sometimes it takes a team and sometimes you get it done by yourself

I didn't get to vote when I was a high school student. I turned 18 in June and then for two years I went to Hofstra where I would assume I came back home to vote because I voted as often as I could . Maybe I got an absentee ballot . I never felt very connected to Hampstead . But, in my third year of college I transferred to Stony Brook. There, I got involved in Progressive politics. I moved onto campus and felt a little bit more connected to that University but then I found out I couldn't register to vote there.  Not if you lived in a dorm.

I got involved in an organization called NYPIRG, the New York Public Interest Research Group. 

We marched around in circles complaining about the fact that we weren't allowed to vote on campus. Picketing. We got some media attention but in my three years as an undergraduate living on campus there I never got the right te bote on campus. They helped me get an absentee ballot so I can vote back in Brooklyn. As a grad student I moved off campus and was able to vote in Stony Brook or East Setauket or Port Jefferson Station. A pissed the locals off up there but F them,  now I was a local.

I didn't give any of this much more thought until about 30 years later my son is going to Stony Brook  and living in the dorms. He also turned 18 in the spring so his first election was when he was away at school.  I asked him if he got to vote and he said "yep".  I asked him if you voted absentee or in the local election. "I don't know".

At first my Dad instincts kicked in and I felt like saying " What do you mean you don't know?? Who did you vote for?"  but I let that go.  And I did find out that he voted in Suffolk County. He voted without thinking twice about it. Then I realized that back in the 80s I fought in a battle that I did not win and people continued in my place and continue to fight and eventually they won. The victory is that my son was able to vote in Suffolk County without even thinking about the battle.

So there's that.

Over the past 25 years I probably ran over the Brooklyn Bridge over a thousand times.  Back and forth about twice a month training for the past 35 marathons. Sometimes good weather sometimes bad weather. But I had a lot of time to think about The Pedestrian path up there. I wrote this in 2010.  I thought back then it would be a good idea to put back the staircases around the towers to keep the bicyclists off and give them the whole of the Manhattan Bridge. Or, take the Brooklyn Bridge away from the Department of Transportation which really doesn't care about the guest regions and give it to the parks department or to Brooklyn Bridge Park which does care about pedestrians. None of that happened.

But today I marched over the bicycle free pedestrian path on the Brooklyn Bridge. 

It wasn't my plan and I really didn't do much to help make it happen but I'm really glad it happened. Now there's enough room for pedestrians and tourists up on the Brooklyn Bridge.

The fine folks a transportation Alternatives did a great job  in both getting the bike lane put onto the roadway and and having this little celebration. There were a lot of photographers at the celebration and when I find their pictures I will add them to this blog.

but the weird thing is while I was looking for pictures of the parade I did come across the transportation Alternatives website for the borough of Brooklyn . I could confidently say that they have not update the picture on the cover and at least seven years . Maybe seven and a half years the cover photograph shows a picture of me that must have been taken before May of 2014. Because since then I have been unable to hold my hand up in that angle or keep my wedding ring on my hand. https://www.transalt.org/brooklyn

 And in other news....  It's really a good idea for me to hold on to the rail when I use a staircase. Especially when I go down.  To make things more complicated, I really should not hold on to the rail with my left hand.  I don't have enough grip strength to make that helpful. So basically I need to stick to the right when I walk down stairs. I've become pretty atun to what a proper rail should be like. At the top of the stairs it should start before you're actually on the stairs so you can hold on before you start walking. Same thing at the bottom. And it should be a specific height.  Here are the legal requirements on what an ada-compliant staircase should look like. Except in that picture of the good staircase rail is on the left as you would walk down the stairs. That wouldn't do me much good. 

for the most part handrails in the subway system meet the specifications. Sometimes the real doesn't extend a foot or two past the stairs because it's old and there's no wall there but the height is acceptable. Accepting the train station where I go all the time to get to the B / Q train. the stair on my side of Flatbush Avenue had a rail on the right that was significantly lower than every other raiI ever incounted. a couple of weeks ago it occurred to me to do something about it. I went to the MTA website and made an accessibility complaint . 

Below is a screenshot of my correspondence with the MTA. I honestly assumed they were blowing me off,  in that this is the reply that they would send someone when they did nothing because they looked around and said everything looks fine to them.

 

Response by Ben D. (09/20/2021 04:50 PM)

 

Hi Michael --

This is a follow-up to your recent e-mail reporting uneven handrails at the 7 Av Station.

We can confirm that Station Maintenance inspected this area and verified the condition. The handrails have since been replaced are now ADA compliant.

Thank you again for bringing this matter to our attention.

Ben D.
Customer Service Specialist

Costomer (07/18/2021 09:05 AM)

 

The handrail on me west side of the staircase labeled S4 is lower than the rest of all the handrails in the subway system. This is the rail that is closer to the building. It makes it dangerous for a disabled person to walk down the stairs especially because I cannot hold a rail on my left side. This is the rail on the right as you walk down the stairs

well, below are the pictures I took this afternoon. They raise the rail by 5 or 6 in. Sometimes you can do something.

I think you can see the old hole

yeah, it's just not a couple of steps.

Fun on the last day of Spring Break (not much to update in 11 years)

I originally posted this in April of 2010 . I just happened to be back  in that area and took a fresh photograph of that same Payphone. Just to remind my reading audience that 718 replaced 212 as the area code for Brooklyn in January of just to remind my reading audience that 718 replaced 212 as the area code for Brooklyn in January of 1984We walked..... We walked from Brooklyn Borough Hall to the Brooklyn Bridge. On the way there we stopped in Cadman Plaza to use the bathroom.

In there the kids found a pay phone with a dial. They had never seen one before.

On the bridge we notice lots of locks. The kids want me to put a lock on the bridge too. I guess that is kind cool. You always know where you lock is. We walked more. The we stopped for a great lunch on Chambers Street. Jerry's Cafe was a great alternative to fast food. Twice the cost. Ten times better.

We continued walking across Chambers Street to the Hudson River. The kids played in the Rockefeller Playground and took a break while watching a pond get cleaned out. Then we walked over to the dock for the Water Taxi to NJ and had ice cream. A few more steps got us to a very nice grassy park with pretty trees. My daughter took this picture of this man taking a picture. She has my taste in art. She also took this one. Then we stopped to used the indoor plumbing in the World Financial Center (very nice) . Walking around the World Trade Center Site is very tough for me. I HATE the tourists who come to gawk. Hate.

We crossed Church St and the kids found themselves playing on a statue. It was fun for them, but this is what that stature looked like on Sept. 11, 2001. Click here to see what it looked like on Sept. 11, 2001. (It is not nice, I took it out of my blog.) Then we walked across Wall Street. We stopped at Federal Hall. My son asked why George Washington is holding out his hand. I told him that this is where he took that oath of office to become the first President of the United States. But "I know that but why is he sticking his hand out?" I told him that he was resting it on a bible. "What's a bible?" Thats my boy! (Thanks Roate for the photo of G. Washington.) We were not done walking. We stopped to play in the BMW dealership on Wall Street. (Just a little, it was not a kiddie place.)

Walking done (almost). We jumped on the Ikea Ferry to get back to Brooklyn. I did a lot of cropping but check out the side of this building in Brooklyn. It cost $5 to take the ferry to Red Hook (on weekdays) but you get a $5 credit to shop in Ikea. So we went in and bought some swedish meatballs. We got them to go. We took the bus home.....

Oh Crap, the school kids are back on mass transit

MTA ridership hits close to 3 million Tuesday,
a day after setting pandemic record

Two years ago I used to be the guy that would think twice about getting on a city bus at 3 p.m..  I tried to avoid bedtime because it was full of  hormones with feet otherwise known as middle school kids.  Also, the buses would smell like ketchup and AXE.  My balance is not great but I don't look like the guy that needs a seat and these kids are pretty oblivious. Not necessarily bad kids just oblivious kids who might need to be reminded that the front seats in buses aren't for kids who just want to sit and play video games.

And so they're back! At first I had a small moment of dread because I kind of got used to not having to fight over the front seat in the bus.  But, you know what, I'm really glad they're back.

And I overheard this in front of PS 321 between a couple of 9 year old boys.

" I missed you so much last year.... I have to tell you what I learned....  I learned the best yoga pose to help you fart."

don't be that guy

It's no secret that I didn't lock myself in my house when the pandemic started. I took all the precautions and I went outside. I ran, I meant people, and lately I've been getting on the subway a lot. For the most part everybody is wearing a mask on mass transit, but some are not. When I see someone not wearing a mask I give them some space. 

Not because I'm worried they're going to give me covid, I'm wearing a mask and I'm vaccinated and I'm not getting that close to them. But, I don't know what they're going to do next. Someone who's not wearing a mask on the subway is someone who doesn't care about anything but themselves. Are they going to start littering, spitting on the floor, on me? Will they just take off their shoes and start cutting their toenails? Will they drop trow and just take a dump? or maybe they will just light up a cigarette? Why not?

Seriously people, you are sharing the environment with people just cannot get vaccinated. They are called children and they are everywhere. (Rarely, there's the person who medically cannot take the vaccine. More commonly there are people who think they shouldn't take the vaccine for medical reasons)

Maybe I'm taking a leap,  but that guy not wearing a mask is probably more likely to be the guy that's not vaccinated.  So, he's not unlikely to be spreading the virus.  And even those that are vaccinated can inhale it and exhale it on someone later.

Also, please don't tell me you didn't know there are literally signs everywhere. I was sitting under one when I took the selfie.And in case you missed the signs in the subway or on the sides of buses or on every TV channel here are some signs I found on social media,

 

Sometimes you just have to pull off the bandage - Joe Biden

Sometimes you just have to pull off the bandage - Joe Biden

 

I thing I did this week (updated for helping with the manual recount)

I'm updating us because last week I was asked to help out with some more ballot-counting watching.  I don't know how helpful I actually was for the Brad Lander campaign but I did show up when I was told to. So they asked me to show up where actual work was needed to be done.  The 9th city council District that represents mostly Harlem and the Upper West Side was a victory for the progressive candidate by only 140 votes.  This triggered an automatic manual recount.

Here are some details on that election and I'm surprised there is not much news on the recount process because it was quite complicated. Since they were 13 candidates they were actually 13 rounds of recounting. It took two weeks.  I was there for 3 of the days.  The job of us poll watchers was very literally to watch the poll workers. As they counted every ballot they held it in the air and indicated who it was cast for. Then they wrote down the results and walked them down to someone entering them into a computer that was really only doing the arithmetic. We kept the same tally and entered the data into our own computer that was running a parallel program. 

I was really glad I got to help.  Not because I got to contribute to a victory, (and honestly, my contribution was teeny). Because I got to meet a  few young people who are really trying to make the world better. They were putting in the hard tedious work to improve everybody's lives. Also, I got to see how the old world of racist sexist homophobic people is just going away. The world is going to get better and I got to work with the people who are going to do it. it was really nice to be with a bunch of people who look past each other's differences and at each other's strengths without even thinking about it.

Also, there was a lot of down time and everybody took out their phones. I went on Facebook and saw as one of my old high school classmates posred to be one of those  stupid things that asked if our lives were better before everyone had a cell phone. I told my new friends what I was looking at and told them my comment.  I told my high school friends that these young people was staying on task they were working on a phone and a laptop at the same time and communicating with each other and people in other places doing the same things as they were.  They weren't off in their own worlds, they were multitasking. And they were damn good at it

And so while the rest of this blog post is about architecture and geography I'm going to go there now. This recount took place at 450 West 33rd Street in Manhattan oh, at least that was his address until 2019. The building was built in 1969 and rebuilt in 2019 when it became 5 Manhattan West, part of Hudson yards. 

From the outside and in the lobby of the building one would think you were in a brand-new building. But when we went upstairs to the 8th floor which was shared by Amazon and the Board of Elections we walked into the BOE room and I thought they made an old room in a new building. Until I found out that the Board of Elections was always there and they just renovated the building around there Warehouse.  Speaking of the lobby I was really taken by the piece of a giant art that hung there. 

So I took out my new phone with some super duper camera that doesn't work too well with my crippled hands but I took the picture up there. The guards in the lobby yelled at me after I took the picture because you're not allowed to take pictures in the lobby.  I did look closely at it and couldn't find the name of the artist or the name of the piece. But the work of art struck me it made me think about how democratic (small d) a public place could be. From a distance it looks like a painting but when you get closer you think it might be a photograph. I'm not really sure which it is. And from a distance it looks like it could be 50 years old but when you get closer you realize there are people looking at cell phones.  I'm going to post this update but I might post another one when I figure out who took that picture or painted that canvas 

.......................................................................

Last week I worked for the Board of Elections as a seasonal poll worker. I wrote about it in this blog. 

This past week I turned my hat back around and helped out my old friend Brad Lander in his campaign for New York City Comptroller.  In the past I helped raise money, I also stood in public places and got citizens to sign the petition to get him on the ballot and once I even woke up early and stood outside Thompson Square Park and pointed potential voters at him so they can shake his hand. (I've got to say that the corner of East 7th Street and Avenue A is probably the most fun place to stand at 10 on a Sunday morning. Probably one of the most diverse places in the most diverse City on the planet.   There was a guy who asked me if illegal aliens could vote. I said no but Welcome to New York City anyway. He looked at me sideways and said, " but I'm not really here."

Anyway,  I helped out by going up to the Bronx Board of Elections office and officially observing the opening of the absentee ballots. I went to a Zoom training and explained that I had never done anything like this before and they explained that was okay. because Brad was ahead in the early count by a lot and they weren't really worried about any  shenanigans.  Just to report back if I saw anything unusual. I said that I didn't know what unusual was because I had never done it before. They told me if anything unusual would be happening everybody in the room would know it.  I actually reported back that there was not only nothing unusual going on but there wasn't even anything interesting. Election workers were opening envelopes pulling out the ballots and showing the people who were watching that there were no extra marks on them and then putting them in a pile to be scanned. However, I lied.  The building itself was actually very interesting. The Grand Concourse is kind of on a cliff When you enter the building from the front it is a four-story building. However most of the action was in the lower levels and they were five of them. From the Morris Avenue side of the building it was a nine-story building.

This is what I look like when I walked in the front of the building. Also note the subway entrance right next door. (straight shot from Park Slope to the Bronx on the B train)

This is kind of what it looks like inside.

Here is the Google Street View From The Morris Avenue side of the building

And here is a picture of the subway going under the Grand Concourse and over Morris Avenue. I think this was unusual but the Brad Lander campaign wasn't interested in this stuff

I would have gone back and taking these pictures myself because I was supposed to be there on Wednesday as well. But the campaign asked me to go to Queens Borough Hall to pick up the final numbers from the evening before. Other people found things interesting in Queens and the New York Times even stood next to me and took this picture. I know the photographer was standing next to me when the photo was taken because he was scolded when he took the picture

Other things of interest to me was the fact that I got to take the subway from 59th Street to 125th street without stopping. It is arguably the longest trip you can make underground in New York City without stopping

People often forget that the F train is like a railroad in Queens and it makes four stops to go like 7 miles from 21st Street to Kew Gardens. I got to take this trip on my way to Queens Borough Hall

Then there's the three mile trip  D & N Train make every day from Canal Street to Atlantic Avenue.

Another interesting thing I saw last week in the subway was that under Rockefeller Center which is kind of an accessible station the stickers on the ground that ask people to stand six feet apart had a little variety to them.Maybe the MTA could spend a little bit more money installing and maintaining elevators so the subway system could be truly accessible. 

And maybe the MTA could reopen the bathrooms in subway stations so people wouldn't have to take a dump on the floor. I took this picture around noon on the 4th Avenue platform at Atlantic Avenue. There's a bathroom upstairs that's been closed for over a year. Supposedly less people are getting infected with covid because the bathroom is closed 

why should I bother turning on my GPS device?

my Garmin says I did this

I actually did this

It looks like the Garmin decided to cut off my first five miles. Then it gave me about 5 more miles because of all the wiggling it thought I did while going straight up  the satellite bouncy Canyons of Broadway and 5th Avenue.

So the GPS makes it look like I started where I took a break to take a leak and then I ran 6 extra miles at a super fast pace so it almost worked out. N.O.T.

LOOK!! IT"S ME

I was featured in the blog of The Prospect Park Track Club ...... https://pptc.org/blog/2021/7/13/member-spotlight-michael-ring

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT:

MICHAEL RING

Photo by Linda S. Chan (she/her)

Some five years ago I met Michael Ring (he/him) at NYRR’s Open Run at Marine Park.  I don’t remember the exact date or that exact moment, but undoubtedly Michael was wearing a red PPTC hoodie or a PPTC T-shirt, perhaps with the Achilles logo pinned to his shirt.  Michael was a slow walker who at that time may have joined us to walk only a loop of Marine Park (0.84 miles).  Michael was talkative and friendly. Anyone who took time to speak with him learned a lot about the evolution of the running scene in New York City through the years and the medical condition that afflicted Michael.  

Michael is a lifelong Brooklynite born in Brookdale Hospital. He discovered running when he joined the track  team in high school to avoid gym.  In his junior year at Sheepshead Bay High School, Michael ran his first race – a cross-country race in Prospect Park that covered a route from Dog Beach to Cadillac Lake.  Michael went on to earn a master’s degree in social work from SUNY Stony Brook and took a break from running, but he would return.  

Michael joined NYRR in 1979 and first attempted to run the New York City Marathon in 1981.  With no coaching leading up to the marathon and consuming too much water during the race, Michael DNFed at mile 16 that year. 

In 1992, Michael joined PPTC because he heard that clubs could get people into the New York City Marathon (NYCM), and in 1994 Al Goldstein helped Michael get a spot in the marathon.  Since then Michael has run 33 official marathons (the 33rd in 2019 as part of an indoor marathon relay team).  He is a NYCM Streaker:  he has run 20 consecutive NYCMs with his longest streak being 16 runnings of the NYCM, and he now has guaranteed non-complimentary entry to the marathon.  Michael’s marathon PR is from the 2000 Sri Chimoy Marathon when he finished in under 4 hours.   

In May 2014, Michael was diagnosed with acute motor axonal neuropathy, a rare variant of Guilliane-Barré syndrome (GBS).  Michael suspects that the GBS was triggered by undercooked chicken that he ate in a road stop meal he had after spectating at the Boston Marathon that year.  He thought he had Lyme disease when he went to the doctor and instead was told to immediately go to the hospital, where his condition continued to decline and he was ultimately diagnosed with GBS.  Michael was hospitalized for four months and gradually moved from using a wheelchair, to using a walker, to being a slow walker with a cane, to returning to the marathon.  

In 2017, Michael completed the New York City Marathon in a time of 9:52:16.  GBS has not stopped Michael.  This was his first official marathon since being diagnosed with GBS.  He has made a lot of progress since then.  Even the pandemic hasn’t stopped Michael.  He completed the 2020 Virtual TCS New York City Marathon with a time of 8:30:57.  More recently, Michael completed the marathon distance for his birthday, running around the Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir Track in Central Park as a fund raiser for Achilles International.  Michael covered an ultra-marathon distance of 26.5 miles in 8:00:07 that day. 

From about 1995 to 2020, Michael served on the Board of PPTC, including being vice president.  There’s a rumor that he decided to no longer seek election to the Board because of a strong dislike of Slack.  Although Michael is no longer on the Board, you can find him helping out at some of PPTC’s races.  Since his diagnosis with GBS, Michael also has been training with Achilles International’s New York City chapter.  

A stay-at-home father since the birth of his twins, with his son and daughter now in college Michael is looking to return to the workforce.  He worked as a poll worker for the 2020 presidential election and the recent mayoral primary election.  Michael’s current running goal is to qualify to run the Boston Marathon and run the Boston Marathon.  Under the Boston Athletic Association’s Adaptive Program for Runners, Michael would need to complete a qualifying marathon in under 6 hours to qualify to run the Boston Marathon.   

Michael’s running history before his diagnosis with GBS was impressive, but his drive to continue running and to set higher and higher running goals since his diagnosis with GBS has been inspiring.  Despite having been awarded the Joe Kleinerman award from NYRR in 2017, Michael dislikes being called inspiring, but I think he’s coming around to it.  

You can follow Michael on Strava or read about his thoughts on his blog.  

Photo by Jimmy Leung (he/him)

---

PPTC is a diverse and supportive team. We want to celebrate the diversity of our club and membership. We welcome and encourage everyone to share their stories with us.

Text by: Linda S. Chan
Photos by: Linda S. Chan and Jimmy Leung, as noted
Edited by: Rachael DePalma (she/her)
Produced by: Linda S. Chan

JULY 20, 2021COMMENT

Best team building exercise ever

Way back when I was in college I work for student affairs. And I eventually became a full-time employee of the Department of student affairs at a big SUNY University. Occasionally, we would taken on retreats where we left the building and worked on team building exercises as a staff. We would break up into random groups and beat tasked to solve a make-believe problem.I thought it was a complete waste of time but it was nice to stay in a hotel somewhere.

For the past eight out of nine days I was an election day worker.  I worked at early voting and then on Election Day. For early voting I was sent to a college a couple miles from my house. I didn't know any of the people I would work with. But we all had one thing in common. We were citizens of New York City who wanted to work at early voting. We had a variety of reasons for being there. Some of us wanted to assist in the civic activity of voting and others wanted to make some money. Most like myself did it for both reasons.

The training we received to do this job was last summer and our supervisors we're basically incompetent. They were there because of political patronage and had no idea what that job was supposed to be. So as a group of strangers we had to figure out how to make early voting work.

That's me and my partner in the background
managing the line at the New York City College of
Technology. The photo is from the Brooklyn paper

And we made it work. We followed a manual, correctly set up the voting machines and allowed our fellow citizens to vote independently and with dignity.

But this wasn't just about voting. I truly believe they're getting to meet the people I worked with was more of a benefit to us then actually setting up the polling place.

Getting to meet and work with my fellow citizens gave me such a greater respect for people who didn't look like me.I assume that feeling when both ways. We all had to overcome the same challenges like figuring out a confusing system that could and should work.As you can see from the photograph above we had a lot of down time while working. That led to a lot of drama among the election working staff. So in order to get the job done we had to overcome some personality conflicts between supervisors and staff and some of the other workers who really weren't up to the job.

Yeah, voting is very important  for democracy. That doesn't even need to be said.  But the process of setting up an election takes a lot of people. And I'm really trying to say that participating in that benefited Society almost as much as voting does. Getting to meet my fellow citizens and working together quite a long way towards making the United States better.

Another Strava mess. But a good run

I did not do this

..

I did this

I wanted to get into mileage. But I also had a somewhat busy weekend. I short race on Saturday and rain on Sunday so I figured I'd get in a Monday long run. My team was celebrating a belated  Earthday by plogging in Coney Island. First I figured I'd just run to Coney Island. But I wasn't so attracted to the idea of running across Brooklyn on a Monday afternoon. So I started playing with maps and looking at other ways to get to Coney Island. I realized I hadn't crossed the Flatbush Avenue Bridge as a runner since I was in high school.

I have a friend that lives in Rockaway so I texted him and asked him his address so I can give it to the  Access-A-Ride cabby so I knew where to start.  He told me he lived in a gated community and they would not welcome me there. So I pick the address of the Comfort station that was the entrance to Gateway National Park. He told me the concession stand probably wasn't open until after Memorial Day. I told him that Comfort to me didn't mean putting food in me it meant removing some liquids before I started running. It turned out we are both wrong and a comfort station didn't actually exist. It was the entrance to a beach club that was deserted.

I peed behind the sign. I could have peed in front of the sign and no one else would have noticed.

On my run I noticed some things have changed since I was in high school in the 70s. They expanded the Gil Hodges Bridge. The Pedestrian Lane was on the outside of the bridge as opposed to being separated from the traffic by a little fence. They also built a bike lane on Flatbush Avenue and there's a new bridge that goes over  Gerritsen Creek. Sheepshead Bay hasn't changed much but most of the wood has been removed from the boardwalk in Brighton Beach and Coney Island... replaced with

Pedestrian path on the
Gil Hodges Bridge.
Manhattan skyline in the background

concrete. 

Another things changed since the last time I ran to the end of the fishing pier in Coney Island. It was the 90s and I remembered when you turn back to run towards the land you got a beautiful view of the World Trade Center Towers.  I was back there about 15  years ago and sadly observed the nothingness where the towers were.  Today I saw the new building. I didn't bother trying to take pictures with my puny camera phone.

I really thought I would be able to find a picture on the internet of the view of the World Trade Center from Coney Island with the parachute jump in the same frame. But Google is not being so helpful.  (wow I'm using voice to text and when I said Google is not being so helpful a Google box opened up on my computer screen and told me "I'm sorry you're feeling that way how can I help")  I'm going to post this blog as is but one day I'm going to go back with a friend that has a good camera and take a picture from the end of the pier in Coney Island that includes both the parachute jump and the World Trade Center