Here's a breakdown of car ownership (or actually non-car ownership) in the 4 boros:

Most NYC residents don't own cars. New York City total: 54% (vs. 57% in 1990), The Bronx: 60%, Brooklyn: 54%, Manhattan: 78% (vs. 77% in 1990. Unclear if this is actual decline in car ownership or from rounding the numbers.), Queens: 34%, Staten Island: 20%. [bicycle universe]

I should be heartened by these figures, but I wonder how accurate they are. On the one hand the stats are from 2000, so things are probably different now. Also, lots of people who live here keep their cars registered in other states to save on insurance costs. Then there's this article in the Times that notes how New York is falling behind other more enlightened cities who are shutting parts of town down to car traffic. Not surprisingly, Mayor Bloomberg hasn't been very inspirational for bicyclists. Commenting on one of the many bike/car fatalities of the past year, he advised cyclists to "pay attention."

The article suggests the reason for the increase in problems over the past few years has something to do with the city attracting an increasing number of people who, for the past 50 or so years, normally would opt for the suburbs to roost. As usual, these folks know the melody of the song but get the words wrong. They flock to the Big City, but want to take their suburban accoutrements of convenience with them.

If something is convenient, it seems to nullify all debate. Case in point is the ongoing moral struggle seen in patrons of Fresh Direct. They love getting fancy food and fresh produce delivered to their door, but have serious misgivings about the pollution, congestion and waste produced by the company's trucks and packaging. While I do think FD could probably find better packaging methods, I'm not sure I see a way the company could feasibly maintain their delivery schedules without using those big trucks. It kind of seems like the people who are complaining about them are trying to assuage their own guilt over using the service in the first place.

The Brooklyn Record had a recent post which led to a lot of discussion about ways in which food delivery companies could reduce pollution. I commented that it was important to remember what a luxury it is to have such a service, and how it comes with a price. At that point I was told that FD is a 'necessity' for certain people, mainly because there is no decent grocery store in their neighborhood. This got me to thinking, we live in a city with one of the most extensive mass transportation systems in the world which, despite its problems, provides its citizens with flat-fare access to most of the city. Yet despite this we have a whole bunch of people who apparently live so far off the grid that they must compromise their ecological morals and, regretfully, have to have their avocados brought to their door. Yes, they have to do this because there is no other option; it's not like they could hop on the bus and get the stuff they want.

The unspoken, irreducible element here is convenience. Nobody wants to really use that as a defense but that's what's going on here. It's not like I'm above this, I'm a slob for convenience as much as anyone. I'd probably use Fresh Direct sometimes, if only it came to my neighborhood (it's amazing I haven't starved to death yet). But I wouldn't kid myself as to what I was doing, I'd at least be honest enough with myself to admit I could get pretty much anything I wanted if I just hoofed around the city more.

People will claim they don't have enough time and so simply must use services like FD just to keep it together. I sure hope these aren't the same people who whine about emissions from the trucks. Maybe you need to reorder your priorities more than you need to worry about some fumes and some cardboard boxes.

But like I said, I'm not immune. Lately I would kill for the convenience of a car or big pick-up truck. I have all this stuff I need to get into my house, but have to jump through all these hoops to get it there because I have no vehicle. For the basement soundproofing project, I'm having a bunch of drywall delivered from a local contractor's supply house. The delivery charge alone was $75. Now, I could have rented a $20 a day van from U-Haul for less, (usually it's more like $50 a day when all is said and done). But getting the van is a pain, and driving it is particularly stressful for me. So not only am I paying for not owning a vehicle, I'm paying for the convenience of having it delivered to my door. I admit it.

But if I want some exotic vegetable, I also know I'm gonna walk over to 49th street and go to the fancy grocery store before I go home tonight. It sure is nice we have all these subways to get around.

Labels: Cars, Mass Transit, Renovation, The City

Saturday was a busy day in SoBu (South Bushwick, think this name will catch on?). We hit a snag with the plans for soundproofing in that my research I discovered that the air cavity we'd end up with would be maybe too little. Essentially, more air space means more sound isolation. It appears to go again logic, but we need fewer layers of drywall up there to get the best results. Please consult this handy diagram for relative STC (Sound Transmission Class) ratings (higher is better):
By keeping the original ceiling intact, we'd have a "triple leaf" which is less effective than a correctly-built double leaf. Of course, we're not really building a full double leaf (which would involve two sets of separate joists and is something that doesn't really fly for a ceiling that's only 6.5').

Ripping a ceiling down is fun. It took like a half hour to rip out some 150 square feet of double-layer drywall. It was a little tricky getting it out from around the pipes and conduit, but everything came out fine. Before we knew it, we had exposed all the joists (that probably hadn't seen light in 30-some years), happy to find nothing rotten or any human skulls or anything. The downside of course was the clean-up.


I had like 5 contractor trash bags left and those filled up within minutes with at least half the floor covered with rubble. Lucky for me, there's a contractor supply place two blocks away (Henry Distributors, 1674 Broadway) that sold me a box of 100 for $30. We bagged up the rest of the debris and Buzz started hauling the bags outside. Our cellar has those horizontal metal cellar doors with cement stairs leading down. While this is way better than the hole-and-ladder configuration most houses have, the stairs are really steep and the clearance of the doorway is minimal. And these bags were really really heavy. I don't know how we got all 10 (!) out onto the areaway so quickly. We basically were done in two hours (though it would take four hours to begin to recuperate for me).

As of Friday all the supplies have been ordered, most of which will be delivered Saturday morning. I'm annoyed with the new snowfall, as it almost definitely means nobody will be showing up today to pick up the trash, and it means it the plywood I've been storing out back will be all snow-covered, and I need that stuff indoors so it can dry out. There are still a few things I'm not sure how we'll handle but at least we're getting there.

The rest of the evening was spent going to the early show at the Knitting Factory to see Trans Am, Oneida and Big Bear. I wanted to go to this show because I really like Big Bear. But I was disappointed by the set; one of their guitarists left the group and appears to have been replaced by some keyboardist (red flag!), and worse, the lead singer is no longer barking in that shredding 'hardcore' screamo voice and sounds now like a little girl shrieking into the mic. She mentioned something about being sick, but it occurs to me that she says this at nearly every show. And wouldn't a cold actually make a voice more guttural and scratchy? I guess singing that way has finally taken its toll.

Oneida was good, as usual, but I don't think I like seeing them at clubs like this. They played some old stuff like "All Arounder," which was always one of my favorites. They didn't play "Up with People," which was fine with me, I'm getting a little tired of that one. We went to Nancy Whiskey Pub at the early hour of 10:30 and somehow stayed until the bar closed. There was a bacherlorette party going on there with a lot of sorority-types present. At first irritated by their presence, we concluded that it was admirable for people like that to have a bacherlorette party at a bar known mostly for its grizzly old men who hang out there.

Labels: Bands, Bars, Renovation, Soundproofing

For a brief time I wrote band previews for the NY Press. Some of the articles appeared largely unretouched, but as time went on, I noticed they were really going through the wringer. Somebody was hacking my tiny blurbs, not to shorten so much as add nonsensical stuff to somehow jazz up my writing. I talked to the shmoe who was doing this and he blamed me for not writing "tight enough." Somehow, adding "Spraying the audience with vomit and cheese" to my write-up of the Ex-Models didn't seem to be tightening anything up, yet he had the final cut. Anyway we were both unceremoniously let go a couple months later.

I was reminded of this heady time in my life today as I read JoshB's latest article in the Press, concerning the reticence of his livery cab driver to take him to my adopted neighborhood of Bushwick Brooklyn. It's a pretty funny read, which I read previously on his own blog. Now, I don't know if his writing is subject to the same dubious knife of editorial re-education, but there are some amusing discrepancies. In describing our house and its occupants' desires, the Press article states

My friends wanted to buy an apartment in Park Slope, sure. Who wouldn’t? Historic brownstones, lush trees, schools without metal detectors. Yet their bank accounts would only let them buy in Bushwick, two minutes from the jackhammer-loud overhead train.

Oh, the indignity of it all! Like I would ever want, of all things, an apartment in Park Slope. I know, none of it matters, it's just filler for the real meat of the story. I just hope it was the work of some anonymous editor and not Mr B Himself. He knows better anyway; we lived for years on the same longitudinal path in Clinton Hill and Crown Heights, respectively (he's still there). Truth be known, I had wanted to buy in Clinton Hill, but even that neighborhood had priced us out long ago, not to mention it is getting progressively full of the kind of reprehensible people I used to think would never cross Flatbush Ave (let alone come into Brooklyn).

But I suppose in terms of dramatic illustration, establishing the dichotomy of The Slope and The 'Shwick makes for a palpably wide spectrum of experience. Still, none of you Slopers better come out here or, you know, we'll beat you with a bat. For an hour!

Labels: Bushwick, Funny to Me, House, Music

Since I'm no good for regular blogging anymore, let's get back to house renovations. Actually, 'renovation' may be too strong a word for what we've been doing to this house. I always think of renovations in terms of totally ripping stuff out and putting in something totally new, like a bathroom or kitchen. In this case, I'm trying to soundproof a room in the cellar so the band can practice without making the neighbors throw bottles at our house (well, they already do that, so let's just say we'd like to limit the number of things flung houseward).

At some point in the past the basement was paneled and subdivided into a few small rooms. I took the two in the middle of the floor and removed the dividing wall (which, like all the paneled walls here were single-stud frames with paneling nailed to it). These walls will provide a base for the soundproofing to come, but it's the ceiling that has been taking up all my time lately.

Once upon a time, this ceiling was completely finished in acoustical tile. By the time we moved in, though, many of the tiles had fallen out, and those that had stayed put were water stained and hanging by a thread. There had been framing around the pipes running through the room, not to mention occasional framings that didn't seem to be concealing anything at all. This led to my theory that the whole cellar had been designed to thwart anybody over 5' 7", since as soon as you think you can stand up straight you inevitably smash your head on some box or something sticking meaninglessly out of the ceiling. In retrospect, the Fuck Tall People Party was kind to the long n' lanky set.

So I had to rip all this stuff out so I can put in a partially decoupled ceiling composed of a dual drywall layer separated by a visoelastic adhesive and sealed with acoustical caulk.* The walls will be simpler, just a dual layer comprised of plywood and drywall (plywood leftover from the floor refinishing). I had planned to rip the ceiling down to the joists to fill with insulation, but I just realized that above the tile level the topmost layer is already two layers of drywall nailed into the ceiling joists. In theory, this is a great start for sound isolation, but there's one big problem. Or, several big problems, it's full of holes.

Sound isolation (the more correct term for what I'm after) is all about sealing things off. No matter what materials are used, if things aren't securely separated, the soundproofing won't work. Two layers of drywall is great, but the gaping holes (from old light fixtures and BX cable) negate any good the drywall could do. At first I thought I'd just tear this stuff down, but upon reflection (too lazy) I've decided just to patch these holes really well and build onto them.

I patched all the small holes last night, and a few of the larger ones. Tonight I tackle the really big ones, for which I have to construct plugs to mount into the boards. The good thing about this work is that I don't have to be neat at all. As long as the seal is solid, it doesn't matter what it looks like since it'll be obscured by the next ceiling layers. When it's all done then, we'll have two discrete segments of doubled-up drywall and two distinct levels of trapped air as well (as long as it's contained, that air will actually help stop heavy bass tones from ruining someone else's enjoyment of Deal or No Deal upstairs).

*I'll explain this when I get the supplies in.

Labels: House, Renovation, Soundproofing

My boss said I could leave early today because of the weather (which I think is actually her guilty conscience cuz she almost never comes into the office at all). But I can't because I'm taking a training that runs from 3-6PM. So that sucks. The likelihood of getting a real snow day is pretty slim at this point in my life. It's times like these I feel should rationalize my returning to telecommuting all the time ("I could work through any blizzard! And I will, too! Sure!") But I'm just about to pass the one-year mark as a real employee, so with my annual pay increase looming I guess I won't rock the boat right now. Plus I'm still not convinced I'm indispensable around here yet.

Anyway, this training is a breeze: it's a web-based teleconference so I can sit here and do the crossword while I'm learning a new content management system for the web site. Which of course I could do from home as well ... damn. Now it's too late to get home before the training starts.

Labels: Job, Office

Looks like Sylvie's here to stay. She and Buzz got hitched at the fabulous Brooklyn Municipal Building over the weekend and then had a reception at home. I took a few photos of the ceremony and forgot all about the camera until they got to the cake-cutting (which I also missed, I only got one odd pic of Buzz waving a cake spatula around).

This was the new house's first party, so far it seemed to weather the storm well. Despite the rain, the wedded couple made good on their promise to break a whole bunch of plates in the back yard. Apparently this is some sort of wedding tradition (gimme a wineglass carefully folded into a napkin, thank you). I don't have any photos of this, but I'm pretty sure somebody got some footage, so I'll link to it when it becomes available.

Ironically, our yard has already been the site of a similar celebration: before the party, I had to go out and sweep up a number of glass bottles that had been lobbed onto our property. I wasn't sure where the bottles came from or if our yard specifically was being targeted, but I hoped it was just mindless littering. But after the plate-throwing cacophony ended, just as the last people returned inside, a St. Ides bottle came out of the sky, landing squarely on the patio. I'm almost certain it came from the house next door, probably from the top floor. Now I'm not sure how to fight back, aside from leaving the broken crockery out there as a symbol that we really don't give a damn, but at some point I will want to spend time in that yard, and I don't wanna have to wear a helmet. I'm thinking of getting an air rifle, but perhaps that may just exacerbate the animosity. Wait till they get a load of band practice.

Labels: Bushwick, Neighbors, Weddings