No irony, then, "Dr" Greer, in the fact that you are reading blogs during the day? Are you unemployed? By your own logic, you must be. You are insane. — Doug on Inside a Goldman Sachs Ferry

Jim Smithers is a fictitious name and uses fake emails. I know this for a fact becuase he has tried to post on our. News sites but was deleted. — Steven E. Greer on Inside a Goldman Sachs Ferry

You're right, I am going to change my life TODAY!!! I just bought the domain name Crazytown.TV!! Thank you, I would have never done something like that without your tough love and gentle nudge to strive for national paper coverage! EriK, please accept my immediate resignation as a first-class cronie. — Jim Smithers on Inside a Goldman Sachs Ferry

By the way, once again, one of my stories has generated more comments than any original story ever made by this blogger. — Steven E. Greer on Inside a Goldman Sachs Ferry

Typo "back up" above should be deleted. And my affiliation with BatteryPark.tv and DowntownTV was left off — Steven E. Greer on Inside a Goldman Sachs Ferry

To the previous anonymous posts who are certainly cronies of the blogger who runs this site, back up you are unemployed and reading blogs during the day. Go create something original that leads to national paper coverage then watch it stolen without credit. See how you feel then. — Steven E. Greer on Inside a Goldman Sachs Ferry

@K: When I first read about the ferries in the New York Times last week, I included the article (and credited it to the New York Times, with a link to the article) in an "In the News" post: https://tribecacitizen.wpengine.com/2013/02/20/in-the-news-street-pianos-are-coming-back/. If another outlet covered the ferries first, I had no idea, because the New York Times article has no mention of it, and I no longer read the other site in question. For this subsequent post, I linked to the "In the News" post that includes the New York Times article. Should I have acknowledged the New York Times again? The current industry standard says, no, that would not be necessary. Perhaps one day information will be embedded with identifying technology, so we'll know where it started—whether that would be good or bad is a pretty interesting subject to think about. — Erik Torkells on Inside a Goldman Sachs Ferry

I thought I was childish but that guy takes the ice cream cake. Did BatteryPark.TV, oops that's Downtown.Tv now, ever mention that it use to "steal" comments from TC? He should rename his blog to CrazyTown.Tv. — Jim Smithers on Inside a Goldman Sachs Ferry

Seriously, "Dr." Greer? — StrollerlessTribecaHottie on Inside a Goldman Sachs Ferry

You should give credit to other site when you are "inspired" by them to do your own reporting. Have you ever taken this ferry from this slip prior to reading about it in DowntownTV or NYT? — K on Inside a Goldman Sachs Ferry

Apparently, you've been stealing stories from Downtown's resident rage blogger and self-aggrandizing paranoid fantasist. http://downtownmanhattan.tv/2013/02/26/tribeca-blogger-steals-another-story-from-downtowntv/ Any comment? Have you NO SHAME? Lol. — Doug on Inside a Goldman Sachs Ferry

Wow...was that a Freudian slip? I typed Christie for Jersey. Maybe simply a subconscious political statement? — betty on Inside a Goldman Sachs Ferry

It could have been Goldman and Sachs. Ai. Or Cuomo and Christie. Ugh. Bloom and Berg. (This could be fun.) York and Christie are beginning to look really good. — betty on Inside a Goldman Sachs Ferry

It depends on what building you look at. I live at 80 John which was profiled in 2009 by the New York Times when FiDi was coined and is still called "The Diaper District." Our building is packed with kids. They simply aren't building the schools fast enough to accommodate the growth. We have become very close friends with many of our neighbors. As a matter of fact, a big group of us are going out to dinner tonight at Acqua! We love living in FiDi and our building is not unique. It is repeated at all of the Condominiums downtown, 59 John, 15 Broad, 99 John, 75 Wall, etc.... Well except apparently at 20 West Street. :-) I say it's time for another article. Come back to 80 John and we'll show you a building where lots of people have put down roots! — Luis on In the News: FiDi’s Transient Population

Yes, salmon congee! — Janet on Seen & Heard: Franklin Station Café Is Back

The Corbin building is just gorgeous. Shame it will be part of the Fulton hub, really wished it would be residential... — asaf Bar-Lev on Seen & Heard: Battery Park Carousel

me too! — liat on Welcome to TweeBeCa

I always love these... — Adam on Welcome to TweeBeCa

indeed, Bikini bar has pineapple glass holders! — WhoKnows on In the News: Service Dog Deli Dispute

@Nicole - don't discount recasting with "the Clooney." That would easily sway my vote to support the financial incompetence of the HRPT & FofHRP. Clooney's smile has an undeniable and devastating charisma, especially if you don't look at his big ears and just focus on his teeth and 5 o'clock (magic hour) shadow. However, any business that had an annual $10 million shortfall would NORMALLY, in the real world, result in a drastic cut in spending/planning, layoffs or bankruptcy, but you want to continue to engage in a discussion with them about the best way to draw a map to "fairly" take MORE money out of the pockets of residents who already live in the MOST expensive city in the US of A to GIVE to an organization that has already demonstrated that they are incapable of comprehending the very basics of financial planning. Well, then, you're part of the problem with this City and this Country's shit-storm of debt. Too bad we don't have a bunch of fresh immigrants living on the LES to underpay & abuse to build our city's infrastructure and parks. (kidding) There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens....but RIGHT NOW, we don't need and CAN'T AFFORD additional pedestrian bridges, crossing guards, crosswalks, clean & well-landscaped medians and adjacent areas, etc. When is enough, enough, Brendan? Oh yeah, See you at the Spring Gala!!!! — Jim Smithers on The Proposed Hudson River Park Tax: A Response

Brendan, You're the one dramatizing this, not us. No one has said we don't or won't support the Park. We're just unsure a BID is the right framework and a lot of FoHRP's communications we've seen raise more questions about oversight and fairness than they answer. First you accused me of ad hominem attacks because I asked you to identify yourself as a paid consultant to Friends of Hudson River Park. We're not trying to squelch FoHRP's right to push the proposal (this dialogue is on the page with AJ's response to our letter after all, and everytime I comment it puts a new link to his words on the front page of Tribeca Citizen), but it really is only fair that you identify yourself and your motivations for supporting the NID fully. Second, let's agree to stop using Central Park as a comparison. Central Park is supported by the Central Park Conservancy, which raises funds through voluntary contributions only, not a legally enforceable assessment on people who live near the Park. As for the other Parks you mention, yes, the BIDs support them but it's a bit of a comparison stretch in my eyes because the work of both the Union Square and Bryant Park BIDs have direct payback to the businesses that are in their zones. In fact, the rehabilitation of those Parks has driven customers to those businesses, so it's a win-win for them. In contrast, there are relatively few retail businesses in the HRP zone where the Park does or will directly drive customers to them (the bike shops maybe and perhaps some delis and bodegas in the major entry corridors, but not much else). Both those BIDs are also geographically miniscule compared to the proposed size of the HRP NID so the priorities of the assessed owners are less likely to be widely divergent and their proportion of residential vs commerical owners doesn't approach the 6:1 ratio of the proposed HRP NID. I don't understand your defensiveness about accusations of supposed secrecy (of which there really aren't any serious ones) now that a few of us ask to be part of the discussion in shaping the district plan, unless, of course, you had hoped that it WOULD stay secret (or at least not well known) until the City approval process has started. Because for all the steps it has to go through after it's been approved by SBS, lets be honest and stipulate that it will be almost impossible to stop or change it once that happens. To stop the NID at the City Council hearing stage, 51% by either assessed value or number of owners has to object by filing a notarized objection form with the City Clerk that has a copy of their note or deed attached as proof of property ownership. So that means that only a total of 4,080+ condo owners and co-op buildings in the zone can stop it once it goes into the City approval stage and only if they all make the effort to file notarized copies of their deeds. No one in Hollywood would greenlight that fantastic story even if my character was changed to a man and was played by George Clooney because it's too ridiculous to believe. If this is an open process, will FoHRP post the draft District Plan publicly so everyone can see and comment on all of the details including exact boundaries, detailed first year's budget and governing board composition and election rules now? How about the mock billing run from SBS so we can see exactly how much the assessment will be for each property owner? You say you welcome my feedback, but I have a hard time doing so constructively when you won't tell me exactly what you want to do. — Nicole Vianna on The Proposed Hudson River Park Tax: A Response

None of your over-wrought comments changes the fact the the Park was ONLY approved because it was to be self-sustaining and now that the "unrealistic hope-y" planners and managers failed to live up to the agreement, they are demanding taxpayers bail them out, so they can continue over-planning and over-spending. Stop spinning your failure. Taxes weren't even raised to pay for two very costly wars, but sure, let's all pitch in to make sure we don't have to look at the horror of unkept traffic medians. Oh, the horror!! — Jim Smithers on The Proposed Hudson River Park Tax: A Response

This is getting kind of over-wrought, but for the record: Central Park and virtually all our major parks (that DO get taxpayer support for maintenance and operations) have had to resort to and are now supported by exactly the sort of public-private partnership we are proposing with the NID. So, even if we reversed the state law that set up the current HRP situation, the need for additional support would still be very likely. There are just not many public dollars available for park operations anymore and it has gotten worse, not better, over the last many years. Regrettable and odd, really, but true. Although Central Park is the most famous park in our City, and although "supported" by tax dollars and not subjet to any special constraints such as we have with the HRP, we actually effectively lost Central Park for more than two decades. Bryant Park the same or even worse; Union Square nearly the same. And so on. Taxpayers or their elected reps have simply not been willing or able to allocate the dollars needed. No matter how irrational or even irresponsible we may think this is, it is where we are today and this is after two or three decades of this dynamic. Today we use Central Park, or Union Square, or skate free at Bryant Square and no one from those local support groups demands that we pay or leave--and not many from outside the immediate area do contribute, as it happens. If we succeed in getting our Park on a sound footing the same will be true, I'm sure--people from 'outside' will love the place-- but we don't object to this reality when we go to, say Union Square, and shouldn't object when 'outsiders' find our park attractive. [by the way, the Sanitation Department arrears--many millions of dollars--have been won by the Friends' legal activism, and this money is being used for operating expenses right now. it runs out soon, however. Believe me, every conceivable funding opportunity has been pursued by Friends before launching this exhausting NID process.] It may be worth saying that the assessment will not be 'forcibly extracted' except as any special assessment is. The assessment if it is passed will get there through not a secret process but after public hearings at Community Boards, then at City Planning, subsequent public hearings at the Council, and then a fourth round--all with legally required public notice--at the Mayor's office. We may or may not like the outcome, but it will be done as openly as our democracy ever achieves, and in fact through the exact same public, advertised process that all proposed local laws must follow. This process is only just now beginning. The boundaries --still only proposed boundaries--are an example of this public, transparent process. A proposed map had been published widely for months, on and off the web, as the proposed boundaries have been discussed with the three Community Boards. And, they have changed, not quietly and secretly, but in response to the comments of the public and of these Boards, and the boundaries took their present (proposed) shape in cooperation with each Board. And they are still only proposed boundaries--they will be decided as part of that same public process just described. Finally, this process has been open enough not only to get all these comments on this site, but to have allowed many of our neighbors to sign our petition or send letters or supporting statements. Some people may indeed have "just heard of " it, but it hasn't been done in secret at all. there have been ads, newspaper stories, many many meetings along the whole length of the Park, and these are still going on. The objections or suggestions heard to date have changed the proposal; the proposed boundaries, mentioned above, are not the only example, an increased priority for Park security is another. None of this debate changes the fact that the Park needs our help. The NID is at least a way to spread the burden widely. Nothing in that plan suggests an end to the need for donations or says that we shouldn't keep lobbying for a change in public park-funding practices, and so on. But the reality for now and for the foreseeable future calls for something as substantial and reliable as an Improvement District. This is not a conclusion excitedly rushed into by the Friends or the Trust--it is a result of many years of analysis, discussion, fund-raising, lobbying for more public funds, and the like. It's a real option, in an otherwise worrisome landscape. — Brendan Sexton on The Proposed Hudson River Park Tax: A Response

That's my band's song in the Club Monaco spot! — Jason on Seen & Heard: Car Fire Trick

Looks like the HRP was a complete financial failure in planning and execution. "Oops, did we say we would be self-sustaining? Well, we're going to be $10 million short....annually." I am sure that the appropriate people will be held accountable and the taxpayers won't be asked to pick up the tab again. Right, CB1? Right, CB1? Hey, CB1!! Wake up and stop drooling over each other. — Jim Smithers on The Proposed Hudson River Park Tax: A Response