September 20, 2007
Not Without Notice
R.I.P. Jimmy R.
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March 30, 2007
ONE-ARMED MAN STILL ON THE LOOSE
WNBC is running the above story right now. Granted, some hard-hearted types might bring up the fact that it would be difficult to give hot pursuit with a peg leg. And those people would be wrong, ignorant, and not funny, no matter how amusing that mental image might be. This is the 21st Century, and artificial limbs make will and determination more important than how many appendages one might have.
Brian O'Sullivan was told in July 1999, after he had passed a written police exam, that he wasn't eligible for the NYPD because his lower right leg was amputated because of a birth deformity.
A police doctor said O'Sullivan's artifical leg would cause him difficulty performing a number of essential functions of a police officer.
In 2002, O'Sullivan, who has run a marathon, again passed the written police exam but was disqualified medically. He sued, claiming unlawful discrimination.
If you skimmed, let me reiterate: Brian O'Sullivan ran a marathon. I'm trying to think of the officer-related duties he might have trouble with, as based on what I've seen my cop acquaintances do. Sit in a van? Sit in a patrol car? Drive around? Stand around? Run more than three blocks?* Darn, I can't think of a single thing O'Sullivan isn't capable of.
* I've never actually seen an NYPD officer do this, but O'Sullivan clearly could.
Tagged: amputee, cops, nypdPosted by Lexiphane at 12:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 29, 2007
SIN-É, FINIS
These New York Times elegies for lost neighborhood institutions are beginning to pack all the poignancy of a roll-call, but it's still nice that they do them. Lower East Side club Sin-é is closing its doors this Sunday, unable to keep up with the Joneses that have moved in around it.
Yes, another one bites the dust: Sin-é (pronounced shih-NAY), after a weekend of goodbye shows, will close for good on Sunday. Over two decades and three locations, the owner, Shane Doyle, maintained it as a cozy, unassuming place for up-and-coming musical acts, charting the perimeters of gentrifying areas as surely as Starbucks now defines them. But two months ago, as wealthy neighbors and city and state regulators encroached, he decided his low-key vision was out of step.
“I look at this block, and I know it’s over,” Mr. Doyle, 55, said in an interview in his club on Attorney Street near Stanton. Once an industrial stretch of liquor warehouses and auto-repair shops, that block is now within spitting distance of several million-dollar apartment complexes. When those buildings’ residents started calling to complain of noise and crowds, he knew. “Then the obvious thing is, O.K., let me go somewhere else,” he said. “But I can’t find somewhere else. And even if I could the lifespan would be too short.”
I liked Sin-é. The short depth of the club combined with the height of the stage provided good sightlines regardless of where you were standing, and if you could grab a seat at the far end of the bar, all the better. Something I learned from the Times piece: Sin-é is Gaelic for "That's it."
(Photo from Crackers United at Flickr)
Tagged: club, les, sin-éPosted by Lexiphane at 9:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 28, 2007
IF YOU GROW IT, THEY WILL COME
Given the cost of a square foot of Manhattan real estate, one wouldn't think that using an apartment to raise commercial crops would be feasible. When the "IT" in the title is a 'Field of Weeds', however, things have a way of becoming feasible in a hurry. And although this Upper Manhattan resident probably would have loved to see a line of headlights snaking towards his front door in the New York night, the "THEY" dropping by last night were DEA agents.
Drug Enforcement agents raided a Washington Heights apartment building on Tuesday and found a virtual "forest" of marijuana plants being grown on one floor of the building.
News Channel 4's Jonathan Dienst first reported the seizure where agents were seen removing more than 700 plants from the site.
The raid happened around 10:30 p.m. at a building at West 154th Street and Amsterdam Avenue after investigators were tipped off about the facility.
Somebody is seriously bummed right now.
(Picture is not of described operation)
Tagged: dea, marijuana, pot farm, weedPosted by Lexiphane at 8:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
NYC GETTING BIKE FRIENDLY?
This may be a case of putting the municipal cart before the horse, but some NYC neighborhoods may be getting bike stands, where residents can pick up and drop off short-term loaner bikes. The program will be modeled after similar installations in European cities such as Amsterdam (pictured). The pilot program will start with bike stands in the East Village, Long Island City, and Governor's Island. Even some bike transportation advocates, however, concede that such a scheme could face difficulties.
New York City has long operated with different rules than some of the cities where free-bicycle programs have been successful; one might wonder if the bicycles would leave their racks and never return. Advocates indicate that the scheme would work in New York only in a modified form.
"If we had a program where you could pick up a free bike and use it, those bikes would end up at the bottom of the East River," the deputy director for advocacy at Transportation Alternatives, Noah Budnick, said. "It works to a certain extent in Amsterdam, but eventually even those bikes all end up in the canals."
While I feel that the city could make some other steps first to encourage bike transportation––restricting the use of dedicated bike lanes to bicycles as opposed to speeding cars, or at a bare minimum, making the killing of cyclists by drivers against the law––it's encouraging to see the city make any bike-friendly move.
(Photo from Flickr)
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MAZEL TOV!
To the right is the winner of the inaugural Matzo Sculpture Competition sponsored by Manischewitz and hosted by NYU. Sophomore art student James Donovan won $1,000 for his unleavened rendering of the Arch at Union Square. Art talk abounded:
The official theme was "Home," contestant Eric Goldberg said, and his three little matzo dioramas were meant to represent his parents' home, his grandparents' home, and now (the one with the matzo futon), his own home, as an NYU student.
"They gave me a foundation," he said of his family, and you just know that somewhere out there, there are two generations of Goldbergs very proud that their boy is spending his $39,000 education gluing matzos together.
Don't worry Eric, they're probably just relieved you're not a performance artist.
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NYC DISTINGUISHES ITSELF
NYC succeeded in distinguishing itself yet again as a city hostile to the eonomic interests of lower-income households as the CEO of Wal-Mart announced that the low-cost retailer was abandoning attempts to open a store within the city's five boroughs.
Mr. Scott’s remarks, delivered at a meeting with editors and reporters of The New York Times, amounted to a surprising admission of defeat, given the company’s vigorous efforts to crack into urban markets and expand beyond its suburban base in much of the country. In recent years, Wal-Mart has encountered stout resistance to its plans to enter America’s bigger cities, which stand as its last domestic frontier.
Much of the opposition to Wal-Mart in cities like New York is led by unions. Organized labor, fearing that the retailer’s low prices and modest wages will undercut unionized stores, have built anti-Wal-Mart alliances with Democratic members of city councils.
Yesterday, labor leaders, upon learning of Wal-Mart’s apparent retreat from New York — or at the very least Manhattan — returned Mr. Scott’s sentiment.
“We don’t care if they’re never here,” said Ed Ott, executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council. “We don’t miss them. We have great supermarkets and great retail outlets in New York. We don’t need Wal-Mart.”
Well, one can't miss what one never had and that's pretty much the crux of this issue. Whatever one thinks of Wal-Mart, this is about a powerful special interest group using its political clout to deprive New Yorkers of consumer choice and the opportunity to save some money while stocking up on groceries, or anything for that matter. And say what you will about the Arkansas chain, but there never seems to be any shortage of people applying for positions to be "exploited" there. Probably because it doesn't ask its workers to "volunteer "as check-out bag boys and work only for tips.
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March 27, 2007
AT THE ZOO
With the weather warming up, now's a good time to make a trip up to the Bronx Zoo and see some of the facility's new additions. Pictured to the left is an ebony langur that was born over the winter and is now starting to explore his zoo habitat.
Also known as the Javan Lutung, the ebony langur is an arboreal primate found exclusively in the rainforests of Indonesia. They are herbivorous, eating leaves, fruit, flowers, and flower buds, according to Wikipedia.
This species is listed as "Endangered" by the World Conservation Union (IUCN) due to hunting and habitat loss. In recent years, Indonesia has had the highest deforestation rate in the world as a result of illegal logging, fires, and forest conversion for agriculture -- especially oil palm plantations.
The langurs are housed in The Bronx Zoo's JungleWorld habitat. In a map of the zoo here, one can see JungleWorld in the lower left-hand corner near the Asia Gate.
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March 26, 2007
BOARDWALKING THE PLANK
I recommend that next weekend you get on the F train heading out of or away from Manhattan, towards Brooklyn and the line's terminus: Coney Island. It's not just a Sunday, it's April Fools' Day; and there is no better place for careless fun than Coney Island's boardwalk. Unfortunately, April 1st marks the beginning of the end for Astroland, the boardwalk amusement park that's been around for 40 years and that has served as an anchor to Coney Island's much longer history as an amusement destination.
The owner of Astroland, Carol Hill Albert, who also owns the Cyclone roller coaster, sold the site to Thor in the fall for $30 million, property records indicate, a deal she said she was reluctant to make. "I couldn't risk going out of business," she said, contending that years of anticipated construction on Thor's property presented a large obstacle.
Ms. Albert, whose family has owned Astroland for all 40 years of its existence, said there were too many bureaucratic obstacles to year-round amusements on her site. "I think Joe Sitt has been taking all the city's attention and energy," she said.
Suffice it to say that Thor Equities has its sights set more on condos than corndogs and cotton candy. If you've never been to Coney Island, this summer is the time for you to make a trip. It's one of those places that you'll be able to imagine or remember years from now, but that you can actually experience for the last time right now.
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March 25, 2007
"THEN SHE DROPPED INTO SPACE"
Looking at the image to the right, it is not hard to think of bystanders watching the World Trade Center towers burning: heads tilted upwards in dumb disbelieving shock, even as bodies began to pile at their feet. This was March 25, 1911 though, and the bodies were those of the women who worked at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in the Asch Building (now the Brown Building) at 23-29 Washington Place. A fire broke out on the factory floor at 4:45 p.m. that day and quickly spread. Finding that they were locked in to the factory (a move to improve productivity by management), women fled to the fire escapes to make their way down from the 7th and 8th floors. Although the Asch Building was only ten years old, the fire escapes gave way under the combined weight of too many women and collapsed. 146 women died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, many choosing to leap to their deaths instead of burning.
Cornell University has a superb site with information and resources concerning many aspects of the fire and its aftermath. Matthew Shepherd was a United Press reporter who phoned in his account from the scene. Here is part of it:
I was walking through Washington Square when a puff of smoke issuing from the factory building caught my eye. I reached the building before the alarm was turned in. I saw every feature of the tragedy visible from outside the building. I learned a new sound--a more horrible sound than description can picture. It was the thud of a speeding, living body on a stone sidewalk.
Thud—dead, thud—dead, thud—dead, thud—dead. Sixty-two thud—deads. I call them that, because the sound and the thought of death came to me each time, at the same instant. There was plenty of chance to watch them as they came down. The height was eighty feet.
The first ten thud—deads shocked me. I looked up—saw that there were scores of girls at the windows. The flames from the floor below were beating in their faces. Somehow I knew that they, too, must come down, and something within me—something that I didn't know was there—steeled me.
I even watched one girl falling. Waving her arms, trying to keep her body upright until the very instant she struck the sidewalk, she was trying to balance herself. Then came the thud--then a silent, unmoving pile of clothing and twisted, broken limbs.
The fire occurred a little less than a year and a half after an address given by Clara Lemlich to hundreds of assembled workers at Cooper Union. She passionately proposed a general strike for better and safer working conditions for shirtwaist workers, and nearly two out of every three of the 32,000 workers followed her. The strike of 20,000 women was eventually ended in February 1910 with concessions on wages and working conditions. The Triangle Shirtwaist Company was not an adherent to the settlement. It was only until after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire that workers' conditions began to improve on a larger scale. Assemblyman Al Smith, representative of the Lower East Side in Albany, was part of the commission that investigated working conditions in the aftermath of the fire. He began a crusade for improved working conditions and with the support of Tammany Hall was eventually swept into the Governor's office.
Standing on the corner of Washington Place and Greene St. today, there is little to indicate it was the site of a castrophe that left firehoses washing a river of blood down the street's gutters. But on a spring evening not that unlike today's, 96 years ago, onlookers witnessed sights so horrible, that it changed the course of New York history.
NB: Concidentally, today is also the 17th anniversary of the Happy Land Social Club Fire in the Bronx. 87 people died in a fire that swept through a crowded club. It was set by a man after he argued with his girlfriend.
Tagged: al smith, clara lemlich, triangle shirtwaist firePosted by Lexiphane at 1:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 24, 2007
WHITHER THE PRINCIPAL?
In my piece a few days about the release of wrongly accused school janitor Frances Evelyn, who was arrested for the repeated rape of an 8-year-old girl and then released when the charges appeared unfrounded [see WHOOPS! WE SAID WHAT? 3/21/07], I concluded by inquiring about P.S. 91's principal:
And here's something else I'm curious about: what happened to P.S. 91's principal and what happens now?
Somewhat lost in the drama of the police's catch-and-release exercise with Evelyn, the principal of P.S. 91, Solomon Long, was relieved of his position by the school board. I missed the followup the next day, but the Times was on it:
On Tuesday, education officials removed the principal of the school, Public School 91 in East Flatbush, saying he had failed to report an earlier allegation of abuse by the child that she said had taken place outside school and did not involve a school employee.
And yesterday, city officials said the girl had previously complained of being sexually abused by her father and also by a classmate her own age.
Following the death of Nixmary Brown last year, the Bloomberg administration instituted much stricter regulations with regards to reporting incidents of child abuse. These are what Principal Solomon Long ran afoul of and precipitated his removal. While it may seem like regulations regarding reporting child abuse could never be stringent enough (report everything!), blanket prescriptions remove a valuable layer of discretion wielded by the people closest to the situation and likely with the most firsthand information.
Judging from the Times account, it seems that Principal Long was employing a little discretion in formalizing complaints made by a girl who was not unfamiliar with accusing adults and contemporaries of abuse. While privacy laws shield the results of an investigation by the Children's Welfare Agency, the Times wrote that police sources believed allegations against the girl's father were found to be baseless.
So Principal Long has been relieved of his position for exercising discretion in formalizing complaints that he suspected were confabulations by a child. It appears that his experience and judgement in this matter were correct. Critics will say that draconian rules are there to purposefully override the discretion of individuals and that children must be protected at any cost, no matter what the consequences. That may be, but it's certainly cold comfort to Frances Evelyn, whose face and name were dragged through the mud by the NY media alleging he was a child rapist. And it may be cold comfort to Solomon Long, whose well-founded prudence and judgement in a matter of child welfare were proven correct, a fact he can comfort himself with as he looks for a new position.
Tagged: abuse, evelyn, principalPosted by Lexiphane at 6:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
MOST FORGIVING D.A. EVER
Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes's job description is essentially to lay blame. As a D.A., he's the agent of the state responsible for making the case for guilt of people charged with crimes. When it comes to, not criminal actions, but a colossal blunder made by someone in his own office that may have cost a young rape victim her life, however, he is more forgiving than Jesus, at peace than Buddha, and understanding than Oprah.
In 2005, Natasha Ramen was allegedly raped by a man named Hemant Megnath, who had lured her to his home under the pretense of showing her an available apartment for rent. Months later, she went to the police and reported the rape. Megnath was charged and released on $5,000 bail with an accompanying order of protection prohibiting him from contacting Ramen, who was scheduled to testify against him.
In October, relatives of Ms. Ramen told the police that Mr. Megnath had threatened to kill her and her husband. He was arrested on charges of aggravated harassment, under the jurisdiction of Queens prosecutors, but the Ramen family did not press charges.
Ms. Teitelman, who was standing in for another assistant district attorney on the rape case in Brooklyn, was told of the harassment arrest in Queens, Mr. Hynes said in his statement. Prosecutors routinely use such information to argue for an increase in bail or other conditions to restrain the defendant. For reasons Mr. Hynes did not explain, Ms. Teitelman did not tell Judge Walsh about the harassment arrest.
Last Thursday evening, Natasha Ramen left her job in Queens and a man cut her throat twice and deeply, nearly decapitating her (I guess we could call if 'OJ-Style'). Mr Megnath was arrested almost immediately and has been charged with first-degree murder and is being held without bail. So is it normal for a person charged with rape and an order of protection against his witness, who has threatened to kill that witness and her family, to be out on the street on just $5,000 bail? No, it's not. But D.A. Hynes lets us know that everything's cool, because it was an "honest mistake."
The Brooklyn district attorney reportedly says his office should have warned a judge that threats had been made against the family of a rape victim who was later killed.
But according to reports, District Attorney Charles Hynes says it was an honest mistake that his office didn't warn the judge ahead of time and so it shouldn't be blamed for the death of Natasha Ramen.
The Times provides some more detail:
“It was an honest mistake,” he said. “To attempt to blame her is almost as ludicrous as trying to lay the blame on Ms. Ramen’s family, who refused to cooperate in the Queens prosecution. My heart goes out to the family for the terrible tragedy that the defendant brought upon them.”
Perhaps the reason the family wouldn't cooperate was because they were terrified of Mr. Megnath, and rightly so. Note that it was relatives who had to contact the police about the death threats Megnath made to Ramen. Is ludicrous the word that is appropriate here? Is it ludicrous to think that an A.D.A might want to inform a judge that a defendant has threatened to murder the victim of his crime who is the state's primary witness in its case? Perhaps too many years of watching "Law & Order" have left me with a wildly inflated impression of professional standards of competence maintained by the D.A.'s office.
I commend Charles Hynes for being the type of boss that reflexively moves to defend his underlings when they are being attacked in the press. I'm sure that Ms. Teitelman is a good lawyer and probably well liked by her co-workers, who are rushing to defend her (in part by blaming the victim and her family.) She made an "honest mistake" however, in that it was definitely a mistake, and one that she did not make with any malice towards the victim. It's more akin to a surgeon who removes a patient's healthy kidney and leaves a diseased one in, thereby killing him; or an airline pilot who mistakenly doesn't follow the control tower's directions and lands his plane on the wrong runway, which results in a fatal crash. These are serious mistakes and ones that can't be brushed away with non-mea culpas like "Whoa, our bad. Sorry 'bout that. What's for lunch?"
Tagged: d.a., hynes, murder, rape, witnessPosted by Lexiphane at 8:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 23, 2007
GET ON THE BUS
A staple sight of summer is throngs of well-heeled-looking NYers standing in line to get on a bus at 40th St. and Lexington Ave. Loaded down with enormous LV, Coach, and grocery bags, they are all waiting to get on the Hamptons Jitney. The Jitney is the coach service bus that allows NYers to flee the city in style while knocking back a few road cocktails on their way to their Hamptons summer shares. The migration usually picks up steam Thursday afternoon as the crowds assemble at their designated pick-up spots on Manhattans East Side.
This year, however, the Hamptons Jitney is offering service directly out of Brooklyn, something The New York Sun notes is irking Manhattan's Upper West Siders. Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz couldn't help but gloat a little:
"We have the hip zip," he said. "No disrespect to the Upper West Side, but Brooklyn is always hipper. If Shelter Island is not half Brooklyn, I'd be surprised."
The Brooklyn pick-up spots will be at two locations in Park Slope and one in downtown Brooklyn. One of the Park Slope pick-ups will be on 4th Avenue and 9th St., which should be an interesting sight. While the neighborhood continues to gentrify, that particular corner remains a little down at the heels, with 4th Avenue perpetually darkened by the elevated subway overpass and the corner of 9th St. usually crowded with people loitering outside of the check-cashing business or hanging around outside the bodega across the street. Let's just say that it's the kind of spot that will leave Hamptonites wondering "When is that bus going to get here!"
Tagged: brooklyn, hamptons, jitney, summerPosted by Lexiphane at 1:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 21, 2007
RITE OF SPRING
It may seem like the most unnatural sight in the world, but watching elephants emerge from the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and march down 34th St. signifies the arrival of spring to me in a manner that Punxatawney Phil can only dream of. The elephants are accompanied by all sorts of other exotic animals belonging to the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. When the circus comes to town, the elephants are too large to be brought into the city by rail, so the city shuts down the Queens-Midtown tunnel one night a year and marches the elephants through it into Manhattan. The crowds very with the weather and there's always a significant number of animal rights protestors, but it's worth staying up late for. Gothamist got its hands on the schedule for the event, which occurs next Tuesday, March 27th.
Unload Stock Cars: 11:30 PM (Tuesday, March 27)
The Walk Begins: 11:59 PM
Time At Tunnel: Approx 12:20 AM (Wednesday morning)
In Manhattan, the elephants will emerge from the north tube of the Queens Midtown Tunnel and proceed along 34th Street to The Garden.
I've found that the elephants usually emerge from the tunnel in Manhattan around 12:45 am to 1:00 am.
Tagged: circus, elephants, march, tunnelPosted by Lexiphane at 10:15 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 20, 2007
IF YOU CAN'T SAVE IT, AT LEAST DOCUMENT IT
This week's feature at Gotham Gazette (put out by the Citzens Union Foundation) is an transcript of a recent Gotham Gazette Readiny NYC Book Club meeting. Featured guests were Kevin Walsh of ForgottenNY and Roberta Gratz, the author of two books about urban development. Walsh recently published a book version of his site and I was reading it in the Grand Central Terminal bookstore the other day [if Kevin is reading this, rest assured I intend to actually buy a copy soon] and it is fantastic. Forgotten New York: Views of Lost Metropolis is an everyman's guide to discovering the little-known about the city, as well as documenting and sharing the bits of NYC that are disappearing without most of us even knowing they were there. The Gotham Gazette transcript comes with some great photos illustrating essential NYC items lost to the ages. Here's some of the transcript:
In 1963, they also eliminated all the cast iron lampposts on 6th avenue. These lampposts dated back to 1910. Overnight, they were wiped out. Even at that young age, I had been filling notebooks with drawings of these cast iron lampposts, in all their different designs.
Those two events put a kernel in my head: you better get stuff on camera before they destroy it. Much to my regret, I didn't do anything about it until 1998. Imagine if I had done that all those years.
With the onset of the Internet, I got the idea of doing a Web site called Forgotten New York about all the things that you see in the street that are unusual, unnoted, that people don't look at or don't see.
In New York everybody's rushing around. They're not looking up, they're not looking down. They just want to get where they're going. But I took a slow walk around, and took a bicycle, and looked at the painted ads on the side of buildings. Some of these things go back to the 1880s. There's one on 17th street and 6th avenue that talks about Victorian carriages and trotters for horses. We call them Wall Dogs ads, because the guys who used to paint them were called wall dogs.
I took photographs of all this ephemera – all these things that people had not noticed. I got a critical mass of 50 pages together, and I set up the Web site. We have been around for eight years, and we've got four million hits so far. So it's been moderately popular.
Read the whole transcript.
Tagged: architecture, books, forgotten ny, gotham gazette, kevin walshPosted by Lexiphane at 9:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
I SAID SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP!
Let's face it, riding the school bus is never going to be fun. Confined three to a seat, often with a musical instrument jammed between your knees, which are simultaneously pushing hard into the small of the back of the person sitting in front of you. God help those poor bastards who had to sit on the seat with the wheel well hump. Is that thing supposed to be some type of sick joke? I'm convinced that one of the reasons the subway never bothered me is that after spending my formative years riding a school bus, every mode of transportation is a delight in comparison.
I guess kids in the burbs have it easy. Apparently bus drivers and bus monitors for the city make my old occasionally ill-tempered bus driver look like Albert Schweitzer. Here are some of the complaints found in Department of Education records. Bear in mind, these are the substantiated cases:
- Driver offers elementary schoolkids cigarettes;
- Monitor sits on elementary schoolkids when they misbehave;
- Driver urinates on the sidewalk in front of a bus full of children;
- Driver calls one student a "retarded Jamaican," another a "retarded Puerto Rican," makes fun of third student's weight, telling him he has "the biggest forehead and double chin in the world";
- Driver gets lost for five hours on way to the Bronx Zoo, leading to cancellation of the outing;
- Driver falls asleep, then tests positive for cocaine;
- Driver tries to steal student's coat during field trip;
- Driver and monitor take photos of children showing their underwear;
- Driver oversleeps, so he picks up his students with his own car, until the bus company brings him his bus;
- Driver screams epithets into a cell phone while driving;
- Driver leaves idling bus full of children unattended, allowing an elementary schoolboy to rev the engine;
- Monitor punches, pins to the floor and curses at elementary school student, then tells him: "I will murder you."
Don't feel bad for laughing at some of those. I'm picturing Sam Jackson playing the bus driver who gets up in a 4th Grader's face and says "I will murder you."
(via Gothamist)
Tagged: bus driverPosted by Lexiphane at 8:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 18, 2007
TIME HEALS ALL WOUNDS, BUT IT REALLY FADES ALL
The New York Times gets off on the right foot this Sunday, but perhaps should have bounced some ideas off an editor over the age of fourty. The concept is a great one: what are the lasting memorials to our urban tragedies, e.g., the death of 20 people in a house fire in the Bronx last week, the murder of three innocents in the West Village the other day. These things fill our airwaves and splash gallons of ink on our frontpages for a few days, but is there any withered or hallowed ground following the media's usual scorched earth practices? The Times checks it out:
Still, time’s erosions are formidable. A million people drain into and out of New York City each decade, and for those who live in many neighborhoods, four decades are no different than four centuries. You walk a line of Tudor-style town houses along Austin Street in Kew Gardens, Queens, where Ms. Genovese spent her last frantic minutes, and talk with a dozen people under the age of 40. No one has heard of her.
The Times highlights some places that are remembered and municipally sanctified. What they leave out is all the more telling. It's one thing to commemorate the killing of John Lennon outside The Dakota. A great deal fewer people commemorate the deaths of more than a 1,000 people from the LES when the General Slocum steamship caught fire in 1904. That was not only the largest loss of life in a single day in NYC's history (pre-9/11), but it shattered an entire ethnic neighborhood and initiated an exodus from the LES all the way to Yorkville, where some of its descendants remain. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire is rightly noted in the article, as it is in most history books, but the 1918 BRT subway disaster wasn't. That's when an out-of-control Brooklyn subway car helmed by a strike-breaking driver jumped the rails. 102 people were killed. If you live in NYC and have heard of neither the General Slocum nor the BRT disaster, don't feel bad, most people haven't.
Frances Morrone acknowledges that most people are shocked to know of the tragic antecedents to their residency:
Mr. Morrone speaks from experience. He has taught classes inside the old Triangle Shirtwaist building at New York University in Greenwich Village, where more than nine decades ago a fire raged and factory doors were locked, and 146 female garment workers burned or plunged nine stories to their deaths. Their deaths would give muscle to the progressive era in New York, as legislators passed a raft of laws protecting the rights of workers.
“When I tell students that they are sitting in a building with that history, I’ve heard their gasps,” Mr. Morrone said. “And that’s a sensible response.”
If Prof. Morrone was in a great and expansive mood, he might share how a crowd of unruly opera fans were cut down by a U.S. militia back in the 19th Century, leaving dozens dead in the street a few blocks from NYU's campus. I think we could all do with some first-hand geographical brushing-up on the history that literally surrounds us every day.
Tagged: history, nyc, nyu, slocum, triangle shirtwaist firePosted by Lexiphane at 4:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
NAME THAT STREET, BUILDING , SLIP, AND/OR MONUMENT, NO MATTER HOW LONG AGO IT VANISHED
Almost exactly a year ago––perhaps a few days before––I went to the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, NY. Hop on a MetroNorth train and get off one stop after Marble Hill and you're there. Cars are for suckers: just walk across the platform and some playing fields and you find yourself at the Hudson River Museum front door.
Inside the museum, one will find an interesting (alright, it depends on what your threshold for interesting is) overview of the entire course of the Hudson River. Other floors of the museum have some great displays on advertising and sublime 1950's marketing trends, including kitchen hardware. One of the best things about the Hudson River Museum is its planetarium. If you feel the computer-generated effects and real-time synchronized movement of the heavens was too overwhelming when you were at the Rose Center on CPW and 85th St., only the Andrus Planetarium can manage to pass off a filmstrip projected on the ceiling while simultaneously begging for funding and pitching b-day parties at the planetarium. It might have been the most interesting planetarium experience I've had in a while.
Anchoring the Hudson River Museum is the Glenview Mansion, one of dozens of family Hudson River manses surrendered to the State when the age of Robber Barons drew to a close. For as many of these examples I've been in, The Glenview Mansion is one of the better ones: full access, a working pool table, accessible art galleries upstairs, and some kickass curatorial commentary posted along the way.
One of the more interesting parts was the annex between the Hudson River Museum and the Glenview Mansion. It included a floor-to-ceiling mural of the Manhattan waterfront that I took a picture of in stages. Just yesterday, I stitched those pictures together; the above image is an excerpt. 19th Century photographers loved to architecturally conflate their images by cutting and pasting. I thought I was relatively familiar with NYC's architectural history, but I'm having a lot of trouble getting a bead on many of these larger late-19th Century buildings.
Drop a note if you can ID some landmarks. Check Flickr here for the largest versions available of the composite picture.
Super Bonus Points: What is that obelisk to the southwest of the Manhattan-side Brooklyn Bridge Tower? It looks like it has windows. Perspective would seem to place it further south than City Hall Park. What the hell is that thing?
Posted by Lexiphane at 3:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 17, 2007
WHEN NEWS CYCLES COLLIDE
No one seems to have really noticed it yet, but two of the larger NYC stories from the past few weeks have finally intersected. This hasn't resulted in a perfect media storm yet, but with the Sean Bell Shooting indictments on the way and St. Patrick's Day Parade shenanigans to report, it's possible local outlets are just sitting on this 'til next week.
Story one is the shocking discovery that rats in NYC like to hang out in restaurants––especially a KFC/Taco Bell in The West Village. In the weeks following the videotaped rat circus, one Health Dept. inspector was fired and scores of restaurants have been closed for health violations. Many restaurateurs are claiming they're the victim of a rodent witch hunt as a city agency attempts to redeem itself in the eyes of the public. One owner of a famous pizzeria, Brooklyn's Di Fara Pizza, took it in stride though:
Despite the crap news, Dom seemed pretty chipper, taking things in stride. "I'd only wear a hat if I were bald. I'd rather pay the fine than wear the hat."
Story two on everyone's front page is the quadruple homicide in the West Village Thursday evening, when David Garvin shot the bartender at DeMarco's Pizza to death, gunned down two unarmed auxilliary police officers in the street, and then died in a hail of bullets from police on Bleeker St.
The coincidence is more than the fact that a pizzeria was involved in both stories. The owner of Di Fara and the man quoted above is actually Dom DeMarco. DeMarco's Pizza is the Manhattan sister restaurant of Di Fara Pizza and run by Dom's daughter. So the DeMarco family has managed to find itself at the intersection of two of the biggest news stories emanating from the West Village in years.
[Di Fara link to Slice.com via Gothamist.]
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March 16, 2007
DOCTOROFF ACKNOWLEDGES THE OBVIOUS
One of the basic truisms of NYC transit projects is that the 2nd Avenue Subway line will never be built. Nonetheless, every ten years or so the city feels like it has to go through the motions. A few hundred million bucks are wasted on surveying work, planning, and maybe even a section of tunnel gets built, but the fact is, New Yorkers will be commuting on flying cars before a 2nd Avenue line is built. Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff finally had to admit as much publicly:
"It will be the third groundbreaking for the same project. It sounds like the Freedom Tower," Mr. Doctoroff told a gathering of about 400 transportation professionals at the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council's annual meeting yesterday, referring to the ground zero memorial that has celebrated multiple groundbreakings but has seen little work thereafter. "We've seen how these things play out before."
The Second Avenue line, known as the city's greatest transportation project never built, is a planned two-track subway line that will run along Manhattan's East Side to the financial district from 125th street. Construction on such a line stopped in 1975, when funds for the project ran dry.
"We can't afford that mistake again," Mr. Doctoroff said. He stressed that even the expected federal funding for the project "does not mean a commitment to completing the job."
I don't doubt for a second that New York will continue to pour hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars down a whole drilled undernearth 2nd Avenue, but the safest bet over the last 100 years and for the next 100 years is that no one will ever take a trip anywhere on a 2nd Ave. line.
The long undistinguished history of the 2nd Ave. Subway can be examined here.
Tagged: 2nd avenue, subwayPosted by Lexiphane at 1:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 15, 2007
WITNESS TO THE EXECUTION
Last night, a man who is reported to be a former employee of DeMarco's Pizza, located on the corner of West Houston and MacDougal Streets, shot the restaurant's bartender 15 times in the back after the victim turned to get the man a menu. The gunmen then fled up Sullivan St., followed at a short distance by two unarmed NYPD auxilliary officers, who are akin to neighborhood watch volunteers. The NYPD released video taken by a surveillance camera outside the Childrens Aid Society on Sullivan St. this afternoon.
What the video shows is a man not that intent on escape, but on spilling as much blood as possible in the streets of the West Village before getting himself killed. The video still above points out three main portions of the video. On the left is 28-year-old auxilliary policeman Nicholas Pekearo. He was running up the left side of the street (towards the camera) trailing gunman David Garvin. When Garvin realized he was being followed, he cut right and back across the street to where Pekearo attempted to crouch behind a car. Garvin stood directly over Pekearo as he fired point blank at his prostrated victim over and over. Garvin then ran south (away from the camera) when he spotted Pekearo's partner hiding behind a car. 19-year-old auxilliary cop Yevginny Marshalik was summarily executed in the street by Garvin. At that point, an armed policeman runs up (south/down) the Sullivan firing at Garvin, who returns to the right-hand sidewalk and makes a quick right off Sullivan onto Bleeker Street. Moments later he would emerge from the store he was hiding in and died in a hail of NYPD gunfire.
The video caught on Sullivan St. is unnerving, only because that's not how suspects are supposed to behave. They're not supposed to advance on and execute uniformed officers. The New York Times coverage of the event thus far as been comendable. WNBC's also has been up to date, but filled with as many sketchy details while the story was breaking as outright fraudulent details as the story developed. I'm referring specifically to the local affiliate's slideshow accompanying its story. According to the story, Garvin was shooting a 9mm semiauto handgun that is pictured after it was recovered. In addition to approximately 100 rounds of ammunition, Garvin apparently also was found with a .380 semiauto in his possesion after he was killed. That's great, but the image WNBC includes in its slideshow is that of a .45 caliber 1911 ACP. It's a formidable looking handgun and a far cry from what a .380 semiauto looks like. The caption under the .45 reads,
Regular police officers then shot and killed the gunman, who had a bag with a fake beard, two guns and 100 rounds of ammunition, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said early Thursday. (Above: a gun seized by police).
I'm sure if pressed, WNBC could weasel a bit and say that the parenthetical never indicated that it was the gun seized from Garvin, but just a gun seized at some point in the history of the NYPD. Such weaseling, of course, would be misleading and weak.
NB: Lots of coverage in today's edition of The New York Times. Gunman David Garvin was not a former employee of DeMarco's Pizza as I wrote above. He was a regular of the establishment who had been thrown out more than once in the past for being disruptive. Garvin's profile actually makes him sound like a loser and few people who knew him seemed particularly shocked that his life ended in this fashion.
Sad profiles of the two auxilliary officers murdered by Garvin. They sounded like exceptionally good guys who were well loved. As apparently was Alfredo Romero, the bartender Garvin shot fifteen times inside DeMarco's Pizza.
Tagged: cops, killed, nyc, west villagePosted by Lexiphane at 11:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 13, 2007
BUT PRAYING DOESN'T MAKE YOUR TRAIN COME ANY FASTER
Welcome Gothamist readers. If you've arrived here from a link on a page at Gothamist.com, thanks for stopping over. Feel free to poke around to your heart's content and return again in the future. Fresh content added daily. -Dave H., aka Lexiphane
Which is the worst: Evangelicals when you're already worn out after a long day, the MTA after you're already worn out after a long day, or Evangelicals posing as the MTA under any circumstances? NY1 Transit beat reporter Bobby Cuza scoops the rest of the NYC locals––as far as I could tell–– with his story on how a group of missionaries parked itself on a URL very close to the MTA's Information Page (www.mtainfo.com vs. www.mta.info, spot the fake one!).
If you've ever asked yourself questions while riding the subway like ‘Why Am I Here? Where Am I Going When I Die? What is hell like?’ You can find answers on the MTA website, the Mission To America website that is.
This makes the Jews for Jesus folks parked down in subway stations handing out leaflets look like complete punks. Cuza continues:
Mission To America's webmaster says it was just an idea he had, a play on the concept of a bus ride to heaven.
There was also accompanying text that read "We don't have the bus or train schedule. But we can tell you how to take the most important trip of your life."
First off, if you find yourself riding a bus in the immediate post-life period following your death, you are not on your way to meet Jesus. Jesus sends a limo for his people. People riding the bus are heading to warmer climes.
While the Oregon-based group has since removed the biblical allusions featured on its www.mtainfo site, it may not have been all a waste:
It was not all for nothing, though. According to Mission To America, while visiting their website an MTA attorney requested a copy of the Gospel of John. The package was mailed to his home address.
As the proverb goes "Save one MTA attorney from eternal damnation, and you've saved the world."
Tagged: cuza, evangelical, mta, ny1, subwayPosted by Lexiphane at 4:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
LET'S SAVE THE OUTRAGE THIS TIME, ALRIGHT?
The New York Sun has an article today filled with some of the most disingenous belly-aching I've heard in some time. Right from the headline, one can sense that the head on this argument is more Coors Light than Guinness.
Ban of Liquor on St. Patrick's Riles Railroad Commuters
What commuters would these be exactly? On a Saturday? Could it be the throngs of Irish-for-a-day drunkards who make almost all public transportation in and around NYC a vomit-filled nightmare? Clinging to the increasingly absurd notion that the Irish are still some sort of discriminated-against ethnic group, as if this was the "ol' sod" during the Troubles, is patently ridiculous:
"It definitely looks like stereotyping, and that's what the MTA should be faulted for," state Senator Martin Golden, a Republican of Brooklyn who is Irish, said. "Some people do get out of control, but to focus on that day, and on certain segments of the population like that, is totally wrongheaded."
Mr. Golden said the MTA should lift what he dubbed a discriminatory liquor ban that assumes Irish revelers are more out of control than other groups when celebrating their holidays.
"And I'll fight any man who claims otherwise!" was not added by Mr. Golden.
A VP of a fraternal Irish police organization involved with the parade––of all people!––complained that a booze ban on March 17th was discriminatory because enforcement wasn't equally strengthened during the Gay Pride or certain Hispanic Day parades. Alright buddy, and everyone always says that it's "A Day When Everyone's Queer!" during the Gay Pride celebration; when legions of knuckleheads under the age age of 25 flock from far and wide, donning rainbow pants and drunkenly singing old Madonna favorites. You think you 're being unfairly discriminated against? Try holding a parade when every business and residence on 5th Avenue boards up their windows and doors with plywood and lock up their daughters, lest they be ravished by some scary Dominicans hoods. I think this is one occasion when we can put down the bottle for just an hour or two and stop whining. As for the stereotypes, try to get past them when weaving between cops and firemen relieving themselves just off 2nd Ave next Saturday, while stepping over the hundreds of empty bottles and cans littering the streets of the East Side, and as a you see some teenager with vomit down the front of his shirt holding onto a building as he waits in line to be denied entry to yet another bar.
(Photos courtesy of a Google search that turns up thousands of links associating St. Patrick's Day with drunken behavior.)
Tagged: drunk, mta, nyc, st. patrick's day, subway, vomitPosted by Lexiphane at 8:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 12, 2007
BLOOMBERG DOESN'T SPARE US THE HARD REALITIES OF LIFE
No, the Mayor gives us the full complement of truth with both barrels, whether we can take it or not. Like on his weekly radio address last Friday, when he announed that making bus and subway rides free would be good for city residents. NY1's headline:
"Mayor Says Free Mass Transit in the Public's Best Interest"
NY1's transit reporter pours some cold water on the hot idea that even Bloomberg admitted had little chance of becoming reality:
Bloomberg can of course talk all he wants about free transit but the truth is he has little say in the matter. The mayor does recommend four members of the MTA’s board, but it is, in effect, a state agency.
A state agency that last year collected $2.9 billion in subway and bus fares. As for how to fill that gap, Bloomberg suggested raising the cost of parking. To give you an idea just how realistic all this is the MTA would not even bother to comment.
Others weren't so quick to dismiss the idea. A member of the dubiously named Institute for Rational Urban Mobility [emphasis mine] had this to say:
"Of course it's feasible,” said George Haikalis of the Insitute for Rational Urban Mobility. “As the mayor pointed out, the Staten Island Ferry is free. You just remove the turnstiles and it becomes free. The real trick is to find the replacement funds that are now produced by the transit riders."
Shoot. Why didn't we think of that before?
Here are some other endeavors Mayor Bloomberg might want to consider proclaiming "in the best interest of the public":
- Curing cancer
- All Thursdays and Fridays now paid vacation days
- The next round is on him, in perpetuity
I await them with baited breath.
Posted by Lexiphane at 7:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
ONE MAN'S BREAKOUT IS ANOTHER MAN'S OUTBREAK
When an actor or actress plays a character in a movie that propels him or her from obscurity to widespread fame, it's generally referred to as a breakout performance (think Jim Carrey in The Mask or Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic.) A breakout performance is what I thought NYC rats experienced in local news broadcasts a few weeks ago, when they were captured performing the rodent equivalent of a Busby Berkeley number for the cameras stationed outside a West Village Taco Bell. As many actors will sadly attest, however, until you're famous in showbusiness, it's like you may as well not even exist.
Posted by Lexiphane at 3:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 10, 2007
FINAL-LY!!!!
The saying goes that a picture is worth a thousand words; and that may hold true here, although excuse me if I add a few words of my own. In the Big East Championship game at Madison Square Garden, Georgetown played like a team of destiny, not just soaring over Pittsburgh, but catching them flatfooted and towering over them like giants. This is what I hastily typed at halftime to keep from chewing my fingernails off in appreciation of too-good-to-be-true fortune:
"One really can't ask for a much better half than Georgetown gave during the first 20 minutes of tonight's game. What the ESPN announcers don't realize is that it's not a question of one player going to sleep and the other player lighting up when talking about Jeff Green and Roy Hibbert. The two Junior frontcourt men are a tandem team. They're enablers of the court kind, opening up and occupying opposing teams inversely for maximum inflicted damage. If they were a comedy team they'd be Abbot and Costello, if thieves, Bonnie and Clyde, if dancers, Ginger and Rogers. Georgetown played its first half against Pitt like a consummate team. The Panthers, frankly, looked a little desperate, clunky, and stilted. Only a fool would count them out after 20 minutes though. They were down to Louisville's Cardinals by 14 points last night and wound up winning by by six. This isn't the Big East Championship for nothing."
Roy Hibbert wound up being the man. Jeff Green scored 21 points to Hibbert's 18, but this lopsided rout was not won with offense: Georgetown only scored 65 points. Pitt's problems was that they were being completely killed at their end of the court on rebounds. Any shot that Pitt missed was as good as a wasted posession. Georgetown outrebounded Pitt by a wide margin at the Panthers' end of the court [stats have not yet been posted at ESPN]. Hibbert had 12 rebounds, nine of them defensive.
With Jesse Sapp on the foul line and under two minutes to play, Hibbert left the floor to a round of applause at the Garden (I'd like to say "thunderous applause", but the Hoyas have never been well liked at MSG), with a 24-point lead. Jeff Green followed Hibbert on the sideline a free throw later when Georgetown was up by 25 points. Green was awarded the Big East Tournament MVP trophy following the game.
It's been 18 years since Georgetown hoisted a trophy at The Garden, so I think a few historic and contextual points are in order. This was Georgetown's 7th Big East Tournament Championship, breaking a six-win tie with UConn and making Georgetown the tournament-championest team in conference history. As extraordinary as the Hoyas' 23-point margin of victory was tonight (65-42), what is more extraordinary is the fact that 42 points is the lowest point total a team has been held to in a championship game in conference history, by a margin of 12. And that includes the era when college basketball was ruled by no shot clock and lacked a 3-point shot line.
The NCAA tournament selection can do whatever they want. The Hoyas may or may not merit a #1 seed come Sunday. I, for one, am thrilled at what this group of men have achieved over a long season. That Big East Championship was a long time coming. Hang the banner in McDonough Arena. Just save some space for the next one.
For the record:
SUPER-DUPER ULTRA MONEY QUOTE:
"I feel grateful that I get to be a part of that, and that I get to wear 'Georgetown' across my chest," Hibbert said.
Posted by Lexiphane at 9:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
THE OLD NEIGHBORHOOD GROWS UP & UP
While most eyes are directed downtown to the massive amounts of development occuring on Manhattan's Lower East Side, my old stomping grounds on the Upper East Side has highrises popping up like mushrooms. Not that Yorkville around 86th St. was a slouching neighborhood of low-rent tenements before. Especially along 86th St. between Lexington and 2nd Ave, there were a number of 20-30 story buildings. Most of the avenues and side streets, however were limited to five or six-story apartment buildings that gave the neighborhood a very cozy atmosphere. This may not be the case for long.
The cornerstone of all this development, given its proximity to the subway, its size and the retail it will offer, is Extell Development's half-city-block behemoth, the Lucida. The limestone-based, glass-curtain-walled building will encompass the area from 85th Street to 86th Street on Lexington and is the U.E.S.'s first LEED-certified residential green construction. Its 18 stories will contain 110 condos, an H&M, a Barnes & Noble, a Sephora and a Bank of America.
One block east, at Third Avenue, is the massive crater that will be the Brompton, a 206-unit condo building developed by the Related Companies. And one avenue over from that, on Second Avenue, three five-story tenement buildings are about to be torn down to make way for a 20-story condo building. (The L-shaped parcel contains 105,000 square feet of buildable space and is coveted by "proven New York City developers," says Alan Miller, a senior director and principal at Eastern Consolidated, the company selling the piece of land.)
To put their proximity in perspective, if you stand on the north side of 86th Street midway between Second and Third avenues, all three sites will be visible once they're under construction.
And there's more.
Residents of the neighborhood can only hope that all the new neighbors occupying these luxury condos will be well-heeled enough to take car services to work, because the 4/5/6 subway line is already stretched well beyond its peak operating capacity. A single delayed train during rush hour is enough to send the UES into chaos, with overflow passengers pouring back up onto the sidewalk at 86th St., jamming buses full, and creating what looks like a stream of refugees heading down Lexington Avenue on foot. With the 2nd Ave. Subway still a decade away at best (I maintain it will never be built), commuter relief is a long way off. Read more about the neighborhood's development in the New York Post
Tagged: condos, development, real estate, subway, ues, yorkvillePosted by Lexiphane at 12:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE
In a game that will probably be talked about for as long as their triple-overtime regular season marathon a few years ago, Notre Dame and Georgetown's Big East Tournament semi-final matchup was some basektball both teams could be proud of.
If one looks at the Game Flow graphic from ESPN.com to the left, one can see that ND dominated the first half, primarily by dropping 3s at will. The Hoyas closed the half with a run though, narrowing the gap to two points. The second half is when things got interesting. Over 20 minutes, the two teams were tied 9 times and the lead changed hands 13 times. The outcome was not certain until the last seconds of the game, when a three-point shot for the win taken by Russell Carter of ND missed its mark and the Hoyas escaped with a two-point victory.
Junior Jeff Green showed the crowd on hand in NYC and probably the whole nation some of the reasons he was named Big East Player of the Year. The forward played 40 minutes, never once coming off the court for a rest in an effort that yielded 30 points and 12 rebounds. To give one a sense of how great a team player Green is and what a catalyst he is in getting Georgetown wins, swallow this: Leading Georgetown to its first regular season title in 18 years and the first Hoya to win Player of the Year since Alonzo Mourning in 1992, Jeff Green never scored a double double (double-digit points and rebounds or assists in a single game) during the regular 2006-2007 season and did not do so until last night. To be named Player of the Year without ever achieving a double double over an entire season is extraordinary and Jeff Green may have been the first to do so. Also contributing significantly––and emotionally––was Patrick Ewing, Jr. Wearing his father's number on his jersey and using the same locker at The Garden that the old man used as a New York Knick, Jr. was electric, coming off the bench to score 15 points. He humbly deflected praise, however, to freshman teammate DaJuan Summers, who scored 18 with four rebounds.
Notre Dame shot out to its early lead thanks to shooting 8 for 14 from 3-point range in the first half. Georgetown muscled its way back into the game thanks to the play of Ewing Jr. and the freshman DaJuan Summers (18 points), who Ewing Jr. called “the next Jeff Green.”
High praise indeed. In a bit of news that will be troubling to all the other Big East teams, it should be noted that Georgetown only has two seniors on its team, both of them four-year bench warmers who I'm embarassed to say I'd never heard of. The Hoyas starting five is comprised of three Juniors (Green, Hibbert, Wallace) a Sophomore (Sapp) and the Freshman Summers. The New York Times has a decent article on last night's game.
In the second of last night's games, Pitt battled back to defeat the Louisville Cardinals 65-59. Georgetown and Pitt have met twice already this season, Pitt winning the first game and Georgetown the second. Both events were closely contested. This will be Pitt's sixth appearance in the Big East Tournament Final in the last seven years. In their prior five appearances, they've only managed to win once, in 2003 against UConn. This will be Georgetown's first appearance in the final since 1996. I was at that game and it may have been the worst thing I've ever seen as a championship slipped through their fingers to UConn in a comedy of errors. The last time Georgetown won the BE Championship was in 1989.
Tagged: basketball, big east, college basketball, georgetown, hoyas, irish, notre dame, pittPosted by Lexiphane at 8:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 9, 2007
DOWN TO FOUR
Georgetown almost surrendered an overwhelming first-half lead, but eventually held off Villanova for a win. The Irish finally got lucky at the Garden and continued their season-long sweep of Syracuse to advance. It took Louisville two overtime periods, but they managed to stave off an upset-minded group of Mountaineers. Pitt's game versus Marquette was past my bedtime; they won. Capsule recaps of the games can be found at the Big East homepage here
So what's happening tonight in the semifinals? All four top-seeded teams who received a first-round bye in the tournament have advanced to penultimate round on 7th Ave. At 7 p.m. Notre Dame's Irish meet the Georgetown Hoyas. According to The New York Times, ND's Big East Coach of the Year Mike Brey is already looking ahead to Saturday's finals.
It was the Irish’s first victory at the Big East tournament since 2004, and it left Brey giddy about his team’s chances to earn its first appearance in the conference title game.
“I told them in the locker room: ‘It’s our destiny, we’re playing on Saturday night,’ ” Brey said. “It’s destiny, and there’s fate involved here. There’s good karma around this group.”
Brey might want to not look too far past the Hoyas, who thrashed his team mercilessly in early January, 66-48. And that was before Georgetown got its on-court act together.
At 9:30 p.m. Louisville will meet season-long conference leaders Pitt, who only surrendered the regular season title to Georgetown at their schedule's bitter end. The two have only met once this year prior to tonight. Louisville issued the Panthers a 66-53 beatdown in mid-February on Pitt's own home court. Both games should be fun to watch.
Tagged: big east, college basketball, georgetown, louisville, notre dame, pitt, tournamentPosted by Lexiphane at 4:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 8, 2007
GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS
While there are 16 schools in the Big East Conference, the bottom four finishers are not invited to its annual conference tournament held at Madison Square Garden in March [see GARDEN PARTY, 3/4/07]. This makes for some heated regular season games down the stretch, as the teams with the four best regular season records are granted byes in the first round. Yesterday was that first round and it passed with relatively little excitement. Higher seed beat lower seed in three out of four game