Cities Deploy Fakery Techniques To Cover Up Urban Blight

Camden, New Jersey, one of the poorest and most crime-ridden U.S. cities, has awaited rebirth for a generation. For now, it has Christopher Toepfer and his paintbrush.

Ten feet up a ladder, Toepfer, a 51-year-old artist, is turning a rotting factory’s plywood-covered windows from a mess of gang graffiti into a railroad mural. The spruce-up, though it won’t cure the neighborhood’s ills of poverty and violence, will make a bright spot of the biggest blight on Federal Street.

Thirty years after New York City Mayor Ed Koch drew scorn for gussying up uninhabitable Bronx tenements with decals of curtained windows, urban fakery is spreading in U.S. cities where the recession’s wave of foreclosures added to decades-long decay. The city of Wilmington, Delaware, used the decal approach on a string of row houses earlier this year, and Bridgeport, Connecticut, started working with local artists in October to adopt Toepfer’s approach.

If the technique that Toepfer calls aesthetic board-up is a stopgap, it’s a cheap one, costing just $500 to $1,000 per property, a fraction of demolition costs. It’s also immediate, with a typical makeover done in less than a day.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/business/2014/07/05/Vacant-House-Fakery-Reborn-as-Cleveland-to-Camden-Fight-Blight/stories/201407040018#ixzz36bqH18zQ

Governor: 4 Dead, 63 Hurt In NYC Train Derailment

Map of New York Highlighting New York City (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

NEW YORK — A Metro-North train derailed on a curved section of track in the Bronx on Sunday morning, coming to rest just inches from the water and leaving four people dead and 63 injured, authorities said.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the deaths at a news conference at the site of the crash near the Spuyten Duyvil station. He said authorities believe everyone at the site has been accounted for and that the National Transportation Safety Board is en route.

Eleven people are believed to be in critical condition, authorities said. The train operator was among the injured, Cuomo said.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokeswoman Marjorie Anders said the big curve where the derailment occurred is in a slow speed area. The black box should be able to tell how fast the train was traveling, Anders said.

Read more: http://www.timesleader.com/news/news/1023495/Governor:-4-dead-63-hurt-in-NYC-train-derailment

Man Hospitalized After Slashing In Pottstown

Editor’s note:  This is a very bizarre story!  Don’t they have adequate entertainment in the Bronx?  

POTTSTOWN — Police are looking for help from the community to find a suspect who sliced a man’s neck Tuesday night at the Montgomery Elk’s Lodge.

Borough police responded to the lodge at 605 Walnut St. at 11:10 p.m. after they received a call about a man being stabbed.

The victim, Fuquan Wilson, of Bronx, N.Y., suffered a laceration wound to his neck but did not tell police who caused the injury.

According to police, officers attempted to administer first aid to Wilson but he was combative and uncooperative. Police also said that Wilson had to be sedated when emergency services arrived.

Read more:  http://www.pottsmerc.com/article/20130619/NEWS01/130619135/man-hospitalized-after-slashing-in-pottstown-charged-with-assualt?nstrack=sid:880285|met:300|cat:0|order:4#full_story

A Place To Be Seen (And Heard) In Upper Manhattan

With the lights of the George Washington Bridge painting the Hudson River and a half-moon hanging over the Palisades, La Marina felt like the place to be last Saturday night.  At the year-old restaurant in Fort Washington Park, at the end of Dyckman Street in Upper Manhattan, two D.J.’s, working opposite ends of the property, cranked up the volume. Patrons ordered bottles of liquor, starting at $130 for rum and rising to $12,000 for a methuselah of Champagne, equal to five bottles, to secure a table on the terrace.  Dancers let loose on the “beach,” a sand-covered strip flanked with four-poster beds draped in flowing white fabric.

“The vibe is getting turned up,” Marc De Jesus, 27, a La Marina regular from the Bronx, said with a wide grin.

But that vibe has become a bit too much for many in the Inwood neighborhood, a residential area that has developed a lively night life in recent years.  They complain that La Marina, a concession on city parkland initially billed as a restaurant-lounge, has evolved into a raucous outdoor nightclub, attracting the likes of Jay-Z and Leonardo DiCaprio.  They say the hot spot snarls traffic for blocks, even backing cars up on the Henry Hudson Parkway; creates noise pollution; and regularly violates the terms of its license with the city’s parks department.

“The crowds are the worst part,” said Terrie Walters, 52, who lives a few blocks away.  “People will drive there even if they live six blocks away.  You want to pull up to the valet and be seen getting out of your S.U.V.  It’s brought an element to the neighborhood that does not fit, and there’s gridlock beyond gridlock, with people fighting and cursing and cutting each other off.”

Read more:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/19/nyregion/a-place-to-be-seen-and-heard-in-upper-manhattan.html?hp&_r=0