About a week ago I got a postcard about a town meeting at the Lenox Hill Neighborhood House, about the Second Avenue Subway.
But Seth, there is no Second Avenue Subway.
That's why there was meeting. In attendance were Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, Manhattan Borough President Virginia Fields, and City Councilman Gifford Miller. I met and spoke with all of them; read on.
En route to the meeting I ran into an egg Tony dated twice--Mr. D. It was the Grover Cleveland of dating. Dated him in two nonconsecutive bouts in two different years. We have a lot of nicknames for him, none of them nice, even though, at the end of the day, he's not evil. He works for some transit agency. Cannot figure it all out, actually.
The room was filled to SRO by the time they started. Before the meeting began, Carolyn Maloney, the Stepford Member of Congress, who has had the corners of her eyes and mouth surgically altered to make sure it looks like she's happy to see you, said, "HI! HOW ARE YOU!?!" Mr. D said, "You know her?" Of course I don't. She's a politician.
The emcee was Virgina Fields, an affable woman who needs diction lessons. She was dressed in purple and spoke with emphasis in every other word. Essentially, Barney the Dinosaur trying to sound like Jesse Jackson, and not succeeding. She means well, and that's half the battle.
Everyone seems to agree that we desperately need another subway line. A bond was approved in 1929 and construction was begun in the late 1960s. We once had three transit lines up here and now we only have the Lexington Avenue line. Yet they keep building and building. Why? Because the subway's impending arrival in the late 1950s allowed zoning for large apartment buildings. SO they arrived and the subway didn't.
Of course there were the usual eggs in the audience getting in their two cents. My favorite? The guy who said, "Why not have it on First Avenue?" Hello. When the zoned it, they made sure that cables and pipes were not set up in Second Avenue. Digging under First Avenue would be a nightmare.
Personally, I want a private subway car right outside my fire escape. My apartment wasn't noisy enough.
Well, after a rousing two hours in which just about everyone expressed a desire for the project, I met the officials. Gifford Miller has Nile-green eyes and a dead look behind them. He's a Republican and of course that scares me.
Neither he nor Maloney would talk with me. Ms. Fields did, and she was pleasant, but had not good answer for the question, "Why don't we stop the new construction until the subway is built?"
That's the question I would love to have answered. Do we need that many more cheap-looking high-rise apartments on Third Avenue? The answer is obvious.
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