Tag: Bronx

Bronx shooting at Mt Eden train platform

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This is the train I would take if I used the subway to get to work. But I don’t take the train because, despite what the mayor and MTA officials have been saying, it’s not safe to use the subway system in New York City. They know it. We know it. They won’t police the city properly and then act surprised when people don’t want to expose themselves to danger.

I’m very much against congestion pricing because of situations like this. If the city and the train system was safe, it would be different, but the NYPD has been neutered. We need to bring back stop and frisk. We need to make arrests stick so that jails aren’t a revolving door for repeat offenders with rap sheets longer than a CVS receipt. We need to stop spending money on illegal aliens and spend it on things that matter.

Shootings on the trains. Protesters being allowed to shut down roads and buildings with impunity. Kids getting kicked out of schools so illegals can live in them. $53 million dollars for prepaid debit cards for illegals when US CITIZENS are living on the streets or struggling to keep bills paid, including US Veterans. It’s a shame. It’s scandalous. But elected officials don’t care. They seem to think that people value illegals over the rights and needs of citizens and keep wasting our money on them. What money they aren’t pocketing, like that missing $850 million dollars that disappeared into De Blasio’s wife’s pockets.

I can’t understand how these Democrats run the city into the ground and then act surprised that everything is going off the rails. They keep adding taxes and tolls and fare increases, but they don’t provide improved services, and no one’s salary is going up fast enough to cover all of these expenses, including higher rents. All of the money we pay in taxes is being mismanaged and misspent. New York City feels like a third world country. And what I can’t understand the most is how people in New York City keep voting Democrat anyway. I guess some people just like to keep hitting themselves.

Attempted break-in and slow NYPD response

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My wife and I were watching a movie and we started to hear this banging noise from the hallway. When it went on for more than a few minutes, I stuck my head out the door to see what was going on and I saw this skinny crackhead looking dude in a heavy black coat banging on a door down the hall with some kind of tool.

I looked at him and he looked at me and he didn’t even care. He just kept banging on that door.

While I was looking down the hallway, the super’s wife opened her door across the hall and I waved her back inside and told her someone is breaking into an apartment down the hall. I took one more look at the guy and shut the door and called the police.

I placed that phone call at 5:50 PM.

We listened to the guy hitting the door and using what sounded like a hammer and chisel for about ten minutes. Then we got bored and went back to watching our movie.

Twenty minutes later, we heard an altercation in the hallway so I went and looked again and the building super was running the guy off.

The police never showed up. I called 911 again and asked why the police hadn’t responded to a report of a man hammering his way through the door of an apartment. The operator told me that the “job [was] in the system” and she wasn’t sure why there was a delay in my area.

I could only say, “very reassuring” and ended the call.

The NYPD finally responded an hour after my first call. One hour. The criminal got away because the NYPD failed to respond in a timely fashion, which means the guy will probably be back. What if he had attacked someone in the hallway?

Thankfully, the door held. Even if there was no one home, no one deserves to have all of their property stolen or vandalized, or to possibly have pets injured because the NYPD was too busy eating donuts to respond to a call. We’re supposed to trust them to help us when we need them but how can we?

They don’t show up for 311 calls for noise or huge numbers of double and triple parked cars blocking the road, or parked on the sidewalk. They don’t show up for a crime in progress. Will they really show up and save you?

You can’t rely on the police to save you or even to help you, only to write a report about how you got wasted after the fact. We need more 2A friendly laws in New York City so regular citizens don’t become victims due to lax policing and even laxer sentencing.

Photos: I-287 accident last Tuesday

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Last Tuesday I got stuck in traffic while trying to get to work because of an accident. I was late to work the previous week for the exact same thing, so I had to take photos this time to make sure my boss knew I wasn’t bullshitting her.

I figured they’re worth sharing. The weirdest thing about the accident to me is that the person in the smaller vehicle looks like some old lady that just rolled out of her living room to yell at some kids for being noisy in the street.

This section of 287 is rough. People get into car accidents there all the time because of cars veering from the left lane into the middle lane to cut the hard left exit onto 27 East, Prospect Expressway, followed immediately by people merging into the highway from 3rd Ave and then everyone opening it up on the straightaway if possible to make up time before the Belt Parkway split.

287 is called the Gowanus (‘Go anus’) Expressway, which adds some comic relief to getting screwed by bad traffic backups there regularly, but during the school year traffic is so bad that I’m thinking about taking the train to work instead, even though the trip would be 1.5 hours each way.

An unfinished post about COVID-19 from April 1, 2020

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This is something that I started writing on April 1st of 2020 but never turned into a full post. I think it was shortly after this that I started working full time for the 2020 Census and I got sidetracked. It’s nothing unusual, but still interesting to see what I was thinking about back then, during the height of the pandemic in New York City. Unsurprisingly, I was concerned about toilet paper.

Coronavirus Journal: Day 28 – Impact areas and hoarding in the city

People in poorer neighborhoods are being harder hit, but they’re also less likely to hoard.

Cheap toilet paper in stock. Everything isn’t being immediately wiped out. It’s amazing, because this area is one of the harder hit areas of the city. It’s an area where people are still boarding the train every day to head to work because they work in essential services. They’re being infected in the trains.

I live in one of the hardest hit areas in the city and the country for COVID-19 and I think it’s because most of the people that live in this area work in industries that kept going during the pandemic, so close contact in public transportation and at work kept transmission rates high.

According to current CDC data, transmission, hospitalizations, and deaths are down, despite people mostly giving up on masking and the lack of interest in booster shots. I imagine the numbers are trending downward because more people are developing some level of immunity. I’d also read previously that viruses tend to evolve into less lethal forms to ensure their own survival as well, so maybe that has something to do with it.

I have a feeling COVID-19 is going to be around for the long-haul now, like other serious illnesses. We’re going to have to figure out how to mentally accommodate that knowledge while we get back to living our lives.

Board of Elections training

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Almost a year ago, on October 1st, 2020, I submitted an application to work for the Board of Elections in New York City. I figured it would be interesting to actually work on an election day. Plus, I’d heard it was pretty good money. I cut it a little too close to work on the 2020 general election (and maybe that was a blessing in disguise considering how contentious it was), and I never heard back about training, so I sort of gave up on the idea.

Today, I got an email about attending training on Thursday in the late afternoon. It’s strange that the notice was so short, but it fits my schedule because I work early mornings. I’m going to go check it out and see what they’re offering. I took a look at the election schedule and the upcoming election is on November 2nd, which is a Tuesday. Being honest, if the hours required conflict with my regular job and doesn’t pay as much, it isn’t going to be worthwhile, even for the experience of participating in the democratic process in a more involved way.

What an official absentee ballot for Bronx County, US looked like for the Nov 2020 General Election

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Just in case anyone was curious, this is what an official absentee military ballot looked like for residents of Bronx County, New York City, for the 2020 general election.

I wound up not using it. I went to the polling station and voted in person. I was doing some house cleaning, found it, and thought it might be useful to someone in the future.

PDF available below:

Official-Absentee-Military-Ballot-11-3-2020-GEDownload

Jerome Ave Flooding Damage, January 2021 – Bronx, NY

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A picture of the NYC Emergency Management Bus parked along the curb on 175th Street near Jerome Avenue

Living in the Bronx is exciting. You never know what you’re going to see when you go outside or even when you look out your window at 4 AM. For example, early last Thursday morning I saw a river where I expected to see an avenue.

4 AM Thursday Morning

A water main break at 175th Street was causing major flooding. The water main that broke was cast iron, 48″ across, and was installed in 1909. It’s kind of hard to believe that something installed in 1909 was still holding up considering all of the traffic that rolls across Jerome every day and the vibrations from the elevated 4 train. Maybe this will encourage local politicians to address the traffic issue in this area.

Jerome Avenue sits in a depression that I’ve always wondered about. Was it a river in the past that was converted into a roadway? Or just a natural valley? Regardless, it is now a major thoroughfare in the Bronx both for vehicles and for an elevated train line. That worked to funnel the water towards I-95, which sits at an even lower elevation and crosses under Jerome Ave a block away.

I can’t say I was completely unhappy to see the street flooding, even though I was worried about my car and the impact on local businesses that I frequent. This stretch of Jerome Avenue is usually filthy. It needed a good wash. It needs a second wash for good measure, but I don’t suppose that’s going to happen anytime soon. Maybe when the two new buildings that are going up are finished and new people and businesses start moving into the neighborhood? I have hopes that this section of the Bronx, being right on a train line and with quick access to two major highways, will be vastly improved over the next year or so.

Anyway, looking out of my window at 4 AM, I could see that the water was hip deep and rising. Cars parked along the avenue were already half-submerged. What I couldn’t quite figure out is why the water seemed to be so deep between 177th Street and 175th Street, but was almost completely absent from 175th Street down towards I-95. I could see emergency workers standing in the road there. The difference in elevation from one block to the next isn’t that severe.

Thursday Evening

Later that evening I went out to get groceries and to look around. Most of the businesses along that stretch were closed or people were using pumps to remove water from the basements. I could see people in El Gran Valle on the corner of 176th and Jerome looking around and shaking their heads like they were dealing with a lost cause.

The road itself was covered with mud and there were emergency work crews surrounding huge holes in the intersection of 175th Street and Jerome, in front of the Dunkin’ Donuts. A reporter, Naveen Dhaliwal from Channel 7 I think, was on the corner. It looked like she was getting ready for the following news segment:

Friday

People clearing damaged items out of businesses on Friday afternoon.

Today (Friday), more than 48 hours later, water was still being pumped out of the basements of businesses and workers at a church and bodega were hauling damaged equipment, furniture, and other odds & ends out to the curb for disposal. Between the physical and fire damage from the riots and this week’s flooding, the area is really taking a beating. I can’t help but wonder if the damage was done intentionally to try to clear out some of these businesses so that more new buildings can be erected.

One last thing I wanted to note. ConEdison has closed Jerome Avenue between 176th Street and 175th Street for repairs. Today, some overly clever clown got out of his car, moved the cones, and drove down Jerome anyway. He was forced to turn around both by ConEdison workers and by the lack of a road in the 175th Street intersection. People really are something else in the Bronx.

Thoughts on the 2020 Census Low Response Rate

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Let me ask you this: if someone walked up to you in the street and offered you $1,091, would you say “No thanks”? According to a George Washington University report, every person that failed to respond to the 2010 Census cost their state an average of $1,091 dollars.

People complain about their communities all the time, especially in the Bronx. The Bronx is one of the worst off areas in the entire country. But people also don’t want to do anything to improve their situation, even when doing it is free.

You use public transportation, the school systems, the hospitals, the roads. Maybe you get EBT (food stamps). Maybe your Mom is elderly and gets some sort of medical assistance. You get a lot of services, but those services don’t just appear from thin air. Someone has to pay for that, right? They’re all partially funded by the federal government.

How does the federal government determine how much money to send to each community? The Census! The Census Bureau counts people, removes personal details, and releases statistics to the rest of the government for the purposes of allocating funding and determining representation in the House of Representatives.

Tables source: Census.gov

It’s pretty simple. The more people that get counted, the more federal funding your community gets relative to the rest of the country. So if you don’t complete the census, you’re cheating yourself and your community out of essential services. You’re cheating your parents. You’re cheating your children.

It takes 5-10 minutes to complete the Census online. You can call someone to get the Census done if you don’t understand the questions. There’s really no excuse.

It doesn’t matter if the government has your social security number. It doesn’t matter if you’re on welfare and they “already know where you at”. That’s not how the government works.

If you want that money, if you want your neighborhood to improve, then you have to respond to the census. If you don’t, then funding for services and/or programs that you use could get cut and/or run out before funding is reallocated after the 2030 Census. This only happens once every 10 years.

Completing the census is more important than voting. When you vote, the politician that gets in office does whatever they want regardless of what they promised during their campaign, but when you complete the census, the government has no choice but to allocate funds according to the count and give your area more seats in the House of Representatives if that’s how the numbers play out. That’s just how it works.

Why do I care so much? Because people being willfully stupid bothers me. Because when I hear someone say, “No thanks” when a census taker asks them to complete the Census, that response is so stupid that it just stays with me. They’re not selling you something. They’re trying to give you something that you need. All you have to do is spend 5-7 minutes and take it.

Only 55% of New Yorkers have responded to the census, but guaranteed next year someone who didn’t bother to respond will be complaining about how the federal government doesn’t do enough to help poor communities like the Bronx.