Photo Courtesy of Wiki Commons

The last contract between the MTA and its largest union, TWU Local 100, expired on January 15, Gothamist reports. Yet the two have failed to reach a deal in recent negotiations, and things may be getting a little hairy.

MTA Chairman Joe Lhota publicly pleaded with union members by way of a New York Post op-ed piece, saying it’s “time for labor to sacrifice.” Lhota asked for a three-year wage freeze, arguing everyone else has given their share and now it’s time for union workers to do the same.

Lhota pointed to fare and toll hikes for train riders, local business taxes and manager and non-union employee salaries, which have not changed in four years. He also pointed to MTA’s delicate financial situation, which has improved drastically but continues to be hindered by union demands.

The op-ed suggests a “growing rift,” says Capital New York’s Dana Rubinstein. Rubinstein refers to the fact that Lhota has been hesitant to publicly negotiate with union members in the past, maintaining a policy not to publicize such communications in the press. Clearly the two groups have reached an impasse.

“It’s time for labor to be part of the solution,” says Lhota.

TWU responds via its Twitter: “OUTRAGEOUS” and “#Fail.” When a Twitter war is brewing, we know things are serious.

—Alissa Fleck

I took my first puff of a cigarette at 8 years old. I wanted to be cool and macho and fit in with the neighborhood kids.

Access to cigarettes was easy; I looked no further than my local corner market. In those days, the cigarettes were right next to the candy bars. I would tell store clerks I was buying them for an adult. It was easy and I was hooked in no time.
I kept smoking until I was 40 years old. Luckily, I found the strength to quit through nicotine replacement therapy and the support of friends who had successfully quit themselves. Now I spend my days helping others quit, running the SmokeFree Project at The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center in the West Village.

In addition to helping people develop a quit plan, build a support system and effectively handle relapse pressure once they have quit smoking, the Center also works with the Manhattan Smoke-Free Partnership as part of the New York City Coalition for a Smoke-Free City. I, along with our Youth Organizers Against Tobacco Advertisement interns, advocate against tobacco marketing that targets young people.

New York City is home to 11,500 licensed tobacco retailers, 75 percent of which are located within 1,000 feet of a school. The Partnership conducted surveys on the Lower East Side of Manhattan between 14th and Delancey streets and found a higher prevalence of tobacco marketing near schools.

The Center and the Partnership are working to decrease tobacco marketing to youth in stores and window displays near schools. We are bringing attention to this growing problem by speaking to community boards and participating in awareness events throughout Manhattan.

We participated in the American Lung Association’s “Take a Walk in Our Shoes” campaign. Center youth took community leaders on walking tours of Manhattan, including the Lower East Side and Chinatown, to spotlight the huge presence of youth-targeted tobacco advertising. The youth pointed out the hundreds of storefronts loaded with tobacco advertising designed to appeal to young people and encourage them to smoke. Our goal is to prompt further dialogue about the immense need to limit tobacco marketing to youth.

The stakes could not be higher. According to the Coalition, approximately 17,000 New York City high school students smoke and a third of them will die prematurely. Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States and 90 percent of regular smokers start before the age of 18.

The reason so many kids start smoking today are the same as when I took up the addiction when I was young; studies show that the more tobacco marketing kids see, the more likely they are to smoke.

As the Coalition noted: “Kids see tobacco whenever they go into a store to buy water, gum or candy. They see it on the store’s windows and directly behind the cash register when they make their purchase. This is not by accident. The tobacco industry knows youth spend a lot of time in stores, so this is the place where they spend their money.

“In New York State alone, the tobacco industry spends $1.1 million every day marketing its deadly products. This is more than the amount spent on junk food, soda and alcohol marketing combined.”

It will take a multi-pronged approach to counter this destructive advertising blitz. We must decrease the visibility of tobacco marketing in stores, limit the sale of tobacco products around schools and prohibit the sale of tobacco products in pharmacies. We also need citizens who care about this issue to speak out, write their local officials, pen letters to the editors and testify at community board meetings. According to a 2011 public opinion survey, 65 percent of New Yorkers support limiting tobacco retailers near schools.

On Jan. 10, Community Board 1’s Youth Committee passed a resolution regarding youth exposure to tobacco marketing. On Jan. 24, the full board vote was tabled until the Quality of Life Committee weighs in on the resolution, at a date to be determined.

I don’t want one more young person to walk the same decades-long smoking path that I took. Thankfully, I was able to quit as an adult, but had I not been targeted at such an impressionable age, I would have avoided years of unhealthy living and increased risk for serious illness or death.

The only way to stop youth tobacco use in our city is by stamping out the level of direct advertising access tobacco companies have to our children. We all have a responsibility to shield our most vulnerable from the irresponsible and manipulative messages that make it seem hip or fashionable to smoke or chew. Tobacco use is neither hip nor fashionable. It is a one-way ticket to ill health and a potentially shortened life span.

Adam Steiner is the SmokeFree Project counselor at The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center in the West Village.

By Alan S. Chartock

The first thing the new governor has to do is to get the state’s fiscal house in order. That must happen immediately because in a year, the state’s election cycle will start all over and if Andrew Cuomo waits until then, it will be too late. Cuomo is lucky because as a political genius, he has rounded up the two most powerful publishing magnates in New York: Rupert Murdoch and Mort Zuckerman, the billionaires who, by ordering up editorials in the New York Post and Daily News, can make or break a politician. These two men will back Cuomo on his rush to fiscal austerity and will punish him if he waivers on his “New Democrat” principles.

Cuomo has to submit a budget that will make everyone who depends on government weep. We are talking about, among other things, class sizes in our schools, depletion of the state’s civil service ranks, pension and Medicaid reform. Not-for-profit agencies will suffer great reductions because the Legislature and its infamous member items will not be permitted the largesse of the past. If Cuomo wants to be president of the United States, he will have to convince the rest of the country that he means to be the bluest of blue dog Democrats. He’ll have to be ruthless. As the famous political operative, college professor and lobbyist Norman A. Adler said of Andrew in the New York Times, “He didn’t ream people out. He’d cut your legs and knees off while you were sleeping.”

So what do you do if you are a union leader in New York? You spend what dollars you have screaming that Cuomo is a sell-out to the working people. You buy TV ads that show mental patients languishing in closed wards. You show crowded schoolrooms and a child with tears in her eyes because she doesn’t have books. This time, because union leaders’ survival will be at stake, the union PR campaign will be extremely tough. There is a lot of money left in the Cuomo campaign accounts. Thanks to his Republican opponent Carl Paladino, Cuomo didn’t spend what he might have spent in a tougher race. If he needs to, he’ll buy his own ads to counter those of the unions and he’ll have those powerful newspapers behind him writing supportive stories that make light of the unions. Even the New York Times, which seems deeply suspicious of Cuomo, will have to go along. It isn’t as if they haven’t had to learn the hard way themselves about fiscal austerity and cutting back. The usual groups that descend on Albany in an annual pilgrimage will be told “no.” The union leaders will make a show of it but they will know that as the ranks of their members are thinned, those who are out and who are the most furious will not get a vote. Only the ones left standing will determine the fate of the leaders.

As always, the people who are most dependent on government will be hurt the most. The truth is that these folks vote the least and will be asked to take a disproportionate share of the pain. The new Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives will have a huge say in the federal budget negotiations, and when blue-state New York makes its case, it will be told to drop dead. Of course, real political courage will be in short supply. Shelly Silver will fight like hell for those in his Democratic conference who understand what the political consequences of the cutbacks in their districts will be. But even Shelly will know that the cupboard is bare and the most he will be able to fight for will be table scraps.

Cuomo will say—and mean—“No new taxes.” Shelly will fight for “revenue enhancers.” The line will be held and Shelly will have to compromise. Many people, including a lot of sacred cows, will be hurt. When the smoke clears, you will see a leaner, meaner state bureaucracy, but you will also see closed parks, schools and rest stops. There is no way out.

Now Cuomo has to govern. In a strange way, he also got lucky because of the fiscal mess the state is in. Right now, things are really bad in New York State. There is a huge structural deficit. New York can’t print money like the federal government, so the deficit has to be addressed. The Democrats know it, the Republicans know it, Sheldon Silver, the powerful Assembly Speaker, knows it and certainly Andrew Cuomo knows it.
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Alan S. Chartock is president and CEO of WAMC/Northeast Public Radio and an executive publisher at The Legislative Gazette.

By Lorraine Duffy Merkl

I’ve had a taste of fascism. It’s called the M15 express bus, whose route goes north on First and south on Second.

Let’s begin at the beginning. I got on at 14th Street. Having just missed the local, I wandered up the block where a crowd was gathering. I figured it was a bus stop for the new limited line when I saw those machines on the sidewalk. I stood in front of one as it mocked me: “Go ahead. Try to figure out how to get a ticket.” (FYI: Customer ambassadors are no longer on hand to help.)

I’m pretty quick on the pick-up, so I pushed the silver button on the center panel, stuck my Metrocard in the slot to the right, and grabbed my receipt, which spit out on the left. (The MTA website offers an instructional video at www.mta.info/news/stories/?story=124).

While I was training myself on how this thing works, the bus had arrived and people were getting on through the front, middle and back doors. A creature of habit, I chose the front, where a clueless woman boarded and tried to use her Metrocard. I had one of those glad-it’s-you-not-me moments.

The bus driver, who had probably had this same, “But why can’t I use my card?” conversation more times that day (week, month) than one human being is meant to endure, directed the passenger, rather loudly, to, “Go get a ticket from the machine. What do you think they’re there for?” By the time the woman figured out the press button/pop in Metrocard/receipt pops out rhythm, the doors were closed and the bus was on its way.

Next stop: 25th Street.

“Get out your receipts,” we were instructed over the loudspeaker.

Sighs and eye rolls abounded. Everyone held theirs up in that, “I dare you to give me grief over this” New York way. Checking everyone’s ticket wasted a good 10 minutes. (Weren’t these buses supposed to save time?) While we were waiting, the woman seated next to me shared that this is how the bus system works in Europe. If I wanted to do things the way they do them in Europe, I would probably move there.

The inspectors left the bus and with them took one prisoner, I mean passenger. Yes, they had caught themselves a real, live non-receipt holder. The rest of us watched as Mr. Free Ride stood in the bus shelter attempting to talk himself out of the ticket that the fare inspector, unmoved, continued writing. I found out a summons is $100. Hardly seems worth it to try and beat the fare.

Along the way, we had a couple more, “But why can’t I use my Metrocard?” episodes. Those aside, we made it to 86th Street without incident.

Even though I traveled a straight run up the avenue, I got the 411 on how to get on a connecting bus: board through the front door, show your receipt and ask the driver for a transfer. Also, if you buy your machine-generated ticket for the express, but the local comes first, you can use it to get on that bus instead.

All and all, it doesn’t seem that complicated once you get the hang of the curbside machines. After all, we managed to get used to Metrocards despite years of carrying tokens around. And really, what choice do we have? Taxi fares are going up yet again.
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Lorraine Duffy Merkl’s debut novel Fat Chick, from The Vineyard Press, is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.

By Laura Day

Holidays are supposed to be a time when families unite, when you are reminded of your childhood or revisit the memories of yourself over the years. Some may be spending this time alone or far from home. But no matter where you are or who you are with, the holidays provide you with a unique opportunity to heal the inner patterns and relationships that have been obstructing your life and hindering your dreams.

This high holiday energy allows us to easily connect to others and it can be expediently, powerfully and positively directed. As you become aware of your intuition and the links you share with one another in a tangible way, you also become aware of its power to change old connections. By revisiting your old relationships, you can change the persistent patterns that have had you running the same unsatisfying maze over and over again in your life.

How to Move Forward with Your Family:

Take a moment to replay in your head the arguments you always have with your family. Now, resolve them in your head. Let those around you do all the old dances and find a place to go in yourself where you do not need to respond. Often, a full-body sense of what you are creating in your life helps. Intuition does not give up once you commit to change. Use breath as a tool to center yourself instead of reacting in destructive or self-destructive ways.

All change takes discipline. Try redirecting your attention when someone pushes your buttons. You may even be able to plant the seeds for a new relationship and a new family dynamic. Practice compassion so that you can send real warmth to those around you even if you have issues with them.

Even if you are alone, the holidays tend to bring up these familial patterns. Do the same exercises you would if you were with your family and reach out to someone as the person you have chosen to become now. It is good to find groups gathering in your area that allow you to connect your dreams to the dreams of others.

A public holiday is a time when you can send your goals out into the world. Scientific research has demonstrated that others perceive what you think and feel, even at a distance. Try it by sending a warm connection to someone you care about. Use your thoughts in a conscious, powerful and directed manner to create the changes you desire. When your thoughts wander to a hurtful place, refocus them on the dialogs you want to send to the people you want to send them to.

Holidays also represent time markers. You may think of where you were last Thanksgiving, the Thanksgiving before that and even 30 Thanksgivings before that! Yet in ways this does a disservice by undermining the power of accepting the moment as it is.

In 30 years of teaching, I have seen people turn their lives around in a moment. Really being someone you like attracts a life you like. Be active in engaging with your own miracle. You may be very pleased and surprised at what comes back your way.

Simple Steps You Can Take Over the Holidays:

Holidays are a powerful time to “run the experiment” of success. If you are ready to change, get started with these steps today. Using the field of energy that we share, I send you love and blessings as you reach for your dreams.

—Focus on what you want in your life, not on what you don’t want.

—Write down your goals. Document change. Review this every day. You will see how powerful you are at creating your own life and having an effect on the lives of those around you.

—Take one small action to forward each goal before the holidays begin.

—Use your positive memory files to create thoughts. Practice being in them when you need
a boost.

—Commit to having conversations with people you want to meet. Refuse to rehash negative conversations from the past.

—Practice being the new you without being defensive when people treat you like the old you.

—Try to tell at least one other person about your goals. Having a witness makes something sacred, powerful and real in your life.

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New York Times best-selling author Laura Day has spent three decades helping individuals, organizations and companies use their innate intuitive abilities to create change in their lives. Her new book is How to Rule the World from Your Couch (Simon & Schuster). She has a free mini-workshop 7-8 p.m., Nov. 22 at Barnes & Noble Tribeca.

Bicycles in a crowded, large city should never go fast (“Pedestrians, Bicyclists Need to Get Along,” Oct. 14). Is it a race, or is it recreation that takes place while others—young children, pedestrians, mothers with infants—are also enjoying the scene?
By the way, the mere fact pedestrians get into the bike lanes shows the utter senselessness of placing one in proximity to the other.

Nicholas Arena
Upper West Side

I feel exactly the same way about flier guys (“Why I Love the Flier Guy,” Oct. 28)! I find that they’re usually pretty grateful for the little bit of civility and decency I offer by just taking the damn flier. It’s one of the many types of human interaction that only city dwellers experience.

Amy Mintzer
Upper West Side

By Bette Dewing

I clip enough from The Daily News, The New York Times, this paper and sometimes the NY Post, to fill a 600 word bi-weekly column a dozen times over. And on every walk or ride on the bus (what else?), there’s more to report, too much that “doesn’t like me.”

The “doesn’t like me” phrase was coined by Bess, my dear and greatly missed mother-in-law on her 81st birthday. “These eighties don’t like me,” she wryly observed. Bess had the gift of speaking hard truths in a no-nonsense but very likeable way. Her chronic knee-arthritis had deprived her of being able to walk around her Chicago neighborhood. We hear what a hardship automobile country is for elders when they have to give up driving, but far worse is having to give up walking—or in truth, have walking “give up” on you.

About this “doesn’t like me” way of critiquing, lamenting and protesting—it’s something that all of us should adopt!

For example, “I hate traffic law-breaking motorists, bicyclists and heedless scooter riders, walkers and joggers!” would become, “They hate me!” Let’s put the blame where it belongs.

And again we are reminded of how the new city hybrid bus interiors surely do “hate us” with their cramped and multi-level design. We must get our laments in soon, however, because they’re ordering more. This is on the advice of Katie, a representative of the Straphanger Campaign. Let’s share our grievances with Joseph Smith, president of the MTA Bus Company, at 646-252-5872. Katie, incidentally, finds these buses that are operating on First and Second Avenues “really quite great.”

So call Smith and 311 and pressure media and elected officials who don’t see the total picture when going “green.” Most of them haven’t thought about the total bus experience but only “fast,” not “comfortable” or even “safe.”

The Civitas civic group’s rider survey on the new Select Bus System on First and Second avenues also needs feedback. Businesses in the area really “hate” the resulting parking and delivery restrictions from the new system. Although the survey can be found on the web at www.surveymonkey.com/s/Q32XJ5W; knowing that many bus riders don’t have this option, I say also call Civitas at 212-996-0745.

Well, The Times seemed to like my letter about the judge who charged a 4-year-old girl with negligence after she rode her bike with training wheels into an 87-year-old woman, knocking her to the ground. The woman suffered (the right verb!) a broken hip and died several months later, which columnist Susan Dominus said was from “unrelated causes.” Oh?

In the letter, I blamed parents and other adult caregivers for failure to train their charges to ride safely and to be concerned for others sharing our cities crowded walkways. I’m more afraid of children wheeling on walkways than adults illegally wheeling because of youngsters’ “inexperience” and their undeveloped sense of safety. I know of two serious (one ultimately fatal), accidents caused by heedless child-wheelers.

Of course, crossing-the-street danger from adult “traffic law-haters” is far worse. But for the safety of both bicyclist and other city travelers, a city bike should make a nice little sound—little jingle bells. But a very traffic-safety concerned bicyclist friend responds with “It would drive bicyclists crazy!”

But you can’t have it all, Charlie! It’s not a right, but a privilege to bring private wheels into a high-density city, one with much public transit. And prudent pedestrians, who bring only themselves into a crowded city, do have a right for safe and low-stress passage. So do public transit riders.

Cameras will now catch motorists riding in the Select bus lane. How about bicyclists? Of course, that would mean a license plate. Safety First persons would definitely love that! So would some bicyclists.
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dewingbetter@aol.com

By Jeanne Martinet

I was on deadline for a project. I was stressed out. I was also out of food and coffee. With the clock ticking, I grabbed the first hat I could find and jammed it over my unwashed head, and pulled on a pair of old walking boots (with no socks—a look which I must say did not help matters since I was also wearing a mid-calf-length mu-mu). I had gone half a block when suddenly, there he was: an ex-boyfriend, coming right at me. I tried to hide (which in pedestrian-terms means looking the other way and walking fast), but it was too late. He had spotted me. I cringed inwardly as he greeted me by kissing my unwashed, unpowdered cheek. “Of all the sidewalks in all the neighborhoods in all of Manhattan, he walks onto mine,” I thought gloomily on the way home.

But of course, this kind of unexpected encounter happens all the time. It’s a part of Murphy’s Law—or rather, Finagle’s Law, which takes Murphy’s further: “Anything that can possibly go wrong will—at the worse possible moment.” If you absolutely do not want to run into your ex-boss, you absolutely will, and not only that, it will be with mustard on your chin and your fly unzipped. Slip out in your torn sweats for a pizza or a bagel, and there they are: the agent who turned down your play, the community board member you had a big fight with at the last meeting, the man you had a date with who you never called back. It’s no good trying to protest, “Darn, this is the one day I did not put any makeup on, and I run into you!” This is just like saying, “I really look better than this.” Who cares, or even believes you? Because you still look horrible right now, and apologizing for it will not erase the current image of you with blue ink on your face.

Suburbanites and small town-ers will tell you that it is worse for them, because everyone they know goes to the same stores. A friend of mine wailed recently, “You are so lucky to live in a big place like New York City! I want to be anonymous! In my town, I have to be on my toes every minute.” I tried to explain to her that in Manhattan, there is really no such thing as anonymity—only the illusion of anonymity. When you walk out onto the crowded streets, you may feel as if you have Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility pulled over you, as you make your way through the bustle. The idea that millions of people live here tricks you into thinking you can make it there and back unscathed by any unwanted social encounters, and then—whammo! Surprise attacks in the city can occur in a store, on the bus or on the subway, but most happen on the sidewalk. (My friend John keeps running into his old barber, who likes to stand outside his shop when he is not busy. The barber will greet him, “Hey, haven’t seen you lately,” with a critical look at John’s unkempt head. This kind of thing cannot happen in a place where people drive cars everywhere.) Also, you never know who might suddenly pop up in New York. People visit or move here all the time. If you live in Memphis, and your long lost boyfriend lives in Sonoma, you do not expect to run into him on the street, but it is possible in New York.

Can you pre-arm yourself somehow? Actors wear big hats and weird glasses so they won’t be recognized. You could try this incognito trick, but with the time it takes to create a disguise, you may as well just go ahead and put on a new shirt and some lipstick. The best thing to do is keep a good lookout as you make your foray out into the world. If you see the person first, you can look the other way and try to walk by quickly, or whip your cell phone out and walk fast while you are on it, with your head down. Maybe the other person will be so engrossed in texting or talking to someone else that she won’t notice you.

Of course, if you are really lucky, she will be on deadline, too—and look even worse than you.

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Jeanne Martinet, aka Miss Mingle, is the author of seven books on social interaction. Her latest book is a novel, Etiquette for the End of the World. You can contact her at JeanneMartinet.com.

By Lorraine Duffy Merkl

Matchmaker, matchmaker, go back to L.A.

Bravo’s reality series Millionaire Matchmaker is filming this season in Manhattan instead of Los Angeles. The show’s star, Patti Stanger, will fit in quite nicely with those competitive New Yorkers who often don’t live up to their own hype.

We all know them: the colleague who sharpens a pencil and acts as though they’ve cured cancer; the friend who must one-up you even if it’s over one more slice of bacon on his BLT; and the mom who declares her child “gifted” even though his class rank or position on the team is no more impressive than anyone else.

Watching the program’s wacky west coasters embarrass themselves on dates has given me hours of amusement. Now that it’s in my own backyard, though, I’m not laughing.

First, let’s define “millionaire.” On both coasts, Stranger’s are not the high-society, captains-of-industry types, but more of the millionaire-next-store ilk. They aren’t exactly inaccessible; but, as are those who work paycheck-to-paycheck, often just too busy for “the hunt.”

Enter the abrasive, Jersey-born Stanger (note: the doctor cannot heal herself, and remains unmarried), who bills herself as a third-generation matchmaker with a phenomenal record of helping wealthy people find their soul mates.

Except that she doesn’t. What puzzled me from watching the L.A. franchise is her abysmal rate of failure. Why would anyone put their business on national television and week after week disprove their bragging rights that they are the best at what they do?

In the show’s first NYC episode, her challenge was to set up two owners of a very lucrative Internet businesses. The million-dollar man was 40-years-old and looking for a wife. Patti honed in on the problem: His usual choice of young, hot party-girl does not a Mrs. make.

She set up a mixer for him to meet more serious, accomplished, age-appropriate women, of which New York has a plethora. But also invited twenty-somethings. (Why? Didn’t she say they were his downfall?) Guess whom Mr. Creature-of-habit chose and whose date didn’t work out?

Stanger, like all those who screw up their assignments, looked for someone else to blame—in this case, her intern.

Her other client, the million-dollar woman, didn’t fare any better. This time though, Stanger laid the fault at the feet of the single-mother, who was deemed too picky. Then, like those GOING OUT OF BUSINESS store salespeople who can’t convince you their cheap wares are “better than Sony,” Stanger yelled at her paying customer, “There’s the door. Go.” She declared the rejected men “great,” even though they didn’t meet the client’s requirements.

Yet none of this stops Stanger from proclaiming, “New York needs me.”

Like we need another bagel store.

This is yet another NYC reality show that does us no justice. For her get-togethers, Stanger manages to find the handful of women here who don’t own a little black dress, as well as guys who don’t own suits. Giving her license, by the second episode, to snap with superiority, “This is the fashion capital of the world, yet no one knows how to dress.” Where is she looking? Not at the elegant denizens on Madison, or Boho chic-sters downtown or the tailored execs in Midtown. She also claimed that, “No one here gets mani/pedis or waxes.” How does she explain the nail salons on practically every corner?

If you really want someone to help you snag a rich New York spouse, forget Millionaire Matchmaker and seek counsel from someone who’s already done it for herself. Anyone got an email address for Melania Trump?
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Lorraine Duffy Merkl’s debut novel Fat Chick, from The Vineyard Press, is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.