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THE BIKE KING OF MANHATTAN, < Q&A, P.18
WEEK OF APRIL
2-8 2015
OurTownEastSide @OurTownNYC
VISION ZERO’S DECADES-OLD ROOTS Starting in the 1970s and 1980s, advocates calling for traffic safety persevered through indifference, “windshield perspective” BY RICHARD KHAVKINE
Traffic coursing through Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village in 1987. Photo by Greg Wass, via Flickr
Vision Zero, the de Blasio administration’s pivotal traffic-safety initiative, has been as notable for the speed of its rollout as for what it’s managed to accomplish. In just over a year, the city has rolled out improved road designs and configurations, increased enforcement of traffic laws, installed new street signs, and lowered the speed limit
to 25 m.p.h. across most of the city. That effort has been accompanied by increased activism among families of traffic victims, and a focused effort to increase the number of drivers prosecuted for causing traffic deaths. In a city long seen as more friendly to drivers than to walkers, the past year would seem to mark a dramatic — and sudden — swtich in thinking. In fact, Vision Zero’s foundational thrust can also be traced back several decades, when citizen
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45 Years and Counting
FROM THIS WORLD TO THE NEXT ONE For the Kritls, undertaking is a family business BY PANYIN CONDUAH
Every week for the rest of the year, Our Town will celebrate its 45th anniversary by profiling a neighborhood business that has been around longer than we have. Know of a local business that should be on our list? Email us at news@strausnews. com When it comes to living in the city, everyone talks about the here and now. We rarely dwell in the past; we certainly don’t think about the afterlife. But when a life comes to an end, people have tended to dial John Kritl Funeral
Home on First Avenue, just south of 70th Street. They’ve been doing so since 1885. Built with gray granite and standing four stories high, the funeral home has been in business since 1885. John Kritl’s great- grandfather, also named John, became an undertaker in one of the Upper East Side’s most diverse diverse enclaves. “The neighborhood was ethnic at the time. It was whoever was here and here basically was usually Czech and Czech- Americans and Slovaks and Hungarians,” Kritl, 58, said. Kritl was the family’s fourth generation to manage the business. He will soon leave it all in the hands
of his nephew, Tom Kritl, currently the assistant manager. But growing up, being a part of what may seem like an atypical family business was nearly conventional. “Everybody knew me from the neighborhood as the undertaker’s son, so it was sort of an acceptable thing— again it was an old-school neighborhood at that time,” he said. Although John has helped out with the business since he was a kid, he received his license in 1979. The Kritls run a full funeral home service. They do burials, arrange for cremations, ship human remains overseas and arrange, in case people do think about it, pre-planning. The family owns the building they both work in and live in, which is at should be in the business: people pass at any hour, after all. The small staff, mostly family, emphasizes comfort and consolation. For
Illustration by John S. Winkleman the Kritls, the value is in the ease they provide families during what can often be a very difficult and stressful time. “You take the burden away, you do what you can to make it easier on these people all of them top to bottom in their time of most need and then you sort of bail out,” he said. Throughout Kritl’s career, the severest tests have fol-
lowed the deaths of children and young people. He tries not to fall into sadness but keeps things professional with clients. “Your service is to those living remaining,” he said. After being in business for 130 years, John has learned the secret in being successful. “If you do it right, then you’re in business since 1885— if you do it wrong you crash and burn,” he said.
In Brief SELLING OFF GREENSPACE AT NYCHA Yet another story emerged this week on a similar theme: How can a city this rich be this broke? Last week it was the crisis in our public libraries. This year, the New York City Housing Authority, which, it emerges, is $100 million in the red. By 2025, that budget gap could grow to $400 million, all while a quarter million people wait for affordable-housing space to open. So what can NYCHA do about any of this? One answer: sell off its green space to developers. According to a piece in The Daily News, the agency has quietly sold 54 plots of open space to developers since 2013 to build new affordable-housing units. More than 400,000 square feet of public land, now gone. Residents are, not surprisingly, tepid on the plan. Open space and parkland are scarce in the city, in general, and in NYCHA complexes, in particular. Parents wonder where their kids will be able to stretch their legs. The saddest part about all of this is that NYCHA may have few other options. Demand for affordable housing is only going up; recent counts put the NYC homeless population at the highest it’s been since World War II. And while new affordable housing units desperately need to be built, the existing stock is desperately in need of repair, with elevators, lights and stairwells chronically in disrepair. So, in a city where the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment goes for more than $3,500, the very neediest among us are stuck with having to choose between a place to live and a patch of grass. Jewish women and girls light up world by lighting the Shabbat an Holiday candles. Passover, Friday, April 3 - 7:04 pm Saturday, April 4 after 8:05 pm from a pre-existing flame For more information visit www.chabaduppereastside.com