On this especially beautiful Saturday, I rode my bike 72 miles out onto Long Island and back. Out there, I cruised around the north shore villages of Great Neck and Port Washington. There’s a very specific reason I chose these two destinations, which I will explain in a future post. Regular readers of this blog can probably guess what it is.

Highlights of this ride:

• Passing the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.
• Seeing the house on Forest Parkway where Betty Smith lived when she wrote “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.”
• Riding on the abandoned Vanderbilt Motor Parkway (where I hit my top speed of 30).
• Crossing Utopia Parkway, made famous (to me at least) by the band Fountains of Wayne.
• Getting a bagel sandwich in Manhasset and eating it on a bench with the turtles, dragonflies and egrets in Manhasset Valley County Park.
• Stopping for a beer with Leslie and Brian and friends at their new place.
• Witnessing the excesses of Long Island mansions and the depressing decay of northern Brooklyn and eastern Queens, just a few miles apart.

A map follows.


GPS tracking powered by InstaMapper.com

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

This evening I saw for the first time the MTA subway train which Target paid to have wrapped in ads, promoting a new store in Manhattan. This is the first time the MTA has covered an entire 10-car train with ads. The train is running on the 6 line.

How much? The reported cost of the ad is $250,000, though that might not be accurate. (It sounds high to me.) At any rate, the campaign is supposed to last 6 weeks and has been generally well-received by New Yorkers, who want the MTA to have more money and who find Target tolerable.

Here are some photos of the train:

What’s interesting is how much the red Target train car looks like the old redbird subway trains, which were decommissioned in 2003.

Though this is the first full train to be wrapped, the small Times Square Shuttle trains occasionally get wrapped for ad campaigns, and there have been some small exterior ads pasted on the 1, 2, 3 and 7 trains.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

My goal of this ride was to rack up some mileage on a hot day in practice for my Livestrong Challenge Ride next month in Pennsylvania. (P.S. – Donations welcome!) Round trip: 51.9 miles. Average speed 11 including breaks. Top speed of 32 achieved twice on downhills in the Palisades. High temperature in Central Park: 96. Bottles of water/gatorade consumed: 6.

A map follows below.


GPS tracking powered by InstaMapper.com

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

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Yahoo News is one of the most popular news web sites in the world. It has a problem, though. Every major story comes with a generous helping of the most vile hate speech you’ve ever seen.

Earlier this year, Yahoo News restored its long-mothballed comments feature. The given explanation was that Yahoo’s readers demanded a platform to interact with the news. A Yahoo exec told PaidContent.org: ”[T]the feedback from the audience was that the right to comment was sort of an extension of their First Amendment rights.” User engagement is also good for business, since time on site is one metric Internet companies use to set ad rates.

I’m a fan of interaction and free discourse, but let’s face it: Comments on news stories are about the lamest form of user engagement on the Internet. On the some of the more popular sites, comments are a festering cesspool of pure mean. The nastiness comes from two sources. The first is trolls: Creative geeks who make a hobby out of posting the most offensive messages they can think of, to get a rise out of people. The second is true bigots, some of whom post creepy threats of violence. I have a bad feeling that a lot of the people posting comments on Yahoo are not goofing around. This a thriving community of actual racists!

Compared to its peers—AOL, USA Today, The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC—Yahoo comments are spectacularly bad, and they show up in your face, at the bottom of every story. Anyone reading the news, including children curious about the world they live in, will certainly see them.

How bad are we talking about? I’ve collected a few choice comments from Yahoo News over the last few days. Read on. Warning: Rough language ahead.

* * * *

Comment: Texas_Dave: blacks….the bodies of humans…the minds of animals.

Comment: Joeg: Too many colored people in office !

Comment: AlwaysRight: If it wasn’t for white people… blacks and browns would still be poking bugs with sharp pointy sticks in thier loin cloths.

Comment: Zorro: Moslems live to kill each other,but they prefer to kill non-muslims, that’s why Pakistan and Afghanistan will never cooperate with the West.We should not intervene and let those animals exterminate each other.

Comment: DISTURBED: I HAVE AN IDEA: WE ERECT A HUGE CATTLE FUNNEL IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FENCE WITH A SIGN READING: FREE LEGAL U.S. ENTRY 3 DAYS ONLY! OUR OBAMA ADMINISTRATION WILL LEAD THE WAY! AND ON OUR SIDE BY THE OPENING YOU SET ME UP IN A TOWER- WITH FLOODLIGHTS, MY CHAINGUN, AND 5 MILLION ROUNDS! OH AND LOUDSPEAKERS WITH THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER CRANKED 24/7 ! I THINK AFTER THE FIRST DAY THEY’LL GET THE POINT- YOU’RE NOT WELCOME !

Comment: Bigfoot: She is an ugly racist B_itch, hang her and hang her high

Comment: BeRevealer: This is an example of how black people run their country. Not one country with black leadership is without violence on a large scale and poverty of the masses but not the leadership. Could be coming to a city near you the way things are heading in the USA!!

Comment: Burney D: Solution to Border problem, kill all the men and breed all the women, soon they’ll all be white.

* * * *

Whew. Welcome back from the worst place in the universe.

But please don’t form your opinion from my sampling alone. Go to Yahoo News, pick any story, and read the comments yourself. As I write this, the story about Obama apologizing to Sherrod has 29,000 comments. The one about unemployment benefits has 44,000.

Yahoo has some filters, including a peer voting system that’s supposed to hide offensive comments. None of the comments above was blocked when I found it. But some are. If you spend any time on Yahoo News, you’ll notice that comments denouncing the hate or affirming a liberal point of view are often slammed with Yahoo’s “thumbs down” button until they are hidden from view. This comment was blocked: “Right-wing corporate media (FOX) loves to lie to the stupit & racist people they will belive anything.” And so was this one: “We need to ban guns from the continent to stop the violence.”

Meanwhile, this comment on the immigration story has 16 thumbs-up and zero thumbs-down:

By now, you’re probably feeling angry. Here’s what I’d like you to do with that feeling. Go about your business and remember that one day you might bump into someone who works for Yahoo News. I want you to make that person a hero. When you see them, ask them:

• Are you proud of the Yahoo News comments feature?
• Are your managers proud of the comments feature? Do they even know about it?
• Do millions of pages of hate speech make Yahoo a better company and the world a better place?
• Wouldn’t it feel awesome to be the person who solves this problem?

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

Country radio stations recently started spinning a song called “Way Out Here” by Josh Thompson.

At first listen, it’s a celebration of the nobility of the American small town. On the second listen, it’s a rallying cry supporting God and guns, criticizing government welfare, and boasting that people from small towns are more likely to serve in the military. “If it was up to me I’d love to see this country run like it used to be,” Thompson sings.

So it’s a Republican political song. That’s fair. At least, until the chorus comes around, which goes like this:

“We’re about John Wayne, Johnny Cash and John Deere, way out here.”

Oh no he didn’t!

Hearing Josh Thompson summon the name of Johnny Cash is nails on a chalkboard. Johnny Cash was a protest singer, a social justice advocate, a reformer. It’s impossible to imagine him asking for America to be “run like it used to be.” Thompson has Johnny Cash’s politics exactly backwards.

Johnny Cash played his most famous concerts for prisoners. He refused Richard Nixon’s song requests for “Welfare Cadillac” and “Okie From Muskogee.” He stuck up for the poor and the mistreated, flatly denouncing the “white man’s greed” in “The Ballad of Ira Hayes.”

But mostly, we remember Cash for writing and singing really good country songs. He used music to tell stories about love and lust and personal struggle. His songs were humble. In “I Walk The Line” and “Ring of Fire,” Cash was singing about the fight to be a good man, not boasting about how great his values were. In “Don’t Take Your Guns To Town,” he was singing about the love of a mother for her son, not taking a stand on gun ownership.

Cash was a religious man and sang about Christ as a vehicle for love. “Man In Black” has these lyrics:

“I wear the black for those who never read,
Or listened to the words that Jesus said,
About the road to happiness through love and charity,
Why, you’d think He’s talking straight to you and me.”

Compare that to this lyric (repeated twice) from “Way Out Here”:

“Our houses are protected by the good Lord and a gun, and you might meet ‘em both if you show up here not welcome son.”

Sing what you want to sing, but if that’s your message about God and love, leave Johnny Cash the hell out of it.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

Special “heat advisory” edition. I need practice on hills, so today I rode over four bridges, in order: 1. Manhattan, 2. Queensboro, 3. Williamsburg, 4. Brooklyn. Not a perfect ride—I had to dodge some street fairs and got caught in Chinatown traffic trying to get from Delancey to Broadway during the last swing through Manhattan. Top speed: 31, achieved on the Queensboro bridge. Average speed: 10. Temperature in Central Park: 93. Map is below.

GPS tracking powered by InstaMapper.com

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

GPS tracking powered by InstaMapper.com

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

OK, did you watch it? Let’s talk about it.

First, the story so far:

A decidedly mainstream Muslim organization called the Cordoba Initiative wants to build a community center in Lower Manhattan. Some conservative political types—possibly feeling desperate after getting blamed for the housing crisis and watching their “Drill Here, Drill Now” slogan backfire in the worst possible way—have seized upon this urban “mosque” as a cheap way to stoke rage and anger among their supporters. The subtext, as I see it, is that plenty of fools are still so desperate to believe Barack Obama is a terrorist that they’re prepared to write checks to any organization that hints at similar leanings. Somehow this insanity landed in New York City this summer. Anti-Muslim activists, having rehearsed last month on Staten Island, are trying to shut down the Cordoba House project with as much noise as possible.

Now, where did this nutso video come from?

The ad above was released this month by the National Republican Trust—not part of the Republican National Committee, but actually a political action committee that came together to run smears against Obama during the 2008 campaign. It has a multi-million-dollar budget and ties to the web site Newsmax. (More here.) The ad is getting attention today because two TV networks declined to air it. Nevertheless, it’s getting a lot of exposure thanks to blogs and talk radio.

We could try to argue with the simple facts in this ad (like the fact that the planned Muslim center is actually on Park Place, two blocks north of the World Trade Center site, a dense and mostly commercial area that no New Yorker would consider “Ground Zero”) and its logic (that the Muslims investing in this building are terrorists who want to destroy their own neighborhood) but that would be falling into a trap. You can’t fight this one with sense. We’re talking about a TV commercial opposing a building on the basis of the religion of the people building it, punctuated with the line “We Americans will be heard.” I wonder what Thomas Jefferson would think of that.

I work close enough to the World Trade Center site to see it from my office windows. Like every person who works in Lower Manhattan, I work with, shop with, and commute with Muslim people every day. The idea of a PAC in Washington producing ads attacking these neighbors of mine just makes my blood boil. It should make yours boil too.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

I’ve spent 6 months deciding whether to write this post. That’s how long it’s taken me to be sure the bedbugs are gone. Not that you’re ever really sure.

In January, I discovered my apartment was infested with bloodsucking parasites. The bites were nearly identical to mosquito bites, appearing 2 or 3 at a time, occurring several days or even weeks apart. Bad? No, but perplexing. After a few weeks of this I lifted up my boxspring and saw a bedbug under it. I felt the blood drain from my face and a shiver wash over me. I had gathered my wits and, not knowing what else to do, I carried my boxspring out to the curb. Back inside, I put clean sheets on my sagging mattress. The next few days it was hard to sleep. I woke up one morning with a bite on my face.

Finally, I told my building super. She gave me the number of an exterminator. Two days later the exterminator visited my apartment, and I showed him the bedbug, which I’d sealed in a Zip-loc.

“The first thing to know is that it’s not your fault,” the exterminator told me. “You could be the cleanest person in the world and still get bedbugs.” I was impressed by his bedside manner. Bugs mess with your head, and the exterminator’s reassuring words helped me feel better.

I spent the next two weeks following a page of detailed instructions he gave me. I threw away a bunch of stuff, washed most of my clothes and linens in hot water, took everything else to the dry cleaner (two different cleaners, on four different trips, so as not to arouse suspicion), vacuumed everything every day, caulked the baseboards in my bedroom, organized everything into sealable plastic bins, and basically became a neat freak on speed. Within a week, the exterminator sent his team to treat my furniture, walls and floors, at a cost of $350. I ordered a new boxspring and encased my mattress, boxspring and pillows in bedbug-proof zipper bags. I elevated my bed on blocks and wrapped the blocks in double-sided tape. All told, I dedicated about $1,000 and two solid weekends to de-bugging.

Throughout the ordeal, I saw only 3 bedbugs. They’re bigger than fleas, smaller than ticks, and slower than spiders. They’re brown and flat as a wafer, and wiggle with difficulty on piddly little legs, as if lethargic and drunk. They’re unmistakable. If you see a critter and aren’t sure if it’s a bedbug, it’s probably not a bedbug.

Immediately after the extermination, the bites stopped. Today, I can declare: My name is Daryl, and I have been bedbug free for 6 months.

Will the bugs come back? I can’t say. But the problem is widespread. All four of the apartments in my building have had bedbugs. Other buildings on my block have had them. On “30 Rock,” Alec Baldwin’s character had them. New York published a story this year about how the well-to-do residents of the Upper East Side have them. This month a Hollister clothing store in SoHo and an Abercrombie store at the Seaport both had to shut down for bedbug extermination. Just yesterday, an emergency room in Brooklyn was briefly closed after a bedbug sighting.

Bedbugs thrive in New York City apartment buildings—environments with comfortable temperatures, an abundance of crannies in which to nest, and a dense population of sleeping mammals on which to feed. Some people believe bedbugs live in foreign hotels, then end up in suitcases, then pass from suitcase to suitcase in airports. Residents confronting a bedbug outbreak will blame the most well-traveled neighbor in their building, or someone who has just moved in. I’m pretty sure that’s nonsense.

Bedbugs exploit some clever social hacks to ensure their survival. Bugs, while annoying, never rise to the level of a crisis. That is, they don’t spread disease or kill anybody. Nobody misses work over bedbugs. There’s a financial incentive for building owners to keep the problem as quiet as possible, obviously. Among everyone, rich or poor, there’s shame in acknowledging you have bedbugs. Neighbors will scorn you. Friends won’t visit. No one will sleep with you. The result? There are no spokespeople for the bedbug-ridden, and there never will be. Any pressure for the city government to get tough on bedbugs is low. The problem is handled locally and privately, and the bugs can crawl contentedly from building to building—and back.

Who’s left smiling? Your friendly neighborhood exterminator.

By the way, the three photos in this post are not documenting my own bedbug problem. These pictures were all taken at different buildings, on different days, all within two blocks of my apartment, all within the last month.

Sleep tight!

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

“I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride.”

“I’m thirty,” I said. “I’m five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor.”

Do they still teach “The Great Gatsby” in schools? They did in Maryland in the 1990s, when I read the book for the first time. At that time (9th grade maybe?) I had never been to New York City, had a girlfriend, or attended a party thrown by a wealthy strangers. The narrator, Nick Carraway, seemed unattainably cool and wise as he cruised through the high-society jumble of Manhattan and Long Island. The book was a fantasy.

Now when I read “Gatsby,” I feel like I’ve lived entire chapters of it. (Minus, you know, the tragedy.) I’ve come to appreciate it as arguably the all-time best New York City summer story. This year, as I was re-reading it for probably the 5th time, I was shocked to realize I am now the same age as Nick, the cool narrator who once seemed so out of reach.

I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road of a new decade.

Today, given the path my life has taken, I can relate to Nick in strong terms. He’s an out-of-towner who comes to New York to work in finance, commuting to Manhattan from Long Island. His character is a self-sufficient bachelor who works hard, goes out a lot, and acts as a peacemaker among his friends. Also, he’s obsessed with trains.

As a setting for a story, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s New York of the 1920s might as well be New York I live in today. “Gatsby” landmarks like the Long Island Railroad, the Queensboro Bridge and the Plaza Hotel hold the same significance they did 85 years ago. And people haven’t changed much. You can almost picture Nick, Jordan, Tom and Daisy tapping away on iPhones as they’re trying not to get lost in Manhattan.

Yet while I identify with Nick, at 30 my experience with New York has been totally different from his. By the end of the book, Nick concludes that Midwesterners are so out of place in the East that they’ll be forever chasing unattainable goals, falling down, doomed to failure. The city has kicked his ass. He goes back home.

Gatsby’s green light on the pier—the girl you never got to marry, the wealth you never attained, the dream that turned out to be empty—made sense to me in high school. In college, it squared with my attitude that the deck was stacked against the little guy, and that even if you tried hard, the Man would keep you down. But today, I don’t feel that way at all. My life is hopeful.

I’ll probably keep re-reading “Gatsby” every few summers, but now it feels a little different. I still enjoy the story, and reading Fitzgerald helps me be a better writer. But I may have I learned all I can from Nick Carraway.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.