Seen & Heard: Local events for climate week

September 22, 2020 Community News

CLIMATE WEEK ONLINE AND IN PERSON
Battery Park City Authority has a roster of events lined up for Climate Week, which starts today. There are discussions on micro plastics and the authority’s sustainability efforts; live drawing in the park; and seminars on how to zero out waste. There’s also a Star Talk live show on Thursday at 7:30 with our own Neil deGrasse Tyson. See all the events here.

SOUVENIR STORE NOW?
In the “Hunh?” Department, the former Forever 21 store in the Oculus that closed last fall (the chain filed for bankruptcy ahead of the curve) will soon be a NYC souvenir store. This may be one of the great mysteries of retail in 2020. (Thanks to N. for pic.)

BEFORE AND AFTER
What a difference a (Labor) day makes. The shot from C. above, from Tuesday, Sept. 1. Mine, below, from Tuesday, Sept. 15. A good sign for local business, but also perhaps just a showing of why there is tons of car traffic but quiet streets and empty trains.

TAXI DRIVERS DEMAND DEBT RELIEF
L. sent this picture in August, and I buried it by accident — worth running ICYMI and to see this view of a yellow street. The drivers were demanding debt relief. Of course the business had already been “disrupted” — the technologists’ word for taking incomes away from the people who actually provide the service, if you ask me — by Uber and the pandemic was the final nail to the coffin. “Somebody told me my medallion is worth $50,000 or $75,000. I owe $436,000,” Brooklynite Jean Tannis, 69, a taxi medallion owner since 1987, told The Post in its story at the time. “Even if I’m driving until I die, I will never be able to pay this loan.”

 
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4 Comments

  1. N
    September 22, 2020 • 2:15 pm

    The local parking garages are also pretty full again. The attendant at the garage on Reade Street told me that most of the people coming in are new (rather than pre-COVID customers) because they’re all driving rather than taking public transportation. Every weekday morning there’s a stream of cars going in between 8 – 8:30 am and getting backed up on Reade in a way that never used to happen pre-COVID. This morning there was also a back-up of cars through the Warren / West intersection waiting to get into the garage across from Soul Cycle.

    Reply
  2. David G Imber
    September 23, 2020 • 8:38 pm

    About Uber, et al., agreed. I’ve been making the case for eons it seems. Euphemisms like “gig economy” do little to hide the fact that they represent society sliding into a new feudalism. It’s a tragedy.

    Reply
  3. JS Miller
    September 24, 2020 • 4:16 pm

    Sadly, Taxi’s are hard to come by in TriBeCa. I had to wait 20 minutes to get one the other day. There was nothing on Greenwich and I went over to Hudson. I asked the drives, both going and coming home, if business had picked up. Both said they are lucky to get one fare in a hour. I support taxis – a NYC institution.

    Reply

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