Community Board 6 Chair Mark Thompson said that while the board hasn’t taken an official position on the rezoning proposal, they are generally supportive of it. The biggest problem, he said, is that the city wants to plow ahead with the plan before allowing adequate time to answer the community’s questions and figure out how a potential business boom in Midtown would affect other city systems. Thompson said the board is concerned that the city isn’t giving enough consideration to ancillary factors like sidewalk crowding, an influx of subway and bus passengers and the impact on the electric grid and sewer systems that would come along with a rapid upward expansion of Midtown office buildings.

The board will be sending a letter to City Council Member Dan Garodnick requesting a meeting and his assistance in getting the DCP to steady the pace as they continue, and is working in conjunction with Community Board 5, which shares their concerns.

Renewed Calls for Pedicab Restrictions
Upper East Side Council Member Dan Garodnick, chair of the consumer affairs committee, has consistently called for stricter regulations of the pedicab industry, citing the high number of complaints that his committee has received from customers who feel they were ripped off. The New York Post reported earlier this week that one visiting family from Texas was charged over $400 for a 10-block ride in Midtown recently—and that the charge was completely legal. Garodnick introduced a package of bills last year that passed the Council and now require pedicab drivers to clearly post their rates someone in their cab, but the city doesn’t place any restrictions on how much pedicabs can charge, and some are getting around the rule by posting their rates in tiny lettering and not directing their passengers’ attention to it. Now Garodnick, along with many in the pedicab industry who don’t want their profession given a bad name, are calling for additional laws that will require drivers to state the charges clearly at the beginning of a ride, instead of springing a huge bill on riders when they reach their destination.

Summer Streets on the East Side
If you’ve always dreamed of zip-lining through the streets of Manhattan, your dreams may soon be fulfilled. The Department of Transportation will continue the fifth annual Summer Streets program for the next two Saturdays, Aug. 11 and 18, on the East Side, closing down Park Avenue from Foley Square downtown all the way up to East 72nd Street from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. Cars will vanish and the avenue will be free to roam on foot, bike, scooter, rollerblades or hoverboard, with activities like the zip-line, a rock climbing wall and a picnic food stand area from Whole Foods at various rest stops along the way. There will also be interactive art projects and a fire hydrant sprinkler, perfect for parched kids. Complete info at nyc.gov/summerstreets.

A Comic Consolidation
The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) announced this week that it will be consolidating its collections with that of the Society of Illustrators, located at 128 E. 63rd St. The two art institutions will merge their assets and become a single institution dedicated to celebrating illustration, comics and animation. The Society will continue to host the MoCCA Fest, an annual independent comics festival, and will dedicate one of their galleries to MoCCA’s permanent collection and draw from the collection for curated shows.
“The Society of Illustrators has a long, proud history of promoting the art and appreciation of all genres of illustration,” said Executive Director Anelle Miller in a statement. “We are honored to be able to spearhead the expansion and growth of the incredible foundation that MoCCA has created over the past 10 years.”

East Siders’ Ideas to Boost Second Ave.
While the businesses on Second Avenue near the subway construction have suffered in the past years, with foot traffic down by 30 percent in some spots, local residents say that they try their best to support those businesses and have ideas of how they can do even better, according to a survey conducted by Council Member Jessica Lappin’s office. Out of the 990 people who responded to the survey, 78 percent said that they shop in stores or dine in restaurants along Second Avenue. An overwhelmingly number—86 percent—also said that they’d be inclined to spend on the Avenue more frequently if merchants offered coupons or deals.

“Businesses have been hit hard by Second Avenue construction, so it’s wonderful that East Siders are supporting them,” Lappin said in a statement. “This survey also makes it clear that shoppers are looking for bargains. In this economy, who isn’t? So, going forward, this is something we can work on with Second Avenue merchants.”

The survey also found the best thing the MTA can do to help people who live around the Second Avenue construction is to provide better information for the community about what’s going on. Survey respondents chose that option 40 percent of the time, more than keeping the work spaces cleaner and being less noisy.

C Tops the List as the Worst Line in the City
Have a favorite subway line? So does the New York Public Interest Research Group, whose Straphangers Campaign released its annual State of the Subway report last week.

The Q line came out on top, with major points for a low breakdown rate, regular service, seat availability and cleanliness. Apparently, this line also has the best announcements in the system. It ranked relatively low, though, on the actual amount of scheduled service.
Probably to few New Yorkers’ surprise, the C line came in last. For the fourth year in a row, its notorious grimy cars, frequent breakdowns and infrequent appearances kept it at the bottom. It ranked second to last on in-car announcements.

City is pushing for even smaller apartments

Last month, the Department of Housing Preservation & Development (HPD) unveiled a scheme to construct what the city is calling micro-units, apartments designed to be 300 square feet or less.

HPD has launched a design competition called adAPT NYC, asking developers to submit proposals to create these miniscule living spaces. The winning bidder will be able to build on a city-owned site in Kips Bay; at least 75 percent of the units in the building, which will be at 335 E. 27th St., will be micro-units, between 275 and 300 square feet (half the size of a subway car), and will be reserved for one- or two-person households.

The city will have to waive current zoning regulations that require new apartments to be at least 400 square feet in order to build the apartments, but the mayor is hoping not only that it will work but can serve as a model for new buildings around the city. The units will be designed with efficiency in mind and will be situated for maximum exposure to light and air. They will also be kept at below-market rates, which for a studio in Manhattan is currently about $2,000.

“Everyone is excited to see the response to the RPF [request for proposals] and what sort of creative designs and financial solutions are presented,” said Mark Thompson, chair of Community Board 6, where the new building will be constructed. “There’s been a lot of interest generated about the possibility of creating units that are below market rent.”

Thompson said that while the project could be welcome in such a densely populated neighborhood with few vacant apartments, it will also depend very much on the price point of the units. If they’re designed for people just starting out who can’t otherwise afford their own apartment, close to $2,000 isn’t going to cut it, he said.

There are, of course, the lucky few who rent apartments in Manhattan for well below market rent. Felicia McCoy lives in a cozy studio on West 104th Street. While she always thought she might one day move to a more spacious pad, the stabilized rent—currently $889—has kept her happily in place for 22 years.

“I’m trying to be a minimalist,” said McCoy of not having a lot of space. “I’m also not home a lot, so I really don’t care.”

For McCoy, the tradeoffs of living in a small space—no place to put a proper table, stray papers quickly piling up in the middle of the room, a tight squeeze with visitors—are primarily worth it because of the price and location. Paying close to $2,000 for a potentially smaller space in Manhattan, even if it was a design and amenities upgrade, just doesn’t appeal to her.

“I would move to the Bronx, like a friend of mine did,” she said, before she’d pay more for a studio.

But real estate agents swear there will be people clamoring to get into the micro-units if they are priced even slightly below normal market rents.

“Prices are so high now; if [renters] want to live and work in Manhattan, they have no other alternatives,” said Jason Haber, CEO of Rubicon Properties. He was standing with one of his agents, Eric Mendelsohn, in a tiny Upper West Side one-bedroom that rents for $1,975 a month. Haber and Mendelsohn said that the apartment, which is less than 500 square feet, would probably be snapped up soon because the lack of direct sunlight was offset by a dishwasher, an anomaly in a prewar building.

They both insisted that demand for micro-unit apartments in Manhattan will be high. The housing shortage practically guarantees that anything under $2,000 will be easy to rent, Haber said.

Mendelsohn said he works with a lot of recent college graduates who want to live in Manhattan, but their options are shrinking.
“There’s a real housing shortage and there’s not enough inventory,” Mendelsohn said. “Many managing agents aren’t allowing pressurized walls anymore,” which young people commonly use to turn an out-of-their-price-range one-bedroom into a divided two-bedroom apartment they can share with a roommate, he explained. The micro-units would be perfect for many of his clients, he said.
Lower East Side resident Lisa Travnik was among the young professionals scouring Manhattan for an affordable place two years ago, and she snapped up a studio for less than $1,500, with a big sacrifice on space. Travnik lives in a 275-square-foot apartment; she is living proof of how people might exist in the forthcoming micro-units.

“My kitchen is a decent size, my bathroom is a normal size and it has fairly high ceilings,” said Travnik. “Those are the things that make it livable.”

Travnik’s apartment, which she described as a “cozy cave” that doesn’t get too much direct sunlight or cell signal, has its charms. The exposed brick and new kitchen appliances are bonuses, she said, as is the prime location in her neighborhood of choice. Her queen-sized bed—something she insisted on having, since she spends much of her time sitting on it—takes up most of her living space, but she has it strategically lifted to fit baskets underneath. Still, it’s a challenge to keep it clutter-free, and it’s not necessarily a bargain-basement price.

“Sometimes it seems like [a lot to pay] for how small it is. But I know that rents are going up. When I first got it, it felt like more,” Travnik said. “For the area, it’s pretty low.”

Travnik hopes to stay at least another year in her place and thinks she’s set it up to maximize the little room she has. She’s become a de facto expert on storage, learning how to “store up” and utilize her vertical space and how to choose furniture pieces carefully to fit in exact spaces. She loves her apartment but can’t imagine sharing it with another person. She did say, however, that in a more mindfully designed space, it could very well work.

Sally Augustin, an environmental psychologist who studies how people’s surroundings affect their mental well-being, agreed that design is a key factor in whether two people, or even just one, could thrive in a micro-unit. But more important than that, she said, is the element of choice.

“We need to feel like we’re in control of our lives, including our physical world, and if people really get to choose to live in these apartments, they will feel better about the whole experience,” she said. “If it turns out that everybody getting a certain kind of aid from the city is forced to live in these spaces, there will be some real unhappiness.”

The city is positing that the micro-units can accommodate couples as well as singles, aiming to give more options to the 1.8 million one- and two-person households in New York. But can two people really co-exist in a space that small? Augustin said it truly depends on good design, as well as personality.

“All human beings need to be able to be alone to order their thoughts from time to time,” Augustin said. “You can be alone in different ways. Two people can be alone in 300 square feet, if they can sit in ways that they don’t see each other.”

She said that something as simple as having two chairs back to back can facilitate the kind of privacy that most people think only comes from having a larger apartment with multiple rooms. But it also depends on the personalities of the people living there—the cramped space is probably not great for an introverted person to share with an extroverted one, for example.

Perception is also a key factor, she said.

“Someone comes from Hong Kong to the United States, [it’s] not as dramatic [a change] as for someone who grew up in a great home in Chappaqua, a kid who grew up in that type of large home,” Augustin said.

She suggested that painting the walls light colors, eliminating clutter and using vertical storage can all help make a simple small room into a welcoming home.

“When we have more clutter, our eyes catch on more stuff, it’s quite difficult to survey our environment,” she said.

All of these prescriptions for small living could be the way of the future, especially if the city continues to grow in population with a mind for environmentally conscious development. For some, any move toward providing more middle-range rental housing is urgently welcomed, even if the space is minimal.

“There is simply too much demand and not enough supply,” said Haber. “And this is in a sluggish economy. Imagine if the economy picked up.”

All those declarations leave the neighborhood ready for fresh political blood, and recent campaign filings give residents a sneak peek at who might be a serious contender come next September.

In the 5th District, Mark Thompson has showed his fundraising chops by raising $60,785 from 292 contributions in the past six months. So far, Thompson doesn’t face any other serious candidates, but insiders say Steve Newmark, who currently works for Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and hasn’t started campaigning, could raise significant money and support when he officially jumps into the race.

In the 4th District race, two candidates, Domenico Minerva and Benjamin Kallos, are practically neck and neck when it comes to fundraising as of the latest filing deadline, which was July 16.

Kallos raised a total of $28,453 in the last six months, bringing his campaign chest to $33,456, he said. “Our campaign is very excited about the 348 contributions that demonstrate more community support than we ever expected, and we hope to continue that trend, expanding the number of small contributions from residents all over the district and the city,” Kallos said, noting that his average contribution was $95.42 and that 22 percent of the contributions were $10, a threshold many candidates point to in showing their grassroots support.

Minerva comes a close second in fundraising for the filing period, bringing in $24,793 from 104 contributions, which he raised almost exclusively in the past two months. The other contender, Hill Krishnan, raised only $1,085 from 22 contributions. The only other candidate, David Menegon, confirmed that he’ll drop out of the race due to the possibility of being redeployed to the Army by the end of this year.

But insiders say that at this point in the race, having the least—or the most— money in a campaign account is no indication of where a candidate will fall on the ballot.

“Because of New York City’s extraordinarily generous and almost universally participated-in campaign finance program, everybody will have the same amount of money, so the money has less meaning,” said political consultant Hank Sheinkopf.

The matching program gives candidates $6 for every $1 raised from New York City residents, for up to $175 per person. The program was intended to level the playing field and give candidates without access to big money a chance to compete, a point Krishnan raised in defending his fundraising position.

“Running for City Council in New York should be about more than just raising money,” Krishnan said in an email. “I don’t work in a lucrative career to meet and raise money from high donors; I am a professor.”

Sheinkopf said that it’s way too early to rule anyone out, regardless of how paltry their total seems in comparison to other candidates.

“Unlike most people in my business, I got rid of my crystal ball a long time ago—it didn’t fit in my wallet,” Sheinkopf said. “Early money helps define the race for people in the media business and for local community activists. But the general public, they don’t care.”

Cool Wheels: Lillian Vernon hands over the keys to Citymeals-on-Wheels' first ever refrigerated truck to Citymeals Executive Director Beth Shapiro on July 11. The new $54,000 truck has been funded by the Lillian Vernon Foundation in commemoration of Vernon's birthday, a Citymeals-on-Wheels board member.

Mayor Koch Endorses Mark Thompson
Mark Thompson is doin’ great after receiving the endorsement of former Mayor Ed Koch in his bid for City Council. Thompson, currently the chair of Community Board 6, will by vying for a seat on the council in the East Side’s 4th District when Council Member Dan Garodnick runs for comptroller, as he is expected to do.

In a letter announcing his support, Koch said that Thompson’s experience will be especially beneficial to a Council and city government with many newbies in 2014. “We need to elect people who understand how the city runs and how to get things done. I know that by electing Mark, we will be putting the city in good hands, no matter what challenges we face,” said Koch. He also noted that Thompson “has worked successfully for new school seats, reclaiming of parkland and many other issues.”

Thompson was happy to receive the support, saying it would make his run for City Council an “incredibly strong race.”

“The mayor is a true New Yorker who knows what it takes to govern successfully. His support will give my campaign the powerful push it needs to get started in these early days of the race,” he said.

Thompson works as a consultant for government relations firm Capalino+Company, where he helps not-for profits, cultural institutions and private companies “navigate through red tape.” He worked in the former mayor’s administration in what was then the Department of General Services.

Parking Garage Accident
Two people were hospitalized Tuesday morning after a car plummeted down the elevator shaft of an Upper East Side parking garage.
A parking attendant at the East 76th Street and 1st Avenue garage reportedly drove the vehicle into the car elevator on the building’s fifth floor, but the elevator was not there, CBS reported. He and the car plunged five stories before hitting the ground.

At around 9:45 a.m., the fire department arrived on the scene at 355 E. 76th St., which houses a Hertz Rent-a-Car location, according to NY1. Firefighters rescued the driver, who was trapped inside the vehicle, as well as an individual who was in the elevator on the ground floor at the time of the accident.

Neighbors reported that there were at least 10 emergency vehicles on the scene, in addition to a helicopter hovering over the building. Fire and police officials closed off the sidewalk to passersby on both sides of the street.

The rescued driver and victim were transported to New York Presbyterian-Cornell Hospital to be treated for what were believed to be non-life-threatening injuries.

Department of Buildings records show that the garage faced a code violation in May 2009 for noncompliance related to maintaining elevator service equipment. The complaint was later resolved.

Lappin Gets Cash for New RI Library
City Council Member Jessica Lappin announced last Friday that she has secured over $4 million for Roosevelt Island-based projects and organizations in the 2013 fiscal year city budget. Two million dollars are allocated to move the existing Roosevelt Island Library, which has been plagued by book-damaging water leaks, to a new location at 504 Main St. Another $1.85 million is slated to fund the completion of the FDR Four Freedoms Memorial, and $150,000 is for the FDR Hope Memorial.

“Roosevelt Island is going through a spectacular transformation, and I’m proud to support the groups that have been there in the past and will continue to shape the island in the future,” Lappin said. “It’s especially exciting that this funding will help build a new home for the island’s public library.”

Anthony Marx, president of the New York Public Library, praised Lappin, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Borough President Scott Stringer for their support of the new library, which he said will double in size and offer more access to programming, computers, classes and other library services.

Delivery Bike Crackdown
Cyclists flouting the law found themselves the targets of several attacks from the city last week. On Thursday, City & State reported that Upper East Side Council Member Dan Garodnick and Queens Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer called for legislation to double traffic violation fines for those riding electronic-assisted bicycles, which are illegal in the city. Even though the City Council overrode a mayoral veto to ban electronic bikes in 2004, both Garodnick and Van Bramer said at a press conference in Queens that motorists are still dangerously riding electronic bikes on the sidewalk, against traffic and through red lights. Noting that he had seen an electronic-assisted bike just minutes before the press conference, Van Bramer said there was an “epidemic of reckless driving” in his district and across the city. By doubling the fines, Garodnick said the city could step up enforcement.

“Navigating our city streets is dangerous and difficult enough without the reckless actions of many cyclists who are riding illegal electric bikes today,” Garodnick said. “We need to empower our law enforcement officials to help crack down on this illegal activity.”
The legislation, introduced by Garodnick and co-sponsored by Van Bramer and seven other council members in June of last year, is awaiting a hearing by the Council’s transportation committee this fall. In February, Council Member Jessica Lappin introduced a separate bill to double the $500 fine for selling or operating an electronic-assisted bicycle.

The next day, Department of Transportation (DOT) Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan held a press conference to announce the DOT’s new education and enforcement program for delivery cyclists. The commissioner was joined by Council Members Gale Brewer, Lappin, Garodnick and Council Transportation Committee Chairman James Vacca, as well as some restaurant owners, to introduce the efforts and explain the program that will target first the Upper West and then the Upper East Side.

A special six-person unit of the DOT will go door to door to businesses and explain to employers the legal requirements and safety information for their delivery cyclists. After a six-month period, businesses who violate the laws will receive fines ranging from $100 to $300.

The program comes after the Upper East Side community has called repeatedly for holding businesses accountable for delivery cyclists’ reckless behavior.

“New Yorkers believe they have a constitutional right to great food delivered to their door while it’s still hot—and they’re right,” said Garodnick. “That cannot mean that we will compromise the safety of our streets in the process.”

The education portion of the program will give businesses brochures on safety and the law as well as ID cards their cyclists can fill out and keep on them. Employers will be required to provide upper body apparel with the name of their business clearly identified as well as safety equipment like lights, reflective gear and helmets.

“We need to put the brakes on dangerous delivery bicycles,” said Lappin. “Education and enforcement will make us all safer on our streets.”

“Really it’s the experience, having been a person who’ve volunteered in the community for so many years and been extremely active and gotten things done,” Thompson said in a recent interview at his office in the Woolworth Building. “Between work and the community board, you’re always doing something, but it’s so much fun.”

Thompson grew up in Orange County and earned his undergraduate degree in city and regional planning from the University of Southern California. He moved east to attend Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, but switched over to the Kennedy School of Government after his first year. While a student in Boston, he was recruited by a program run byMayor Ed Koch to intern for the city one summer, working for the Human Resources Administration. When he graduated, he heeded the call of New York and moved back to work for the Department of General Services (now the Department of Citywide Administrative Services).

In 1990, Thompson moved to Estonia to work in development as the country transitioned out of the former Soviet Union, working with private developers and companies to create new businesses and help transition the communist system into capitalism.

“At the time, there was nobody else there,” Thompson said, describing how he served as a de facto cultural ambassador. “I was ‘The American.’ People would look at you like, do you have horns or things like that. There were still people there who thought Americans were evil.”

Gradually, over the course of six years, Thompson said people warmed up to him. He picked up Estonian and grew to love the country and felt like he had achieved what he went there to accomplish. When a friend called on him to work at his company, Thompson agreed, and he moved back to New York to work at Capalino and Company, where he’s now a senior vice president, helping clients navigate the complex arenas of government, fundraising and business.

“The Museum of Chinese in America was one of our clients. They had leased property in Chinatown and were creating a museum,” Thompson said, describing one of his favorite projects. “They needed help actually getting it done. They had to design, they needed more funding and they needed to be able to build it.” He worked to get the Museum through the numerous approval processes and find ways to get the money they needed.

His familiarity with such processes has also served Thompson well as chair of the Community Board.

“Being outside the city itself but in a quasi-public role, [you see] that a lot of it is just doing it and knowing who to call,” Thompson said. “Picking up the phone, calling to ask questions, just being persistent. People all want to help, they want to do the right thing.”

A good dose of politeness doesn’t hurt either, he noted. Thompson enforces rules of civil engagement at Board meetings, no matter how contentious the topic. One recent success for the Board has been tamping down the raucous pub crawls that plague the neighborhood on holidays like St. Patrick’s Day, which they accomplished by talking to local businesses and using reason rather than outrage to encourage bars to opt out of the giant events.

Thompson, like Garodnick, lives in Stuyvesant Town, and he hopes to focus on waterfront development as well as education and senior issues and quality-of-life concerns in his Council race. He’s starting his campaign with small events, getting to know more constituents, but said he feels confident that he’s already aware of the neighborhood’s biggest issues.

“I’ve always thought about doing it, but now I’m just at a point where I feel that I can contribute a lot,” Thompson said. “It’s what I’m doing as Community Board chair in a lot of ways—it’s the next step.”

Encapsulating the Past: With officials looking on, including Rep. Carolyn Maloney, City Council Member Jessica Lappin and former Ambassador William vanden Heuvel, construction workers help place a stainless steel time capsule with memorabilia relating to President Franklin D. Roosevelt at Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island.

Candidates for 4th Council District Emerge

While none have officially declared their candidacies or filed paperwork with the state, several people’s names have been circulating as potential candidates for Council Member Dan Garodnick’s 4th District seat. Garodnick has officially confirmed his run for comptroller, so his seat will be wide open. Community Board 6 Chair Mark Thompson has confirmed that he’ll be filing for a campaign committee shortly.

“I’m looking forward to running for office and representing the East Side,” said Thompson in a recent interview. “I’ve actually been working with the City Council for many years now, most recently as chair of the Community Board; I’ve worked very closely with the City Council and city agencies, getting things done.”

Thompson works for government and community relations firm Capalino + Company and holds a master’s degree in city and regional planning from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He said he plans to focus on quality-of-life issues as well as small business, transportation, developing the waterfront and senior and education issues in his campaign.

Another name that has been floated in political circles is that of Brice Peyre, currently deputy chief of staff and press secretary for Rep. Carolyn Maloney. When asked if he was considering a run, Peyre said in an email that the prospect was interesting and mentioned his years of government service and local residency.

“I have been encouraged to run by many community leaders who think that I could make a meaningful contribution to public service in a different capacity, and that my experience and abilities give me an instinctive feel for the issues that most concern District 4 residents,” Peyre wrote. He would only say that he is “considering all [his] options carefully”; of course, there’s still ample time to make those kinds of decisions and for other candidates to emerge in what is shaping up to be a long race.

Local Democratic Leader Mulls Runs for City Council

David Menegon, president of the Lenox Hill Democratic Club, is considering a run for the Upper East Side’s 5th District City Council seat, Our Town has learned.

The bid for the council seat, currently held by Jessica Lappin, who is very likely running for Manhattan Borough President, has already attracted three declared candidates: NYU professor Hill Krishnan, attorney and activist Ben Kallos and Domenico Minerva, attorney and president of the Lexington Democratic Club.

While he hasn’t made any official moves to register a run for the seat, Menegon said that he’s talking with friends and potential supporters about a possible run.

“I’ve spoken to a couple of friends about this. I’m interested. I’ve lived here for almost 20 years,” Menegon said. “I haven’t filed any paperwork, I haven’t made a decision—it’s very preliminary.”

Menegon is an Army veteran who served for two years in Iraq and has worked in sales at the Xerox Corporation for the past 20 years. He said that his time overseas working on development and infrastructure would be useful working on Upper East Side issues like the Second Avenue Subway construction and the opposition to the East 92nd Street Marine Transfer Station.

“I think I have some skills to be a good advocate for people in the community,” Menegon said. “It’s a 50/50 thing right now.”

Republican Steps Up Against Maloney

This Sunday, local financial analyst Christopher Wight formally announced his congressional campaign, running as a Republican against Rep. Carolyn Maloney in the newly redrawn 12th District. Wight chose the site of the National Debt Clock in Times Square as the location for his press conference to declare his candidacy, using it as a jumping-off point to criticize Maloney’s fiscal record.

Wight, who has worked for Wall Street firms and has been endorsed by the Republican and Conservative parties and the Independence Party of New York, has emphasized his banking credentials and is already throwing jabs at Maloney for her voting record on fiscal issues.

“Our country has been on the path to bankruptcy and Carolyn Maloney has paved that path,” Wight said at the press conference. “When I look at Carolyn Maloney’s voting record, her priorities, I see a record that threatens the future my parents worked so hard for.”

Only time will tell if jabs will be enough to defeat a powerful incumbent. Maloney herself ousted a Republican incumbent when she first won national office representing the district in 1992 and has since won re-election nine times. Maloney defeated a Democratic challenger in 2010, Reshma Saujani, who went on to work for Public Advocate Bill DeBlasio and is now considering a run for that office.

‘War on Women’ Forum at CUNY

Local elected leaders and advocates are joining forces to hold a public forum to discuss feminism, the political attacks on women’s rights happening across the country and what citizens who are opposed to those campaigns can do to fight them. State Sen. Liz Krueger and the Center for the Study of Women and Society at the CUNY Graduate Center will host several speakers, including author of Full Frontal Feminism and founder of Feministing.com Jessica Valenti, vice president of The Women’s Media Center Jamia Wilson, professor at the CUNY Graduate Center political science department Joe Rollins and author and activist with Soapbox Inc. Amy Richards. The forum, entitled “The War on Women: An Evening of Basic Training,” will be held Tuesday, April 24, 6:30–8:30 p.m. at the CUNY Graduate Center’s Elebash Auditorium, 365 5th Ave. RSVP to spasquantonio@gmail.com or call 212-490-9535.

UES Walking Tours

In celebration of their 30th anniversary, the Friends of the Upper East Side Historic Districts will be hosting a series of walking tours through each of the six historic districts under its protection. The first walk will be Sunday, April 29 in the Henderson Place Historic District. The districts’ homes, built in 1881-82, were designed by the architectural firm Lamb & Rich in the Queen Anne style. The district became the center of German, Hungarian and Czech immigrant communities in the 19th and 20th centuries. The tour will be lead by Franny Eberhart, preservation committee chair, and Sarah O’Keefe, education director. Meet at 1 p.m. at the northwest corner of East End Avenue and East 86th Street. Tickets are $10 for members and $15 for non-members. Call 212-535-2526 or visit www.friends-ues.org/events.

“I’m looking forward for running for office and representing the East Side,” said Thompson in a recent interview. “I’ve actually been working with the city council for many years now, most recently as chair of the community board, I’ve worked very closely with the city council and city agencies, getting things done.”

Thompson works for government and community relations firm Capalino + Company and holds a masters degrees in city and regional planning from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He said that he plans to focus on quality of life issues as well as small business, transportation, developing the waterfront and senior and education issues in his campaign.

Another name that’s been floated in political circles is that of Brice Peyre, currently deputy chief of staff and press secretary for U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney.

When asked if he was considering a run, Peyre said in an email that the prospect was interesting and mentioned his years of government service and local residency.

“I have been encouraged to run by many community leaders who think that I could make a meaningful contribution to public service in a different capacity, and that my experience and abilities give me an instinctive feel for the issues that most concern District 4 residents,” Peyre wrote.

He would only say that he is “considering all [his] options carefully,” and of course there’s still ample time to decide and for other candidates to emerge in what is shaping up to be a long race.

There are certain dates every year that bring huge crowds and a scandalous amount of alcohol consumption to the streets of Manhattan. Upcoming St. Patrick’s Day is a big one, followed by Cinco de Mayo. Independence Day is up there, but it’s not nearly as boozy as Halloween or New Year’s Eve.
Local residents usually either join in the fun or batten down the hatches and prepare to spend a weekend battling roving packs of jolly drinkers. But residents of Community Board 6, which encompasses the area east of Lexington Avenue from 14th to 59th Street, are taking a different route and actively trying to staunch the flow of beer taps in their neighborhoods on these revered holidays.
They’re not against drinking and they’re not against business, they say, but they are hoping to cut down on activities that promote excessive amounts of the former while not really helping the latter; one of those activities, according to the board, is the pub crawl.
“We’ve had a growing problem with organized pub crawls and they’ve been getting larger and larger in time with the growth of social media,” said Mark Thompson, chair of Community Board 6. “Last year, it was pretty disastrous for our neighborhood.”
What used to be a fairly small ritual of groups of locals migrating from one watering hole to the next has ballooned into thousands of people from all over the city—and some from farther away—swarming the neighborhoods for an entire weekend.
Pub crawls don’t just bring in revenue to the participating bars. Companies like JoonBug Productions, which owns BarCrawls.com, make a chunk of change by organizing, promoting and charging patrons for tickets to the drinking routes.
Their St. Paddy’s Day Shamrock Shuffle features 17 bars, 11 of which are in the Community District 6 neighborhoods of Murray Hill, Gramercy and Kips Bay. To get drink specials at each bar, customers need to have a ticket. BarCrawls.com sells a $15 ticket for the St. Patrick’s Day crawl or a $20 all-access pass for the entire weekend.
That ticket buys a wristband, a cup and the privilege of buying $2 draft beers, $3 bottled beers, $4 mixed drinks and $5 shots, though the specials vary by place and time throughout the day. The event runs from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., which is typical of most organized pub crawls.
A representative for Joonbug refused to disclose the number of people who bought tickets to last year’s Turtle Bay pub crawl or answer questions about where the ticket sales go or if they have ever reached out to the community to listen to concerns about what the pub crawls might bring to a largely residential area.
A competitor’s site, PubCrawls.com, sells tickets for a massive, Manhattan-wide crawl of 115 participating bars, but a representative said that many are concentrated in Midtown and on the East Side. Last year, they had over 2,000 participants sign up for one or more of their St. Patrick’s Day pub crawl events.
While the pub crawls are obviously many people’s idea of a good time, neighbors complain that cheap booze plus throngs of tourists plus drinking from morning ’til night creates an intolerable atmosphere.
“Pub crawls have become a major issue; last year, the police department had to shut down several streets” over St. Patrick’s Day weekend, said Toni Carlina, district manager of CB6.
“The majority of this district is residential. There are many bars on the commercial strips, and the commercial strips wrap around the residential blocks, anywhere from 100 to 150 feet, with an average of 125 feet.”
According to data from the State Liquor Authority, there are about 120 bars on Third Avenue alone within Community District 6. Second Avenue boasts about 86 bars, and there are dozens more on side streets and other avenues.
CB6 has worked diligently in recent years to curb excessively loud and boisterous drinking along these popular avenues by only approving liquor licenses if certain bars agree to close at 2 a.m. The move to reduce organized pub crawls is an extension of that effort.
Bar owners are now presented with a Change Agreement from the Board when their license comes up for review, something that only happens, Carlina said, if it’s a new license or a renewal where the establishment has a record of complaints through 311 or the NYPD over the past four years. The agreement stipulates that bars won’t participate in organized pub crawls (though no one can stop self-organized groups of pals wandering about, of course), and when it’s signed, it becomes a legal document and part of that establishment’s state license when the SLA approves it.
Some area bars have agreed to the “no pub crawl” mandate voluntarily.
“In the past, obviously, we’ve done it because it does get people through the door,” said Erin Linfonte, the marketing manager at Turtle Bay NYC, a large pub on 52nd Street and Second Avenue that regularly advertises parties and specials. She said they’ve agreed to stay out of organized crawls.
“We always like to comply with the Community Board,” she said. “It’s not really hurting us that much [to stay out of pub crawls]. It just promotes daytime drinking in the neighborhood, and it’s a really a family neighborhood.”
“For the most part, people have been very compliant,” said Thompson. “However, it’s a very difficult thing to control.” If a bar that has signed the agreement violates it, they might have to go before the SLA for a hearing and risk a suspension of their license.
Some bar owners are baffled as to why the board would try to stifle pub crawls.
“I don’t know why CB6 would want to block bar crawls,” said Tony Mykon, manager of Duke’s on Third Avenue. “It brings clientele into restaurants, hopefully gains future business. It’s a good day for most bars, but it’s more marketing, getting the name out, getting new people in.” When bars participate in organized crawls, they get promotion from the companies sponsoring the event, which some say is a small price to pay for offering reduced drink prices.
“We are always going to get revenue, but the bar crawl opens the door to new patrons who normally would not come around here,” Mykon said.
So far, the board has officially got 17 bars to sign the change agreement and opt out of pub crawls, which doesn’t include others who may voluntarily opt out. But with hundreds of bars in the district, it’s a small wedge in a booming celebratory tradition, and locals are still bracing for the upcoming crawl weekend.
Thompson said St. Patrick’s Day is especially tough because the NYPD is stretched thin covering the parade that day.
“Second and Third Avenue are big areas [for bars]. It’s great for them to draw a larger crowd in. Everyone wants to go out on the special day,” Thompson said. “When there’s such a high concentration of people and bars when it’s normally pretty quiet, it just gets out of hand.”