. to change, not that I ever entertained the thought. Still following?

I hope so, since neither of these don’t account for the human element.

Somewhere in a city government building, someone (or someones), has the power to change the lights. Actually, it’s a computer that can adjust to stoppages in traffic to let it by adjusting the phases of a light. Two-way section of Third Ave. moving too slow at rush hour? Theaters letting out all at once on matinee night? Rangers game went into double overtime? No sweat. The adjustments will have been made accordingly. Some of my worse nights have been where a street was moving well one hour and an hour later, it was jammed. The effort to stay ahead of the changes failed once a rainstorm started or an event let out too late and for all the tweaks to the traffic control devices and extra police deployed to the streets, the result is always the same:

You’ll end up at a red light at some point.

When I was 5, I had my tonsils taken out and spent a few days in the Hospital. I was scared to death at the time and looking back on it years later, I realized that it was one of the last times I ever saw my parents together and happy to be around each other. One of the toys I ended up playing with while I was recovering was a miniature cityscape with streets on it that had traffic lights on every corner. A magnet placed underneath the toy could change them from red to green, simply by rotating it. I loved being able to control the streets at will and make the cars move to their destinations in an orderly fashion, along with creating the occasional “accident”.

Today, I have my own car to control but that’s where the similarities end. On a number of occasions, I’ve had the experience of giving the gentility of the Upper East Side a ride home:

“Hey there, where to?”

“3 Ave. and 86 St.”

“Sure thing, all of the lights move well up 3 Ave. so we should zip there once we’re past the bridge.”

“That’s nice, but I prefer Park Ave. It’s a much more scenic ride.”

Oh well…at least I’ll have much to ponder at the red lights that I’ll hit every 8 blocks.

Red, yellow, and green – Garment District