Photo Wednesday 03/31/10 : MTA on Schedule?

In recent weeks (and overall for the past few years) the MTA has been boasting their intent to give us the riders of New York's subway the same privilege that London and Tokyo subway riders have had for a decade...

Up to date real-time schedules of train arrivals.
(*On the rest of the system, the L train was blessed with digital schedules years ago.)

Well the LED screens have been bolted in place at a number of locales throughout the system, and as I ambled toward the turnstile even in pre-caffeine mode I couldn't miss the green and orange glow of progress staring down on me.



As the pics show the schedules are up, and at least today in the Franklin IRT station (yeh IRT) they were very accurate.

I find it hard to think a coincidence is the reason the schedules are up or that some last bit of needed technology was finally delivered making this all possible as a person could speculate. Instead I do wonder if after years of waiting and months of these screens already being installed but not active, the schedules coming online was simply the result of the MTA trying to deflect from the flack they are getting over having no attendants or working cameras in many stations throughout the system (half the cameras in the NYC subway don't work according to MTA) especially in the wake of the stabbing murders that happened on a Downtown 2 Train at the Christopher Street station last week and the Moscow subway bombing this week.

Photo Wednesday 03/24/10 : "WTF?" Edition

This Wednesday's photo was taken by Monifa Bandele and it's posted on a site I've just learning about called Blackandbrownnews.com. A friend and lifelong Brooklynite directed me to the site and the above pictured "jail" playground structure currently (as of this writing) standing at the Thompson Houses in Bedford-Stuyvesant off Park Av.

You'll see if you visit their site and read the followups they did that it is not an act of technically proficient and disgusting vandalism as my tipster and others first thought.

It's actually part of the playset. The word "Jail" and the bar motif I'd like to hope were meant innocently at least in some sort of possibly inappropriate retro "High-Noon" western setting might work, but this piece of playground furniture was placed in a predominately Black and Latino housing project where as a local parent pointed out, many young people are already struggling to avoid the idea that "jail" is a natural part of their lives.

Blackandbrownnews.com went on to contact the city and ask if this piece of play furnishing has been installed at other housing projects around the city. The city said they would look into how this object was selected and whether there are more, but so far according to the story, they haven't replied further.

Personally I tend to save up my outrage for the rainy days of innocent males shot by police while at home,  local government forcing people from their homes to save a billionaire(no not that one) and of course ignorant sport stars who should at least try to avoid doing the stupid (too many to link to). But this image and how it can affect young people in that area is demoralizing and I think we should speak up about it.

If you think it's no big deal look try looking past the easy "kids have played cops and robbers" excuse that I can hear a mile away and accept that regardless of how it got there, that structure in that neighborhood is inappropriate and the definition of insensitive.

Photo Wednesday 03/17/10 : Missed it by that much Edition

Well I made a commitment to have a new photo up every week and I just watched as a 404error allowed the last grains of this Wednesday pass through the hour glass. Brings me back to last week's thought about deadlines.

But speaking of things missed, spring is on the march as evidenced by today's Bonny Bright St. Patrick's Day and all the bonny suburban lasses I saw in midtown...

So I guess in keeping with the thought of "missing" here's somethings we may not see again for some time...



...like this frozen lake scene from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's Japanese pond.

Spring ahead, (bike) map your route now...

Bike lanes work for me. I'm a fan. That the city even bothered to read my thoughts and paint them everywhere was cool enough for me. That the city went further and created a map of the bike paths almost makes me believe I live in a useful functioning democracy.

Here's the map www.nycbikemaps.com/maps/brooklyn-bike-map/

oh the places you'll go