Cardvaark Conservationist?

The Cardvaark that swallowed the canary?

New York gets a little more expensive today as the MTA rolls out its latest fare hikes. Single rides up a quarter; monthly unlimited cards 8 bucks; and one-way tolls on the Verrazano Narrows Bridge (and 6 others) up 2 bucks.

The good news? The MTA is going green. Ssort of. It will now charge a $1 surcharge for every new MetroCard. The goal is to prevent the rampant carpeting of subway stations with busted cards (and, incidentally, net the MTA an estimated $20M in revenue).

Thing of the past?

In another earth-friendly move, the MTA has decided to eliminate the wasteful printing of posters to inform riders on the 7 line that, once again, there is no weekend service between Queensborough Plaza and Times Square. Now, the only posters will be occasional ones reading: "Surprise! The 7 train is running between Queens and Manhattan this weekend." Thanks, Cardvaark!

State Song Blues

Massachusetts is having a good old-fashioned political dust-up over a new state song. It started when an activist named Joyce Linehan lobbied a group of state reps to propose Jonathan Richman's "Roadrunner" to be voted the state song. Good choice, right? "Massachusetts when it's late at night. Route 128 when it's late at night... With the radio on." Not everybody thought so. Two other representatives are pushing for Aerosmith's "Dream On."

This correspondent's sympathies are with the Modern Lover, but it's BTB policy not to interfere in another state's politics. It did get me thinking, though, what would be a good song for New York? To prime the pump, I'll throw out a possibility. It's too long, the title will never fly*, but Patti Smith's "Piss Factory" captures something essential of the New York spirit (or myth):

Welcome to New York!

And I'm gonna go, I'm gonna get out of here 
I'm gonna get out of here, I'm gonna get on that train, 
I'm gonna go on that train and go to New York City 
I'm gonna be somebody, I'm gonna get on that train, go to New York City, 
I'm gonna be so bad I'm gonna be a big star and I will never return, 
Never return, no, never return, to burn out in this piss factory 
And I will travel light. 
Oh, watch me now. 

What's your candidate?

(*To be clear, the "piss factory" refers to her job in New Jersey, not New York.)

Gimme Sequester!

Good morning, Mr. Boehner! Here's a little ditty from Stephen Foster just for you:

Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Emmylou Harris, Mary Black, and a very young Rufus Wainwright.

Gimme Seltzer!

Hooray! A Beer Mayim seltzer truck on the BQE. It even explains what seltzer is (for the uninitiated or the uncarbonated*): "Natural spring water with carbonation"!

(*Was it Socrates who said, "The uncarbonated life is not worth living"?)

Men in Black

Parallel universe parking

Periodically, I ditch the Staten Island Expressway early and take the slow route to work. Winding and bumping along Richmond Terrace, with the water to your right, it's easy to imagine yourself in an earlier century. A time when this would have been a bustling waterfront. I shouldn't have been so surprised, then, when I came around one curve in the road to find a Model T puttering down Port Richmond Avenue. A quick look up the avenue revealed half a dozen more, plus all the personnel and equipment for a film shoot. The HBO show Boardwalk Empire had taken over this part of the old Port Richmond downtown. Good call. It's been trapped in time for decades. One upside of utter urban despair is that nobody bothered to tear down these great early twentieth century buildings.

With the filming of Damsels in Distress on the grounds of Snug Harbor and Boardwalk Empire in Port Richmond, could Staten Island become Hollywood on the Kill Van Kull?

What Lies Beneath

You could hear the woman talking into her cellphone from the other end of the subway car: "I'm walking down the block now." A head lifted here, an eyebrow there, a glance or two were exchanged. The 1 train was just pulling into 103rd St. station. A moment later, she was off the train. Astonishing, when you think of it. So far underground, and the call went through for enough time to deliver the message. The presence of mind to deliver it nonchalantly. Much more interesting, probably, than the story it belied: a babysitter late for a pick-up or a mother late to relieve one? Whatever the little lie was about, for just a moment, we were all complicit.

WMDs on the BQE?

Slam dunk!

I happened to catch a few minutes of Rachel Maddow's MSNBC documentary "Hubris: Selling the Iraq War." Not much new here (though it was nice to see Valerie Plame again!). It reminded me of the artist's rendering of what Colin Powell referred to, in his infamous 2003 UN speech, as the Iraqi "mobile weapons labs," or, as I called them, "cartoon trucks."*

Good thing, too, as it put me on the alert. I was able to capture this snap yesterday of a highly suspicious mega-vehicle on the BQE. Has the Al Qaida infiltration begun?

(Apologies to the Ippolito's)

(*Later thought to be mobile weather stations. Meteorology is murder.)