Excuse me?

As many of you know, we are building a new convent. The location is Harlem at 150th and Convent Avenue. We broke ground in June and hope to move in by mid August this year. The weather has been a bit better so we actually have three of the floors poured... things are looking good.

Except that we got a $3500 fine. The city wrote a ticket because our construction company closed off the sidewalk. The company had permission from the DOT to do this, and erected a walkway with barriers outside. If you live in New York you know exactly what these look like. If you don't here's a picture.



So... get this: the fine says we closed the sidewalk and did NOT erect a walkway. And a photo similar to this one was attached to the paperwork to prove it.

Huh?

So the subcontractor went to court (the one who put up the wall around the sidewalk and erected the barriers for the walkway.) Result: The judge wouldn't take his not guilty plea, wouldn't even look at the photograph. No... they want the construction company to go back to court to enter the not guilty plea. That's two court dates to prove something any moron can see in the photograph, and apparently the person who wrote the ticket, took the picture.

What is it I'm missing? Well, here's another photo to show that some people can actually read the sign and use the walkway.
Is this where your NYC tax dollars are going?

I am woman hear me rant

Today was a tough day that started with an early morning subway ride across the city. By the time I got to work I was thinking of blogging a long list of rants against New York's rude subway riders. 

It's amazing how inconsiderate we can be to each other in our use of mass transportation. Blocking the doorways for one: there was a young woman on the #1 train who was blocking half the entrance to the car from 110th Street to 50th Street (where she finally exited.) That's nine stops where people had to squeeze by her to get on and off the train. Now I can understand wanting to be close to the exit when yours is the next stop. But for nine whole stops? And that's only the ones I could count. She was blocking the doorway when I got on at 110.  The MTA needs more money to run its operations—why can't they fine people for doing that? That... and holding doors, dropping your trash on the floor and blasting your headphones so loud they might as well not be headphones. I wonder how many of the ipod users of the future will have to wear hearing aids because of their blasted eardrums from their ipods? I wonder how much time that same person spends in a year untangling their ear pieces to those ipods? Inquiring minds want to know.

But the truth of the matter is you can't legislate manners. There's just so much you can make "against the law" before it gets silly. Rude people will continue to be rude because there are no consequences for their behavior. It is what it is. Get over it.