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New York Shitty Day Ender: Live From Community Board 1
Filed under: 11211, 11222, Greenpoint, Greenpoint Brooklyn, Greenpoint Magic, Williamsburg, Williamsburg Brooklyn
All in all it was a pretty dull evening at the Swinging 60’s Senior’s Center tonight. However, I did film OSA’s announcement regarding the concerts. Simply put, moving forward these will be located at 50 Kent Avenue (which is city-owned property) and they have scheduled a “town hall” meeting where concerned neighbors can voice their concerns; offer criticism (be it constructive or otherwise) and advice. Watch for yourself!
Nonetheless, very salient concerns were raised at the end of the meeting during the “public speaking” session:
New York Shitty analysis:
- On the surface 50 Kent Avenue may prove— at least financially— to be a better venue for the Open Space Alliance to conduct these concerts. It is city-owned property and as such they do not have to split the profits with East River State Park.
- This year’s concerts, per Ms. Thayer, netted an estimated $250,000. Mind you, this is before costs have been factored in and without taking into account that East River State Park gets half the take. So let’s say, optimistically, $250,000 was raised and there are no costs. This only leaves $125,000— a pittance as far as institutional funds are concerned— to ostensibly improve parks in the entirety of Community Board 1. What’s the point?
- Unless better crowd control and sensitivity to/coordination with public transportation— namely service suspensions by the MTA and perhaps special ferry service to and from Manhattan— are explored by OSA I honestly do not see things changing other than who will be doing the complaining. The “problem” has simply been moved.
- Does filming the aftermath of OSA’s “Widespread Panic” concert merit death threats? Really?
OSA Town Hall Meeting Regarding “The Concerts”
October 20th starting at 6:30 p.m.
Swinging Sixties Seniors Center
211 Ainslie Street
Brooklyn, New York 11211
Comments
3 Comments on New York Shitty Day Ender: Live From Community Board 1
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rutila on
Thu, 6th Oct 2011 2:47 pm
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missheather on
Thu, 6th Oct 2011 3:25 pm
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AJH on
Sun, 9th Oct 2011 12:45 am
Was Christine with you? I hear laughter.
Of course she was there. In fact she spoke and wore her badge while doing so. Naturally I have filmed this!
I kinda touched on this in my comment yesterday but because Madame Stephanie is not exactly the best of communicators, in fact she kinda sucks at it, she meant $250,000 in profit. They had to guarantee over a hundred thousand to the state for their half in order to keep the park open for the year and off the list of state parks slated to be closed, I can certainly remember when it was gated up for months on end a few winter/springs ago because the state didnt have the money to run it, it was disgusting, people were jumping the fence and doing all sorts of nasty things in there– (its amazing how much cold people will put up with just to do something illegal or in the relative private of a locked up park, thank god no one got high and decided to go swimming.) If the state wasnt getting well over six figures for their half of these concerts they wouldnt bother with the headaches these concerts cause (plus I think she said that they pay another $90,000 in fees and other charges that goes to the state– god knows what the state is doing for $90 grand in fees, certainly not providing police. But I just wanted to clarify what Madame Stephanie garbled: she is estimating $125,000 for the state park and $125,000 for the city parks. Of course it would have been higher but going back in a google search, Im seeing that my memory is correct, they reduced the number of shows voluntarily this year from 22 to 15 and the number of people from 7,000 to 5,500 per concert. And five of the 15 concerts they held were free and so I guess paid for by the profits of the ticket concerts. Actually since most of the tickets to the free shows went to the neighborhood in advance, I managed to get tickets to the symphony and one of the childrens shows hoping to take my little niece but both times didnt end up getting to go, but the free concerts are nice now that they arent exact clones of the paid concerts–read:hipster indie bands. I have to tell you, I think they did the right thing reducing the number of concerts, and moving them off the weekends in summer months even if it meant lower ticket sales, but I dont really get reducing the number of people: Once you have 5,500 drunk (or high!) hipsters traipsing through a neighborhood, is anyone going to really notice the difference between that and the 7,000 from last year. If people in the community have to put up with this, then they might as well get a little more bang for their buck, er I guess I mean bucks for their tolerance. But what do I know, maybe you can really feel the difference between 5500 and 7000. Who knows. Either Im sure it sucks for the neighbors, I hope they at least got first shot at the tickets for the free shows.
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