Capital New York

Andrew Cuomo has a problem that can’t be solved by any amount of legislative horse-trading, or any number of cajoling phone calls. 

Upstate business interests, and many residents, want the governor to open parts of New York State to hydraulic fracturing, in order to generate revenue and jobs in the economically moribund region.

But environmental activists want the opposite, and have threatened to brand Cuomo a traitor and a sellout, and to forever dog his future ambitions, if Cuomo allows any drilling at all. 

At some point, maybe soon, Cuomo will make a decision about whether to allow fracking under certain circumstances or to ban it indefinitely. But while he and his administration can delay a final decision, as they did again on Tuesday, he can’t really finesse it. 

On fracking, there is no Cuomoesque middle ground.

Why fracking has Cuomo at a loss | Capital New York

White flag over Fox Beach: A coastal community considers a permanent retreat from the water

“People should not be living here,” said Joseph Monte.

He was standing on the little piece of Staten Island he’s called home for 22 years, and arguing that it would be better if no one lived there at all.

“Turn this into what it should have been and what it was a 100 years ago, a natural area for the grounds to take the water,” he said. 

Until Hurricane Sandy rendered it uninhabitable, Monte, who owned his own construction company for two decades, lived in a grey clapboard house in Fox Beach, a subsection of Oakwood Beach on Staten Island’s southeastern flank. In good times, it was a nice place to live, and some families lived there for generations, in low-slung bungalows with American flags, just a couple of blocks from the sea.

But the neighborhood has had its downsides. Brush fires are a big issue, thanks to all the tall grass that turns to kindling in dry weather. So is flooding, a perennial, worsening problem that has proven resistant to small-bore fixes like berms and floodgates.

In the aftermath of the last big hurricane, whose surges swept more than 10 feet of water through the neighborhood and killed three residents, that problem has begun to appear insurmountable.

Today, residents are banding together in an effort to convince the government that their neighborhood should go away. The people of Fox Beach—more than 60 percent of them, according to one homeowner’s count—want a buy-out.

Justin Bieber and Scott Stringer: Celebrities and the 2013 mayor’s race

azipaybarah:

(via Cuomo lets the clock run on the fracking debate | Capital New York)

Read Azi’s Briefing to check out the most important stories of the day.

A note from Capital co-editor Tom McGeveran, in our newsletter.

“Air-conditioning sales are growing 20 percent a year in China and India, as middle classes grow, units become more affordable and temperatures rise with climate change,” says a New York Times report on the increased demand for air conditioners around the world. 

The article goes on to make a point about global warming but I found myself distracted with another thought: Isn’t this what happened in large chunks of New York City, slowly and by degrees, over the last 30 years?

Growing up, I don’t think I knew a single family with an air conditioner until I moved to a modern apartment complex that was properly wired for them, and in which many of the units came with an air conditioner. We bought our first one sometime in the 1970s, anticipating a long visit from my grandmother. It was wildly expensive, and so small and weak that we had to put it in the living room and stretch a sheet over the archway entrance to the room to keep it cool.

The default response to a heat wave, in many parts of New York City, was to get yourself outside, as quickly as possible—especially in the evening. Hydrants were opened and spots under shade trees in the park were packed. People sat out on their fire escapes if the sun had reached the other side of the building. Everyone was in the streets, from the old men on their fold-up chairs to the kids running around in the spout of freezing-cold water from the hydrant. You got home and took a shower or a bath with no hot water in it.

A term like “middle class” is relative of course, but air conditioners have become more affordable, as most personal technology does over time, and it’s clear that many more people have them. Con Ed is advertising its efforts to increase its energy output to match a rise in air conditioning in the city.

The response to a heatwave, almost mandated by the city, is now to stay indoors. (That’s if you have air conditioning: some time ago the city began giving out air conditioners—not many, of course—to poor New Yorkers who meet certain income and health-diagnosis requirements).

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“For me, the most poignant issue is the fact that the United States gave away its entire garment industry,” she says—an industry that this country previously dominated. Where the United States once made 90 percent of Americans’ clothes, it not makes as little as 3 percent, she said.

“And you know, if I had written this book before the recession, that point probably wouldn’t have hit quite so close to home…. One of the main industries that allowed people to move up in the middle class, especially in a place like New York, was the garment industry. It’s largely gone now.”

Elizabeth Cline making the case for a “slow clothes movement” and for reading her new book, Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, which she’ll be presenting tonight at Powerhouse Arena.

Streets of Your Town: This week’s concerts, with Metallica, Das Racist, Ani DiFranco, and more

In recent years, it could be argued that Metallica’s relentless eclecticism has been their downfall. This feels somewhat cruel to say. Heavy metal is a genre that can at times be preposterously dogmatic, and the natural impulse is to praise any band—particularly one as revered and pioneering as Metallica—that dares defy its Code of Conduct with a bit of arty impulsiveness. The trouble is, Metallica’s impulses haven’t always been the right ones (and you can cue up any section of last year’s brain-breaking collaboration with Lou Reed at random for proof). So be thankful, then for Orion Music + More (June 23 & 24, Bader Field, N.J.), where the group’s adventurousness finds a more productive output. Curated by the band, the two-day event isn’t wanting for metal—the chilling, Satanic Ghost, art-metallers Baroness, and too-fast-too-furious Liturgy all will make appearances. But they’re counterbalanced by the sunny California pop of Best Coast, Gary Clark Jr.’s blistering blues, Eric Church’s rollicking country, and psych-folk mystic Roky Erickson. And lest they feel neglected, there’s even a little something for the purists: Metallica will close both nights by running through a classic album in its entirety. On  Saturday, they’ll be performing 1984’s Ride the Lightning, and on Sunday, their eponymous 1991 album, commonly referred to as “the Black album.” Whether or not they will be joined onstage by Terry Riley or members of Arcade Fire remains to be seen.

Read more!

“We’re going to Mars. In fact, we’ll be there on Saturday.”

What do you think about New York’s new tourism campaign? Editing Milton Glaser’s infamous heart with a ball or a slice of pizza? Dubious.

Tom McGeveran hates it:

Of course it’s supposed to be about what these people love about New York. But the pizza replaces the love, rather than becoming its object. The object in the puzzle, when you resolve it into a sentence, is New York. (If you love lighthouses, why not replace the letters “NY” with the letters “LIGHTHOUSES”? Because that’s not what BBDO wants you to do! Also, no photographs and nothing lewd, please.)

Glaser’s design was precise, and serious brand innovators are, too. There’s a flawless internal logic to the best brand identities. The new campaign gives the I ♥ NY logo a personality disorder.

In marketing materials over many years, New York State has described Milton Glaser’s famous “I ♥ NY” logo as a rebus. It isn’t, and that’s the source of my problem.

Part of finding your toehold in New York is figuring out which New York to call your own. Those not interested in living in Carrie Bradshaw’s fantasy soon learn to peel back the city’s layers. By burrowing in, by deciding whether you’re the kind of person who waits in line at Magnolia Bakery or knows where to get the best Szechuan in Jackson Heights, whether you covet the phone number to Milk and Honey or prefer a corner table at the Brooklyn Inn, you can begin to crack it open.

“When I started, I made like a bible where I had the characters likes and dislikes,” Dunham said. “It’s pretty easy at this point to say, Hannah would watch an episode of “Real Housewives” but wouldn’t fuck around with MTV. I think Jessa doesn’t know who Miley Cyrus is but is really into croissants”—which she pronounced with an exaggerated French accent. “It was really clear to us that both Marnie and Shoshanna loved Rent. We just knew that that would be a commonality of theirs.”

“Marnie, in her fantasy all her dates take place in the Oak Room at The Plaza. That’s her idea of what she wants, and I think she’d go to Enid’s but be in a bad mood about it. Hannah would be like ‘This is my jam. I just want a cheeseburger.’ And then Marnie would be like, ‘I think this is a lot of money for what this food is,’ and be really pissy about the vibe. She wishes there was a Starbucks near her house.” (This reporter was quick to point out that in fact there is.)

Lena Dunham on getting New York right in her new HBO series, ‘Girls’

Meet downtown’s most in-demand new eccentric: 24-year-old art star and Megazine editor Loren Kramar

“For us, Megazine solves the problem of renting an exhibition space in New York City,” said [managing editor Maren] Miller, adding that art published in Megazine will be on display in a series of to-be-announced pop-up shows. “But it’s also a chance for us to use design to put the work we show in unusual contexts, or to make people see it differently.”

Presently, the founders are testing and debating different revenue streams, including an online store and a “curated” ad section. Four original Fat Ebe drawings have been sold for $600 each, Kramar said, and the proceeds were split 50-50 between the artist, Ebecho Muslimova, and the founders.

For upcoming features, a young artist named Joe Kay, Megazine’s “Man on the Street,” will interview people walking out of liquor stores, Kramar said. And in March, Megazine will launch its new erotica section with a one-page reinterpretation of Moby-Dick entitled “Maybe Dick.” First sentence: “Call me a shemale.”

In the meantime, Kramar is preparing for his first live performance in two years. He plans to auction thirty “works of art” that he has collected, borrowed, or made, he said, including a glass slipper fabricated by a Venetian glassworker and an abstract painting made by a Thai elephant.