Shaping the Future of NYC

A local church in Bayside, Queens. It is interesting how a largely Caucasian church is now holding services for a Chinese Audience to fit the changing demographics of the neighborhood.

There is no subway station in Bayside, so to get to the city, you have to take a 40 minute bus ride to the 7 train in Flushing Main St. Either that, or pay the extra $5 for the Long Island Railroad to Penn station.

The local park is a great place to bring the family for a picnic. Just make sure the kids are not swimming in the lake.

I am sure everyone is familiar with this location. Here is a hint: we take this train every day.

Some law abiding car drivers stopping at a red light and wondering why that strange Asian boy is taking a photo of them.

The same road, just the other direction.

A common scene in city: a New Yorker hailing a cab.

A broken traffic sign lying on the floor. Someone call 311!

I am not sure what DANE stands for, but it is gratified on the side of our dorm building.

The view from my dorm building window. Home sweet home at last.

Reading Guide

1. What does Department of City Planning (DCP) certification of an application mean?
DCP certification of an application means that all the necessary forms, plans and documents are present and that the application is ready for review.

2. Who are the major participants in the review process?
The major participants in the review process are Community Board, Borough President and the City Council.  If necessary, the Borough Board is also involved.

3. What is the time allotted for each phase of the process?
Within 60 days of receiving the application, the Community Board is required to hold a public hearing, submit a written recommendation to CPC, the applicant, the Borough President, if necessary, the Borough Board.
Within 30 days of receiving the Community Board recommendation (or within 30 days of the expiration of the CB review period, should they fail to send a recommendation) the Borough President should send a recommendation to the City Planning Commission.
Within 60 days of the Borough President’s review, the CPC must hold a public hearing and approve, approve and modify or disapprove the application.

4. What role does the mayor play in the review process?
The mayor can veto an application within five days of the vote, but otherwise a decision by the City Council should be considered final.

5. Which bodies must hold a public hearing during the review process?
The Community Board and the City Planning Commission must hold public hearings.

6. Who makes the final decision in the approval or disapproval of a land use application?
The City Council decision is considered final unless the mayor vetoes the Council action.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=17363&id=1384800020&l=014d4

This is a facebook link.

I wake up late. It is a Saturday, close to noon. Looking out my window, I expect to see a bright happy view, waiting to call me out of doors. Even in sleep I feel the gentle touch of sunlight on my face. I can tell, today is one of those stay outside all day. I open my eyes slowly. I know what I will see, but still I hope for trees and clouds.

I strain to see the ground. This is not a problem I encountered growing up in Brooklyn. Giving up on amusing myself with an interesting view of the street, I try a different view.

I look up. This is a bad decision. I see none of the natural, expected colors.  The area in front of me is dominated by beige and gray, concrete and glass. Sunlight glares off the windows three or four floors above me. By this I know there is life out there somewhere, looking straight ahead, it would be hard to tell. The light prevents me from looking in the windows of the building across the street. In the giant glass windows I see a reflection of my window, and all the other windows in my building. The beautifully organized suicide proof windows, distorted by the windowpanes opposite.

I am no longer determined to move out of doors. Instead I stay inside, watching TV, reading, daydreaming. Then I get hungry. The kitchen is disgusting, that’s what happens when 50 teenagers use the same facilities. I use it anyway, what else can I do? While I wait for the water to boil, I read the sign. “BEWARE THE MUTANT ROACHES! AHHH!” I laugh, until I see them.

Cockroaches have never fazed me, but I can’t help being disgusted. I start to understand the urge to eat out. Eating out has so many advantages. There are no dishes, counters, or stoves to clean. No time taken to prepare, food is simply a phone call away. Its so simple I sometimes think I’m crazy for enjoying dealing with the problems and the dirt that cooking in New York City presents.

By the time I finally leave the dorms, it is dark. I meet my friends at the train station. This is always my favorite meeting spot. In a city full of places to go, there are too many nondescript places and large chains. I have spent too many hours waiting for a friend in the “Starbucks on Astor Place,” while they were waiting across the street in the “Starbucks on Astor Place.” Somehow the train station is more prominent. It also provides me with a great spot for people watching. Today there are mostly young people exiting the station, walking quicker, and with more of a purpose than suits usually do during the evening rush hour.

Walking down the street, I notice the cities free newspaper receptacles. They are empty. I start analyzing my life. Why have these particular bins caught my attention? What is so significant about them? Why are they empty? I don’t want to think about what this means. They shouldn’t mean anything to me. I keep walking, and I don’t look back.

In stark contrast to the empty newspaper bins, I next notice the full trashcan, leaking all over the sidewalk. This is just one trashcan, but I know that on every other corner there is another full trashcan. How do other cities stay clean? Even with the amount of litter in New York, we still manage to fill up the trashcans. There are even towns and cities with no trashcans. I am in awe of the clean cities of the world.

We are almost home when we pass the tank. It so out of place. Its massive weight sits demurely by the sidewalk. A taxi has pulled up right behind it, the passengers get out, pay the cabbie, and walk off. No one notices. Maybe the camouflage coloring really works, but I don’t believe that.

And finally, I found a phone booth. These things are fairly hard to come by now a days. Everyone has a cell phone, so the city has let the booths fall into disrepair. More money is put into the advertisements on the sides than into actual calls. Communication has evolved. Its not stationary anymore, I can take everything with me as I walk. There is no reason to make a call from a booth when we can have a conversation in the 10 minuets it takes to walk from the train station. New inventions are always made in the interest of saving time. New Yorkers always need more time. They always rush, they can never slow down.

1. What does Department of City Planning (DCP) certification of an application mean?

This means that an application is complete and ready for public review. The application must contain all materials necessary to address any and all issues that might be related to the project or application in question.

1. Who are the major participants in the review process?

The major participants in the review process are the department of city planning, the Borough President, the Community Board, City Council, and the mayor.

1. What is the time allotted for each phase of the process?

The Community board is given 60 days to review the application. The Borough President has 30 days unless the Community board fails to act in which case the Borough President has 30 days from the end of the Community board’s 60 days. Within 60 days of the expiration of the Borough President’s review the CPC must hold public hearing to determine whether to approve, modify, or disapprove the application. The City Council does review’s only certain applications.

1. What role does the mayor play in the review process?

The mayor is not required to approve a CPC decision, but can veto one within 5 days of CPC approval. This veto can be overridden with a 2/3 vote in council. The Mayor can also veto an approval 50 days after it’s been approved of the council has taken no action (he has 5 days to do this). Again the council can override this veto with a 2/3 vote (within 10 days).

1. Which bodies must hold a public hearing during the review process?

Both the Community board and the City Planning Commission must hold public hearings during the review process.

1. Who makes the final decision in the approval or disapproval of a land use application?

The City Planning Commission makes the final decision in the approval or disapproval of a land use application.

Red brick makes up a multitude of New York. For generations strangers have shared the confines of layer upon layer of brick and called them home. This is the sort of common experience that bonds New Yorkers. This is my apartment building.

Riding for minutes or hours inside, above, and around the ground from one land mass to another is a New York routine. A little conversation always makes it nicer.

The simple pleasures of delicious food (especially the best maduros in Queens) are a special part of a New Yorker’s community.

This is the other KFC, the one you only know about of you’re willing to leave Manhattan, it’s our dirty little secret (it actually tastes better) .

Your neighborhood, my neighborhood, the little shops, and colors, and people, and art that make up an area. When you see this, you know instinctively home is not far away.

Entertainment…as though life weren’t funny enough. Sometimes the only release from the boiling, surging emotions of New York…Laugh it out.

Like every other part of New York everything is for everyone, and culture runs thick and intertwines in the most mundane and most exiting places.

Travel is again a constant in the busy, chaotic world of the boroughs.

One often needs to relax in new and familiar places. A burger at 4am Sunday morning, no questions asked, few other cities support their night owls so well.

Returning to a home away from home. The street signs will always be there though, as if to say, “this way’s nice, of course that ways very nice too…” Which, when one’s in New York is usually true.

A dock for one of the more unseen, silent movers in the city.  These designated bicyle parking areas feel like a refuge from the manic speed with which the cycler dodges the vectors of greater momentum.

We are always in the valleys, looking up.  My experience of the city is so dictated by my not-being-able-to-be-in-every-window.

Speaking of windows…

We are all so close to one another’s lives (inches away!), yet we cannot cross that laughable distance and witness another facet of our jewel.  Again, so many windows, so many lives (so many gorgeous apartments..).

What am I glimpsing here?  Massive steel crates of cargo, long travel, ships on BIG oceans, de/recontextualized objects, de/recontextualized people, hands with boxes passing by hands with boxes?  We stand wherever we are, looking around, seeing only hidden information.  All the information in this city is hidden.

Good morning, driver.  What?  My, that’s a long route!  You were there, but now you’re here.  You are here, but you just recently entered.  The things I see in front of me, now, are here, but our things come from all over.  Everything COMES here.  How much is born?

What was: fade awayyyy into our rubble and spread your disintegrating self once again over the wide, welcoming land.

Yumm.  Perfume.

Aerobics class!  With a bit of meaning-fulfillment for free!

Sometimes we are reminded of what we are standing on.

We still have sky above us and air around us.  There will always be wind.  I can breath deeply and feel particularly excellent when I let myself feel the air moving through everyone.

1. The DCP’s certification of an application means that an application is complete and is ready for public review by the ULURP process.

2. The major participants in the review process are the Community Board, the Borough President, the City Planning Commission, and if necessary the City Council and the Mayor.

3. The Community Board Review is permitted to take 60 days for their review of the application, the Borough President may take 30 days, the CPC has 60 days to complete their portion of the application review process, and when necessary the City Council has 50 days to complete their portion when they do review an application (because they don’t review every application).

4. The Mayor does not play a large or frequent role in the application process, but may veto a City Council ruling on an application within 5 days of its decision, or can take action on an application if the City Council has not taken action within their 50 day time limit. However, the City Council may always overrule the Mayor’s decision with a 2/3 majority vote.

5. The Community Board and CPC must hold a public hearing in their portions of the review process. The City Council is only required to hold a public hearing under certain circumstances, such as a “triple no” scenario.

6. The City Council makes the final decision of approval or disapproval of an application, because even in cases of Mayoral Review, it is possible for the City Council to override the Mayor’s decision.

twilight from my window

reflection in the sky

tree: post rain, on asphalt

shooting a film, riverside

night bridge

the runway, a new lane on the brooklyn bridge

kids and koons

cloudbreak

a case for 311

These are pictures taken with my cellphone, of things or instances I thought somehow beautiful. Together they illustrate some sort of New York. And interestingly enough, they all feature the sky.

Everyone knows McDonalds! Its Cheap, and its everywhere. White’s NY probably didn’t have a McDonalds or Starbucks on every corner. Also this isn’t actually at 42nd and Third, its on 23rd and First.

This is on the River, and there’s a place to run and walk your dog if you have one. It’s nice to just sit when the weather is nice! And its near our dorms, so its easy to walk to!

Central Park! Everyone knows Central Park, but I think its gotten better because now there are no more shanty towns in the fields, although with our recent recession maybe people will move back into Central Park.

This is my interpretation of what New Yorkers are like. We’re rude and we have a lot of attitude. This is probably why in White’s time, people thought New York was nice, but they didn’t want to move here.

This is me and Christina at one of our favorite hangout places. Its an outdoor hookah bar. It’s a nice place to meet new people and experience a culture that isn’t our own.

This is at the Pier on Riverside on the West Side. The West side gets no love anymore. But its hard to imagine 1000 foot ships coming into this river, but if White says so it must be true.

This picture came out tiny. Its of me with a person I met playing darts. New York is definitely a place to meet people, which is awesome.

South Street Seaport and the Brooklyn Bridge. I feel like South Street Seaport doesn’t get  lot of love, but it’s definitely kind of like its own little town within New York. Which is interesting, there are lots of places to eat and shop and street performers. I think it embodies New York in that sense a lot.

This is the New York of my adolescence! My roof in Washington Heights! In one direction you can see all of New York (the empire state building, the statue of liberty) and in the other the George Washington Bridge. You can’t see it but the roof is covered in street art, and its beautiful and the city should look more like my roof.

This is on 215th street. There are lots of place that you can see if you just climb over fences and ignore the “DO NOT ENTER” signs. This is on the Hudson River and theres  perfect little place to sit on a rock and hang out and theres no trash because no one knows that it exists!