Josh Benson, a representative from the Department of Transportation, said that construction would begin by the end of this year, and be completed in only a few months. During the Community Board meeting, dozens of bike riders wore pink “I Heart Bicycles” stickers handed out by the advocacy group, Upper West Side Streets Renaissance, in favor of the proposition.

“This is a complete street solution,” said Joseph Barkowski, 26, an Upper West Side resident who bikes to the East Side every day. “It allows cyclists to slow down, feel safe and make their way downtown. The goal is zero pedestrian and cyclist fatalities.”

Seven out of the 10 community board members voted yes, agreeing that longer, protected routes for bicyclists would be safer. Also, the new lane would hopefully encourage more people to use this greener form of transportation.

“I dream of a more livable city,” Mary Beth Kelly said during the public session. Kelly is an Upper West Side resident whose husband died in a cycling accident.

But not everyone in the community approved of the Columbus Avenue bike lane plan. For one thing, the plan takes away approximately 90 parking spaces. For another, the bike lane would also run through the extremely dangerous three-way  “bowtie of death” intersection of Broadway, Amsterdam and 71st Street, and the construction site of the third water tunnel, which is not expected to be complete until 2020.

“We think that bringing anything into the bowtie before construction of the third water tunnel is finished is unsafe,” said Monica Blum, director of the Lincoln Square Business Improvement District. “We’ve also spoken to businesses who are against these bike lanes; it would be directly where their loading zones are.”

Because of these objections, Mark Diller, chair of CB7 chair added said amendments were added to the resolution. First, the board will speak with schools whose students board and disembark buses on Columbus Avenue. For concerned businesses, the board proposed specific loading and unloading zones and times for deliveries.  Finally, Diller also said that the board is working on a solution for blind pedestrians who will be crossing directly into the path of moving bikes.

“It’s not a ‘we vote yes and go home’ kind of thing,” Diller said.

The next step in the process would be vote for the Department of Transportation to review the board’s plan before construction can begin.

Looking for that elusive “Made in U.S.A.” label? Whether for ecological or ideological reasons, increasing numbers of consumers are searching for domestically made wares. While stores have sprouted across the country boasting exclusively U.S.-made everyday items, who you gonna call when you want some charmingly offbeat novelty items, folk-art crafts and classic examples of Americana?

Why, you can’t do better than to call on our very own—accept no substitutes—American Folk Art Museum gallery, at 2 Lincoln Square, which is on Columbus Avenue near 65th Street. (You can also gawk at the sheer perfection that is Liz Cho as she and co-anchor Bill Ritter do their Channel 7 newscast just a scant block or so north in their glass-walled newsroom.)

Among the current standout items at AFAM gallery’s ever-varied offerings are the reproductions of original collages created by Ian Nicholas, a self-taught, British-born artist. In case you’re thinking, “British? Why that’s positively un-American,” be advised Nicholas now lives in Georgia—yes, the one here; not in Eurasia—and his works are proudly declared to be “Handmade in U.S.A.”

“We do not change as we grow older, we simply become more clearly ourselves,” one of the artworks discreetly reads. The quote captions a stunning print on a painted canvas stretched over a wooden frame ready for hanging. Pictured is a lovely, graceful white-gowned woman with a vintage countenance (1920s-1940s?) who, improbably, sports giant butterfly wings. She stands, arms outstretched, against a vivid turquoise background that includes, also improbably but delightfully, the Eiffel Tower, flowers on the vine, a canceled “Paris” postal stamp, a faint but fanciful foreign script and more.

If this approximately eight-inch-square work speaks to you, be advised it can be yours for—I would have guessed more—$29. Other pieces in the variously-sized collection include enchanting visuals based around such quotes as “When it is dark enough, you can see the stars” and “Nobody has ever measured, even poets, how much a heart can hold.”

Going from the poetic to the playful, here there are all sorts of classic childhood games, such as—made in U.S.A.!—$10 sets of dominoes and marbles in vintage-look reusable tins featuring happy children. The marbles are meant to be used in “shooting games;” but don’t worry if you or the kids don’t yet have the skill—included with the set of 48 glassy orbs and two large shooters is a 20-page handbook.

Hey, if you didn’t find a Slinky at your local thrift shop (as per last week’s column), fear not—they’re here, as you might expect “a family classic since 1945!” to be. Need I add this retro-priced $7 “original walking spring toy” is made in the U.S.A.?

Tattoo you—your hands, that is. For kids of all ages (well, three and up is advised), there are Robot Hands temporary tats, featuring colorful high-tech gears and stuff for decorating digits so that the index finger and thumb form a robotic, moving “mouth.” More traditional Animal Hands are also available; your choice, $7.

As an example of the range of goods here, consider now the chanchitos, golf-ball-size three-legged pigs that look like they’re crafted of wood, but are actually ceramic. Villagers in Chile—a country in South America, so we won’t quibble—believe the critters bring good luck. At only $4 per for genuine folk art, what’s to think about?

“What do we want? Contract! When do we want it? Now!” chanted the workers, banging on scaffolding and clapping along. “People united will never be defeated! People united will never be defeated!”

The rally, staged by Service Employees International Union’s 32BJ chapter, was held to help 1 Lincoln Square’s 18 building workers unionize. According to the workers, their requests to join 32BJ have been shot down by the building’s condo board, which they claim is providing them with benefits and advancement opportunities inferior to what they would get from the union.
“I’m getting older,” said one worker, Terrence McGovern, head concierge who has worked in the building for 16 years. “I’ve got my own family. My kids are growing up. I need to provide.”
According to Joe Eisman, residential organizing coordinator at 32BJ, an employee who has worked in 1 Lincoln Square for as long as McGovern could afford to retire for less than a year with the building’s current benefits package. The building also provides no access to citywide training programs for trades like plumbing and carpentry—courses that cost up to $20,000 if paid for out of pocket—which allow workers to move forward in their careers.

To become part of a union, workers must demonstrate to their employer that a majority wants to join, then the employer must recognize the union and negotiate a contract. Employees at 1 Lincoln Square said that their problem is recognition: The building’s condo board refuses to listen to their requests.

“When I was on the board, it was important for us to make sure that the guys were on par with the union or better than the union,” said Joyce Silver, a longtime resident of the building who served as the board’s president 10 years ago. “That was our mandate—to make sure that the guys were happy.” Silver came out to the protest to tell the workers that she supported them. According to her, their paltry benefits were the result of the current board’s neglect.

Heather Albert, another resident at the rally (and the wife of famous sportscaster Marv Albert), agreed. “They’re cheap,” she said of the board, and called its members “a five-member dictatorship.”

“We’re really never given any information about what’s going on this building,” she added. “They’re saying this is the way we’re doing it and that’s it.”

She assured the workers that the residents were on their side. “You guys have always been here for us,” she said, “and we want to be here for you.”

McGovern and a fellow worker, doorman Nelson Arias, affirmed the workers’ good relationship with the building’s residents, and agreed that their problems seemed to come from the current board.
“If we ever had a problem back then, we always went to the board and they helped us out,”

McGovern said. “But now they’ve become more management focused and now it has totally turned. Before, they’d sit down and talk to you, and it’d be an amicable solution. Now it’s turned into either take it or leave it.”

He noted that the board worried that unionizing would create a wedge between workers and residents, but ironically it was the board itself that kept them apart. “We’re professionals. I’ve been doing this for 16 years. If I become union, it’s not going to stop me from doing my job,” he said. “I know my responsibilities and my duties, and I’ll still go above and beyond the call of duty to help all the residents out.”

The board, via a Cooper Square Realty spokesperson, could not be reached, and did not respond to requests for comments on the rally. Silver and Albert are both running for positions on the board in the next election, which will be held in January.

“This is a West Side moment,” said City Councilmember Gale Brewer, who showed up to support the workers and 32BJ. “People walk down their street and they see big tall buildings and they don’t understand that there are people in them that care deeply about the neighborhood, workers’ rights, not just about themselves.”

For residents to show up to the rally and voice their support, she said, was “very special, very wonderful.”

The hearing opened with a presentation by the DOT that reviewed safety statistics of the current bike lane, which was installed in late 2010. According to the department, the one-mile stretch has seen a 48 percent increase in cyclists on the road since the path was created, with fewer cyclists riding illegally on sidewalks and a reduced rate of injuries. The number of crashes without injuries has actually risen, but the DOT attributed this increase to people getting used to the new setup as well as the greater number of cyclists.

Josh Benson, the DOT’s bicycle and pedestrian director, then introduced the expansion proposal, which aims to connect the Upper West Side to the bike lane that runs along Ninth Avenue. The majority of the extended lane would mimic the current path, with a green “protected” lane that is separated from car lanes by a painted section of road. This buffer zone, in some spots, is used for parking and pedestrian crossing islands. Between West 63rd and 66th Streets, in a complex set of intersections by Lincoln Center called “the Bowtie,” the DOT would install shared bike lanes in which cars could drive, but not pass cyclists.

Benson said that the lane extension would increase safety, reduce traffic congestion, make for greener streets and shorten pedestrian crossings.

Many speakers from the public enthusiastically agreed. The majority of public attendees were in favor of the expansion, as demonstrated when Upper West Side Streets Renaissance Director Lisa Sladkus stepped up to the microphone for comments and asked supporters to raise their hands.
“The status quo on our streets is unacceptable,” Sladkus said. “We have the opportunity here to build something better, and the data from the first mile of this project tells us that we need to do it.”
Some supporters’ endorsements were more tentative, however. Elizabeth Carpenter, a physician at New York University, spoke of getting sideswiped by a car in a shared lane. “It’s just not enough without some sort of physical protection barrier from cars,” she said, arguing against the safety of the proposed Bowtie path.

Following comments, the Transportation Committee decided that they needed more time before voting to support or combat the proposal. The DOT already had said that it would not begin installing lane extensions until after winter, CB7 Chair Mark Diller pointed out, so no immediate resolution was necessary.

Eyewear Raid
Last Wednesday around noon, a group of five men swarmed a Sunglass Hut store on Broadway, working together to steal 17 pairs of frames before the store employee could do anything to stop them. The quintet made off with pricey models from Prada, Burberry, Gucci and a slew of Ray-Bans, worth a total of $3,435.

A Deathly Raid
When a 74-year-old man was taken to the hospital from his home by paramedics in December, he asked them to make sure to lock his apartment when they left. But when his friend checked on the apartment for the still hospital-bound man, he discovered the door unlocked. The victim instructed his friend to search the apartment to see if anything was missing. Unfortunately, that was the case; the thief got away with a gauntlet of depressing items, including $600 the man had been saving for funeral costs as well as a $500 burial suit. The total ghastly haul was worth $1,340.

Bad Luck at Local Hotel
In two separate unrelated incidents last week, guests of a popular Upper West Side hotel were robbed when they weren’t in their rooms. In the first case, a woman visiting from the Comoros Islands (a small cluster off the southeastern coast of Africa) came back to her room after going out to discover a bag of jewelry that had been in her luggage was missing. The bag contained eight items worth a total of $1,225, including an opal necklace with a gold chain and a pair of emerald earrings. The next day, security cameras caught an unknown perpetrator entering the room of a man from Scarsdale and taking $5,784 worth of computer equipment and personal items, including a MacBook Pro, a passport, expensive sunglasses and a $849 copy of Photoshop and Final Cut Pro software.

Drugged Out Drugstore Robbery

Three men were arrested after they teamed up to rob a Duane Reade on Columbus Avenue last Thursday at 1:30 p.m. The trio grabbed $2,574 worth of merchandise, including Mucinex, Crest Whitestrips, Prilosec and several allergy meds, and strolled past the open registers without even a glance back. When the store employees called the cops and the three were apprehended, police found a crack pipe in one of the men’s front pockets, as well as other drug paraphernalia in a red duffle bag they were carrying.

Kid Escapes Mugging
Another potential victim of a grab-and-go iPhone theft was able to thwart his would-be attacker last week. The perp approached the 12-year-old victim on the street and asked for the time. The victim checked his iPhone, told him the time and put it back in his pocket, but the man followed him for several blocks on West 77th Street as the kid walked to school. At one point, the impatient thief grabbed the boy’s sweater, and when the kid asked if he was about to be mugged, the perp told him, “Yes, I’m going to mug you.” He wasn’t as prescient as he thought, however; the kid squirmed free and made a dash for his teacher, who was able to confirm the story to police.

Residents in support of the retail rezoning plan. Photo by Andrew Schwartz.

Last night dozens of supporters and a fair number of detractors showed up at Community Board 7’s meeting to express their views on the proposed retail rezoning initiative for the Upper West Side. The proposal from the City Planning Commission would limit storefront widths along certain sections of Broadway, Amsterdam and Columbus Avenue, in an effort to encourage small individually-owned “mom and pop” shops and keep big banks and chain stores out.

Several small business owners came to speak in support of the measure. Bruce Stark, one of the owners of Beacon Paint on Amsterdam Avenue between W. 77th and 78th Streets, said that his family’s hardware store has been in the neighborhood for 112 years and hopes that this rezoning would allow them to stay another 112 years.

“This is a very important [thing] for me, because what would stop my landlord from saying, you know, let’s take that store and the one next to it and the one next to it and make one big store and triple the rent,” Stark said.

Monica Blum, president of the Lincoln Square BID, came to beg the board not to approve it for fear that it may come to her district next and to defend the big box stores other were railing against.

“We think drug stores [like Duane Reade] today are the five-and-dimes of the past,” Blum said, a comment that elicited booing from the crowd. She continued, stating that large, established chains are better, more stable bets for landlords to rent to, and said that the BID fears that this zoning would lead to empty retail chains. Barbara Adler, president of the Columbus Avenue BID, asked the board to amend the proposal to exclude their area, a move that the board considered but ultimately rejected.

Anne Shirazi spoke to represent the West 100th Street Block Association, and testified that she and her neighbors support the proposal because they see too many small businesses ousted in favor of larger retail outlets.

“Columbus Avenue is like a New Jersey mall,” Shirazi said. “It’s not a neighborhood. We must pass zoning to protect what is left of small independent businesses.”

Others spoke about how small businesses often contribute to the neighborhood, by sponsoring Little League teams, participating in Safe Haven programs for kids, or just having the flexibility to be available for special circumstances. Others warned that this proposal would do nothing to actually protect the beloved small shops.

“Contextual zoning doesn’t lower rents, it doesn’t prevent someone from being kicked out of their space, it doesn’t protect anyone from the higher costs,” said resident Alexander Medwedew. “There’s too much competition for the same amount of space.” He advocated opening up other areas for small business instead of changing the currently zoned areas.

Ultimately the board approved the proposal, after considering and rejecting an amendment to carve out individual landmarks. They did, however, adopt an amendment asking for City Planning to adhere to a 90-day time limit in approving variances to the zoning for existing small businesses. The proposal will now move to Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer’s office for the next phase of approvals, and the City Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on April 11 to hear community concerns.

An expansion of property on Columbus Avenue and West 95th Street that would have dramatically changed the block’s landscape has been dropped.

The Witkoff Group pulled its application to renovate a 248-apartment building on 95 W. 95th St. called Columbus House.

The plan called for building a two-story structure that would have wrapped around the base of the 33-story residential tower. That addition would have created 4,950 square feet of retail space along Columbus Avenue between West 95th and 96th streets. But it also would have closed pathways between buildings and have been built to the property line, eliminating a wide patch of sidewalk on Columbus Avenue.

The office of Council Member Gale Brewer announced that the proposal was withdrawn. Brewer was pleased that the project would spare trees that would have been removed.

“The broad sidewalks and double rows of trees along Columbus Avenue are vital aspects of the entire Columbus Avenue Urban Renewal Corridor stretching south from 96th Street to 88 Street,” she said in a statement.

Nearby small businesses feared they would be edged out in favor of new chain stores, similarly to the retail scene on Columbus Avenue just three blocks north. (Scott Alper, a partner at the Witkoff Group, denied this and emphasized its support of small businesses.)

Anne Cottavoz, the owner of Columbus Natural Food, had collected signatures and posted signs in nearby businesses to organize opposition to her landlord’s plan. An employee at her store said Cottavoz was unavailable for a comment until Monday Aug. 23.

Alper, the partner at Witkoff Group, hasn’t returned requests for a comment.