The Grim Cost Of Indiscriminate Playground Building, Or, The Cult Of The Dog Has Gone Too Far

Is Martin’s Fields in Queens a playground or burial ground? Some disagree:

Would there be a public outcry if people were allowed to walk their dogs in Ground Zero or the Flushing Cemetery?

That’s the question Bayside activist Mandingo Tshaka wants answered after he learned of a petition to allow Flushing residents to walk their dogs on Martins Field, a previously unmarked black and native-American burial ground in Flushing that is due to be dedicated by the city as a memorial park at the end of the month.

“They’re saying their dogs have more rights than the people who are buried there,” said Tshaka, who shares his ancestry with African Americans and native Americans. “They’re saying their dirty dogs can urinate and defecate on hallowed ground. How would they like it if I were to bring my dogs to where their loved ones are buried?”

But resident Tom Budzick, a 66-year-old third generation neighbor of the park, has a hard time believing that Martins Field still contains the remains of black and native Americans. He believes senior citizens in the neighborhood should not have to walk the extra three blocks to Kissena Corridor Park to walk their dogs when Martin’s Field is just outside their doors.

“I want to see a tombstone if you’re going to tell me it’s a memorial,” he said. “I’m sure when they dug up that place, they must’ve found remains then. You think they didn’t take them all out? Now all the sudden, it’s hallowed ground.”

For the last four years, Budzick walked his mixed cocker spaniel-beagle named Cookie in the park until the new signs were put up barring dogs earlier this year. He has gathered roughly 50 petition signatures from other like-minded neighbors.

“It’s fine if they want to call it a memorial,” he said. “Let my dog on the place. We paid for it . . . I consider it a park. It’s a public park that we paid for. If that Indian wants to make it a memorial for his people, we shouldn’t have to pay for it. He should. That’s the way I look at it.”

As to the question whether there are remains in the ground, believe it:

City records show that it had been used as a burial ground prior to 1934, when the city took it over to house a park, playground and a wading pool.

In 1999, a survey conducted by archaeologist Linda Stone determined the grassy fields hid two mass graves underground. City Councilman John Liu (D-Flushing) and Queens Borough President Helen Marshall secured $2.7 million to construct a perimeter fence and new playground on the north end of the site, while dedicating the field as a burial ground.

Meanwhile, the city hopes that a middle ground can be reached:

Liu, who will be attending the dedication ceremony [October 28] said he is supportive of Tshaka’s stance.

“There are plenty of places that people and dogs can enjoy,” he said. “This is not one of them. We’re not going to have anyone or anything defecate on this hallowed ground.”

Closing Of CBGB Completes “Cultural Rape” Of The East Village

CBGB has closed:

Last night was the last concert at CBGB, the famously crumbling rock club that has been in continuous, loud operation since December 1973, serving as the casual headquarters and dank incubator for some of New York’s most revered groups — [Patti] Smith’s, the Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, Television, Sonic Youth — as well as thousands more whose blares left less of a mark on history but whose graffiti and concert fliers might still remain on its walls.

After a protracted real estate battle with its landlord, a nonprofit organization that aids the homeless, CBGB agreed late last year to leave its home at 313 and 315 Bowery at the end of this month. And Ms. Smith’s words outside the club, where her group was playing, encapsulated the feelings shared by fans around the city and around the world: CBGB is both the scrappy symbol of rock’s promise and a temple that no one wanted to see go.

. . .

“It’s the cultural rape of New York City that this place is being pushed out,” said John Nikolai, a black-clad 36-year-old photographer from Staten Island whose tie read “I quit.”

Added Ms. Smith outside the club, “It’s a symptom of the empty new prosperity of our city.”

Meanwhile, the Daily News Don McLeanizes CBGB with a maudlin headline — “The Night Music Died”:

The birthplace of punk, CBGB, where bands such as the Ramones and Talking Heads got their start, threw its own headbanging funeral last night.

With rock poet Patti Smith offering the expletive-laden eulogy to the grungy Bowery icon, Mohawk-wearing mourners took one final twirl in the mosh pit.

“You know what’s sad? Turning New York City into the suburbs,” Smith said. “The whole thing’s sad. This is just a symptom of the empty prosperity of our times.”

You know what is actually sad? Fetishizing Manhattan and turning punk rock into a museum piece . . .

The Only Thing In Law Enforcement That Should Be Pushing 90 Is A Dodge Charger*

OK, last time was pushing it but this really would be going too far:

Yes, he is 87 years old. And yes, he is not up for re-election for another three years. But Robert M. Morgenthau, who has been the Manhattan district attorney pretty much since the dawn of time, is gearing up for 2009.

Next Monday, his campaign committee is holding a fund-raising cocktail party, with tickets at $150 to $1,000, and it expects about 75 guests, said Julie S. Nadel, who was a coordinator for Mr. Morgenthau in the Democratic primary last year.

The invitation notes that the party will occur on National Boss Day, a nod to the fact that Mr. Morgenthau has been known as “the Boss” to hundreds of lawyers who have worked for him in the past 45 years: he had been United States attorney in Manhattan before becoming district attorney.

Mr. Morgenthau has not publicly announced whether he intends to run again at age 90, and he did not respond to a request for comment left with his office.

*Leslie Crocker Snyder has our permission to use this slogan on her ’09 campaign bumper stickers. (And in case you forgot about Dodge Chargers.)

MTA To Train Enthusiasts: Sit Down!

The “Rail-fan Window” is slowly being phased out by the MTA:

Rachael Lambert, a 24-year-old office worker and part-time student from Howard Beach, Queens, took a practiced stance on Tuesday at the head of a J train that was clattering eastward across the Williamsburg Bridge into Brooklyn. Peering out the scratched window at the front of the train, she offered in her slight Midwestern twang a running commentary on the view.

“You see the green-yellow?” she said, pointing to a pair of signal lights beside the elevated tracks. “We’re going, but we’re being diverted to the middle track.”

A few minutes later, the train reached one of Ms. Lambert’s favorite spots, near the Myrtle Avenue station, where the M line veers northward across the J line, and in doing so crosses a spaghetti-like tangle of rails.

“It’s great in winter,” she said. “When they’re afraid the switches are going to freeze, there are little pilot lights on them, and they light them, and it looks like the tracks are on fire.”

But Ms. Lambert’s is a dying pastime. Over the last few decades, and with increasing speed, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has been phasing out cars with publicly accessible windows in front, a feature that is often called the rail-fan window because of its appeal to subway buffs. In 2000, nearly half of all cars had such windows, according to Charles Seaton, a spokesman for New York City Transit. This year, they appear in only about one-fifth of the fleet’s roughly 6,200 cars.

And over the next decade, rail-fan windows will probably disappear entirely. A new model of car that lacks the rail-fan window is currently being tested on the A and N lines; the city has ordered 660 of the cars, set to arrive in 2008, and has an option to buy an additional 900 or so.

Definitive Proof That, Until 1957 At Least, God Was A Giants Fan

The man who claims to have taken the only photographic evidence of Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ‘Round The World” reveals his inspiration:

Rudy Mancuso is 85 and lives alone in a rental apartment on the Lower East Side. He uses a cane and moves slowly. But 55 years ago, on Oct. 3, 1951, Mr. Mancuso had the split-second timing to snap a photograph of one of the great moments in sports: “The shot heard ’round the world.”

The photograph of the home run hit by Bobby Thomson of the New York Giants in the ninth inning at the Polo Grounds to steal the National League pennant from the Brooklyn Dodgers and set off pandemonium in New York became iconic — Thomson swinging the bat, the ball sailing above the Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca as it soared out of the park.

. . .

In 1951, [Mancuso] and the rest of New York were riveted by the three-game series between the Giants and the Dodgers to decide who would play the Yankees in the World Series.

By the third and decisive game, Mr. Mancuso said, he had received an authoritative and specific photo assignment.

“God told me Bobby was going to win it with a homer in the ninth,” he said. “There’s no doubt. I was chosen to take that picture.”

On Oct. 3, 1951, Mr. Mancuso said, he rode the subway to the Polo Grounds carrying a Busch camera he had bought for $300 to use for wedding portraits. His ticket put him in the upper level directly behind the press box. He had only brought two exposures with him and used the first one early on, taking a snapshot of the Yankee right fielder Hank Bauer, who was sitting nearby.

Mr. Mancuso set the camera on top of the press box until the bottom of the ninth when Thomson came to bat.

“Like I said, I knew it was going to happen, so I pulled the paper strip out that protected the exposure and put the focus on the furthest it would go. I put the focus on infinity.”

“I heard the crack of the bat and snapped the picture,” said Mr. Mancuso who made a batch of prints and said he took one to The New York World-Telegram and Sun the next day.

“They took it inside and then came back out and said: ‘We can’t use it. It’s old news,'” he recalled. “I think they took a picture of it and it got spread around, because it got to be all over the place. I should have copyrighted it.”