I walked by there later (after your comment) and the counterfeiters were back. Lots of them were on the opposite side of Broadway from their usual spot by the old bank building. But some were there as well, by the bank building (now "Inter"...?). Once again....lawlessness. — Marcus on Another smoke shop coming to Church

They're also the owner of Koyo in Astoria. — Sc on Another Japanese omakase coming to the neighborhood

I would try our CM, Chris Marte. The rebates are for zone residents making <$60k//y. For more of my perspective, which I hope you and other neighbors down here, pls read my NYT op-ed from Thurs: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/08/opinion/traffic-new-york-congestion.html Best, Charles — Komanoff on There’s an election this month!

Cops were actually kicking all of the counterfeiters out on Canal this afternoon. There were probably 6+ cops and a few vehicles. Was a great sight to see! First time I’ve ever seen that happen. Agreed on don’t block the box too. The traffic enforcement is just nonexistent on Hudson/Canal—very dangerous. — person on Another smoke shop coming to Church

Well done Robert! You are correct about the Reade & Duane location. regards, Sonia Perhaps Pam will put up the location photograph confiming? — SONIA STOCK on Where in Tribeca?

I hope Jill is trolling because this is such a brain dead comment. Tribeca and New York City needs to be more supportive of hospitality. It's one of the largest metropolitan areas on the planet and if you don't like the noise leave the city. — Thomas on New restaurant coming to The Palm space

If we're talking about the old Palm, they would be the only one on the block if i am not mistaken and the restaurant is facing the noisy west side Highway. I don't see any concern here. We are talking about a restaurant not a nightclub correct. See if they had any complaints in the past if not I will be there to try it out. I love caribbean everything. — M. Kenzer on New restaurant coming to The Palm space

Can't wait. Music shouldn't be a concern that place is enormous. I'm just happy to see new places come to our area. Like everyone else that lives in Tribeca we are tired of the same old stuff. My best vacation hands down was going to the caribbean. So if it is anything like that then we have a winner. #NKrestaurant #Tribeca — J. Burns on New restaurant coming to The Palm space

Five smoke shops on Canal between West Broadway and Church! — Mimi on Another smoke shop coming to Church

@Larry, good point about time saved in traffic. @Charles, thanks for explaining the "Jane the plumber/18 wheeler" issue. Which elected would you suggest are likely to listen? As to the "because I live here" issue -- well, I live here and am concerned. Wasn't there some talk about tax rebates? — Jeff on There’s an election this month!

@Larry, good point about time saved in traffic. @Charles, thanks for explaining the "Jane the plumber/18 wheeler" issue. Which elected would you suggest are likely to listen? As to the "because I live here" issue -- well, I live here and am concerned. Wasn't there some talk about tax rebates? — Jeff on There’s an election this month!

The rotating Downtown Alliance ad is really annoying and makes it hard to keep your eyes concentrated on any other content on the page. I understand why they'd want several panels, but isn't there a way to make it rotate through several times and then stop? — N on Another Japanese omakase coming to the neighborhood

Actual non-driver - and completely against Congestion Pricing. The vast majority of vehicles are commercial and relate to luxury and commercial overdevelopment - Uber, ecommerce, commercial delivery, building utility/service, construction etc. Moreover the City has manufactured congestion with street closures and street shrinkage. In the meantime, the City completely supports more projects that will increase vehicles - like the evil casino, a new billionaire building in the works. What should be happening: tax ecommerce, pied a terre, billionaire buildings — sammy on There’s an election this month!

Reademan, True. Unbelievable and sad. Criminal activity is ignored. The amount of public drug use is really scary. And nearly everyone seems to have an entitled "can do whatever i want" approach - proactive littering, letting dogs pee in flower beds, bicyclists running red lights/going wrong way. The list could go on.... — ali on Another smoke shop coming to Church

Yes, it seems more and more so. What happened, for example, to "Don't block the box" and enforcement against red-light running and speeding? Streets feel like chaos. Canal Street area especially bad, and near the tunnel. Counterfeit sellers, litter, public urination (and worse), numerous break-ins on our street, graffiti, etc. I had high hopes for this mayor, but I don't know whether it's his fault or not, but this city is a mess. — Marcus on Another smoke shop coming to Church

@Larry, thanks for saying in under 30 words what would have taken me 300. @Jeff, thanks for your kind words. Building on Larry, I'll add that for reasons I don't understand -- maybe plain inertia -- there's a chance that all trucks will be charged the same toll premium vis-a-vis cars. That would be not just unfair but also unnecessary since the TBTA, which is going to administer CP, already tolls trucks *by axles* on their tunnels and bridges. Rather than waste energy futilely demanding exemptions "because I live down here," we should appeal to electeds to make sure that Jane the Plumber and 18-wheelers don't get charged the same. — Komanoff on There’s an election this month!

The Smoke Shop at 321 Broadway across the street from the Federal Building was just busted on Thursday. — FiDiGuy on Another smoke shop coming to Church

We live in a completely lawless city, where obvious criminal activity is just ignored. Our public leaders are completely incompetent and seem intent on destroying NYC. — Reademan on Another smoke shop coming to Church

Even though I work but do not live in Tribeca, I feel sad when a long-time business closes in this neighborhood. Since the late 1970's, when I first started coming here, more stores than I can remember have had their sunrise and sunset. Kings Pharmacy now joins that sad roster. This is a familiar phenomenon, so take heart as Kings closes after a quarter century. No less an authority than E. B. White, in his "Here Is New York," wrote: "To a New Yorker the city is both changeless and changing. ln many respects it neither looks nor feels the way it did twenty-five years ago." This especially applies to stores that give us the sense of a neighborhood, rather than just a collection of city blocks. That's what these tributes tell me. — Gary on Kings Pharmacy, a Tribeca staple for 25 years, will close on June 30

Faster moving traffic will be a huge boon to the tradespeople. Instead of sitting in traffic they'll be able to more efficiently work, get deliveries, and schedule their day. — Larry Greenfield on There’s an election this month!

@Thomas: By law, CP’s congestion revenue is earmarked for transit capital investments (80% to NYCT, 10% to each of the MTA’s two commuter RR’s) and so can’t be dedicated to holding down transit fares. Nevertheless, those earmarks will hold down fares over the long haul by making the trains run better, thus attracting more riders (not to mention defraying the need to borrow which as you know is a huge cause of rising fares). My model, which underlies the figures in my NYT op-ed and which I again invite you to review, projects that “turnstile windfall” to be $200 million a year. For conservatism, the model holds those revenues aside rather than pretending to invest them or use them to hold the line on fares. Re commuters: I use the term to denote regular (formerly 4-5 days a week, but now, with WFH, 3 days) work trippers to the CBD. Pre-Covid, they accounted for nearly half of auto trips to the zone. Now they’re barely a third; the remainder being non-work (theater, medical, daytrippers, whatever) and thru-trips. I don’t include thru-trips in my count of people coming to the zone, b/c they don’t “land” there; I trust you agree. My point about commuters being only a subset of all car trips is one I continually press on my fellow CP advocates, by the way; it irks me when they conflate straight-up census counts of CBD trips with all such trips. In any event, the 15-20% attrition I project in car trips to/thru the zone takes less of a toll (haha) on trips that land there than you may have assumed. And that modest shrinkage is more than offset, in my model, by the increase in subway trips noted above, along with a 10% rise in vehicle occupancies (from 1.33 per car now to 1.46 with CP). If you find the latter suspect, please consider that changing prices of goods and services differently (as CP will do to driving into the zone) invariably affects behaviors in myriad ways, many of which can’t fully be foreseen. This “magic of pricing,” if you will, is why I’ve long gravitated in my advocacy toward pricing rather than conventional regulation, and not just in traffic matters. Whether CP will make it more or less attractive to work in, live in and visit the zone and NYC is something we can debate. Fyi, while I’m indeed a dyed-in-the-wool enviro, I don’t advocate CP on pollution grounds. Perhaps you noticed that the op-ed, co-written by a climate economist, didn’t mention climate and barely mentioned air pollution. That was to keep the focus on CP’s *time savings* which in our estimation are far and away CP’s greatest benefit, and, thus, selling point. Last, I admit that the fruits of investing CP revenue that I touted in my opening graf as well as in the op-ed will not be harvested overnight but will take years to materialize. That’s a non-conservatism in my presentation, one I flag in the model (even offering a “switch” to turn them off) but could not raise in the op-ed due to limitations on space and comprehensibility. I add that MTA governance, which we barely touched on in the op-ed, is critically awry and has to be overhauled. You and I evidently agree that our city is in trouble and can’t any longer afford hidebound inefficiencies and privileges (I’m looking at anti-housing forces, among others). I bet you and I have much in common. Let’s join forces. — Komanoff on There’s an election this month!

Charles, I've appreciated your work on congestion pricing for a long time. One area that I never see addressed: what about the various trades-people that need vans or cars to carry their tools, supplies, etc., and on whom many buildings depend? Having done construction for years I know there is very little margin for additional expenses. I imagine the result will be higher prices to clients, which would in some way affect your numbers of gain/loss to the city, no? Is there any provision (tax credits, etc.) for these people? — jeff on There’s an election this month!

If you said that the congestion tax was going to be used to lower train and subway fares we could debate the net impact. But the current proposal MUST lower the number of commuters (absent other forces). There's only three types of commuters: 1- Currently commute on public transit. Numbers should stay flat or very slightly down as a result of this policy (more crowded trains). 2- Currently commute privately. With the new tax, some will keep driving, some will switch to public and some will stop commuting into the city. This policy will reduce the number of people currently in this category who commute into the city. 3- Not commuting right now. With the potential cost of commuting either staying the same (public transit) or going up (private transit) there's nothing in this policy to motivate a non-commuter to begin commuting. In a vacuum, this policy will definitively reduce the number of commuters into NYC. This policy won't take effect in a vacuum. Maybe the number of commuters will go up anyway because other forces have a larger impact. A stronger economy, reversal of population outflows, companies requiring a return-to-office or increased public safety would all be expected to increase the number of office workers. What's NOT going to happen is somebody who doesn't commute now says to themselves, "Well, now that it's more expensive to drive and the train fare is the same I think congestion policy is motivating me to commute into NYC again." It's fine if you support CP on environmental grounds (it will reduce auto trips to Manhattan) or as a means to transfer wealth from drivers to MTA employees (go look at the MTA's cost per employee sometime) but don't delude yourself that it will lead to more commuters. — Thomas Hagen on There’s an election this month!

Very very sad to hear this news. Kings has been a wonderful, welcoming neighborhood gem. We filled all our prescriptions there, and they navigated our insurance with great skill and minimized our stress, that’s for sure. We agree with the comments above about Mohammed, the delivery guy. What a gentle, lovely gentleman he is. I don’t think CVS offers delivery service, do they? Hoping they take him on or he finds another position that appreciates his services. — SW on Kings Pharmacy, a Tribeca staple for 25 years, will close on June 30

I... think it's possible for people who own one restaurant in one neighborhood which plays music to open a different restaurant in a different neighborhood which is not identical to the first restaurant? Possibly so different that it does not even play music? — Smarch on New restaurant coming to The Palm space