A New York City rite of power: alternate-side suspension
Plus a multimedia environmental series, #73
Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Alternate-side parking started in a few Manhattan neighborhoods in the 1950s, before it expanded to the rest of the boroughs. It’s now a reviled but necessary New York City ritual for drivers.
The holiday suspensions started as soon as it began; Jewish residents couldn’t drive on the High Holy Days, so they were added. And as the decades have gone by, the suspensions have continued – often a sign of increased power and influence by certain religious or ethnic groups.
I wrote this week about a proposal to add the Tibetan New Year celebration of Losar to the suspension calendar. New York City, particularly Queens, is home to the largest number of Tibetan and Himalayan people in the United States.
Adding Losar isn’t just about the parking – although that’s important, since taxi and ride-share driving is a popular job for those who celebrate. It’s about honoring and recognizing something significant to a group of people who have crafted a community here mostly since the early 1990s. For refugees, some living in exile, they finally found a home in New York City.
“From day one, I felt nobody was strange, nobody was foreign, nobody was an outlier in New York – you fit right in,” Tenzin Dorjee, the former Executive Director of Students for a Free Tibet, told me.
You can read more here.
Toxic
My colleagues published an amazing package on the toxic Newtown Creek, and what that looks like for the neighborhoods surrounding it. Hazard NYC is a multimedia package that includes a podcast – please enjoy them all this weekend.
☣️The Meeker Avenue Plume Lurks Beneath North Brooklyn
☣️Demolishing a Chemical Company’s Radioactive Past in Ridgewood, Queens
☣️Newtown Creek: Four Miles of Polluted Waters at Risk of Flooding
Other interesting stories
⭐ The NYPD commissioner and some City Hall staffers were in Dubai, for some reason [POLITICO]
⭐ The mayor says migrants don’t sleep on the street, but they do [THE CITY]
⭐ 100 small acts of love [NYT]
🎧 LISTEN 🎧
Rapper Heems released his latest album Lafandar today. His first single, “Accent,” is with Saul Williams — you can listen to that below, and find the whole album on all streaming sites. (You can also check out his magazine and sick Queens t-shirts at his website, Veena.)
Thanks for reading!