11/14/2002 - Today an article was released in the Times Ledger, a newspaper local to various neighborhoods in Queens and Nassau Counties, New York. It is linked to below and centers around an effort by certain groups to refurbish the physical plant that is the Jamaica Avenue/Jericho Turnpike corridor stretching from Bellerose to Floral Park on the Queens-Nassau borderline.
I was approached by the reporter, Joe Whalen, who was put in touch with me by my friend Kevin Walsh (www.forgotten-ny.com). He was doing a story on these plans, the centerpiece of which were the installation of new retro-style faux cast-iron lampposts. Clearly, Mr. Whalen expected me to give a glowing appraisal of the project, since I am known, as he wrote, as being a streetlight aficionado. Little did he realize what I was about to tell him.
First, let me acknowledge right now that I am basically a fairly lazy person. Although I hold strong opinions about a lot of issues, I just don't have the patience to write letters to the editors of papers, or to elected officials. Like so many others, I'll bitch and complain, but ultimately not get much more involved on an issue except for occasional comments seen on some of my scattered website pages, such as my ambivalence towards the Van Wyck corridor Skytrain. I'm deeply indebted, therefore, to Joe Whalen, and The Times Ledger, for affording me the rare chance to both solicit, and to air my views on a matter that I think has finally got to be addressed in my city.
Ever since I first noticed them in Jackson Heights, just off Roosevelt Avenue, in the early 1980's, my city has been deluged by a flood of retro-style lampposts, aluminum castings based on cast-iron designs that once dominated the streets here until wholesale replacement of them occurred in the 1950's and 1960's.
At first it was cute. The real estate mogul Helmsleys really began the craze in the late 1970's when they circled one of their midtown hotels with freshly cast "Bishop Crooks", also known as bishop creeks by some, the classic candy cane shaped poles with pendant type fixtures hanging down from their "handles", variants of which lined streets around the world throughout the 20th century. They could be seen even amidst horrific scenes during WWII, in Berlin, Warsaw, etc.
It began innocently enough with the aluminum "crooks", but 20 years after this mania to bring back the past began, I've begun to wonder what role some flesh and blood crooks might have had, and continue to have, in the "crook" invasion.
At this point, nearly every important street in Manhattan, and many more from Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, have had their monotonous, but serviceable and efficient modern steel and aluminum lampposts ripped down, to be replaced with retros. Many of these duplicate with fair fidelity the classic patterns of the long departed cast-irons. Many more, however, are nothing more than simple standard steel hex poles with fancy trimmings attached, as on Brooklyn's Eastern Pkwy, or bizarre pseudo-retro monstrosities, such as now line Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, Main Street in Flushing and the worst of all, 14th Street in Manhattan.
Now anything good is good only up to a point. Simple economic curves familiar to every college student tell you that sooner or later, everything reaches a point of diminishing returns. First it was one hotel, then a few scattered shopping districts, then lower Manhattan, then 6th Avenue, then the public library, then the pseudo monsters already described, then Columbus Avenue, and so on and so forth, ad infinitem, ad nauseum.
All this time, I never knew, and still don't know in each case, exactly who was paying for these replacements. I always hoped it was private money, from merchant organizations or community groups and the like. I loved the few surviving original poles, but had never really shown much interest in the retros. I didn't totally dislike them, but the idea would never have appealed to me enough for me to want my tax dollars spent on them.
Well, now I know that it is my tax money, and the tax money paid by all New Yorkers, city and state, that pay for this garbage, and I don't like it.
New York City is essentially broke right now. Our Mayor says taxes are going up. Home owners in NYC, many of whom are struggling mid to lower middle class, in neighborhoods like those surrounding Bellerose, may see their tax bills go up by 25%, a staggering amount if they are already wondering where their next mortgage, car or tuition payments will come from, let alone their normal tax bills as they currently stand, not to mention food, clothing and utilities. To allocate over HALF A MILLION DOLLARS to replace perfectly good streetlighting just so a few store owners and commercial landlords can increase their property values is sickening, unconscionable and criminal!
We have hundreds of homeless families, not just winos and junkies, but helpless children, sleeping on the floor of the city shelter system intake center in the Bronx, because there's no place the city has available to send them. Those it does find space for, it warehouses in homeless shelters that Charles Dickens would find familiar, and somehow the city finds thousands of dollars per family to lavish on the owners and operators of these "hotels", these disgusting hotel hells, that have cost me my respect for The Salvation Army, a "charity" that "runs" one of the newest, and possibly the worst of them all, in a bankrupt Best Western near Kennedy Airport, mere miles from where lampposts will take priority over getting these unfortunate children, HUNDREDS of whom are corralled in this shelter, into their own homes in normal apartments.
WHERE THE GODDAMNED HELL ARE OUR PRIORITIES?
State Senator Frank Padavan was among the boosters of this lighting project, and the obscene public funds grant that was given away to the merchants and landlords of Jericho Turnpike, and I call on him to reverse his position and seek revocation of this grant. I also want an end to all publicly funded streetlight replacement that is done merely for aesthetics and not for the pure purpose of improving the lighting efficiency or mechanics.
I want to see an investigation of all contracts, past and present, involving these streetlight replacements, and of the public officials who jumped on the bandwagon pushing for these projects.
The scant handful of honest to goodness cast-iron survivors were enough for me. I don't need the retros and neither do the taxpayers, the renters, the homeowners, the homeless and the city.

11/11/2002 - I want to extend my heartfelt condolences and prayers to the victims of the terrible tornadoes and violent storms that have wreaked havoc across many states. My heart goes out to those communities devastated by this destruction. I spent some wonderful time this past summer in North Carolina, my first trip south of DC since childhood, and hope to see more of the south in time to come. Although I realize its asking too much, given the way our planet's nature has been created, I pray that this region gets a much needed break from these marauding, murderous twisters, which always seem to zero in on the most economically hurting towns and counties. More could be done to hamper a tornadoe's ability to touch down and run wild and I should think between all of them, our government, universities, think tanks and corporations could fund programs to strategically plant more trees, or build windbreaking structures in strategic spots to provide a benefit to twister prone areas much as clusters of tall buildings seem to do for most city centers. My understanding is that a twister cannot get a foothold in a densely built up area. Many rural sections full of cleared farmland and lowrise structures simply lack enough of these "spikes" sticking up from the ground to deny these monstrous storms a landing pad, and even if they land, they would likely loose strength when forced to cut through what in essense would be like barbed wire to them, if a thicket of either trees or false towers were set before them. Maybe I'm off the wall, but is anyone in government or academia even studying this?. Are we waiting until one of these days a school full of hundreds of kids is totaled, or a theater, or a mall, with possibly four or five figure casualty counts? Our universities have got to stop concentrating on turning out hordes of useless left-wing radicals who do nothing but help tear down society, values and morals. Frankly, these schools have got to do a better job of cranking out scientists and engineers who can solve more down to earth problems like storm control, or does it offend their twisted liberal sensibilities to possibly violate the rights of tornadoes to freely express their nature?