What the liar said earlier:
This is the last post related to a King-of-the-Hill beheading or vandalism -- unless somebody does something really clever or cruel (or more cruel)
“Who was born there? Who died there? Who was shot there?” said the organizer of the event, Eric Ferrara. “We’re interested in everything that’s notable and not so notable.”
Indeed, even before the neighborhood trivia contest began, there was much discussion over the little matter of what to call the neighborhood.
Although contemporary maps generally refer to the area of the East Side between 14th Street and Houston Street as the East Village and reserve the Lower East Side label for the neighborhood south of Houston, most older maps call the entire area the Lower East Side. Some old-timers eschew the East Village name as an aspirational invention of real estate interests trying to pump up property values.
“I use East Village professionally because it is what people know today,” Mr. Ferrara said. “But with family and comrades we still call it the Lower East Side.”
Mr. Ferrara said that he does not reflexively oppose gentrification, but lamented that he had recently moved across the East River to Brooklyn after being evicted from a rent-stabilized apartment on East Third Street.
“I can’t even afford to live in my own neighborhood anymore,” he said.
It opened 42 years ago, in a time known by some as the Age of Aquarius, in a Manhattan neighborhood that was a hippie haven. It endured as a psychedelic oasis even as the hippies disappeared and the neighborhood, the East Village, was transformed into a pricier and less scruffy place by the real estate boom that washed across many parts of New York City.
LSD, located on the same block of Second Ave. as Gem Spa, B&H Dairy, The Orpheum, Stage Deli and Toy Tokyo, now has a new sign on its door, and it isn’t amusing. It’s an ugly announcement about the departure of yet another special facet of the East Village.
But how ironic and horrible that this unique “real estate” will most likely end up symbolizing a really bad acid trip when a Duane Reade or the equivalent no doubt occupies the space.
ARE you afraid that the economic downturn could get out of hand? I mean, really out of hand?
Well, don't worry.
The US Army War College is on the case -- ready to handle "unforeseen economic collapse" and the "rapid dissolution of public order in all or significant parts of the US."
And you thought we were just dealing with a recession!
In a report published Nov. 4 -- just in time for the holiday season -- the War College's Strategic Studies Institute posited a number of shocks that the country should be prepared for, including unrest caused by the economy's failure.
The report has a snappy title, "Known Unknowns: Unconventional 'Strategic Shocks' in Defense Strategy Development," and was written by Nathan Freier, a visiting professor at the college. The foreword was written by Col. John A. Kardos, director of the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute.
Freier lists a number of possible things we should worry about - because we probably don't have enough of our own -- including run-of-the-mill terrorism and the fact that China and Russia could align against us politically and economically.
"Some of the most plausible defense-relevant strategic shocks remain low-probability events," Freier soft-pedals before going on to scare the hell out of us.
The War College says "widespread civil violence inside the US would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security."
Among things Freier wants us to worry about are "deliberate employment of weapons of mass destruction. . . unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency and catastrophic natural and human disasters."
"The Catcher in the Rye," by J.D. Salinger, was published in 1951. But nearly all the landmarks Holden mentions as he wanders around Manhattan at Christmastime — the Rockefeller Center skating rink, Radio City and the Rockettes, the zoo and carousel in Central Park, Grand Central, the American Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art — are still drawing holiday visitors more than a half-century later.
"The things that he chose tend be crowd-pleasers," said Matthew Postal, a researcher with the Landmarks Preservation Commission. "In a city where so much changes, there is a tendency, especially with institutions, to protect the crowd-pleasers."