The local paper for Downtown wn A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME AT MOMA, < P. 12
WEEK OF AUGUST
25-31 2016
THE POWER OF NEIGHBORS Some observations on small-town newspapering in the world’s largest media market BY KYLE POPE
For the last three years, I have been a small-town newspaper editor in the middle of Manhattan. That means people called me to complain that the cost of paper towels at the Duane Reade store downstairs from their apartment was 30 cents higher than the store down the block. It means that they sent me photographs of potholes that not only twisted their ankle, but their neighbor’s as well. It means that when the local gym canceled its gymnastics program, I heard not only from outraged parents, but from a clutch of distraught teenage girls. The term of art for what we do here is hyper-local, and it’s a surprising slice of the media world. Who would have thought that in this age of instant communication, of Twitter and Snapchat and YouTube, that local newspapers, largely in print, would soldier on in one of the most intense media markets on earth? Yet they do, and I am convinced that one of the reasons is because they help recreate the notion of a small town. It is a return to the notion promoted by the social activist Jane Jacobs, whose 1961 book “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” noted that the vitality of a place can be found on its sidewalks and stoops, and that the glue that holds a place together is the interplay among neighbors. In many parts of New York City, her argument, about the need for central gathering places and public squares, has been lost, blasted away by gentrification and a
CONTINUED ON PAGE 6
REFLECTING ON CHELSEA, AND NEW YORK CITY BY ISIDRO CAMACHO
New York is rapidly changing. Architectural mock-ups of the Big Apple’s skyline in five years reveal a surge of vertical development, and a transformation of midtown and downtown into clusters of shining towers. The city is becoming more of a glamorous tourist destination than a place where people actually live. Manhattan often feels like it might be one of the most expensive places in the U.S. The price of MetroCards and cups of coffee seem as malleable as the wet cement outside one of the hundreds of new developments popping up throughout the island. Chelsea is one of the places where the direction the city is headed in is the most apparent. The Whitney Museum and the High Line draw visitors from around the world. The luxury store Barneys has recently moved its flagship store back to its original home on Seventh Avenue and 16th Street. Chic cafés and restaurants dot the avenues closer to the water. Before the era of the High Line, Chelsea and the Meatpacking District were largely industrial areas. As the High Line crept up the edge of the neighborhood closer to its terminal on 34th Street so did trendier business and apartment complexes. I wrote solely about Chelsea during my time at Our Town. I constantly walked around area to check the neighborhood’s pulse, to see what kind of issues might be pertinent to our readers. Spatially, Chelsea is quite small, but its demographic makeup makes it one of the most interesting places in the city to write community news. According to a city report, the median household income in Chelsea in 2013 was $114,486, and more recent reports suggest the current figure is closer to $150,000. There are two large housing projects the northern and southern borders
More than any other single project, the High Line helped transform Chelsea into an exclusive city enclave. Photo: David Berkowitz, via Wikimedia of Chelsea. Residency in these communities is predicated on incomes vastly smaller than those in the surrounding luxury apartments. Walking around this section of Chelsea I saw a diverse community and I would stop in a real bodega for some candy.
The further south I walked the less variety and bodegas I saw. It was often during these walks around the beat that I was struck by the neighborhood’s glaring extremes. On one of my first tours I walked down 26th Street toward the Downtowner
OurTownDowntown
O OTDOWNTOWN.COM @OTDowntown
Serial Crime Watch Voices Out & About
2 3 8 10
City Arts Restaurants Real Estate 15 Minutes
12 14 17 21
WEEK OF APRIL
SPRING ARTS PREVIEW < CITYARTS, P.12
FOR HIM, SETTLING SMALL CLAIMS IS A BIG DEAL presided over Arbitration Man has three decades. for informal hearings about it He’s now blogging BY RICHARD KHAVKINE
is the common Arbitration Man their jurist. least folks’ hero. Or at Man has For 30 years, Arbitration court office of the civil few sat in a satellite Centre St. every building at 111 New Yorkers’ weeks and absorbed dry cleaning, burned lost accountings of fender benders, lousy paint jobs, and the like. And security deposits then he’s decided. Arbitration Man, About a year ago, so to not afwho requested anonymity started docuhe fect future proceedings, two dozen of what menting about compelling cases considers his most blog. in an eponymous about it because “I decided to write the stories but in a I was interested about it not from wanted to write from view but rather lawyer’s point of said Arbitration view,” of a lay point lawyer since 1961. Man, a practicing what’s at issue He first writes about post, renders and then, in a separatehow he arrived his decision, detailing blog the to Visitors at his conclusion. their opinions. often weigh in with get a rap going. I to “I really want whether they unreally want to know and why I did it,” I did derstood what don’t know how to he said. “Most people ... I’d like my cases the judge thinks. and also my trereflect my personalitythe law.” for mendous respect 80, went into indiMan, Arbitration suc in 1985, settling vidual practice
9-16
MANHATTAN'S APARTMENT BOOM, > PROPERTY, P.20
2015
In Brief MORE HELP FOR SMALL BUSINESS
The effort to help small seems to businesses in the city be gathering steam. Two city councilmembers, Robert Margaret Chin and Cornegy, have introduced create legislation that wouldSmall a new “Office of the within Business Advocate” of Small the city’s Department Business Services. Chin The new post, which have up told us she’d like to would and running this year, for serve as an ombudsman city small businesses within them clear government, helping to get through the bureaucracy things done. Perhaps even more also importantly, the ombudsman and number will tally the type small business of complaints by taken in owners, the actions policy response, and somefor ways to recommendations If done well, begin to fix things. report would the ombudsman’s give us the first quantitative with taste of what’s wrong the city, an small businesses in towards important first step fixing the problem. of for deTo really make a difference, is a mere formality will have to the work process looking to complete their advocate are the chances course, velopers precinct, but rising rents, -- thanks to a find a way to tackle business’ is being done legally of after-hours projects quickly. their own hours,” which remain many While Chin “They pick out boom in the number throughout who lives on most vexing problem. said Mildred Angelo,of the Ruppert construction permits gauge what Buildings one said it’s too early tocould have the 19th floor in The Department of the city. number three years, the Houses on 92nd Street between role the advocate She Over the past on the is handing out a record work perThird avenues. permits, there, more information of Second and an ongoing all-hours number of after-hours bad thing. of after-hours work the city’s Dept. problem can’t be a said there’s with the mits granted by nearby where according to new data jumped 30 percent, This step, combinedBorough construction project noise Buildings has data provided in workers constantly make efforts by Manhattan to mediate BY DANIEL FITZSIMMONS according to DOB of Informacement from trucks. President Gale Brewer offer response to a Freedom classifies transferring they want. They knows the the rent renewal process, request. The city They 6 “They do whatever signs Every New Yorker clang, tion Act go as they please. work between some early, tangible small any construction on the weekend, can come and sound: the metal-on-metal or the piercing of progress. For many have no respect.” p.m. and 7 a.m., can’t come of these that the hollow boom, issuance reverse. owners, in business moving The increased beeps of a truck has generto a correspond and you as after-hours. soon enough. variances has led at the alarm clock The surge in permits
SLEEPS, THANKS TO THE CITY THAT NEVER UCTION A BOOM IN LATE-NIGHT CONSTR NEWS
A glance it: it’s the middle can hardly believe yet construction of the night, and carries on full-tilt. your local police or You can call 311
n OurTownDowntow
COM
Newscheck Crime Watch Voices
for dollars in fees ated millions of and left some resithe city agency, that the application dents convinced
2 City Arts 3 Top 5 8 Real Estate 10 15 Minutes
12 13 14 18
CONTINUED ON PAGE
25
water. I passed a group of youngsters piling into a bus coming out of P.S. 33, the public school at the edge of the Eliot-Chelsea housing projects. I walked down the street more to see
CONTINUED ON PAGE 5
We deliver! Get Our Town Downtowner sent directly to your mailbox for $49 per year. Go to OTDowntown.com or call 212-868-0190