A few NYC-related articles...
May. 29th, 2005 12:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conuly
One on Ditmas Park
Brooklyn's Technicolor Dream Quilt
By JOSEPH BERGER
The new face of New York City is taking shape among the graceful Victorian houses and stout apartment buildings of Ditmas Park, Brooklyn.
This softly shaded patch of Flatbush is one of the city's most polyglot and polychrome, what city demographers like to call a melting-pot neighborhood, because no one ethnic or racial group is dominant and many are represented. Moreover, the neighborhood's population of 8,243 is not cut up into distinct ethnic swatches like Williamsburg in Brooklyn - where Hasidim, Italians, Poles, Latinos and white bohemians live in distinct pockets - but is significantly intermingled. Residents proudly reel off a multitude of races and nationalities that flank their porches and backyards, and interviews with two dozen residents indicate that the ethnic mix is not merely cosmetic, it is thorough and strong.
The outlook for such neighborhoods, according to a new analysis by the Department of City Planning, is bullish. Data from the 2000 census indicates there were 220 melting-pot census tracts among the city's 2,217; in 1970 there were 70. In 2000, they were found in neighborhoods like Elmhurst, Jackson Heights and Flushing in Queens. The ranks are growing as a result of immigration and the apparent comfort level long-rooted New Yorkers feel in cosmopolitan milieus.
"People are living side by side in a way that 100 years from now we may take for granted," said Joseph J. Salvo, director of the City Planning Department's population division in a speech last month at New York University's Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. New Yorkers, he added, are more ready to say, "I'm going to live next to the guy even though he's five shades different than me."
In part, this is the result of a wave of newcomers from two dozen countries since 1965, when a revised immigration law began to shape the city into one in which immigrants or their American-born offspring account for 55 percent of the populace. The decline of crime, the city's liberal tradition, and the sheer habit of encountering different cultures on a daily basis has made New Yorkers more open.
"Anybody who rides the subway is going to have a multicultural experience," said John H. Mollenkopf of the City University of New York. "One senses that people who can't handle that sort of thing moved out of New York."
The analysis by the Planning Department showed that New York stands atop the world in its ethnic variety. Los Angeles has more people born abroad - 40.9 percent compared with 35.9 for New York - but most are from Mexico. A handful of world cities rival New York in its proportion of the foreign-born - Toronto's is 49.4 percent; Sydney, 33.4 percent; London, 27.4 percent - but the ethnic stew is not as varied, said Mr. Salvo.
It is true that for residents who use words like utopia and United Nations in describing Ditmas Park, friendships seldom extend across class lines. "I notice that the people who live in the apartments and rent and are of a lower income tend to keep to themselves and the homeowners who live in the albeit diverse community of homeowners also tend to be exclusive," said Claire Beckman, an actress who has lived in the neighborhood for four years.
Then too the neighborhood is fairly self-selected, drawing people like Graham and Chelsi Meyerson, restaurant owners, and their 20-month-old daughter, Olivia, who are willing to tackle the discomforts that might arise out of cultural differences.
"When Chelsi and I had Olivia," Mr. Meyerson said, "we wanted her to know a lot of different people."
Still the two census tracts that make up Ditmas Park are remarkable for their ethnic palette. The racial breakdown was 40 percent black (almost half from the Caribbean), 23 percent white, 17 percent Hispanic and 16 percent Asian. There are Jews who were born in Russia and others who just moved over from Park Slope, third- and fourth-generation Irish and Italians, and significant smatterings of Bangladeshis, Mexicans, Pakistanis, Chinese, Tibetans and more.
In a neighborhood where in 2000 the median household income was $37, 670 - slightly lower than that of the city as a whole - there are houses owned by lawyers and executives, yet a fourth of the residents live below the poverty line.
"The reason why this works is there's no majority of one - there's a majority of many," said Susan Miller, a mother of four who lives on a block of Victorian houses with people of Indian, Pakistani, Polish, Italian, Jamaican, and Orthodox Jewish backgrounds and a group she describes as "Caucasian left-wingers."
Others speculate that Ditmas Park is so varied because it is wedged among more monotone enclaves: Caribbean East Flatbush, the neighborhoods of professionals surrounding Prospect Park, Chinese and Latino Sunset Park, and Orthodox Jewish Midwood and Borough Park.
"This area belongs to no one, so you have a lot of everyone," said Fred Siegel, an urban affairs professor at Cooper Union and a longtime resident.
The ethnic variety is evident on a stroll down Cortelyou Road, the main shopping area, where within seconds a recent visitor passed a black man with cornrows, a Muslim woman with a head scarf, a white mother in Birkenstocks, and a man wearing a skullcap. Vladimir Popov, 67, the clerk at a local video store, can wax effusive on the varying ethnic tastes in film. Cinco de Mayo is a restaurant that has lots of actual Mexican construction workers, not just food enthusiasts. Karali Pitzele, a teacher, is 33 and white. But she considers herself a mix, albeit of religious background: Jewish, Christian and Buddhist. She tells of borrowing spices from her Pakistani neighbor after the neighbor borrowed her table for an evening's dinner.
Ms. Pitzele chose the neighborhood eight years ago in part because her boyfriend then was Jamaican and they felt that as an interracial couple they would not stand out. They didn't. In fact many residents remark on the large number of interracial couples in the neighborhood.
Joe Wong, a 28-year-old grandson of Chinese immigrants, who is married to Ellen, a white native of Virginia, grew up in Ditmas Park and went to Public School 139, which he described as a "mini-United Nations."
"As you're growing up you're getting exposed to the diversity and this becomes second nature," he said.
Cross-cultural friendships are run-of-the-mill. One of Ms. Pitzele's closest friends is Dawn Eddy, a 25-year-old teacher born in Trinidad, who herself tells of her Japanese and Italian friends.
Mavis Theodore, a publishing administrator who is also from Trinidad, said she had been friends with Hynda Lessman Schneiweiss, a retired Jewish engineering assistant, for 10 years. They have both lived in the neighborhood for a quarter-century, and they recall when it was largely filled with Jews, Italians and blacks.
"This neighborhood is going to demonstrate what Rodney King said, 'Can't we get along?' " said Mrs. Schneiweiss.
Daniel Shaw, a senior at Cornell University, went to the neighborhood's schools and nearby Midwood High School and has been friends since kindergarten with Panamanian and Moroccan boys and a Chinese girl. They have all visited him at Cornell. While he told of some unpleasant consequences of the economic diversity in the neighborhood - he has been robbed at knifepoint and his father was beaten by young men trying to steal his briefcase - Mr. Shaw said he was glad he had been raised there.
"I've been thankful even for the muggings," he said. "It keeps me in check because as much as I grew up in a comfortable house, I know I'm lucky. I can't get too cocky. There are people out there who struggle."
But some, like Paul Feldman, a Web site editor, contend that the neighborhood is so fragmented that "its diversity works against a strong sense of community."
"A mix is happening but there's no personality that is asserting itself," he said.
Ditmas Park did not just fall out of an idealist's dreamscape; neighbors work hard at sustaining the mix. Around Christmas, the neighborhood holds progressive dinners, where courses are served at a succession of homes encompassing a range of ethnicities. On Thanksgiving, a black minister holds an open house flapjacks-and-bacon breakfast. Dan Shapiro, a data consultant who has lived in a 15-room Victorian for 25 years, said everyone is invited for funerals and bar mitzvahs and "everyone shows up."
Ms. Beckman, who directs Brave New World Repertory Theater, is putting on a production of "To Kill a Mockingbird" on Sept. 18, using her porch and five of her neighbors' porches as the stage. A four-year-old organization, Friends of Cortelyou, sponsors ethnic tastings and pairs recent immigrants with fluent English speakers as "conversation partners."
At his year-old restaurant, Picket Fence, Mr. Meyerson intentionally hires a diverse staff, like Justin Alexander, a waiter from Trinidad, and Dana Nagler, a Jewish cook. Vox Pop, a combination coffee house, book store and print shop, holds open-mike evenings, when rap performers, poets and activists of a variety of ethnic backgrounds express their views.
There are some who worry that a diverse Ditmas Park may be fleeting. The 1970 census showed a neighborhood that was 95 percent white; Rugby Road was known as Doctors' Row for the professionals who lived in its handsome Victorians.
Ditmas Park started changing dramatically in the late 1960's, said Mr. Shapiro and others, partly because the city, struggling with a mushrooming welfare population, dispatched troubled families to Ditmas Park's empty apartments. Some middle-class whites fled in response, allowing middle-class blacks to buy Victorians at fire-sale prices, effectively integrating the neighborhood.
The upsurge of crime throughout the city in the 1970's and 1980's and a shaky economy meant more departures for the suburbs, but groups like the Flatbush Development Corporation managed and repaired hard-pressed buildings and evicted difficult tenants. Stability soon led to an upswing as the administration of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani demanded and got stronger police enforcement, said Mr. Siegel, who was a policy adviser for Mr. Giuliani's 1993 election campaign.
Now, with prices of some homes surpassing $1 million, people like Ms. Beckman fear that only affluent buyers will consider the neighborhood and that Ditmas Park's multicultural character could dissolve.
"What's scary," she said, "is that it could change."
One on a calendar counter who's not a savant. Note to the editors, that's not "idiot savant" anymore.
The Entertainer
By BORIS FISHMAN
FOR those lacking cab-ride entertainment since television screens were discontinued in taxis in 2003, there is hope. It comes in the form of the Human Computer, a k a Oleg Roitman, an immigrant cabdriver from Ukraine who regales fares with a flashy sleight of mind: Give Mr. Roitman any date - say, your birthday - and within a second, he will tell you what day of the week it was.
On a recent Saturday afternoon, Mr. Roitman demonstrated his skill to a passenger named Mary, who was going to Whole Foods at Union Square. In a thick Russian accent, Mr. Roitman directed Mary to read a sign explaining his talent.
"Can you guess my weight or height?" Mary asked hopefully.
"No, only dates," Mr. Roitman answered. "What's your birthday?"
"March 13."
"And what year?"
"I'm not telling you!"
"Come on!" Mr. Roitman persisted.
"Well, be kind now," she said. "1952."
"Thursday, young lady, Thursday!" Mr. Roitman boomed as he scrawled the information on a souvenir sheet he hands to passengers.
"Any other dates while I'm still alive?" Mr. Roitman prodded. "The date of birth of your first husband? Your second husband? Your third husband?" Mr. Roitman, who is married and lives in Midwood, Brooklyn, is a big fan of marriage jokes.
His style might best be described as tough-love entertainment. When a passenger suggested that Mr. Roitman got his answers from a reference book listing days of the week for the past century, which he keeps in the cab in case a rider questions his mental gymnastics, Mr. Roitman good-naturedly reassured her that "this book, my lady, is only for stupid passengers who don't know mental math."
Though the abrasiveness annoys some riders, the rough-edged immigrant spin on the archetypal New York eccentric tends to charm most. But Mr. Roitman's showmanship is actually the much-rehearsed product of a quintessentially American catalyst: motivational literature. Inspired by its directives, Mr. Roitman is constantly tinkering with the language of his self-promotional materials - each passenger walks away with a stack, including cards with an address for the Taxi and Limousine Commission, in case he or she wants to send a complimentary letter on his behalf.
Mr. Roitman, 43, is not an idiot savant; he uses a mathematical formula that can be found at curiousmath.com, a Web site that offers an array of mathematical tricks. A fan of astronomy and math, he says he worked out the equation on his own during down time as a Red Army recruit in the 80's.
Mr. Roitman's act was a sensation on the boardwalk in Tel Aviv, where he immigrated in 1991, but the following year, when he moved to New York, he discovered that it translated poorly in the more saturated entertainment arena of Times Square. For a time, Mr. Roitman gave up the act, but in 2000, his "blood started boiling again," as he put it, and he decided to give it another try, this time on the road.
Mr. Roitman has a formula only for dates, but he has found that human beings are pretty predictable too, at least in the dates they remember. During the Saturday ride, after informing a couple on their way to see "A Streetcar Named Desire" of the days of the week they were born, Mr. Roitman asked for more dates.
"How about June 18, 2004?" the man said.
"Friday. What happened on this day? You got married?"
The man nodded.
"One more fallen brother!" Mr. Roitman shouted. "One more prisoner of war! Anything else?"
"Jan. 3, 1971," the woman said.
"Sunday. Sister or brother?"
"Sister!" she exclaimed. "God! Are people that predictable?"
Mr. Roitman didn't deign to answer.
Taxi and Limousine Commission officials were pleased to be informed by a reporter of Mr. Roitman's extracurricular skills. "We encourage drivers who are multitalented to try to form a connection," said the commission's chairman, Matthew W. Daus (birth date: July 27, 1968 - a Saturday, Mr. Roitman said). "Sometimes it leads to good tips for them as well. Certainly we'll consider Mr. Roitman for our driver recognition ceremony."
The Human Computer indeed attracts good tips; twice he has been given more than $100, Mr. Roitman says.
But the act is a labor of love, he insists. This was apparent the other day as he ferried two young men to the Virgin Megastore at Union Square. Pulling up to a red light, he fished out his reference guide to prove he had been right about their birthdays. But he had just found the right page when the light turned green. Then Mr. Roitman yelled something few New York taxi drivers have ever uttered: "Stupid green light!"
Lastly, one on sharks.
When the Great White Way Was the Hudson
By TOM VANDERBILT
THE 30th anniversary of "Jaws," with its attendant Martha's Vineyard festivities beginning Friday and an obligatory DVD release, would seem hardly relevant to the historical memory of New York. At most, New Yorkers who might have a faint recollection of having seen the first summer blockbuster at some 42nd Street grind house in the summer of 1975, a year in which the city would be metaphorically told by President Ford to "drop dead," presumably had more to worry about than the Great White Shark. In those days, the only local shark sightings were the "land shark" variety, courtesy of "Saturday Night Live," which had its debut that same year.
Even these days, the New Yorker in search of local examples of the species would probably do no better than those sand-tiger and white-tipped reef sharks to be found circling intently in the post-feeding murk of the big tank at the New York Aquarium.
And yet until the latter half of the last century, sharks were as much of part of New York - which is, one need hardly be reminded, an island - as any other inhabitant.
New York was once considered the "capital of American angling," the historian William Zeisel Jr. noted in Seaport magazine in 1990. From Troy to Sandy Hook, he wrote, "the Hudson River forms one long nursery and feeding trough for scores of fish species that migrate up and down the East Coast." With such a veritable water-borne buffet at hand, it is little surprise that sharks, top of the food chain and all, would find New York replete with gustatory delights. "Reliable accounts spanning more than a century, from 1760 to 1881," Mr. Zeisel noted, "show that the Manhattan waterfront and the harbor were often infested with sharks, some weighing perhaps a ton."
History books tell of myriad interventions between Gotham's humans and Gotham's sharks, with the shark typically coming out on the losing end. In the 19th century, dockworkers at the Catherine Market in Lower Manhattan delighted crowds by hauling in scores of sharks; Sam Way, the most famous fisherman of the day, armed himself with a chunk of meat, a length of rope and a large hook and would, according to Mr. Zeisel, "single-handedly fight and overcome the beast of the sea, to the cheers and wonderment of the waterfront bystanders."
In August 1882, The New York Times reported that Capt. Patrick Owens was exhibiting, on Pier 22 in the East River, a male and a female shark, 11 and 7 feet in length, respectively. "Upward of a thousand persons deposited their nickels in the cigar box at the opening of the tent yesterday and took a look at the captured monsters," the paper wrote, "and the pier was a scene of life and activity all day."
Though reliable accounts of attacks were scant, there were reports of isolated incidents that might have deepened the sense of mystery and fear surrounding a species about which little was known. On Aug. 3, 1860, a short newspaper item titled "A Shark Bites a Boy's Toe Off in the East River" noted that a boy, who had been swimming, was "nibbled at by a shark, but he succeeded in escaping with the loss of only about one half of his great toes."
In 1894, a shark was said to have attacked an actress named Catherine Beach while she was bathing at Woolsey's Point in Long Island City, Queens. A local diver, however, noted that since the shark was of the "shovel-nosed variety," it could not have bit Ms. Beach "if it had tried," and instead had merely brushed past the actress.
Given the tenor of commentary about sharks in this period - "he had a mouth large enough to swallow a 6-year-old child," "a stranger within the city's gates," "capable of taking a man's leg off in a twinkling" - it was hardly surprising that people who came upon an actual shark responded with considerable energy. In August 1869, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle wrote that an eight-foot shark - "an immense animal, floundering around furiously in the pond" - had washed up into a swimming hole near 15th Street and Hamilton Avenue. It was promptly shot, speared and pulled ashore, where, the paper reported, "the animal was skinned by some boys, the skin being said to make excellent sand paper."
Shark sightings were reported into the 20th century, if less frequently. In July 1933, a shark was reported in the Hudson River off 42nd Street, with the police "as far as Poughkeepsie warned." In 1950, a shark made it all the way into the Gowanus Canal, where as John Waldman writes in his book "Heartbeats in the Muck," it was shot by the police as hundreds watched along the bulkheads.
In recent years, sharks have dropped off the city's radar. The only mention of New York on the Web site of the International Shark Attack File is an item that notes, rather gleefully, that a person is more than 30 times as likely to be bitten by a rat in New York than to be attacked by a shark anywhere in the United States.
What happened to New York's sharks? According to Hans Walters, resident shark expert at the New York Aquarium, local waters are still home to a relatively large number of sand-tiger, sandbar and brown sharks and other species, most of them harmless.
"We get calls here, 'Oh, I've got a shark,' " he said. "It ends up being a smooth dogfish. If they bit you, it wouldn't even break the skin."
BUT the consensus is that the city is no place for a proper shark. "We have developed the area of New York City so much - pollution, boat traffic, human intervention - that it's not an environment that any fish would find particularly attractive to live in," said Ramon Bonfil, a researcher with the World Conservation Society whose specialty is Great Whites. "Sharks would come here presumably to find food, and if the fish are gone, then there's no reason for the fish to come." Or, as Mr. Walters put it: "Would you want to eat anything that came from the Hudson?"
What of the much-publicized decontamination of New York's waters and the return of long-departed species? It is certainly possible, Mr. Bonfil said, that a massive Great White might lurk beneath the New Yorker innocently kayaking up and down the Hudson. The problem, Mr. Walters noted, is that despite all the fear engendered by "Jaws," it is the sharks who have us to fear. Decades of indiscriminate long-line commercial fishing have wiped out shark populations worldwide, with New York no exception.
To talk about the history of sharks in New York is really to be talking about "the history of public perception and attitudes toward sharks," Mr. Walters said.
"They're not mindless killers, they don't target people, they're part of the ecosystem, they're just there," he added. "Any of us who have gone to the beach have probably swum with sharks without realizing it." Even at Coney Island.
Brooklyn's Technicolor Dream Quilt
By JOSEPH BERGER
The new face of New York City is taking shape among the graceful Victorian houses and stout apartment buildings of Ditmas Park, Brooklyn.
This softly shaded patch of Flatbush is one of the city's most polyglot and polychrome, what city demographers like to call a melting-pot neighborhood, because no one ethnic or racial group is dominant and many are represented. Moreover, the neighborhood's population of 8,243 is not cut up into distinct ethnic swatches like Williamsburg in Brooklyn - where Hasidim, Italians, Poles, Latinos and white bohemians live in distinct pockets - but is significantly intermingled. Residents proudly reel off a multitude of races and nationalities that flank their porches and backyards, and interviews with two dozen residents indicate that the ethnic mix is not merely cosmetic, it is thorough and strong.
The outlook for such neighborhoods, according to a new analysis by the Department of City Planning, is bullish. Data from the 2000 census indicates there were 220 melting-pot census tracts among the city's 2,217; in 1970 there were 70. In 2000, they were found in neighborhoods like Elmhurst, Jackson Heights and Flushing in Queens. The ranks are growing as a result of immigration and the apparent comfort level long-rooted New Yorkers feel in cosmopolitan milieus.
"People are living side by side in a way that 100 years from now we may take for granted," said Joseph J. Salvo, director of the City Planning Department's population division in a speech last month at New York University's Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. New Yorkers, he added, are more ready to say, "I'm going to live next to the guy even though he's five shades different than me."
In part, this is the result of a wave of newcomers from two dozen countries since 1965, when a revised immigration law began to shape the city into one in which immigrants or their American-born offspring account for 55 percent of the populace. The decline of crime, the city's liberal tradition, and the sheer habit of encountering different cultures on a daily basis has made New Yorkers more open.
"Anybody who rides the subway is going to have a multicultural experience," said John H. Mollenkopf of the City University of New York. "One senses that people who can't handle that sort of thing moved out of New York."
The analysis by the Planning Department showed that New York stands atop the world in its ethnic variety. Los Angeles has more people born abroad - 40.9 percent compared with 35.9 for New York - but most are from Mexico. A handful of world cities rival New York in its proportion of the foreign-born - Toronto's is 49.4 percent; Sydney, 33.4 percent; London, 27.4 percent - but the ethnic stew is not as varied, said Mr. Salvo.
It is true that for residents who use words like utopia and United Nations in describing Ditmas Park, friendships seldom extend across class lines. "I notice that the people who live in the apartments and rent and are of a lower income tend to keep to themselves and the homeowners who live in the albeit diverse community of homeowners also tend to be exclusive," said Claire Beckman, an actress who has lived in the neighborhood for four years.
Then too the neighborhood is fairly self-selected, drawing people like Graham and Chelsi Meyerson, restaurant owners, and their 20-month-old daughter, Olivia, who are willing to tackle the discomforts that might arise out of cultural differences.
"When Chelsi and I had Olivia," Mr. Meyerson said, "we wanted her to know a lot of different people."
Still the two census tracts that make up Ditmas Park are remarkable for their ethnic palette. The racial breakdown was 40 percent black (almost half from the Caribbean), 23 percent white, 17 percent Hispanic and 16 percent Asian. There are Jews who were born in Russia and others who just moved over from Park Slope, third- and fourth-generation Irish and Italians, and significant smatterings of Bangladeshis, Mexicans, Pakistanis, Chinese, Tibetans and more.
In a neighborhood where in 2000 the median household income was $37, 670 - slightly lower than that of the city as a whole - there are houses owned by lawyers and executives, yet a fourth of the residents live below the poverty line.
"The reason why this works is there's no majority of one - there's a majority of many," said Susan Miller, a mother of four who lives on a block of Victorian houses with people of Indian, Pakistani, Polish, Italian, Jamaican, and Orthodox Jewish backgrounds and a group she describes as "Caucasian left-wingers."
Others speculate that Ditmas Park is so varied because it is wedged among more monotone enclaves: Caribbean East Flatbush, the neighborhoods of professionals surrounding Prospect Park, Chinese and Latino Sunset Park, and Orthodox Jewish Midwood and Borough Park.
"This area belongs to no one, so you have a lot of everyone," said Fred Siegel, an urban affairs professor at Cooper Union and a longtime resident.
The ethnic variety is evident on a stroll down Cortelyou Road, the main shopping area, where within seconds a recent visitor passed a black man with cornrows, a Muslim woman with a head scarf, a white mother in Birkenstocks, and a man wearing a skullcap. Vladimir Popov, 67, the clerk at a local video store, can wax effusive on the varying ethnic tastes in film. Cinco de Mayo is a restaurant that has lots of actual Mexican construction workers, not just food enthusiasts. Karali Pitzele, a teacher, is 33 and white. But she considers herself a mix, albeit of religious background: Jewish, Christian and Buddhist. She tells of borrowing spices from her Pakistani neighbor after the neighbor borrowed her table for an evening's dinner.
Ms. Pitzele chose the neighborhood eight years ago in part because her boyfriend then was Jamaican and they felt that as an interracial couple they would not stand out. They didn't. In fact many residents remark on the large number of interracial couples in the neighborhood.
Joe Wong, a 28-year-old grandson of Chinese immigrants, who is married to Ellen, a white native of Virginia, grew up in Ditmas Park and went to Public School 139, which he described as a "mini-United Nations."
"As you're growing up you're getting exposed to the diversity and this becomes second nature," he said.
Cross-cultural friendships are run-of-the-mill. One of Ms. Pitzele's closest friends is Dawn Eddy, a 25-year-old teacher born in Trinidad, who herself tells of her Japanese and Italian friends.
Mavis Theodore, a publishing administrator who is also from Trinidad, said she had been friends with Hynda Lessman Schneiweiss, a retired Jewish engineering assistant, for 10 years. They have both lived in the neighborhood for a quarter-century, and they recall when it was largely filled with Jews, Italians and blacks.
"This neighborhood is going to demonstrate what Rodney King said, 'Can't we get along?' " said Mrs. Schneiweiss.
Daniel Shaw, a senior at Cornell University, went to the neighborhood's schools and nearby Midwood High School and has been friends since kindergarten with Panamanian and Moroccan boys and a Chinese girl. They have all visited him at Cornell. While he told of some unpleasant consequences of the economic diversity in the neighborhood - he has been robbed at knifepoint and his father was beaten by young men trying to steal his briefcase - Mr. Shaw said he was glad he had been raised there.
"I've been thankful even for the muggings," he said. "It keeps me in check because as much as I grew up in a comfortable house, I know I'm lucky. I can't get too cocky. There are people out there who struggle."
But some, like Paul Feldman, a Web site editor, contend that the neighborhood is so fragmented that "its diversity works against a strong sense of community."
"A mix is happening but there's no personality that is asserting itself," he said.
Ditmas Park did not just fall out of an idealist's dreamscape; neighbors work hard at sustaining the mix. Around Christmas, the neighborhood holds progressive dinners, where courses are served at a succession of homes encompassing a range of ethnicities. On Thanksgiving, a black minister holds an open house flapjacks-and-bacon breakfast. Dan Shapiro, a data consultant who has lived in a 15-room Victorian for 25 years, said everyone is invited for funerals and bar mitzvahs and "everyone shows up."
Ms. Beckman, who directs Brave New World Repertory Theater, is putting on a production of "To Kill a Mockingbird" on Sept. 18, using her porch and five of her neighbors' porches as the stage. A four-year-old organization, Friends of Cortelyou, sponsors ethnic tastings and pairs recent immigrants with fluent English speakers as "conversation partners."
At his year-old restaurant, Picket Fence, Mr. Meyerson intentionally hires a diverse staff, like Justin Alexander, a waiter from Trinidad, and Dana Nagler, a Jewish cook. Vox Pop, a combination coffee house, book store and print shop, holds open-mike evenings, when rap performers, poets and activists of a variety of ethnic backgrounds express their views.
There are some who worry that a diverse Ditmas Park may be fleeting. The 1970 census showed a neighborhood that was 95 percent white; Rugby Road was known as Doctors' Row for the professionals who lived in its handsome Victorians.
Ditmas Park started changing dramatically in the late 1960's, said Mr. Shapiro and others, partly because the city, struggling with a mushrooming welfare population, dispatched troubled families to Ditmas Park's empty apartments. Some middle-class whites fled in response, allowing middle-class blacks to buy Victorians at fire-sale prices, effectively integrating the neighborhood.
The upsurge of crime throughout the city in the 1970's and 1980's and a shaky economy meant more departures for the suburbs, but groups like the Flatbush Development Corporation managed and repaired hard-pressed buildings and evicted difficult tenants. Stability soon led to an upswing as the administration of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani demanded and got stronger police enforcement, said Mr. Siegel, who was a policy adviser for Mr. Giuliani's 1993 election campaign.
Now, with prices of some homes surpassing $1 million, people like Ms. Beckman fear that only affluent buyers will consider the neighborhood and that Ditmas Park's multicultural character could dissolve.
"What's scary," she said, "is that it could change."
One on a calendar counter who's not a savant. Note to the editors, that's not "idiot savant" anymore.
The Entertainer
By BORIS FISHMAN
FOR those lacking cab-ride entertainment since television screens were discontinued in taxis in 2003, there is hope. It comes in the form of the Human Computer, a k a Oleg Roitman, an immigrant cabdriver from Ukraine who regales fares with a flashy sleight of mind: Give Mr. Roitman any date - say, your birthday - and within a second, he will tell you what day of the week it was.
On a recent Saturday afternoon, Mr. Roitman demonstrated his skill to a passenger named Mary, who was going to Whole Foods at Union Square. In a thick Russian accent, Mr. Roitman directed Mary to read a sign explaining his talent.
"Can you guess my weight or height?" Mary asked hopefully.
"No, only dates," Mr. Roitman answered. "What's your birthday?"
"March 13."
"And what year?"
"I'm not telling you!"
"Come on!" Mr. Roitman persisted.
"Well, be kind now," she said. "1952."
"Thursday, young lady, Thursday!" Mr. Roitman boomed as he scrawled the information on a souvenir sheet he hands to passengers.
"Any other dates while I'm still alive?" Mr. Roitman prodded. "The date of birth of your first husband? Your second husband? Your third husband?" Mr. Roitman, who is married and lives in Midwood, Brooklyn, is a big fan of marriage jokes.
His style might best be described as tough-love entertainment. When a passenger suggested that Mr. Roitman got his answers from a reference book listing days of the week for the past century, which he keeps in the cab in case a rider questions his mental gymnastics, Mr. Roitman good-naturedly reassured her that "this book, my lady, is only for stupid passengers who don't know mental math."
Though the abrasiveness annoys some riders, the rough-edged immigrant spin on the archetypal New York eccentric tends to charm most. But Mr. Roitman's showmanship is actually the much-rehearsed product of a quintessentially American catalyst: motivational literature. Inspired by its directives, Mr. Roitman is constantly tinkering with the language of his self-promotional materials - each passenger walks away with a stack, including cards with an address for the Taxi and Limousine Commission, in case he or she wants to send a complimentary letter on his behalf.
Mr. Roitman, 43, is not an idiot savant; he uses a mathematical formula that can be found at curiousmath.com, a Web site that offers an array of mathematical tricks. A fan of astronomy and math, he says he worked out the equation on his own during down time as a Red Army recruit in the 80's.
Mr. Roitman's act was a sensation on the boardwalk in Tel Aviv, where he immigrated in 1991, but the following year, when he moved to New York, he discovered that it translated poorly in the more saturated entertainment arena of Times Square. For a time, Mr. Roitman gave up the act, but in 2000, his "blood started boiling again," as he put it, and he decided to give it another try, this time on the road.
Mr. Roitman has a formula only for dates, but he has found that human beings are pretty predictable too, at least in the dates they remember. During the Saturday ride, after informing a couple on their way to see "A Streetcar Named Desire" of the days of the week they were born, Mr. Roitman asked for more dates.
"How about June 18, 2004?" the man said.
"Friday. What happened on this day? You got married?"
The man nodded.
"One more fallen brother!" Mr. Roitman shouted. "One more prisoner of war! Anything else?"
"Jan. 3, 1971," the woman said.
"Sunday. Sister or brother?"
"Sister!" she exclaimed. "God! Are people that predictable?"
Mr. Roitman didn't deign to answer.
Taxi and Limousine Commission officials were pleased to be informed by a reporter of Mr. Roitman's extracurricular skills. "We encourage drivers who are multitalented to try to form a connection," said the commission's chairman, Matthew W. Daus (birth date: July 27, 1968 - a Saturday, Mr. Roitman said). "Sometimes it leads to good tips for them as well. Certainly we'll consider Mr. Roitman for our driver recognition ceremony."
The Human Computer indeed attracts good tips; twice he has been given more than $100, Mr. Roitman says.
But the act is a labor of love, he insists. This was apparent the other day as he ferried two young men to the Virgin Megastore at Union Square. Pulling up to a red light, he fished out his reference guide to prove he had been right about their birthdays. But he had just found the right page when the light turned green. Then Mr. Roitman yelled something few New York taxi drivers have ever uttered: "Stupid green light!"
Lastly, one on sharks.
When the Great White Way Was the Hudson
By TOM VANDERBILT
THE 30th anniversary of "Jaws," with its attendant Martha's Vineyard festivities beginning Friday and an obligatory DVD release, would seem hardly relevant to the historical memory of New York. At most, New Yorkers who might have a faint recollection of having seen the first summer blockbuster at some 42nd Street grind house in the summer of 1975, a year in which the city would be metaphorically told by President Ford to "drop dead," presumably had more to worry about than the Great White Shark. In those days, the only local shark sightings were the "land shark" variety, courtesy of "Saturday Night Live," which had its debut that same year.
Even these days, the New Yorker in search of local examples of the species would probably do no better than those sand-tiger and white-tipped reef sharks to be found circling intently in the post-feeding murk of the big tank at the New York Aquarium.
And yet until the latter half of the last century, sharks were as much of part of New York - which is, one need hardly be reminded, an island - as any other inhabitant.
New York was once considered the "capital of American angling," the historian William Zeisel Jr. noted in Seaport magazine in 1990. From Troy to Sandy Hook, he wrote, "the Hudson River forms one long nursery and feeding trough for scores of fish species that migrate up and down the East Coast." With such a veritable water-borne buffet at hand, it is little surprise that sharks, top of the food chain and all, would find New York replete with gustatory delights. "Reliable accounts spanning more than a century, from 1760 to 1881," Mr. Zeisel noted, "show that the Manhattan waterfront and the harbor were often infested with sharks, some weighing perhaps a ton."
History books tell of myriad interventions between Gotham's humans and Gotham's sharks, with the shark typically coming out on the losing end. In the 19th century, dockworkers at the Catherine Market in Lower Manhattan delighted crowds by hauling in scores of sharks; Sam Way, the most famous fisherman of the day, armed himself with a chunk of meat, a length of rope and a large hook and would, according to Mr. Zeisel, "single-handedly fight and overcome the beast of the sea, to the cheers and wonderment of the waterfront bystanders."
In August 1882, The New York Times reported that Capt. Patrick Owens was exhibiting, on Pier 22 in the East River, a male and a female shark, 11 and 7 feet in length, respectively. "Upward of a thousand persons deposited their nickels in the cigar box at the opening of the tent yesterday and took a look at the captured monsters," the paper wrote, "and the pier was a scene of life and activity all day."
Though reliable accounts of attacks were scant, there were reports of isolated incidents that might have deepened the sense of mystery and fear surrounding a species about which little was known. On Aug. 3, 1860, a short newspaper item titled "A Shark Bites a Boy's Toe Off in the East River" noted that a boy, who had been swimming, was "nibbled at by a shark, but he succeeded in escaping with the loss of only about one half of his great toes."
In 1894, a shark was said to have attacked an actress named Catherine Beach while she was bathing at Woolsey's Point in Long Island City, Queens. A local diver, however, noted that since the shark was of the "shovel-nosed variety," it could not have bit Ms. Beach "if it had tried," and instead had merely brushed past the actress.
Given the tenor of commentary about sharks in this period - "he had a mouth large enough to swallow a 6-year-old child," "a stranger within the city's gates," "capable of taking a man's leg off in a twinkling" - it was hardly surprising that people who came upon an actual shark responded with considerable energy. In August 1869, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle wrote that an eight-foot shark - "an immense animal, floundering around furiously in the pond" - had washed up into a swimming hole near 15th Street and Hamilton Avenue. It was promptly shot, speared and pulled ashore, where, the paper reported, "the animal was skinned by some boys, the skin being said to make excellent sand paper."
Shark sightings were reported into the 20th century, if less frequently. In July 1933, a shark was reported in the Hudson River off 42nd Street, with the police "as far as Poughkeepsie warned." In 1950, a shark made it all the way into the Gowanus Canal, where as John Waldman writes in his book "Heartbeats in the Muck," it was shot by the police as hundreds watched along the bulkheads.
In recent years, sharks have dropped off the city's radar. The only mention of New York on the Web site of the International Shark Attack File is an item that notes, rather gleefully, that a person is more than 30 times as likely to be bitten by a rat in New York than to be attacked by a shark anywhere in the United States.
What happened to New York's sharks? According to Hans Walters, resident shark expert at the New York Aquarium, local waters are still home to a relatively large number of sand-tiger, sandbar and brown sharks and other species, most of them harmless.
"We get calls here, 'Oh, I've got a shark,' " he said. "It ends up being a smooth dogfish. If they bit you, it wouldn't even break the skin."
BUT the consensus is that the city is no place for a proper shark. "We have developed the area of New York City so much - pollution, boat traffic, human intervention - that it's not an environment that any fish would find particularly attractive to live in," said Ramon Bonfil, a researcher with the World Conservation Society whose specialty is Great Whites. "Sharks would come here presumably to find food, and if the fish are gone, then there's no reason for the fish to come." Or, as Mr. Walters put it: "Would you want to eat anything that came from the Hudson?"
What of the much-publicized decontamination of New York's waters and the return of long-departed species? It is certainly possible, Mr. Bonfil said, that a massive Great White might lurk beneath the New Yorker innocently kayaking up and down the Hudson. The problem, Mr. Walters noted, is that despite all the fear engendered by "Jaws," it is the sharks who have us to fear. Decades of indiscriminate long-line commercial fishing have wiped out shark populations worldwide, with New York no exception.
To talk about the history of sharks in New York is really to be talking about "the history of public perception and attitudes toward sharks," Mr. Walters said.
"They're not mindless killers, they don't target people, they're part of the ecosystem, they're just there," he added. "Any of us who have gone to the beach have probably swum with sharks without realizing it." Even at Coney Island.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-05-28 09:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-28 10:00 pm (UTC)Exactly. The sentence should've just read "he's not a savant" or "that's not a savant skill".
Additionally, I think the last time I bothered to read anything on the subject, I got to read a bit on how it's just called savant now, but I may be mistaken.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-28 10:05 pm (UTC)The mess I know about has to do with sex and gender. Sex used to mean physical sex and gender meant the role you fit into, played out, and felt applied to you. Now sex is still used to mean sex, but gender is also used to mean physical sex when you don't want to say the word sex because you're an idiot in the non-technical sense, and then gender role is used to mean gender, except that gender role could be used just to mean the role you play and not what actually fits if the person using the term feels like doing it that way. It gets messy fast, and that's without even going into the ways in which gender is inherently messy.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-28 09:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-28 10:00 pm (UTC)Exactly. The sentence should've just read "he's not a savant" or "that's not a savant skill".
Additionally, I think the last time I bothered to read anything on the subject, I got to read a bit on how it's just called savant now, but I may be mistaken.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-28 10:05 pm (UTC)The mess I know about has to do with sex and gender. Sex used to mean physical sex and gender meant the role you fit into, played out, and felt applied to you. Now sex is still used to mean sex, but gender is also used to mean physical sex when you don't want to say the word sex because you're an idiot in the non-technical sense, and then gender role is used to mean gender, except that gender role could be used just to mean the role you play and not what actually fits if the person using the term feels like doing it that way. It gets messy fast, and that's without even going into the ways in which gender is inherently messy.