Urban Gadabout: Noshwalks, "Steamboat Bill Jr.," Long Island Art Deco, and mudh more (Fall gadding preview, Part 2)

Tomorrow evening movies return to Washington Heights' gorgeous, nearly 3400-seat United Palace Theater [click to enlarge], built in 1930 as Loew's 175th Street, the last of Loew's five 1929-30 "Wonder Theaters" in NYC and Jersey City, as the Buster Keaton silent masterpiece Steamboat Bill Jr. is shown with live organ accompaniment. Advance tickets, available online through today only, are $10. (Tickets tomorrow night will be $15, $10 for seniors.)

by Ken

As I explained Wednesday in Part 1 of this fall gadding preview, what I intended as a brief note on Myra Alperson's Noshwalks, which I haven't written about before, grew out of hand, and so had to be spun off into a Part 2, which has given me an opportunity to include some other odds 'n' ends, including the screening, with live organ accompaniment (by silent film music composer, organist, and orchestrator Bernie Anderson), of Buster Keaton's 1928 classic Steamboat Bill Jr. at the United Palace Theater in my own northern Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights.

We'll get to the Noshwalks et al., but first --

STEAMBOAT BILL JR. AT THE UNITED PALACE THEATER



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Urban Gadabout: A fall gadding preview, Part 1

With Wolfe Walkers update: Oh no, it's the final season!


Yes! On Oct 22 Jack Eichenbaum is doing another of his day-long explorations of a single NYC subway line -- this time the L train.

by Ken

With the Municipal Art Society's Sept-Oct schedule already up and open to registration and with early (members-only) registration for the New York Transit Museum's fall schedule having begun this morning, we're already late for a fall gadding preview if we're ever going to do one. We'll get back to them, but I want to start with what for me is the fall highlight, another of urban geographer Jack Eichenbaum's all-day excursions built around a subway line, this time the L train, especially timely as its Manhattan-to-Brooklyn link is about to be shut down for 18 months for rehabilitation of its Sandy-damaged East River tunnel.


JACK EICHENBAUM

Jack, who's the Queens borough historian, always calls his day-long exploration of and along the #7 (Flushing) line his "signature tour" (you may recall that he recently did a wholly revamped version), but I've also spent days with him on the J train and the Q (Brighton Line). So I whipped out my checkbook when he announced this to his mailing list (which you should sign up for on his website, Geography of New York with Jack Eichenbaum):

[Click to enlarge.]

Life and Art Along the L Train
Sat, Oct 22, 10am-5:30 pm

Since its expansion to 8th Avenue in Manhattan in the 1930s, the L line has stimulated gentrification along its route which traverses three boroughs. We explore the West Village and meatpacking district -- including a portion of the new Highline Park -- and on to the East Village, Williamsburg, East Williamsburg, Bushwick and Ridgewood noting the continuous transformation of each of these neighborhoods, stimulated by the movement of artists.

This tour requires registration and payment in advance and is restricted to 25 participants. Fee $49. For a complete prospectus, email jaconet@aol.com. The L train will soon be shut down for repairs; join this tour prior to that.

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Maybe the best reason to spread word of Nancy Reagan's first home is that she doesn't seem to like people knowing

Justin's caption: "Though this modest 2-story frame house with yellow siding at 149-14 Roosevelt Avenue, between 149th Street and 149th Place, remains unmarked by a plaque or medallion of any kind, this is the home where former First Lady Nancy Reagan spent the first two years of her life."

by Ken

The other day I promised to return to what sounds like a fairly routine question: Where was Nancy Reagan born? What makes the question rather more interesting is that it seems to be a touchy subject for Mrs. Reagan, and suggests in turn that Mrs. R has a relationship to reality reminiscent of that of her late husband, the sainted Ronnie, whose most enduring legacy to the country seems to me the lesson, now totally absorbed by the Right, that reality is whatever you want it to be -- or, to put it another way, whatever makes you feel best.

Now of course "feeling best" doesn't necessarily mean "feeling contented." For right-wingers, in fact, it often means what seems like the opposite: feeling mad as hell. We just need to remember that one of the things they like best in life is feeling outraged, aggrieved, betrayed, and so on. And of course the people who treat the unwashed rubes like brainless puppets know this better than anyone, and know how much return there is to be gotten from getting the pathetic, otherwsie-useless, doody-kicking legions of right-wing saps hopping mad at the usual targets. Thus the ease of spreading psychotic delusions about, say, Hillary Clinton, or Planned Parenthood, or indeed anyone with a working brain and an ounce of decency or humanity.


IF YOU WERE TO LOOK NANCY REAGAN UP --

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Urban Gadabout: Is Jane's Walk Weekend coming up where you are? Plus some additional NYC-centric gadding notes

No, you can't click on anything here, or type anything in. But you can by going to janeswalk.org.

by Ken

Just some quick updating, mostly occasioned by the upcomingness of a favorite weekend of the year in this space, Jane's Walk Weekend. For us in New York it means, once again, a generous calendar of incredible walks (and also some bicycle rides) -- free events -- overseen by the Municipal Art Society, which knows a thing or two about walking tours, except that this year the calendar includes a pretty full schedule on Friday as well as Saturday and Sunday, May 1-3.

New Yorkers can go directly to the New York City page. In theory there are filters that should enable you to sort the total schedule to fit your particular needs and wishes. I guess it's my contrariness that make those filters really not terribly helpful for my purposes, making it necessary to scan repeatedly through the whole schedule. But then, wouldn't I have wanted to peruse the whole schedule anyway? (New Yorkers may also check out the recent MAS blogpost, "Jane's Walk Weekend Is Back -- and Bigger than Ever.")

I know we're getting close to the actual dates. All the more reason to find the appropriate Web page for your locality and see what whets your exploring appetite. It's a great tribute to that great urbanist Jane Jacobs, one of the foremost champions of cities and one of the most revealing students of the way cities work, or don't.


"WORLD OF THE #7 TRAIN"

One other Urban Gadding note I can pass on is that urban geographer Jack Eichenbaum, the Queens borough historian, has scheduled a new edition of what he calls his "signature" tour, The World of the #7 Train, an all-day extravaganza that consists of six mini-walking tours along with an exploration of the #7 train from Manhattan to its terminus in Flushing, Queens. Here's how Jack describes the outing on the "Public Tours" page of his website:

THE WORLD OF THE #7 TRAIN
Saturday, June 13, 2015, 10am-5:30pm

This series of six walks and connecting rides along North Queens’ transportation corridor is my signature tour. We focus on what the #7 train has done to and for surrounding neighborhoods since it began service in 1914. Walks take place in Long Island City, Sunnyside, Flushing, Corona, Woodside and Jackson Heights and lunch is in Flushing’s Asiatown. Tour fee is $42 and you need to preregister by check to Jack Eichenbaum, 36-20 Bowne St. #6C, Flushing, NY 11354 (include name, phone and email address) The full day’s program and other info is available by email: jaconet@aol.com The tour is limited to 25 people.

MUNICIPAL ART SOCIETY

As it happens, I've just done a couple of MAS tours with Jack: a couple of weeks ago a fascinating walk along Woodside Avenue in Queens, and just yesterday the East Side version of his Manhattan "Conforming to the Grid" tour, which focuses on the disruptions to the Manhattan grid created in the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 caused by pre-existing development of the area north of present-day Houston Street between Broadway and the Bowerie. Jack will be doing Part 2, the West Side version, looking at the grid disruptions caused by the pre-existing settlement of then-"suburban" Greenwich Village along the Hudson River, is coming up Sunday, May 31, at 11am. The day before, Saturday, May 30, Jack will be doing Part 2 of his MAS series "What's New (and Old) in Long Island City.

For more information on both, and to check out the rest of the current MAS schedule, go to mas.org and click on "Tours" -- or this link will take you directly to the "Tours" page. Right now MAS is coming up on the final month of the current March-May MAS schedule. Watch for the announcement of the next schedule -- which one might guess will cover June-August -- sometime in mid-May. It's worth checking for the new schedule in a timely fashion, because for some time after it's announced, it's possible to register for any darned tour you want, including the ones that are "never available." Well, they're not available if you wait till they're filled!


NEW YORK TRANSIT MUSEUM

Registration has already begun for non-members as well as members for the Transit Museum's busy summer schedule. For more information go to the "Programs" page of the Transit Museum website, and click through to the link for any date that looks interesting to you to see what the current availability is.

I was going to recommend the two additional outings of a tour that Mike Morgenthal offered for the first time in the last schedule, "Ghosts of the Elevated: A Walking Tour," a walk through the Lower Manhattan risings of the old Second and Third Avenue els, which I enjoyed enormously. But I see that both dates are sold out! On the plus side, this suggests that the tour will continue to be offered!

One thing you know will be available is the Transit Museum's 2015 schedule of ever-popular "Nostalgia Rides," which happen on tenderly cared-for vintage equipment from New York City Transit's collection. Two outings are scheduled for summer: "Beach Bound: Coney Island," on Saturday, July 18, and "Orchard Beach by Rail and Bus," on Saturday, August 8. I can recommend both from personal experience, and may do the Orchard Beach outing again, hoping for better weather than we had the last time we set out there. In addition, we have advance news of another outing I can recommend from personal experience, a fall "Evening Ride to Woodlawn Cemetery," on Saturday, October 24.


WOLFE WALKERS with JUSTIN FERATE

Again there's a new schedule in progress, but there are still a lot of terrific-looking programs to come: "Summer Mansions of Astoria" (Saturday, May 9, 10am-12:30pm), "Kleindeutschland in the East Village" (Saturday, May 16, 1-4:30pm), "An Offbeat Day in Staten Island: Tottenville and Conference House" ("by ferry, foot, and overland railway," to the southern tip of Staten Island; Sunday, May 31, 9:15am- 3:30pm, "possibly later"), and two of Justin's famous grand bus outings: "Hyde Park: Val-Kill, Springwood, FDR Library, and Vanderbilt Mansion" (Sunday, June 7, 6:45am-7:30pm) and "New Paltz and Hurley: 17th and 18th Century Stone Houses of the Hudson Valley" (Saturday, July 11, 7:45am-6:30pm).

I'm doing all of the above except the Tottenville excursion, and that's only because of a schedule conflict. The first tour I ever did with Justin was a version of the all-day Tottenville outing he did for MAS some years ago, in admittedly dreadful weather -- looking out over the Arthur Kill, which separates southern Staten Island from New Jersey, we could barely make out the city of Perth Amboy opposite. What's more, we weren't able to go inside Conference House itself, which has now been refurbished and just been reopened to the public.

But my abiding memory of the Tottenville trip is that as soon as Justin got our group safely organized on the Staten Island Ferry he started talking, and about eight hours later, on the return trip, he took a breath. My official policy became that if Justin thinks there's something worth seeing someplace, I'm going, as long as I don't have a schedule conflict. In the case of the above-mentioned "Summer Mansions of Astoria" tour, I'm going even though I had a schedule conflict. As I've mentioned I've been reading Edith Wharton, including the Old New York quartet of novellas, and I'm not going to miss that!

Download the Spring 2015 Wolfe Walkers brochure for more information, including the registration form.

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Urban Gadabout: Check out the Spring 2015 schedule of Justin Ferate and Wolfe Walkers

This time Justin's hardy Tottenville explorers will get inside Conference House. (Click to enlarge, and download a pdf of the Wolfe Walkers Spring 2015 Brochure here.)

by Ken

Just about every time I take a walking tour (or bus-and-walking tour or train-and-walking tour) with the amazing Justin Ferate, I have occasion to tell the story of the first tour I ever did with Justin, back when he still occasionally did tours for the Municipal Art Society. It was a pretty much all-day affair to Tottenville, at the southern edge of Staten Island, and it was, well, amazing. As I always say, as soon as Justin got us grouped on the Staten Island Ferry at the Manhattan terminal, he started talking, and all those hours later when we arrived back at the end of the ferry terminal terminus of the Staten Island Railway, he came up for breath.

The weather was dismal, raining on and off, with mist so heavy that when we got to Conference House Park, at the southern tip of the island, we could barely make out Perth Amboy, New Jersey, across the Arthur Kill. Nevertheless, the whole day was magical, and I was inspired to return to Tottenville on my own. And of course I was inspired to take as many tours with Justin as I've been able to.

Nowadays those tours are mostly in spring and fall seasons of the Wolfe Walkers, the venerable band of urban gadders originally gathered together by Prof. Gerard Wolfe when he was teaching at NYU. As Justin noted last year, though, he sudenly realized that he has now been doing the Wolfe Walkers walks longer than Gerard.


And in the brand-new Spring 2015 Brochure that Justin just passed along, I see that he's doing a new verson of the Tottenville expedition on May 31, which I would have signed up for in a heartbeat if I didn't have a schedule conflict. (This time the group is promised access to the inside Conference House.) I had a couple of other schedule conflicts with dates on the Spring 2015 schedule, but one of them I'm blowing off, in order to do the ever-so-Edith Whartonesque Summer Mansions of Astoria, Queens. (I've been reading a lot of Edith Wharton, including the Old New York novellas, for which the tour should practically be a required field trip. I had my registration form and check -- for both bus tours, the "Titanic Memorial Tour," "Summer Mansions of Astoria," and "Kleindeutschland" -- sitting in the mailbox across the street in time for the next pickup after I received the brochure.

Dear Friends,

Another Spring Season awaits! Responding to several requests, we are offering a walk of Spiritual Sites along Central Park West [Sunday, April 12] that will include (among other locations) a private tour of Congregation Shearith Israel Synagogue. Three tours celebrate the New York waterfront: Brooklyn Bridge and Brooklyn Heights with a tour of Plymouth Church [Sunday, April 26]; Summer Mansions of Astoria, Queens [Saturday, May 9]; and the charming waterfront village of Tottenville, Staten Island [Sunday, May 31] -- including a tour of Conference House, where attempts were made to resolve the issues of the American Revolution. (Needless to say, the Conference was unsuccessful.)

We’ll explore the history and remnants of “Kleindeutschland” or “Little Germany” on the Lower East Side [Saturday, May 16]. On our bus trip to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Hyde Park [Sunday, June 7], we’ll travel to Springwood, the Roosevelt Mansion. A special treat will be a visit to Eleanor Roosevelt’s unusual snuggery, Val-Kill Cottage as well as the FDR Presidential Library. The Hyde Park trip will also include a tour of the Frederick Vanderbilt Mansion, designed by McKim, Mead and White.

A very exciting offering this year will be a day of 17th and 18th Century Stone Houses in the towns of New Paltz and Hurley [Saturday, July 11]. The New Paltz houses form a National Landmark district and the houses are maintained in a protected museum environment. The houses of Hurley date back as far back as 300 years and are currently residences today. This is the only day of the year that these private homes are opened for public visitation. A rare treat!

Come join us for another exciting season!

In addition to the above tours, all led by Justin, there's a Saturday-evening Titanic Memorial Tour (April 18) led by Dave Gardner, "a gold member of the Titanic Historical Society."

You can find a pdf of the Spring 2015 Brochure here. The brochure includes the registration form (it's page 2), but if you want to download just the registration form, you can find it here.

And while you're on Justin's "Tours of the City" website take a look around, and if you have any interest in what's going on in and around New York, you should sign up for Justin's mailing list, which will land you an ongoing cornucopia of information. As I always say, I always read Justin's pass-alongs, and have been tipped to all manner of fascinations.

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Health Watch: The menace of toast -- and of French fries fried darker than "golden"

So you love toast, do you? But does toast love you? This toast is not only not golden, it is surely by any standard dark brown. Why not just swallow poison?

"Acrylamide [is] a chemical that causes cancer in animals. . . . The FDA suggests these steps to decrease your intake of acrylamide: . . .

"* Lightly toast your bread until it's a golden -- not dark -- brown."

-- from a "Johns Hopkins Health Alert,"
"The Risks of High-Temperature Cooking"

by Ken

What? You mean you're toasting your toast dark brown? I'll bet you're also the kind of person who fries your French fries darker than "a golden yellow color." Good grief, Sir or Madam, why don't you just swallow a healthy, or rather terminally unhealthy, dose of cyanide? Robert Benchley once wrote a piece called "The Menace of Buttered Toast"; now it turns out that the menace may be the toast itself!

So naturally I think of shmura matzo.

I've mentioned a couple of times the fascinating pre-Passover tour I took with the Wolfe Walkers in which Justin Ferate led us into the heart of Chassidic Brooklyn. From Justin's tour description it was clear that in negotiating our tour with our Lubavitcher hosts he had been trying urgently to secure a promise of one of the possible tour features: a visit to the Lubavitchers' shmura matzo factory.

You don't see Justin getting much bubblier -- and Justin is someone whose many great enthusiasms render him more than usually prone to bubbling -- than when he was able to inform us that the matzo-factory visit was confirmed.

Some other time we might wish to talk about matzo manufacture among avowedly observant Jews, in fulfillment of the requirement that, to qualify as unleavened bread as required for Passover consumption (in commemoration of the Exodus from Egypt, when the fleeing Jews were instructed, in the interest of all possible haste, to prepare bread without allowing the dough time to rise), the product has to be made completely, beginning at the moment the water hits the flour, in 18 minutes.

For now, though, let's just say that shmura matzo is made the old-fashioned way: entirely by hand, with lots of preparers on hand in the cramped space to roll out just-produced little chunks of dough into flat discs for immediate transfer to an excruciatingly hot oven. (I'm recalling something like 15 seconds at 1200 degrees. Rabbi Beryl Epstein, our tour guide from the Chassidic Discovery Center, explained that if the dough is left in the oven even a second too long, it will burst into flame. This must simply the quality-control operation.) When the person manning the oven paddle pulls a batch of completed matzos out and dumps them aside, they don't look exactly yummy.

And it's not cheap. We had the opportunity to buy the shmura product at the source, and considering that I had lived my life as long as I had without ever consuming this truly authentic product, and didn't expect to have a comparable opportunity to do so anytime soon, I fought back my native cheapness and paid the freight: $21.75 for a pound box.

Justin explained to us that basically the stuff tastes burnt, and that consequently his partner loves it because he loves foods with a charred flavor. I discovered with my first bite that Justin's description, as usual, was on the money. The stuff tastes burnt. Nevertheless, it didn't take me all that long to consume my pound's worth.

Now, however, I have to rethink the whole shmura-matzo issue, If this "Johns Hopkins Health Alert" is to be trusted -- and are we going to start mistrusting one of our leading medical centers, or anyway the commercial partner to which it lends its name? It looks like God is butting heads with the FDA.

Johns Hopkins Health Alert

The Risks of High-Temperature Cooking

You know that many fried foods pose a health risk because of their saturated fat content. Now the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says that food fried -- and baked -- at high temperatures is cause for concern.

High-temperature frying, baking and toasting causes certain sugars and an amino acid in mainly plant-based foods like bread, potatoes, cereal, crackers, coffee and dried fruit to form acrylamide, a chemical that causes cancer in animals. Scientists suspect that acrylamide causes cancer in humans, too.

Although you can't eliminate acrylamide from your diet -- it's estimated to be in up to 40 percent of the calories Americans consume -- the FDA suggests taking these steps to decrease your intake of acrylamide:

* Lightly toast your bread until it's a golden -- not dark -- brown.

* Don't eat areas of food that are burned or dark from cooking.

* Don't overcook food like frozen French fries -- they should be a golden yellow color.

* Store potatoes in a dark, cool place, never in the refrigerator, which increases acrylamide during cooking.

The FDA has also issued a draft document advising food service operators, manufacturers and growers of strategies to reduce acrylamide amounts in foods.

Published in FDA Consumer Health Information.

Posted in Nutrition and Weight Control on April 30, 2014

Medical Disclaimer: This information is not intended to substitute for the advice of a physician. Click here for additional information: Johns Hopkins Health Alerts Disclaimer

What can I tell you? I am a person who has frequently been known to toast my toast to full brownness -- maybe not "dark brown," but incontestably darker than "golden." I have close friends who routinely specify that theiir French fries be fully cooked, by which they don't mean "golden."

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Urban Gadabout: Coming up -- Wolfe Walkers spring walks, World of the #7 Train, Jane's Walk Weekend

The No. 7 train to Flushing here has its most dramatic view of the Manhattan skyline. Jack Eichenbaum is doing this year's version of his "signature tour," the all-day "World of the #7 Train," on May 31 (see below).


by Ken

I mentioned recently that I did a pre-Passover tour with Justin Ferate to the heart of Chassidic Brooklyn -- to the worldwide nerve center of Chabad Lubavitch, on and around Kingston Avenue below Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights South. It was the first tour on Justin's Wolfe Walkers Spring 2014 Calendar. (You can download the Spring 2014 brochure here.) When our utterly engaging tour guide from the Chassidic Discovery Center, Rabbi Beryl Epstein, asked us all to introduce ourselves and explain briefly how we had come to take that day's tour, I was tempted to offer as my reason that Justin had scheduled a tour there, and if Justin thinks it's worth visiting, the odds are awfully good that it is.

Which is pretty much my governing principle in attacking each Wolfe Walkers brochure when it becomes available. Next up on the schedule (and I don't know if there's even still space) is:

ROOSEVELT AVENUE: "TASTES OF THE WORLD" FOOD TOUR
Walking Tour with Queens Food Specialist Jeff Orlick
Saturday, April 26, 2014, 1:30pm-approx. 5pm
(Note: The start time is a half-hour earlier than is indicated in the brochure. Justin just sent out this change of time late tonight, as requested by Jeff, "to ensure that we are given ample time to savor the experience.")

Here’s the tour you’ve been asking for! Join the noted Queens food specialist Jeff Orlick on this very special food discovery tour of perhaps the most diverse area in the world: Roosevelt Avenue in Queens. Experience the cultural enclaves of Jackson Heights, Woodside, and Elmhurst in one afternoon. Get an insider’s view to as many as nine cultures such as Tibetan, Nepalese, Filipino, Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Mexican, Ecuadorian, Colombian, Thai and more in one afternoon. In neighborhoods noted for their complex array of cultures and ethnicities, we’ll taste our way across the globe to demonstrate Jeff’s ultimate premise: Food is the greatest medium for communication and connection.

On this special 3-hour tour, created just for the Wolfe Walkers, we'll travel from Little Manila to Little India, then the Himalayan Heights to Bogotá through Bangkok, exploring only the most authentic foods not made for tourists. In between bites, we'll stop at some of Jeff’s best-kept secret shops for clothing, jewelry, and other authentic ethnic wares while we work up our appetites. The tour will be tailored to our needs and interests, so we’ll share our interests with Jeff and be ready for an amazing afternoon. This promises to be a one-of-a-kind experience – unlike anywhere else in the world. This isn't a lecture; it’s an insider’s experience to the most culturally rich and diverse place in the world.

Food and non-alcoholic beverages are included. The world is ours!

Limited to 15 participants. Fee: $75, advance registration only (includes tour guide, food, and non-alcoholic beverages)

There's usually an all-day bus extravaganza on the Wolfe Walkers schedule, with lunch included. For Spring 2014 it's a trip up the Hudson River to the Gomez Mill House Museum (the house, built in 1714, is the oldest Jewish dwelling in North America and the oldest home in Orange County), then back for lunch at the Buttermilk Falls Inn ("a delightful country hideaway that includes a renovated 1680 home on a 70-acre estate on the banks of the Hudson River"), stopping next at Wilderstein ("a remarkable 1852 house and estate that was owned by three generations of the Suckley family"), with a final stop at the bridge across the Hudson River from Poughkeepsie, the old Poughkeepsie-Highland Railroad Bridge, whose 1.3-mile span was reopened a couple of years ago as a recreation area, the Walkway Over the Hudson, now "the world's longest (and tallest) elevated footbridge," with "expansive vistas" over the river.

GOMEZ MILL HOUSE, BUTTERMILK FALLS,
WILDERSTEIN, and WALKWAY OVER THE HUDSON
Bus and Walking Tour with Justin Ferate
Saturday, May 10, 2014, bus leaves promptly at 8:15am, returns approx. 7pm

There's a much more detailed tour description in the brochure.

Limited to 40 people. Fee: $115, advance registration only (includes bus, admissions, guided tours, luncheon, and gratuities)

Farther along the schedule are:

* WHAT'S UP IN BROOKLYN HEIGHTS?
Saturday, May 24, 10am-1pm, $25 in advance, $28 on-site

* CHURCHES OF MONTCLAIR, NJ
Sunday, June 1, 10am-3:30pm (from and to Manhattan), $25 in advance, $28 on-site, plus bus fare
Tour led by John Simko, director of the Nutley Historical Society Museum (a splendid tour guide who led us through the museum on our Wolfe Walkers visit to Nutley last year)

* MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS
Saturday, June 15, 10am-1pm, $25 in advance, $28 on-site

Wolfe Walkers advance registration (which you'll note is required for some tours) is by mail only, by check only -- you can download just the registration form here; of course it's also included in the PDF of the complete spring brochure.

I have no idea whether there's still space (it's limited to eight people), but there's also a (free) bicycle tour with the Belgian journalist Jacqueline Goossens, who has lived in New York for a couple of decades now and is one of the smartest and most charming and funniest people you'll meet. The spring ride is CENTRAL PARK, HARLEM, AND A BIT OF THE BRONX, and it's Saturday, June 21, from 10am to about 3:30pm.


JACK EICHENBAUM PRESENTS THE 2014
EDITION OF HIS "SIGNATURE TOUR"

I've mentioned this famous tour a lot, but it's been a few years since I actually did it, but I'm doing it again this year. Jack, an urban geographer who for some years now has been the Queens Borough Historian, has been talking about updating some of the mini-walking tours that make up the whole adventure to take note of changes that have been taking place in those areas, so it should be even more interesting.

THE WORLD OF THE #7 TRAIN
Saturday, May 31, 2014, 10am-5:30pm

This series of six walks and connecting rides along North Queens’ transportation corridor is my signature tour. We focus on what the #7 train has done to and for surrounding neighborhoods since it began service in 1914. Walks take place in Long Island City, Sunnyside, Flushing, Corona, Woodside and Jackson Heights and lunch is in Flushing’s Asiatown.

Tour fee is $40 and you need to preregister by check to Jack Eichenbaum, 36-20 Bowne St. #6C, Flushing, NY 11354 (include name, phone and email address)  The full day’s program and other info is available by email jaconet@aol.com

The tour is limited to 25 people.

Jack's public tour schedule is here, and there's also a link to sign up for Jack's e-mail list. One walk I'm especially looking forward to is a Municipal Art Society tour that has been rescheduled from last summer, when Jack wasn't able to do it. It's of WILLET'S POINT, the patch of terrain in northern Queens between Citi Field (home of the New York Mets) and Flushing, a sort of Land That Time Forgot. Jack describes it as "a sewerless, hardscrabble area of auto junkyards and related businesses that has twice beaten back attempts at redevelopment." Now, with developers lurking again, Jack aims to help us "understand the area’s important setting, confront ecological issues and learn why “Willets Point” is a misnomer." It's Sunday, May 25, 4pm-6pm, $15 for MAS members, $20 for nonmembers; for more information or to register, use the MAS link above.


MARK THE DATES FOR JANE'S WALK
WEEKEND: IT'S MAY 3-4 (SCHEDULE TBA)


The birthday of that late great urbanist Jane Jacobs provides a good clue to the timing of each year's celebraton of her visions of cities that work for their inhabitants, now celebrated widely around the world -- you can check online to see what festivities (free!) may be offered in your area.

In New York, since the Municipal Art Society took over the planning and operation of Jane's Walk NYC, it has become one of the great urban gadding weekends of the year. This year it's May 3-4, and I'm itching for the schedule of events myself. You can keep track at MAS's Jane's Walk page, where you can also sign up for updates.

AS FOR THE REGULAR MAS TOUR SCHEDULE --

There are still a fair number of tours that have space in the remainder of the March-May schedule (or just remember mas.org and click on "Tours"). The new schedule should be posted sometime around May 15, and while it's true that some tours will fill up well before they take place, if you start doing your registering when the schedule comes out, you'll be able to register for any tour you want.

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Are "good Christians" really incapable of understanding why this is so offensive -- not to mention (one hopes) illegal?

There's audio on the DNAinfo website.

by Ken

One of the favorite lies of the Christian Right is that the U.S. is a "Christian country." There is, of course, no basis in fact for this assertion, either historical or documentary. And since one of the favorite habits of right-wingers of every stripe is telling lies about our revered Founding Fathers, naturally they love to tell the bare-faced lie about them being good Christians. On the contrary. As one of my favorite New York City walking-tour leaders, Justin Ferate, likes to point out whenever the subject comes up (or he can make the subject come up), with only very occasional exceptions the Founding Fathers weren't even Christians.

It's frequently noted that many of them were deists, and therefore believed in God, but there is no indication that they believed in any of the Christ apparatus, which is kind of central to being of the Christian faith. Justin will usually go on to point out that one thing the FFs overwhelmingly were is Masons. George Washington took the oath of office as president not on a Christian bible but on a Masonic bible.

And Justin will usually also point out that by and large even the Christians among the colonists had had quite enough of the experience of state-sponsored religion, and wanted no part of it here. As witness the constitutional mandate for separation of church and state. Oh, right-wingers like to lie about that too, pretending that the First Amendment didn't really mean to establish separation of church and state, but then, lying is what right-wingers do. It's what they expend nearly all their mental activity doing.

And so right-wingers, and especially the fascists of the Christian Right, especially love to lie with the claim that separation of church and state somehow infringes on their religious freedoms. If there are any of them genuinely ignorant enough to believe this, it's only because they have been miseducated to have their brains function at the moron level; the rest of them know better and are just, well, lying.

The school-prayer issue is a perfect example. Absolutely to restriction on the rights of students to pray has ever been hinted at. What the Christian fascists can't have in public schools, for reasons that should be blindingly obvious to even the most degraded moron, is official public prayer, which is thereby inflicted on students of all beliefs. I really don't understand how it's possible to be so stupid that you can't understand something so ridiculously simple.

Which brings us to this story, reported for DNAinfo New York by Nigel Chiwaya:
Opening Prayer to Jesus Sparks Shouting Match at Precinct Council Meeting

WASHINGTON HEIGHTS -- An uptown police precinct council member sparked a shouting match with community members after opening Wednesday night's public meeting with a prayer to Jesus Christ.

34th Precinct Community Council secretary Loreen Felis, who has been at her post for the past five months, opened the meeting at Isabella Geriatric Center with an invocation that repeatedly and exclusively referenced Christian religion.

"All things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things and him all things hold together; and he is the head of the body; the church," Felis said.

"Peace through his blood shed on the cross. And the body of Christ says Amen."

The prayer drew immediate outrage from audience members, who said prayer had no place in a public meeting on issues of neighborhood government.

"We are coming to a meeting that has to do with the community, and to have to listen to a prayer?" asked Eddie Santos, general manager at Papasito Restaurant and Agave Bar. "You have a thousand other cultures -- why would you want do a prayer?"

"I go to church, but this is ridiculous."

Rud Morales, owner of Negro Claro lounge, told Felis, "I don't want to hear you pray here. It's not in the bylaws."

Felis stood her ground and began shouting back at Morales, saying that people complaining about the prayer were uptown club owners who need God's intervention more than anyone. . . .

Now there clearly was overlap here between the prayer issue and ongoing community complaints about noise level and rowdiness emanating from some area restaurants and bars. But the prayer issue is open and shut. Not to Ms. Felis, though.

"This is not about religion. It's about keeping us in unity," Felis told DNAinfo New York after the meeting.

"The nightclub owners don't understand that they're supposed to be on their knees praying 24/7 because they don't know if having youngsters in their club could form some kind of chaos, not to mention terrorism."

The president of the 34th Precinct Community Council, George Espinal, after spending a fair amount of time answering charges of "sowing discord," as reporter Chiwaya characterizes the claims of the business owners, "between restaurant owners and residents over noise on Dyckman Street" (to promote his run for district leader, the business leaders say), defended Felis, saying her prayer "was to start the meeting on a good note."

He added that opening prayers are also standard practice at several other precinct councils around the city. He declined to say which ones.

"We're not trying to proselytize anyone or make anyone join any denomination," Espinal said. "The majority of the precinct councils have an opening prayer that is non-denominational."

However, in light of the controversy, Espinal added that the council would look into the incident. He would not say whether he planned to allow the practice to continue at future meetings. The next meeting is scheduled for the end of November.

Apparently Ms. Felis is incapable of understanding how unallowable her Jesus chatter is for an official at a public meeting, doesn't grasp that saying, "This is not about religion," doesn't make it not about religion. So it may not be totally surprising that her belief that "it's about keeping us in unity" did the opposite.

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For the Sandy anniversary, those within reach of the afflicted NY-NJ-CT coastal area are invited to "Light up the shore!"

Blacked-out lower Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, looking northeast, with the tower of the Empire State Building poking up in the background

by Ken

It's an anniversary that has been looming ominously for, well, going on a year.

As it happened, yesterday I was in New Jersey's "Mile-Square City" of Hoboken, on the mostly flatland lip of land below the southern end of the bluffs that rise above the state's Hudson River shoreline, on a wonderful 5½-hour Wolfe Walkers walking tour with the incomparable Justin Ferate, and wherever we went -- at least until we finally reached the high ground overlooking the river where the Stevens Institute of Technology was built, with those spectacular vistas across to Manhattan and up and down the river, and on to the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge -- there were tales of the horrendous flooding from Superstorm Sandy.

In many cases, happily, the flooding stories were accompanied by subsequent stories of gradual restoration and/or rebuilding and reopening. But there were also the cases of not-yet-restored, including the very start of our Hoboken excursion, where the beautiful Erie-Lackawanna Railroad and Ferry Terminal designed by Kenneth Murchison, where connection was once made between trains running to the west and the ferry link to Manhattan. The terminal, which now connects NJ Transit's light-rail lines with the nearby Hoboken station of the PATH (Port Authority Trans-Hudson) subway line, remains largely closed, including the famous vaulted Waiting Room.

As Justin pointed out in the course of the walk, big storms plowing the Northest tend, for reasons of local geography, to pass over the stretch of coast surrounding New York Harbor, producing the double whammy of a storm like Sandy -- inflicting damage, yes, but not of a kind we're accustomed to.

This scene of course plays out all through the New Jersey-New York-Connecticut coastal region, and of course with special severity in the unprotected shore areas that took the hardest hits, where loss of life was highest and rebuilding has been a maybe-yes, maybe-no proposition, with the prospect of permanent changes in land use and lifestyles.

I thought of sharing some of my memories of the storm days and the aftermath weeks, but they're so much milder than the fates suffered by the hardest-hit folks that somehow they don't seem appropriate. So I was pleased to see an e-mail this morning from the Municipal Art Society with information about a remembrance tomorrow which is called either "Light the Shore" or "Light Up the Shore," depending where you look.

Join Sandy-Impacted Communities to Light Up the Shore!

On Tuesday October 29th -- the anniversary of Superstorm Sandy -- groups from across the region will be lighting up the coastline to acknowledge the impact of the storm and the on-going resilience challenges we collectively face. Groups in Staten Island, Red Hook, Lower East Side, in Connecticut and all down the Jersey shore will join together with flashlights and candles along the coast. The goal is to have the entire Sandy-impacted coastline illuminated!

All communities are welcome to join their friends and neighbors and line the coast in solidarity for a resilient future!  Information about specific community meeting spots and times are shown below:

MANHATTAN, LOWER EAST SIDE

Time: 6:45pm to 8:15pm

Where: East River Park
• 10th Street (GOLES) will be meeting at 10th Street and Avenue D at 6:45pm to walk to the East River.
• 6th Street (Henry St.) will be meeting at BGR on 6th between FDR and D to walk over at 7ish to the East River.
• Houston Street (FEGS) will meet at Houston and Avenue D at 6:45pm to walk over.

BROOKLYN

Time: Meeting at 6:30pm, candle-lighting at 7:45pm

Where:
• Brighton Beach: Shorefront Y, 3300 Coney Island Ave.
• Canarsie: Canarsie Park 84th & Seaview (6:30pm -- interfaith service; performance by local elementary school and gospel talent; 7:45pm -- candle-lighting)
• Coney Island: West 8th Street & Riegelman Boardwalk (by NY Aquarium, on boardwalk side). Contact: OHEL / Project Hope Rachel Heller,  rlh290@yahoo.com
• Coney Island (2): Stillwell Avenue & Riegelman Boardwalk Point
• Coney Island (3): Coney Island Pier, W. 21st Street & Riegelman Boardwalk
• Coney Island (4): Kaiser Park Pier, W. 33rd St. & Bayview Ave
• Dumbo: corner of Main Street & Plymouth @ entrance to Brooklyn Bridge Park. Point of contact: Alexandria Sica Email: alexandria@dumbonyc.org
• Gerritsen Beach: Meet at 7pm at the end of Gerritsen Avenue, on the Shell Bank Creek shoreline. Candle-lighting at 7:45pm
• Red Hook: Coffey Park, Verona St. between Richard St. and Dwight St.
• Red Hook (2): IKEA, 1 Beard Street (join Portside and friends at the water’s edge)
• Sea Gate: Sea Gate Association Beach 42 and Surf Avenue. Contact: 917-586-7006 or merrie5017@gmail.com
• Sheepshead Bay: 2801 Emmons Avenue

STATEN ISLAND

Time: 7:45pm

Where: Light a candle with your neighbor in the closest waterfront to your community in Staten Island.

[See the link for information about an earlier Walk Along the Boardwalk, Community Supper, and Interfaith Servic of Remembrance.]

LIGHT UP NEW JERSEY

Time: 6:00pm

Where:
• Raritan Bay Waterfront Park, 1 Kennan Way, South Amboy (NJ 101.5 with Raritan Bay Federal Credit Union)
• Keansburg (NJ 101.5)
• Asbury Park Boardwalk: Keansburg 9/11 Memorial , Main Street and Beachway (NJ 101.5 with CentraState and First Atlantic Federal Credit Union)
• Jenkinson’s in Point Pleasant, 300 Ocean Ave. Point Pleasant Beach (94.3 The Point with United Teletech Financial and Zarrilli Homes)
• Bradley Beach, 900 Ocean Ave. (94.3 The Point)
• Seaside Heights, 800 Ocean Terrace (105.7 The Hawk with NJ Outboards and Walters Homes)
• Chef Mike’s ABG in Seaside Park, Island Beach Motor Lodge, 24th and Central Ave, South Seaside Park (92.7 WOBM with Chef Mike’s ABG, Jersey Shore Crawlspace Enhancement, Classic Kitchens,Island Beach Mortor Lodge, Marine Max and DelPrete Construction)
• Mud City Crabhouse, Long Beach Island, Manahawkin, 1185 East Bay Ave. (105.7 The Hawk with Modular Factory Homes Direct)
• Lucy the Elephant, Margate, 9200 Atlantic Ave. (Lite Rock 96.9)
• Ocean City Music Pier, Moorlyn Terrace (Cat Country 107.3 with South Jersey Gas)
• Trump Plaza in Atlantic City, 2500 Boardwalk (97.3 ESPN / WPG 1450 with Atlantic City Electric and Xfinity)
• Laguna Grill & Rum Bar in Brigantine, 1400 Ocean Ave., Brigantine (SoJO 104.9 with Prudential Fox & Roach Real Estate, the "LePera Team"

(Note: No information is provided about Connecticut events, and with a quick search I couldn't find any. But whose to say that Nutmeg Staters can't follow the same prescription as Staten Islanders? "Light a candle with your neighbor in the closest waterfront to your community.")

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Urban Gadabout: Friday is World Tourism Day -- so GO someplace (I've got some NYC suggestions)

by Ken

No, I don't know anything more about "World Tourism Day," and I'm not interested enough to research it. But I do know what it means to me, and one thing it doesn't mean is booking a $10K fancy-pants trip to some exotic destination.

For reasons that probably wouldn't interest anyone but me, regular travel-style tourism isn't terribly workable for me, but as "Urban Gadabout" readers know only too well, I've become a firm believer in the "tourist in your own city" approach, and if I did have occasion to travel, I would probably try to do it the way I've been doing my local gadding. I expect that in more and more places there are more and more opportunities for walking and other kinds of tours that explore an area's past and present, appreciating what's there now and understanding how it came to be there.


LAST CALL FOR "BRIGHTON LINE MEMOIRS"

As I mentioned in my recent post "Catching up with Jack Eichenbaum," Jack -- who's the Queens Borough Historian -- had to postpone this tour from its original July date. People are probably more familiar with Jack's more or less annual "World of the #7 Train," a day-long trek along the subway line that goes from Times Square to Flushing. Awhile back he brought back his "Day on the J train," to Brooklyn and Queens, and now for the first time in a decade or so he's doing Brooklyn's Brighton line.

Brighton Line Memoirs meandering off the Q train

Saturday, September 28, 10am-5:30pm
This is a series of five walks and connecting rides along what was once the Brooklyn, Flatbush and Coney Island RR dating to 1878. Walks take place in Prospect Park, Brighton Beach, along Avenue U, in Ditmas Park and Central Flatbush. Lunch is in Brighton Beach where you can picnic on the Boardwalk. Tour fee is $39 and you need to preregister by check to Jack Eichenbaum, 36-20 Bowne St. #6C, Flushing, NY 11354 (include name, phone and email address) Get the full day’s program and other info by email jaconet@aol.com. The tour is limited to 25 people. Don’t get left out!

As I also reported in that post, although the last I heard Jack still had a fair amount of space, "The way it often works is that there's a flurry of registrations as the date closes in, and people wind up getting closed out. You don't want that to happen to you, do you?"


MUNICIPAL ART SOCIETY

I still don't know of any better place to start exploring the city than MAS's tours (what's posted now is the schedule through November), and while a bunch of tours for the coming weekend are already sold out, the last time I looked there was still space in:

Harlem Hike: 145th Street from Hotel Olga to Sugar Hill
Eric K. Washington
Saturday, 11am-1pm

Prowling the War of 1812 Seaport
Kathleen Hulser
Sunday, 11am-1pm

Note: I've done Eric Washington's 145th Street "hike" and loved it -- and also his "Harlem Grab Bag," of which there's another edition coming up Saturday, October 12.


ACROSS 57th STREET WITH JUSTIN FERATE,
PLUS "THE REAL GANGS OF NEW YORK"

I worried that I jumped the gun in providing a link for the fall 2013 Wolfe Walkers brochure, which I'd unearthed while doing my own Web rummaging, but Justin Ferate (who has been organizing the Wolfe Walkers program for some years now) finally attached the brochure to a list e-mail. (And if you're not on Justin's list, you're missing out on a wealth of information. Sign up now.) As it happens, there's hardly any time left till the first event on the agenda, "57th Street: Art! Music! Culture!," this Saturday the 28th at 1pm ("to approximately 4pm").

57th Street has long been a treasure trove of artistic, musical, and cultural delights. We discover the history, legends, and lore of this fascinating thoroughfare. Among the various sites will be Trump Tower, Tiffany’s, the Fuller Building, the Solow Building, Carnegie Hall, Steinway Hall, the Art Students’ League, and a selection of art galleries. Rediscover old friends, discover remnants of the street’s residential past, and view high-end new buildings. Tour will include several special interior visits.

Meet: Inside the entrance of Trump Tower, located on the east side of Fifth Avenue, between East 56th and East 57th Streets. A coffee restaurant and restrooms are available inside the building.

Fee: $23 on-site (by check to Hermine Watterson)

I've spent a lot of time on various stretches of 57th Street, and I'll bet it would be special to be able to see it through Justin's eyes, not to mention those promised "special interior visits." During the ominous weekend last October when the Northeast was girding for Hurricane Sandy, and the Municipal Art Society prudently canceled its tours, I found myself suddenly free to hook up with Justin's Halloween Greenwich Village "ghost" walk. I don't have much interest in ghosts, but I realized I'd never done a walk in the Village with Justin, and his view was bound to be different from any I'd experienced. It was, it was.

As it happens, this walk is scheduled on the same day as Jack Eichenbaum's "Brighton Line Memoirs," so I can't do it, but I'll bet that people who do won't ever look at this grand old street the same way. It's too late to take advantage of the discount for advance registration, so just show up at the meeting place (see above) with that check for $23 made out to Hermine Watterson.

Tomorrow Justin's giving a lecture at the Merchant's
House Museum on "The Real Gangs of New York"

It's a "19th Century Lifeways Lecture," "marking the 150th anniversary of the New York Draft Riots, the bloodiest urban insurrection of 19th Century America," tomorrow night, September 26, at 6:30pm. Justin will "examine the social pressures and misguided public policies that led to the powder keg that exploded in the streets of New York in July of 1863."

The Merchant's House Museum at 29 East 4th Street is a unique destination in its own right, not just for the survived 1832 Federal-style house itself but for the remarkable circumstance that a house worth's of furnishings and possessions from the family that lived there for almost a century has also been preserved. The lecture is free to museum members, $15 to others. For more information and registration, go to the museum's Calendar of Events.


GREEN-WOOD CEMETERY

One of the sites planned for Saturday's "Far Side" tour

Green-Wood is a reminder of the days before we had major parks, when cemeteries on the outskirts of the city were places where harried urbanites went for a day's outing in nature, and Brooklyn's Green-Wood was in fact the prototype for New York City's first great parks, Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted's Central Park (Manhattan) and Prospect Park (up the Terminal Moraine a piece in Brooklyn). Green-Wood has an active tour and events schedule, and while Sunday's "Historic Trolley Tour" is sold out, on Saturday at 1pm there's an intriguing-looking trolley tour called "The Far Side of Green-Wood," which will visit "sites not included on many other Green-Wood tours."

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That's just some off-the-top-my-head thoughts, and just for the coming weekend. Don't neglect to check these folks' ongoing schedules -- including that of one of my favorite tour sources, the New York Transit Museum.

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For a "Sunday Classics" fix anytime, visit the stand-alone "Sunday Classics with Ken."