An Outsider among Business Insiders

Some might see the new age of professional business bloggers as a sign of progress — even if those bloggers rarely leave the office or pick up the phone to report and wear ironic t-shirts that say things like, “Trust me, I’m a reporter.”

If you ask me though, it’s further proof that journalism is experiencing an identity crisis.

In early April, Dan Colarusso, the former New York Post Business editor and a longtime newspaper veteran, contacted me to see if I’d be interested in a summer internship at the high profile business and media blog, The Business Insider. The rate for graduates was $12 an hour and most of the work involved simple news aggregation. About as appealing as administrative paperwork to a scientist.

But the infamous Henry Blodget would be at my disposal (to observe from across the room at least) four days a week, and I needed the work.

“This also might be a good place for you to catch up on the twitter phenomena,” Dan told me when I came to see him at the blog’s former office and confessed that I was a little out of touch with new media. “To be 100% honest, I don’t know if this is the future of journalism,” he said. “But I might not be the best judge of that.”

“My blackberry doesn’t even fully work,” he added with a comforting laugh.

“Mine doesn’t either,” I replied in all honesty. “Maybe it’s about time I got it up to speed.”

I was ambivalent about the idea of taking a step backwards in order to go forwards. But after seeing most of my freelance gigs disappear, along with the last few job scraps on Poynter and mediabistro, I contacted Dan a few weeks later to see if there were any openings left. He graciously invited me on board — signaling, again, his own ambivalence about the place — and told me I would join the Insider’s Clusterstock team starting early June.

When I walked into the new office space for my first day, I put my intern hat on and reminded myself that this was just another stepping stone into the age of post-postmodern journalism.

The first assignment the Clusterstock editor handed me was to cull through espn.com and a multitude of sports blogs to come up with the 10 worst franchises, in terms of payrolls and home-game attendance, for a multimedia slideshow. He also asked me to search for photos online to put over captions he would write. When I asked about the protocol for reusing published media, he told me not to worry about it, so long as the photos weren’t from a traceable publication — like say, ESPN.

That was the first sign that something was off.

The next morning the Clusterstock editor told me to go through a list of financial blogs and pitch three story ideas based on recent blog entries about larger news stories. After that, I was put to writing up email alerts, finding photos and doing other intern stuff.

A few hours later, he asked me to run through the financial blogs again and pitch three more story ideas.

“Sure, but why don’t you give me some feedback on the first three before I get started?” I asked, trying not to sound too unappreciative.

“That’s a good point,” he said, “I’ll do that in a little bit. Why don’t you just go through those blogs again in the meantime?”

Out of curiosity at that point, I stood up to get some water and glanced over at his computer screen. He had the blog’s heat map pulled up and was totaling the hits on his posts from that week.

That was the second sign.

Later that same afternoon two of the Silicon Alley Insider editors started to trade jokes and giggle over the New York Times’ horrendous earnings report for that quarter. I had heard similar jabs from bloggers several times before, but I finally realized then that bashing the Times has essentially become proof of one’s own merit in the world of blogging — even for those who rely on the Times for information.

I started culling through older Business Insider posts to see what the general consensus was.

One staff editor had actually written in a post titled “Newspapers Must Be Allowed to Fail”: “Watergate broke because an FBI agent, aka Deep Throat, didn’t like the way Nixon politicized the FBI — not because Woodward and Bernstein sleuthed it out. Source will always find the biggest megaphone they can to get their views out.”

In other words, reporters are dependent on their sources and the smart ones should just hang around the office and wait for a phone call (or a facebook message.)

I was scratching the surface for information so these guys could take cheap shots, grammatical errors included, and then go back to praising twitter. And then it hit me. Where’s Dan Colarusso? It was a fairly small office and I hadn’t seen him either day.

I asked out loud where he was, but all I got were blank looks and faint mumbles. So I waited about an hour and asked again. I never got a straight answer, but all that mattered at that point was that Dan certainly wasn’t there and, from the looks of it, he wasn’t coming back. “There goes any obligation I had to this place,” I said to myself.

That night, I emailed the Clusterstock editor and Business Insider’s publisher to let them know I would need to cut down on my hours to pursue freelance commitments elsewhere.

The publisher wrote me back the next day, informing me that under the circumstances it would be best if they released me from my internship.

“I understand,” I wrote back. “Please send my check for those two days to the following address.”

“Are you serious?” she responded a few minutes later.

“Yes. I came in and worked for those two days, and these are tough times.” I wrote.

Her next response read: “In two days you did not contribute productively to The Business Insider, rather you consumed resources while we trained you. You may send an invoice for those two days if you really think it appropriate.”

Wow. Their CEO Blodget gets $5 million in new funding for his blog — the third round of funding in its less than two-year existence — and I get a snippy insult when I asked for my $192 in return for aggregating news for the site.

Newspapers and magazines are dropping like flies, cable networks are just a few steps behind, and even the blogs that thrive off of their failures are feeling the unbearable lightness of being.

—-Damian Ghigliotty

The Sloppy Money Order Scam

So many scams, so little thought.

Within the past five years counterfeit check schemes have exploded across the Internet as scam artists have shifted from fake mail lotteries to online fraud. In the past year alone, the United States Postal Inspection Service seized over 600,000 fake checks worth more than a fake $2.5 billion combined. Yet, according to USPIS estimates, the overall number of counterfeit checks sent to potential victims in 2008 is likely four or five times that.

In late December I placed an ad on craigslist to sell a piece of audio equipment. I posted the ad from Queens with a selling price of $600 and a clear message at the bottom that I would not ship and that the buyer must come to pick up the device in person.

Within two days I received five responses from potential “buyers” offering to send me money orders in exchange for the device. I knew they were all scams involving counterfeit checks (likely from Nigeria, the world capital of fake check schemes.) But I wanted to see for myself how these scams were supposed to play out. So I decided to pursue one.

The most detailed response to my ad came from divinestoress45@yahoo.com. So that was my bait. Wait, I mean catch… I was the bait.

The responder, who went by Michael Sean, told me he was out of the country on business, but that he would send me a money order through express mail and have his assistant pick up the device after I securely deposited the cash.

Ok, I thought, let’s see what comes of the bullshit. I had already sold the device.

Soon after I agreed to take my ad off craigslist and hold the item for him, I received another email explaining that his assistant had mistakenly mailed payment for more than the requested $600. Michael courteously apologized for the inconvenience and asked if I would be so kind as to wire the difference to his father, Gabriel Sean, in London through Western Union. In exchange for my troubles, I could take an extra $40.

I replied with a few unassuming questions:

How much more had his assistant sent and how much would he be expecting me to wire back?

Could I just give the remainder to his assistant when he or she came to pick up the device?

How could I get in touch with his assistant to arrange a pickup time?

No response.

Two days later I received another email from Michael letting me know the money order was safely on its way and would arrive the following week. “Sorry again for the inconvenience,” he wrote, “I appreciate that I can trust you with my request.” Screw this, I thought, it’s more work than it’s worth. I replied by telling Michael I was well aware he was trying to scam me and that I was completely unimpressed with his lack of consistency.

No response.

Then about three weeks later, on February 3^rd, I received a brown wax-paper envelope heavily postmarked from the Republic of Benin in West Africa, right next to Nigeria.

Inside were four international money orders, each for $950. The money orders were dated January 13^th — more than a week after I had sent my last email — and carried the remitter name Jerry D. Holbrook, the Chief Financial Officer of Fox Chase Bancorp in Hatboro, PA. That wasn’t hard to find on Google. Nor was the fact that Mr. Holbrook’s name has been used several times in previous fake check scams.

Nonetheless, my “buyer” still thought he could pull one over on me. I suddenly became agitated. After I had blatantly told him I was privy to his scam, he expected me to go out and cash the money orders, wire more than $3,000 to an unknown party, and owe my bank the full amount after the checks bounced!

Was he dumb? Or did he think I was dumb?

I had to take it just a little further at this point. I emailed Michael to let him know I had received his payment and that I was heading over to my bank. A few hours later he replied:

“I am happy you have gotten payment. Like I said in my previous email, go ahead and get them cashed at your bank, deduct your payment and send the balance via Western Union to my dad on the following details:

NAME OF RECEIVER: GABRIEL SEAN

CITY: LONDON

COUNTRY: UNITED KINGDOM

THE REMMITER NAME IS JERRY HOLBROOK

Send me the transfer details after doing that. i.e. MTCN (Money Transfer Control Number). Western Union will give you that after doing the transfer, and the total amount sent after deducting the charges. I need to send it to my assistant to take care of some pressing bills and to help me arrange for a pick-up by FedEx.

I will wait to hear from you as soon as possible. I AM SORRY FOR THE DELAY. YOU CAN TAKE $50 FOR THE STRESS YOU WILL GO THROUGH.

Thanks,

Michael”

Over the next week I sent a call out to the USPIS.

“The most prevalent scams have always been fake foreign lotteries,” said Allan Weissmann, a U.S. Postal Inspector. “What they’ve started doing in the past few years is adding a fake check or money order to the scheme as an extra twist, which has lead to all kinds of money order scams over the Internet.“

That begs the question, how many of these scam artists are actually artists? The Internet allows for plenty of fraud, but it also allows for plenty of carelessness. Online scams are about as abundant as online pornography and myspace music pages, and often just as sloppily produced.

“What throws unsuspecting people off is that by law their banks have to make the money available within a few days,” said Mr. Weissmann. “But that doesn’t mean the check has cleared.”

Obviously, I never cashed the bogus money orders, but that didn’t stop Michael Sean from sending me more emails to see when I would wire his payment back.

Jerk.

—-Damian Ghigliotty

Down and Out in New York and Everywhere Else

As George Orwell put it, “It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs – and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety.”

If these words meaning anything to consumers and investors at home and abroad, it’s to those anxiously waiting for the bottom:

The bottom of stock markets, the bottom of housing and credit markets, the bottom of ambiguous recessions muddled by GDP reports.

Perhaps Orwell would top even Warren Buffet as an oracle.

In a recent Op-Ed piece in The New York Times, Buffet assured investors that now is the occasion to buy American stocks. Not a bad idea, considering the Dow was at a low of 8,578 the day before his piece ran. But that suggestion looks less promising than it did two weeks ago as stock markets continue to tumble. Today, the Dow closed at 8,176.

Buffet, himself, has lost $9.6 billion in equity this year, according to a recent story in The Wall Street Journal.

He did write in his call to investors, however, “Let me be clear on one point: I can’t predict the short-term movements of the stock market. I haven’t the faintest idea as to whether stocks will be higher or lower a month — or a year — from now.”

The CEO of Berkshire Hathaway can certainly afford the gamble, despite his loss. For the rest of us, there are plenty of opportunities on the horizon to buy cheap and lend at high risk with a chance of reward, plenty of opportunities for new home seekers to go bargain hunting, and plenty of opportunities for graduates to find jobs once companies start to hire again. But not until the economy — at least ours — truly bottoms out.

It’s a matter of physics. You can’t pick something up when it’s still in the process of falling. Sure, you can try and catch it mid-fall, but that might just hurt your hands.

In the meantime, enjoy the little perks: overheated rent prices are beginning to cool down; Barack Obama stands a better chance in lieu of McCain’s displays of financial ineptitude; there are more free ATMs available for WaMu customers (maybe even ATM fees will start to decline as a result); and everyday goods and services, with a few exceptions, are getting cheaper – just wait for gas.

Some of those perks might not help lift the economy, but se la vi, the economy’s going to the dogs anyway…

More Time, Less Space

By Damian Ghigliotty

Central Watch Band Stand never got pushed out, priced out or bought out in its 56 years of business in Grand Central Station — a locale infamous for high overhead and packed-in retail spaces.

The small son & pop shop that looks more like a service booth from the outside has survived off of its faithful clientele, valued craftsmanship and clever location. Every weekday from 8 am to 5:25 pm, the shop attracts streams of commuters and locals as they tunnel through the seven foot high passage to 45th Street.

“Some of our customers go back as far as three generations,” said Larry Kivel, 65, whose father started the family business known for intricate watch repairs, despite its name. “What we do has always been very specialized.”

But with rent in Grand Central hitting $200 a square foot for some retailers, while the internet remains limitless and more affordable, his son, Steven, saw a future for watch repair on the web.

Last July he and his wife, Laura, launched Watch Battery Central.com, a website that specializes in battery replacements and water-pressure testing for a range of watches. So far the site has grossed $40,000 with little cost.

To recreate the customer loyalty that has allowed the physical location to prosper, the Kivels have designed their online shop with personalized service in mind. The site offers free membership for regulars like former football commissioner Paul Tagliabue and attorney Leonard Grunstein of Toutman Sanders, as well as newcomers.

Customers are also given candid details on what each repair entails — the same details heard when standing outside of the Central Watch booth chatting with Larry Kivel.

“We’ve never really advertised with the store, it’s always been about word of mouth and the fact that we haven’t let people down,” said Steven Kivel, 37, who speaks more like a seasoned businessman than his laid-back father. “I want to bring that to people who don’t live close by or can’t just hop on a train.”

He said eventually he hopes to expand the site to higher-end repairs as well as the watch industry continues to thrive. With luxury watches like Rolex and Omega selling at $1,000 and up, quality specialists have become increasingly sought after. And increasingly harder to find.

“There’s a nation-wide need for people in the watch repair business right now,” said Jim Lubic, executive director of the American Watchmakers-Clockmakers Institute. “Any watchmaker will tell you that these are the days. They’re making more money than they’ve ever made and working on nicer watches than they’ve ever worked on.”

In the past 10 years, the Kivel family’s profits have nearly doubled, allowing them to modify their quaint 340 square feet of space — even as Grand Central began to attract loftier tenants after its 1998 renovation. But without the devotion of familiar customers, other small business owners have taken different steps to find their footing on the web.

Andrew and Anna Hellman of Norwalk, Connecticut, started their online tableware business, Teroforma.com, in March 2006 and soon switched from a wholesale/retail platform to a purely wholesale one. And just as shop owners in busy districts like Grand Central have renovated their stores to modernize, the Hellmans have redesigned their site from a simple version of HTML to Flash to a hybrid of the two that they consider the best format for commerce.

Throughout those transitions, the husband & wife team have maintained a topical blog, which they contribute to regularly to create a sense of kinship between them and their buyers.

“Using different platforms has been a see how goes type of thing, but we’ve always felt that brand is the most important thing,” said Mr. Hellman, who quit his job at UBS in 2006 to focus on his and his wife’s enterprise. “The role of traditional retail is being rationalized as we speak. Costs are changing along with the ways in which goods and services are being branded and sold.”

Steven Kivel, who has worked at his family’s shop since he was in high school, sees Watch Battery Central as a future investment in that regard, but taking the business online remains a split bet.

“Comparing the site to the shop is like comparing David and Goliath right now. The site is lower in cost and easier to maintain, but the shop still makes a bigger profit,” he said. “I’ll be ready for whenever that changes.”

The Internet Popularized the Underground

We used to call the best places and things gems because they were hard to find. Places and things you had to dig deep for.

Back in high school, my friends and I would spend a lot of our time  and lunch money at a record store called Fat Beats in the West Village. The biggest craze among us as 16-year-old Brooklyn kids was underground hip-hop. It was the same music anyone can find on iTunes today, but back then — circa 1995-1999 for us — it was usually local, almost always on vinyl, and sacred in light of what everyone else was listening to on CD or on the radio at the time, with the exception of Stretch & Bobbito, two well known voices on 89.9 FM (WKCR.) From 1 am to 5 am on Thursdays, all they spun was underground hip-hop. And a lot of us stayed up to record it.

The albums and 12-inches that generated the biggest buzz across the five boroughs were quickest to go, and one day my friend Frank and I became the envy of 20 other Brooklyn teenagers for having found two of the last original pressings of the debut Juggaknots LP (later re-released on CD as “Re:Release.”) I soon came to learn with a tinge of jealousy that Frank also owned an original pressing of the Company Flow “Funcrusher” EP, a fresh clear-green vinyl, and Frank later became a little jealous as well when he found out my sister’s friend had given me a copy of the original Slim Shady EP (though he won’t admit it now that Eminem’s beyond famous.) Funny enough, all three of those records had plain white sleeves, meaning no cover art and no pictures of what the artists looked like.

When the internet started to become a recognized place to find and buy independent music — I would argue around the beginning of 1997 — my friends and I discovered a website called Sandbox Automatic that gave us instant access to even harder to find records. It was a sudden maturity in our exposure to the whole subculture of hip-hop and we went to the site as much as we could to buy albums, EPs and singles that record shops like Fat Beats and Beat Street in Brooklyn didn’t carry. Less local, but just as precious and just as tangible when the packages finally came in the mail. Then suddenly, the next few years shot ahead something like this:

I quickly jumped into the first wave of the Napster phenomena in my first semester of college, went back to buying records when I came back to the city feeling guilty, had trouble getting those records onto my computer, awkwardly began buying CDs (blasphemy though it was), got tired of spending money on full-length CDs, quickly moved onto LimeWire, then SoulSeek, and occasionally iTunes, where my access to music — hip-hop, rock, soul and otherwise — thrives today.

Needless to say, most of the value we placed on underground hip-hop throughout high school has dissipated with the past. The physical records will always look and feel like gems in a way, especially caked in dust these days, but in 2008 that same music is ubiquitous and no longer hard to find. And that’s a disappointment at times. Not just due to personal nostalgia, but also due to a fear that when I have kids one day they won’t be able to cherish something the rest of the world hasn’t already seen or heard.

And here’s the much needed caveat I can’t seem to find a proper place for: I hold no resentment against the growth of the Internet and digital music (only a minor grudge), nor am I adverse to other forms of digital media, or digital networking sites like facebook, or blogging (though I hate the word.) But I do believe the ultimate downside to the digital era hasn’t been fully realized yet. Or I’m too reluctant to join an online chat group about it.

Since last year I’ve been a regular contributor to one of the world’s oldest hip-hop magazines based out of London, one that’s been able to survive against the digital shift in music and magazines. As a formality, whenever I interview artists I ask them what they think of the internet as a promotional tool. And almost every time I get the same response albeit in different form: “It’s great.”

“But don’t you feel like hip-hop is becoming oversaturated?” I ask.

“Nope, I stand out,” is the usual reply.

Good for the artist — since so few choose to stay underground. But something was lost in the transition to ubiquity and it wasn’t just the physical embodiment of music.

A Sea of Changes

Father Jim performs first communion at Saint Mary Star of the Sea in Far Rockaway.

By Damian Ghigliotty, Clark Merrefield and Mathew Warren

 

Before Father James K. Cunningham relocated to Far Rockaway in 2001 he barely spoke Spanish and had served a predominantly white congregation in his six years of priesthood. Now the 39-year-old pastor, known as Father Jim, leads a multi-ethnic parish at Saint Mary Star of the Sea with a growing number of families from South and Central America and the Caribbean.

And as a leader among Catholic immigrants he now performs his services in Spanish as well as English.

“When they first sent me here I thought they made a mistake,” Cunningham said with a laugh as he sat inside the 88-year-old rectory. “You usually had to be 25 years a priest and I was only six years ordained at the time. But I guess they figured I could adapt – that adaptability was one of my strengths.”

Saint Mary embodies the sea of cultural and economic changes that have occurred on the Queens Peninsula since the early 1970s. As the bulk of second- and third-generation Irish, Germans and Italians packed up and left over the past four decades, a growing number of Hispanics and Caribbean Islanders have made Far Rockaway their home.

Today, the most recent immigrant groups – including Guatemalans, Mexicans and Guyanese – make up more than 70 percent of the 1,400-member congregation.

During a recent Mass, as Cunningham alternated between English and Spanish, more than a dozen children lined up to receive their First Holy Communion. Flags representing 37 different countries lined the inside of the church.

“The parish has had two or three turnovers since I’ve been a member,” said Josephine Kelly, 81, who moved to Far Rockaway from Buffalo in 1964. “Each turnover has caused a bit of an exodus among older members.”

And as those new members came in, so did new customs: from clapping and cheering to outward displays of affection among families.

“Back when it was predominantly white and European families the most you would hear was an occasional whisper,” Kelly added. “Now during services people tend to be a lot more expressive. You’ll often see a son put his arm around his father without giving it a second thought.”

While those changes have helped redefine the church’s inner-culture and the way in which the priests perform their sermons, they have also impacted on the parish’s finances. New groups appeared, but old money faded.

“Far Rockaway has faced the classic phenomena,” said Joseph Barden, executive director of Margert Community Corp., a neighborhood preservation group dedicated to helping struggling homeowners in the area. “In the 1970s there was a lot of white flight followed by a high concentration of poverty and a growth in public housing. Those forces plus immigration drove the original people who used to live here out. The problem for the church has been that most of the new immigrants don’t have the same economic base.”

One of the most apparent cultural and economic shifts can be seen in the fall off of donations given to the church.

“A lot of the churches in South America and the Caribbean are supported by their governments,” Cunningham said. “In the United States, that’s not the case and people aren’t as accustomed to tithing. A lot of the new members put a few dollars in the basket a week and think that’s enough of a donation. As a result, it’s become hard to pay bills when our collection is good, but still not good enough.”

Raul Hernandez, a 33-year-old construction worker who came from Mexico with his wife and two children, is part of the newest wave of immigrants to join the church. While some of the congregation members see a link between their parish’s financial struggles and the growing proportion of immigrants, Hernandez links it to external forces.

“Today things are really difficult,” he said. “The economy is really bad. Before maybe I could give $10 a week, now it’s $5.”

Jason Fernandez, 7, was one of the first children in line to receive communion. After Mass, his mother, Maria, shed tears of joy while the rest of her family waited to take pictures with Cunningham.

“When I have, I give, and it’s from the heart,” she said. “Without the church and without God, I don’t think we could survive in this country.”

Click Here for Slideshow

 

A Motley Crew

Last night I played pool at a small bar in my neighborhood with a 27-year-old Tibetan named Jigman who is seeking asylum in New York City. He was upset about the riots taking place in Lhasa between Tibetans and the Chinese military, as well as a protest outside of the Chinese consulate in Manhattan that had been broken up by police that morning.

“The Chinese president has often said religion is a dangerous thing,” Jigman told me. “That might be true, but Buddhists are usually peaceful people. The Chinese provoke us.”

Since the riots started on Friday morning, 80 Tibetans have been killed and 72 injured, according to the Tibetan government in exile. And with fears that international scorn will jeopardize the upcoming Olympics in Beijing, the Chinese government has imposed a strict curfew in the area.

Despite Jigman’s frustration, every shot he made was nearly perfect; straight, angled or banked off the sides. By our third game, a stocky 26-year-old Marine named Josh with a fresh crew cut and a wad of chewing tobacco in his mouth joined in. A few beers later, Josh and I got into a conversation about the war in Iraq — which is nearing 4,000 American deaths and over $1.2 trillion in costs — and Josh told me, “We shouldn’t ever have gone over there in the first place.”

When I asked him why not, he spit some of the tobacco into a plastic bottle and looked at me to see if I was about to play devil’s advocate. I wasn’t. He told me when he had served as a sniper in Fallujah in 2004, he had fully supported Bush and the removal of Saddam Hussein, but looking back he realized how much of a mess the original plan was destined to be.

“Hindsight’s 20/20,” he said. “At this point too many soldiers have died trying to fix the war.”

“You’re right,” said Jigman as Josh offered us both some chewing tobacco from his $2 Red Seal tin.

I declined and went outside for a smoke. Jigman told Josh it reminded him of a tobacco often sold in Nepal.

After the three of us got tired of pool, the Tibetan having won almost every game against the sniper and the journalist, we all had one more round of drinks and went our separate ways.

In my cynical mind it’s gotten increasingly harder for strangers to talk openly about politics and find any common ground, especially with so many conflicts reaching new heights at home and overseas. I guess Jigman and Josh felt far enough removed at a random dive bar in Woodside, Queens that they could speak about Tibet and Iraq with no less concern, only less apprehension about what they said.

Freedom’s Corner

By Damian Ghigliotty

 

Surrounded by uniform sterile brick buildings, a rickety cab pulled up to the corner of 97^th Street and 57^th Avenue in LeFrak City.

A small group of men in their late-40s and 50s came over to see what Freedom had brought for the day. An old friend, Black, had come to help him unload several brown boxes from the trunk. Duke and C. were the first customers of the morning. The rest had stopped by simply to chat with familiar faces congregating on a familiar street corner.

“Today this is my corner,” said Freedom with a smirk of self-satisfaction as he began to open one of the boxes. “Mine alone.”

Freedom, 58, a retired maintenance worker turned local part-time merchant, has become LeFrak City’s only art vendor. “One day,” he said, “I plan to have my own flea market here.”

“Today this is my corner,” said Freedom as he began to open one of the boxes. “Mine alone.”

Freedom, 58, a retired maintenance worker turned local part-time merchant, has become LeFrak City’s only art vendor. “One day,” he said, “I plan to have my own flea market here.”

Freedom’s goods ran the gamut — framed posters of southern blacks on porches, portraitures of Martin Luther King and Malcom X, religious proverbs encased in floral designs, and scenes of a disgruntled Scarface holding a smoking tommy gun. Most cost $8 a piece, or $15 for two, but Freedom was apt to bargain with nearly anyone who asked, bringing more people from the neighborhood over to browse as the day went on.

“This helps the neighborhood,” said Duke, a retired hotel management employee from Ghana, as he paid for two framed posters of silhouetted jazz musicians blowing on yellow saxophones. “Children see the pictures of historical blacks with familiar images from the movies and they ask their parents, ‘what’s that?’ It opens people’s eyes.”

Freedom, who has walked with a wooden cane since he fractured his hip in 2002, decided to sell posters after retiring from the LeFrak City Maintenance Department. Surrounded by several take-out restaurants, an income tax office, two beauty salons, and two sportswear stores, he said he had found the perfect place for cheaply priced artwork; an outdoor market overlooked by other vendors in the neighborhood.

“I’m doing something new and positive here,” said Freedom as more customers showed up to his corner. “This is for the five generations of LeFrak,” he added in reference to everyone living in the community — small children to the elderly.

LeFrak City had always needed a stronger sense of identity, Freedom said, a place where people could stop and chat as they went about their day. One effort was to have the side wall of Fluffy’s Salon on 57^th Street painted with a mural of local and historical figures: LeFrak City native, Al Blake; Jackson Heights native, Sen. John D. Sabini, Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan; and local hip-hop artist, Noreaga. Freedom and several community activists, including Al Blake — now the chairman of the LeFrak City Tenants’ Association — organized the project in the summer of 1994.

As the new mural attracted more and more people walking by, Freedom soon thought of commerce in art as another way to bring disconnected neighbors together.

Outside of LeFrak City, city planners, historians and academics looking in have shared Freedom’s dissatisfaction with a community that lacks an identity despite its racial and religious diversity.

“On a visual level, LeFrak City has always been rather depressing,” said Architectural Historian Barry Lewis. “It’s like being in the middle of nowhere.”

When Samuel J. LeFrak began development along the Horace Harding Expressway in 1960, he and his investors envisioned a self-contained community with the basic essentials — a local grocery store, a local pharmacy, and a few nearby restaurants, surrounded by parks, playgrounds and private homes. In his view, Manhattan was close enough for those who needed to purchase luxury items.

Lewis said that in an effort to suburbanize parts of New York City, the movers and shakers behind community projects like LeFrak City and Stuyvesant Town failed to predict the shortcomings of their developments. Suburbanization never came to fruition as those “progressive thinkers” expected, he noted in a tone of sarcasm. Especially once New Yorkers realized what a neighborhood without bustling streets would actually look and feel like.

“People in the city gravitate to where the shopping streets are,” said Lewis. “Shops attract social activity. They’re the microorganisms of the city people love — older folks chatting, young kids hanging outside of candy shops.”

After LeFrak’s vision of a prepackaged suburban community in Queens began to collapse in the mid-80s, the area become notorious for gang violence and drug deals, a reputation the neighborhood still carries today, even though crime has dropped with the rise in Eastern European and Muslim immigrants.

But with a continual lack of interest among landowners and private investors to diversify the neighborhood’s commerce, individual efforts have only amounted to small accomplishments on small scales.

Most days, when Freedom isn’t offering framed posters for sale, he sits outside of Fluffy’s Salon, helps sweep up, and sells packs of Newports for $4, which he buys in bulk for far less.

“I get frustrated sometimes, because everyone around here has their own agendas,” he said, gazing across the street at a group of young teenagers. “One day I’m going to get myself a big stage right on this corner, and then everyone will see what I’m trying to do.”

After the sale of his last poster, Freedom’s spot to one day run his own flea market became encompassed by the slumped shadow of an unemployed community member struggling to get by. With no financial support from the LeFrak Organization since his injury, it has been hard for him to support a family, let alone a community.

“I guess that’s it until the next batch comes,” Freedom said with a sigh as he picked up his cane and headed home.

The New Millennium Manhattan Project

Photograph by Michael Hicks © 2007.
 

I’m suddenly reminded of Robert Oppenheimer and the movie Blade Runner when I think of all the ambitious scientists and researchers working on the next generation of advanced prosthesis. I can’t help wondering if they’re as detached from the purposes of their research as Oppenheimer was. Or as keenly in touch with the idea of a Cyborg culture as Philip K. Dick was. Or maybe both.

With the discovery of myoelectricity, which allows artificial limbs to be powered by the remaining nerves of muscles that once existed (a phantom limb put to practical use), bionic prosthesis has developed to the point where dismembered soldiers are now being urged to jump back into action after losing a leg or two—or an arm or two. And while it all might seem too science-fictionally implausible to picture on a grand scale, let’s say to tally benchmarks against casualties for once, so was the Atom Bomb before the world saw its effects on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That’s where the often forgotten past of World War II and the bleak fantasy of Philip K. Dick suddenly seem all too prevalent and real.

Thirty-one amputees, including Capt. David Rozelle, who lost his right leg above the knee, and Marine Sgt. Sean Wright, who lost both of his hands, have already returned to active duty. Rozelle is one of ten amputee soldiers to return to the battle field after surgery, and now helps architect the amputee program at the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington D.C. Wright currently teaches martial arts to fellow Marines heading over to Iraq. Other amputees, including Army Specialist Max Ramsey, who lost his left leg above the knee; Army Sgt. Neil Duncan, who lost both of his legs entirely; and Staff Sgt. Christian Bagge, who lost parts of both legs in different places, have appeared in the media alongside President Bush.

MSNBC reported on their website on June 28, 2006 that, “Despite a slight drizzle, Bush and Staff Sgt. Christian Bagge took a slow jog around a spongy track that circles the White House’s South Lawn. About halfway through their approximately half-mile run, Bush and Bagge paused briefly for reporters. ‘He ran the president into the ground, I might add,’ Bush said, as the two gripped hands in an emotional, lengthy shake. ‘But I’m proud of you. I’m proud of your strength, proud of your character.’”

The psychology behind the push for bionic prosthesis can be a bit deceiving at first glance; just like with Robert Oppenheimer and Blade Runner’s Rick Deckard. While amputee soldiers deserve unconditional praise for their bravery, regardless of whether or not they choose to return to active duty, the attention they are given is somewhat askew. Military doctors like Mark Heniser have come to find that amputees who suffer the loss of a limb later in their military careers are more likely to return to service. Amputees who suffer earlier are likely to take an honorable discharge and whatever benefits they can receive. While the Bush administration has celebrated both groups equally in the public eye, treating all amputees duly as heroes, if it weren’t for those who were willing to keep up the fight, the funding wouldn’t be there for the latter. Military prospect precludes scientific advancement.

And as long as the guilt of feeling obsolete exists within human nature, giving those in power the opportunity to exploit it, I won’t be surprised to see a unit of well-seasoned soldiers with one or more of their limbs replaced standing on the front lines. Right now is the first testing phases. The driving thought behind the Pentagon’s funding for advanced prosthesis is that if you can make a wounded solider feel whole again by throwing him or her back into action once, morale can never die — as long as body parts can be replaced. Now that’s scary. And the eight-year-old nerd inside of me is slumped over, depressed as hell, because the things we thought we’d never see always get exploited as soon as we get to see them.

 

President Bush jogging with Walter Reed amputees Max Ramsey and Neil Duncan. Photograph taken from ‘The White House News & Policies Page.’

Nostalgia vs. Future Development

Development along the Brooklyn Waterfront.
 

“There’s not a neighborhood in the city that has ever stayed the same for more than a few generations. If they don’t get better, they get worse, but they always take on a new face after a certain amount of time.”

My friend Lee said this to me about four years ago, when I told him overdevelopment does more harm than good to the city. There I was sitting on the L train, reminiscing back to when DUMBO was an absolute no man’s land and Williamsburg was a pretty sub-par place to go drinking — back when New York seemed a bit more comfortable with itself — and somebody else had to rain on my pessimism by reminding me of a time before the time I remember, when Brooklyn Heights was a ghetto and Flatbush was an epicenter of commerce. Sure, taking the longer view always makes things easier to digest, but neighborhoods in New York City have stopped going down since 2002.

And why does that matter now?

Because suddenly, in the media’s eye at least, Mayor Bloomberg might conceivably run for president in 2008. And try as I often do these days, I’m still unable to disassociate New York’s wealthiest and most accomplished leader from all the overgrowth in the city as developers are given greater access to lower- and middle-class neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs.

Of course, it’s not Bloomberg’s fault alone that the cost of living won’t stop rising, and while some New Yorkers have trouble noticing, it’s not only a local phenomena. Neither is overdevelopment, which might be inevitable in the long view. But apart from all the new people coming in and no longer going out, Bloomberg has certainly helped speed up the process a lot faster than it was moving before.

On the horizon, city planners are projecting: redevelopment of the Atlantic Yards, a revitalization of Coney Island, expansions for the Jacob K. Javits Center, further spreading of NYU facilities in the South Village and Columbia in Manhattanville, another convention center in Willets Point, new condos in Bed-Stuy, and the long sought after 2nd Avenue subway line.

Some of these initiatives are for the city’s benefit, some are ruination on the horizon, and others are for the most part innocuous. But when they all happen at the same point in time, a lot of New Yorkers will have to struggle to keep up, and City Hall, these days, seems incapable of not giving developers the green light. Hence the dozens of articles printed within the last few months in Time Out New York and umpteen other magazines about how underappreciated Queens and the Bronx are, and about how many little gems of culture they both hold.

And while the features that promote economic development might not come from the mayor’s office directly, they all carry Bloomberg’s invisible seal of approval. Ironically, most New Yorkers who live in Queens and the Bronx know that the best thing to appreciate about the “other boroughs” is how they haven’t become real estate hotbeds like all of Manhattan and the outer half of Brooklyn. Which causes me to wonder whether the mayor and his associates are simply projecting another million by 2030 or equally endorsing that amount.

The toughest question these days is when does development suddenly cross the line. Is it the misuse of eminent domain?

I’d say it’s when too many neighborhoods no longer have the capacity to change and New York becomes stuck one way for too like an overfed waterbug lying on its back. Bloomberg’s vision of the city has always been new developments and high-rises from the west end of Northern Manhattan (also known as Harlem) to the corners of every other borough, which admittedly has its ups and downs. But pace is key. As is affordable housing.

It might be hard for advocates of city development to notice, but the nicest neighborhoods in New York City got to where they are through gradual spurts. Like healthy adults who grew up properly; foolish fist fights and arguments to valuable lessons learned. DUMBO, on the other hand, is that unbelievably awkward kid in high school who started taking steroids, and Bedford Ave is the 30-something-year-old nerd who still tries to overcompensate for a late entry into hipness. So, yeah, that whole aspect of the Bloomberg legacy still makes skin crawl.

Or… as Lee would likely point out if I were reading this to him on the L train back in 2003… maybe I’m just being too nostalgic over everything old about New York these days. After all, the UN is estimating 3.3 billion people (half the world’s population) to live in cities by the end of next year and 5 billion by 2030, while apart from overzealous development plans, there’s not much else to criticize about Bloomberg’s incentives: going green, raising the standards for public education, dumping the Republican Party for political independence. Not to mention the fact that he’s incorruptible with or without affiliations. And 311 is the best thing for the general public’s protection since Giuliani stopped being mayor. Imagine that on a national level.

So… the question has been asked and everyone has an answer… “Should Bloomberg run for president in 2008?”

I would have to say I’m completely torn to say the least. That’s what happens when you take the personal view and the long view both at once.