Check Out The Beautifully Restored East 180th Street 2/5 Station In The Bronx: Gothamist

Beautiful skylights at the newly renovated 100 year old station.

Nice!

While most of the subway stations we use on a regular basis are
nothing more than subterranean whirlpools of shame and desperation, a
some lucky straphangers in the Bronx are about to start enjoying a
veritable cathedral to commuting. Today the MTA unveils a completely
renovated East 180th Street 2/5 Station. With this 2 year,
$66.5-million dollar project completed, the station is now fully
handicap-accessible, and fully face-lifted!
Located at the southern tip of Bronx Park, the 100-year-old station
services both the Bronx Botanical Garden and Bronx Zoo and sees over
2-million riders annually. The renovations give the station a
significant cosmetic update, including new mosaic tiles, a large
timepiece, and restored platforms, mezzanines and windows.

Click through for gallery of pics.

Typos courtesy of my iPhone

Anti-Weed Republican Charged With Pot Possession

The Party of Hypocrisy:

Westchester County Republican Assemblyman Steve Katz was pulled over yesterday morning for speeding and hit with a possession charge when an officer recognized the distinct smell of marijuana.  

[snip]

Last year, he voted against legalizing medical marijuana, although maybe this will be his Portman moment. The assemblyman sits on Assembly committees for Alcoholism and Drug Abuse, as well as Higher Education.

As one wag put it, "What was thicker when he rolled down the window, the smoke or the irony?"

Bergen Street F Pain

What's up with the Bergen Street F station?  This is the southerly exit from the Coney Island-bound platform.  It was closed off last night (first I noticed it) and still closed when I passed through today.

(And curse you, Blogger, for deleting the text of my posts half the time when I include a photo in a post from email.)

Chicken Run, 3:45 Today At Carroll Gardens Library

That pretty much says it all, but pixels are free, so here's the email I received:

Come see Chicken Run at the Carroll Gardens library today at 3:45, downstairs in the auditorium

Carroll Gardens Library
Clinton & Union Streets

Come on by! It's free! It's warm!

Emily
on behalf of the Friends of Carroll Gardens Library

Time Warner Follies

(UPDATE: To point out that compared to NY1, "TWC News" is an objectively inferior name.  The post below focuses on the obliviousness of management in thinking a name change will solve structural problems; I neglected to mention that even absent that major, glaring flaw, the name change is terrible on its own terms.  Where's Poochie?)

I love NY1 and Pat Kiernan in particular.  But loving NY1 was not enough to keep me from jumping to FiOS as soon as it was available.  And it won't stop others either.  This latest news out of Time Warner reveals management that just doesn't get it:

"Our research shows that people who watch our stations, such as NY1, are loyal viewers, yet most people don't understand their connection to Time Warner Cable," said a spokesperson, who makes us sad. "It is for these two reasons that we're embarking upon a rebranding project that will take the better part of a year." NY1 boss Steve Paulus reportedly fought the changes, but was buried under "broader corporate branding goals." Because if it's not broken, Time Warner will break it.

Improve your service and reliability. Stop nickel and dining people (hello, new modem rental charge!) and recognize that you've finally got some competition, and you're going to have to step up your game on service and pricing. 

See if you can monetize NY1 by selling access to Verizon.  Keep your audience share that way.  NY1 is great, but it's not enough to prevent a customer exodus.  Neither wild horses nor Pat Kiernan could drag me away from a faster, cheaper provider with better customer service. 

Yet Another Hotel Planned for Gowanus

I'll grant that it is a decent looking rendering, as far as that goes.

Another hotel slated for Gowanus manufacturing zone. 

I recall appearing with then-Councilman Bill deBlasio and then-rival Brad Lander almost 5 years ago at a press conference in Gowanus in protest of the loophole that allows wanton hotel construction in manufacturing zones.  This particular area has changed quite a bit, with the Holiday Inn across from the still-extant automotive uses (good ones too - we've had cars serviced at two separate businesses on this block with no complaints), Dinosaur BBQ opening in May, and the Royal Palms Shuffleboarrd Club coming soon on the next block.

In a 2011 profile of Brad Lander, he discussed the problem with this zoning quirk:

Lander believes that the City has not allocated sufficient resources to retain and promote manufacturing uses. While generally supportive of the 22 initiatives proposed by the Mayor's Office of Industrial and Manufacturing Businesses in June, Lander believes that these efforts must be expanded. One initiative included a proposed special permit for siting large hotel uses within designated Industrial Business Zones. Lander notes that large hotels as well as other major commercial uses command higher rents than manufacturing businesses and thereby contribute to the erosion of the City's manufacturing base. The special permit would require a finding that a proposed hotel development is compatible with the manufacturing policy of the Industrial Business Zones. Lander would like to see the hotel special permit requirement expanded to include big box retailers and large office buildings and to apply to all of the City's manufacturing zoning districts.
Lander takes issue with the City's usage of mixed-use zoning districts as well, citing the proposed Gowanus rezoning as an example. According to Lander, these "transitional" districts provide no protection for manufacturing businesses and therefore facilitate the conversion of manufacturing uses to residential uses. Traditional land use controls, such as height limits or inclusionary zoning, likewise cannot protect manufacturing. Finding a new solution, Lander explains, is part of the Council's role in the land use review process.

 

The Shadowy Residents of One Hyde Park—And How the Super-Wealthy Are Hiding Their Money | Vanity Fair

The United Kingdom, or at least it's ruling class, is the most successful organized criminal enterprise in the history of the world.

Trevor Abrahmsohn, a U.K. real-estate agent, remembers London before the modern property boom began. "London was as Paris is today: an interesting, quirky souvenir town. We had the Tower of London, the Queen, the palace, and the Changing of the Guard," he says, adding Scotch whisky as an afterthought. "That is what we stood for. London was not a tax haven."

Starting in the 1960s, new buyers began to fire up the market: crises of the Greek monarchy brought a significant influx of Greeks, pockets of which endure today. Next came the first wave of Americans, a trickle of bankers lured by London's unregulated Euro-markets, and West Coast buyers, often from Hollywood. "They swarmed in," remembers veteran London real-estate agent Andrew Langton, of Aylesford International. "They turned Chester Square into Little L.A. and tidied up all these properties, at enormous expense, with American kitchens, bathrooms, and showers."

The OPEC oil crisis, of the 1970s, lit the big fire under this market. Arab money surged into the so-called golden triangle of Knightsbridge, Belgravia, and nearby Mayfair, to buy high-end properties. Real-estate agents remember it as a tidal wave: "They came as a force," says Hersham. "When they wanted to buy, there were no hysterics or reticence." The fall of the Shah of Iran brought a surge of Iranian money, followed by buyers from the biggest African ex-colony, newly oil-rich Nigeria.

The market paused for breath in the 1980s, with Britain's economy in the doldrums and as sagging world oil prices sapped wealthy foreign buyers' demand. But Margaret Thatcher's financial reforms, notably her "Big Bang" of Wild West financial deregulation, in 1986, caused the stream of bankers to turn into a river, then a deluge. "We would wait for those e-mails ending in 'gs.com' to come rolling in," remembers Jeremy Davidson, a Belgravia-based property consultant. "Goldman [Sachs] partners, Morgan [Stanley] partners: they were the top of the market, and we had lots of them."

The fall of the Soviet Union, in 1989, and the vast, corrupt post-Soviet privatizations, brought the biggest, most reckless wave of foreign buyers London had ever seen, with often questionable money sluicing in via the secretive British-linked stepping-stone tax havens of Cyprus and Gibraltar. "There is no real accountability of these guys coming in—the cops don't really investigate them," says Mark Hollingsworth, co-author ofLondongrad, a 2009 book about the Russian invasion. "They see the capital as the most secure, fairest, most honest place to park their cash, and the judges here would never extradite them."

Nick Candy himself summarized the attractions neatly: "This is the top city in the world, and the best tax haven in the world for some."

Looting whole economies, money laundering, tax dodges . . . if you've got a fortune to steal, the UK will become your protection, for the right price.