Weekend Subway Service Advisories

Not bad. The local:

From 9:45 p.m. Friday, July 11 to 5:00 a.m. Monday, July 14, Jamaica-bound F trains are rerouted via the E line after 47-50 Streets to Jackson Hts-Roosevelt Av due toSecond Avenue Subwayconstruction work.

From 12:30 a.m. Saturday, July 12, to 5:00 a.m. Monday, July 14, F trains run local in Queens due to CPM signal modernization at Forest Hills-71 Av and Kew Gardens-Union Tpke, and MOW track tie renewal at 65 St.

From 5:00 a.m. to 12 midnight, Saturday, July 12, and Sunday, July 13, G trains run every 20 minutes between Long Island City-Court Sq and Bedford-Nostrand Avs due to Hurricane Sandy recovery work in the Greenpoint Tube. The last stop for some G trains headed toward Long Island City-Court Sq is Bedford-Nostrand Avs.

And the big picture:

http://secondavenuesagas.com/2014/07/11/weekend-work-affecting-12-subway-lines-2/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SecondAveSagas+%28Second+Ave.+Sagas+%7C+Blogging+the+NYC+Subways%29

Typos courtesy of my iPhone

A Tree(house) Grows In Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn

Photo from DNAinfo.

One of our neighbors on 2nd Street is building a treehouse in the back yard out of salvaged materials.

The plan to build a treehouse out of recycled materials took root two years ago when an intern at Brooks-Church’s firm, Eco Brooklyn, made a rendering of one. The idea sat on the backburner until Brooks-Church’s girlfriend finally gave him a good reason to break ground.

“We have three kids together. She wants a treehouse for them,” said Brooks-Church, 43, whose children are aged 2, 6 and 11.

The ground floor will be a chicken coop with walls made out of bags of earth so plants and flowers can grow from them. Brooks-Church described the effect as “like a garden turned on its side.”

The second floor will be made out of glass sheets he salvaged. A discarded fire escape ladder will link the floors. Brooks-Church plans on putting a rope bridge on the second floor that leads to a crow’s nest connected to a deciduous tree known as a Tree of Heaven.

This is the same house that has a turtle pond in the front yard (not to be confused with the koi pond on 2nd Place).  That turtle pond was a pleasant surprise on a summer walk last year or the year before.

East New York: Ripe For A Rezoning

I like the look of this proposal for rezoning East New York:

According to a new script being written by the de Blasio administration, that lot and, more broadly, all of East New York are on the verge of assuming an entirely different role, as a launchpad for City Hall's ambitious $41 billion plan to build or preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing during the coming decade. City Planning Commission Chairman Carl Weisbrod aims to spur a renaissance of the neighborhood by rezoning the area to spark the development of thousands of residential units ringed by mixed-use corridors and bisected by a reimagined Atlantic Avenue.

"The plan for East New York offers a template for how our ambitious housing goals can be accomplished on a neighborhood level," said Mr. Weisbrod. "It sets out a framework for new housing and economic development along key transit corridors."

Although the area is poor in economic terms—median annual income stood at just under $33,000 in 2011, 40% beneath the city median—it is surprisingly rich in transit connections. In addition to being virtually adjacent to JFK airport, East New York features a major transit hub of its own, at Broadway Junction, in the neighborhood's northeast corner, where five subway lines converge and the Long Island Rail Road has a busy station.

According to a city planning report on East New York's potential rezoning, a reimagined Broadway Junction will anchor the revitalized neighborhood. The report calls for a redevelopment similar to that of Atlantic Terminal at the edge of downtown Brooklyn, also a major subway and LIRR hub. Today, it is surrounded by a mix of new office and retail space centered on a public plaza.

Now let's make sure that we're focusing on transit-oriented development here.   Broadway Junction is a pretty robust transit hub.  And this should tie in nicely with the effort to remake Atlantic Avenue into a safer corridor.

The Downside of Using Mercenaries

Who the hell thought this was a good idea?  The Randian imbeciles want to outsource anything and everything in the name of profit. 

We are ruled by fools. Oftentimes, belligerent, malicious fools. 

WASHINGTON — Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad's Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor's operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater's top manager there issued a threat: "that he could kill" the government's chief investigator and "no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq," according to department reports. American Embassy officials in Baghdad sided with Blackwater rather than the State Department investigators as a dispute over the probe escalated in August 2007, the previously undisclosed documents show. The officials told the investigators that they had disrupted the embassy's relationship with the security contractor and ordered them to leave the country, according to the reports. After returning to Washington, the chief investigator wrote a scathing report to State Department officials documenting misconduct by Blackwater employees and warning that lax oversight of the company, which had a contract worth more than $1 billion to protect American diplomats, had created "an environment full of liability and negligence."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/us/before-shooting-in-iraq-warning-on-blackwater.html?_r=0

Typos courtesy of my iPhone

Brilliant Essay On Inequality By A Rational 0.01%er

Read and share.

Just go read Hanauer today, by @DavidOAtkins

"But the problem isn't that we have inequality. Some inequality is intrinsic to any high-functioning capitalist economy. The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution. And so I have a message for my fellow filthy rich, for all of us who live in our gated bubble worlds: Wake up, people. It won't last. If we don't do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn't eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It's not if, it's when...."

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/just-go-read-hanauer-today-by.html

I've long held this view, though I am not a wealthy person.  It is cold logic.  And frankly, I do not want my family and friends trampled by the mob - or becoming the mob - at pitchfork time.  Nor do I wish to live in a police state.  We need to make social changes before it gets to that point, and we are already far along that road.

Fulton Street Really Coming Together

View towards uptown 4/5 platform.

View towards A/C/2/3/J/Z connection

View from the sidewalk on Broadway.

Yes, construction is ongoing with finishing work and the escalators are not running yet, but the station is closer and closer to a full opening.  For all the delays, and the cost overruns (not all of which are the fault of MTA, by the way, see, e.g., Corbin Building) this oft-maligned new headhouse will change the lives of the people who pass through here on a daily basis.

The old station was a byzantine maze with the air of a medieval dungeon.  One might have expected to face a Minotaur in the bowels of the complex.  One can already tell that commuting through this station will be a more civilized, uplifting experience.  It's impossible to put a price tag on an intangible like this, and I won't say that this was the best possible use of transit funds.  But let's be honest, this station complex was a depressing mess before.

Our number one focus should be on expanding the reach and capacity of the system, but the overall rider experience is important too.

Do We Ever Learn?

Another $500M to destabilize Syria. 

Meanwhile we can't pass a highway bill, or care for our vets, or adequately invest in mass transit, or [insert valuable domestic initiative here]. 

Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a Twilight Zone episode. 

Arming And Training Has Worked Great So Far

"President Barack Obama is asking Congress for $500 million to train and arm vetted members of the Syrian opposition"

http://www.eschatonblog.com/2014/06/arming-and-training-has-worked-great-so.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FbRuz+%28Eschaton%29

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Typos courtesy of my iPhone