Title: The News From Your Block

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Brian Lehrer: I'm going to call an audible here, as they may say in sports, and do something that we do from time to time, which is invite you to call in and highlight any issue from your neighborhood. Maybe it picks up in a way on our conversation about the mayoral race because, of course, this is a neighborhood-by-neighborhood, block-by-block race, really, in terms of people's quality of life. Producers, screeners, heads up. I'm just throwing this out there right now. This is an invitation for any listener to call. It doesn't have to be from a New York City neighborhood. It could be from your neighborhood, anywhere in our listening area.

Give us a headline from your block. Give us a headline from your immediate neighborhood. Give us a headline from your county if you want to do it on a county basis. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. This is an occasional call-in that we do where we want to make sure we're getting you to help us report reality in our listening area. Our listening area could be anywhere. We know we have some international listeners, as well as those who are actually listening to radio waves in the New York City area. You could be listening online anywhere in the country, any in the world. Anywhere in your neighborhood, what's a local story that you think deserves some play? 212-433-WNYC.

It could be from your neighborhood in France. It could be from your neighborhood in Kenya. It could be from your neighborhood in Indonesia, or it could be from your neighborhood anywhere in the five boroughs, or the rest of New York State, or New Jersey, or Connecticut. One interesting county-level story that I heard Michael Hill talking about on Morning Edition today is that somebody did a survey of how much people walk or bike versus how much they get around by car in their neighborhoods at the county level, nationwide.

Manhattan, if I'm remembering this correctly, I think I am. Came out way ahead of everywhere else in the country, and the other boroughs also did, too, or at the top, other than Staten Island, for how much people walk or bike as opposed to drive. In Manhattan, the number that I remember hearing this morning was 60% of trips of any kind taken by people in their neighborhoods, or taken by people, I guess at all, were by foot or by bike in Manhattan. 60%. Nationwide, less than 10%. Meaning, if you live in Manhattan, you live in Brooklyn, you live in the Bronx, you live in Queens, it's so different out there than the rest of the country in terms of what people bother to get in their cars for.

That's one local story, but we want to hear yours. 212-433-WNYC, hyperlocal news from your neighborhood. Give us the news from your block. Give us the news from your neighborhood. Give us the news from your community, your county. Nobody really thinks about your county, I guess. People don't think about it that way, but maybe you do. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. We'll take your calls right after this.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, the headlines from your block, from your neighborhood, from your community. 212-433-WNYC. We'll start with Louise in Brooklyn. You're on WNYC. Hi, Louise.

Louise: Hi, Brian. Thank you. Brian, the issue that I've had for somewhere between three and four years is a huge amount of standing water on the corner of my block, and it surrounds the corner. I have tried to bring it to the attention of my local assembly person, city council. It bounces back and forth between the DEP and Department of Transportation, each one saying it's the other one's responsibility. It's right on the corner of a very populated and well-attended synagogue. There are children there every weekend. It's just totally unhealthy and it's disgusting. It smells. It extends about half of the avenue on Avenue L and East 31st Street.

In the winter, it's totally ice-covered. Right now, remember when we had a drought a few months ago, there was still standing water there. Disgusting.

Brian Lehrer: Did you say the source of the water?

Louise: The source of the water is just standing water that accumulates because the pavement of the street meets the curb. They repave the street, and the curb is collapsed, so the water now, it spills over onto the sidewalk. You can't even walk. You have to walk around it on the sidewalk. Cars just sit in this disgusting, dirty water, and there's no sewer. There is no sewer on the corner. I don't know why there's no sewer, and nobody seems-

Brian Lehrer: Louise, good luck.

Louise: -to want to address the issue. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: One more quick follow-up. Who's your city council member? You said you checked with your local representatives.

Louise: You know what, I'm sorry--

Brian Lehrer: This is often something your council member will fight for.

Louise: My assembly member is Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn. It's her office that I've been dealing with. I send them pictures, but nothing happens. I know they're trying, but when the departments don't want to do anything, it just sits there. It's three to four years now that I'm trying to work on this.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. Let me recommend that you try your city councilperson, because it sounds like a city issue. Maybe that'll be more effective than your assembly member, I hope. Anyway, you could try, but thank you for your call. This is WNYC FM HD and AM New York, WNJT-FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are New York and New Jersey Public Radio, and live streaming@wnyc.org at exactly eleven o'clock. Taking your calls on the news from your block, news from your neighborhood, news from your community. From Louise and Midwood, we're going to go to Tara in Richmond Hill, in Queens. You're on WNYC. Hi, Tara.

Tara: Hi, good morning, Brian. I've been calling so many places in regarding to fireworks, the really loud ones, illegal ones in my neighborhood. It got worse since the pandemic and it never stopped. Every single time there is a holiday, they do fireworks for weeks and weeks. They don't do it early hours. They do it late. They start them from twelve, one, two o'clock in the morning, they go on sometimes. It's terrifying my dogs. I have two dogs. One of my dog break her leg. She jumped off the chair because she was terrified by it and broke her leg last year. We can't sleep, and then we have to wake up early to go to work, myself and my daughter.

I've called so many times, the precinct, as well as 311. I've got so many complaints. I called Adrienne Adams' office also. Nothing has been done. Fourth of July is finished weeks ago. Fireworks still going on in my neighborhood.

Brian Lehrer: That's so sad, and fairly unusual, I think. I know I have it in my neighborhood every year, leading up to July 4th, more and more fireworks. This year, on July 4th, on that night, it was going on until 5:00 in the morning, but then it calmed down after a day or two later. You're saying it's still going on?

Tara: It's still going on in my neighborhood. Honestly, to God, last night, they started around 1:00, 1:30 again for about 20 minutes or so.

Brian Lehrer: What does the precinct say when you call?

Tara: They said they will check it out. Sometimes they tell me I have to give them an address where it's coming from. I walk around the block trying to find an address, but I can't tell exactly. Sometimes they do it in the backyard, and you can't get to see which backyard. Adrienne Adams' office, they told me that they will look into it, but I haven't seen anything done. It's been going on since the pandemic. It got worse, like I said. Every year is the same thing. Fourth of July, Christmas time, Labor Day time. Every holiday, now they're doing it.

Brian Lehrer: Tara, thank you. I wish I had a better suggestion for you. Maybe other listeners want to chime in for Tara on that ongoing fireworks issue late at night, which even wound up in her dog breaking her leg. Oh, my goodness. That's so sad. All right. We have a good one. Good news one, I think, from Washington Heights coming in from Neil after the two long-standing complaints that started the segment. Neil in Washington Heights, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Neil: Hi, Brian. Thank you for taking this call. I wish it was better, actually, but we have a wonderful tradition in Washington Heights. It gets called Upstate Manhattan because people are terrified of coming up here, but every year, we used to have the Medieval Festival in Fort Tryon. It was usually right before Halloween, and it's by far the biggest event in our neighborhood. We'll get maybe 30,000 or 40,000 people come through, all dressed up. It also features real horse jousts and hawks, eagles, people flying them. During the pandemic, it got canceled, which was understandable, but it never got restarted.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, let me correct myself because I thought you were calling to say that it has finally come back. This is actually not a good news call from your neighborhood. What happened? I've been to that Medieval Festival in Fort Tryon Park. Really fun. Do you know why it hasn't come back after the pandemic?

Neil: I have a friend who works at the Parks Department, and I asked him. He said the way it was funded was that the friends of the park put up half the money, and the Parks Department put up half, and that under Adams, the Parks Department had simply cut the budget for it. Now, I don't know if that's completely true, but it certainly has not come back without any fanfare. There's been no discussion about it. It really seems like a shame to disappear. Also, the thing that how many people encounter the best parts of our neighborhood.

I actually [unintelligible 00:12:00] history, and I was telling a school right across the street from Fort Tryon that I was going to bring them to this event last fall, only to find out that there was no event last fall. That was--

Brian Lehrer: [crosstalk] You might try, if you haven't done it yet, contacting the Fort Tryon Park Trust, which is the public-private partnership, I guess you would call it, that helps take care of that park, like the Central Park Conservancy is for Central Park. You might get at least an answer from them. If not, some kind of organization to help bring it back if there's enough community interest.

Neil: I think there would be, and I will, and thank you. I thought it'd be worth putting a public voice there saying, "Whoever our next mayor is, don't let this slip under the waves because it's a genuine positive good thing for New York City and for the neighborhood--

Brian Lehrer: [crosstalk] Thank you very much. Your phone is breaking up, so I'm going to have to go. For any of you who've called in so far, you can also try to rally support through your neighbors, and then there'll be a group instead of just you calling your police precinct about the fireworks or your assembly member about the standing water or about what's going on or not going on in Fort Tryon Park. There are neighborhood websites, like Nextdoor is one example, where people post. You can join those if you haven't already. There are probably various ones.

That's the one that comes to mind where people talk to each other in their neighborhoods, and it is possible to rally some of your neighbors to neighborhood causes in that way. Just something that might help some of you. Let's go to Valerie in Kips Bay. You're on WNYC. Hi, Valerie.

Valerie: Hi. I'm calling because Kips Bay is the neighborhood below Murray Hill and above the East Village, I guess, and is institution-heavy with three hospitals and the 30th Street Men's Shelter, which, at any given time, is 900 men going in and out as a conduit into various shelters. What I'm calling about is the total lack of green space at all. Bellevue has a park, which they keep locked, and I guess it's for people who go to Bellevue or the employees. That's the only space that looks at all green. There is a Bellevue South Park, which received a very poor renovation.

I don't know who did the design for this, but it remains dirty. Often, when the men are kicked out of the shelter at 7:00 in the morning, they have no place to go, so they go and they sit in the park. It's filthy, frankly. There's a lot of trash and so on because it's a multi-use neighborhood, and all these people are going back and forth to work. There's a lot of employees going back and forth to work. There's a lot of garbage. The cleanliness of the neighborhood is just-- I don't know what's happening. We were represented by Carlina Rivera for a while, and nothing was done about that. Now it was Keith Powers, and he's running, and that's not happening.

I don't know where the money goes for even with this little park that we do have, Bellevue South. Believe me, nobody who lives here goes to that park.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for your call. Again, I don't have a suggestion for how to fix it, but Valerie, you always can and should contact your city council member for something like that for at least one possible avenue. I'm going to read some texts that have come in with news from other people's neighborhoods and take one more call. Cecilia in Highland Park, get ready, because it's going to be you, but let me tick through some of these texts.

Neighborhood headline. "I work with a public housing development in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. In the heat wave that happened during the primary, I saw that public housing developments lost elevator service. It was weird. They say it was decided to take elevator service to preserve electricity for the city. I haven't heard anything about it in the news. Do we regularly stand our most vulnerable for the sake of their wealthier neighbors?" Another text from what somebody's calling the Sixth borough, that says-- in Philadelphia [laughs] "Finally had the first trash pickup for the first time this month. Streets are still a mess, but I want to give a shoutout to DC 33 for their efforts in bouncing back."

I guess they had a sanitation strike there. Another listener. "Big fan of your work. I'm reaching out in the hopes of getting some attention to the recent floods in New Jersey, particularly the Hope 4 Paws Humane Society in Plainfield, where shelter animals were greatly affected by the flooding. They were all thankfully rescued, but their shelter was completely destroyed. I was just hoping to bring it to everyone's attention to send them donations. Thank you so much."

One more in the text. "In and around my neighborhood is commercial trash from what it seems like to be construction debris from home renovations on the side of the south conduit or tucked off the Van Wyck in the bushes," or do you say Van Wyck? I say Van Wyck. "It's always piles of bricks, plastic bags. The amount of illegal dumping on Snake Road, which is the road that separates Rosedale from the Five Towns, is ridiculous." There's that one. I think we're going to end on a good news call, I think, from Cecilia in Highland Park. You're on WNYC. Hello, Cecilia.

Cecilia: Hello, Brian, the hardest-working man in the radio. I love you so much.

Brian Lehrer: You're very kind.

Cecilia: Thank you. My church has been involved in refugee resettlement for many years, and we've had also, one of the things we were getting was money from the federal government. That got just cease and desist on January 24th. In the meantime, we get donations from people, which we use to give to refugees we've been resettling. The donations would come in, and they'd be fixed up in a building that we had here in Highland Park. We just now changed that building from just building stuff to actually, we are accepting donations. The donations come in. If they can go directly out to refugees, they do.

If they need reworking, we have a wood shop there and really talented volunteers. They fix them up. Now we have the upcycle that's on Raritan Avenue in Highland Park. This is all being done through my church, the Reformed Church of Highland Park, which is the best church in the world. That's my good news out of bad news comment.

Brian Lehrer: What do you hear from the refugees themselves, who your church is helping during this new era of mass deportation?

Cecilia: We just had a press conference in front of the church yesterday because ICE came and raided a factory. I don't know the name of it, and took, I think it was something like 20 people, so everyone's scared. It's just a ridiculous situation, but the refugees are very grateful for everything that we give them. We also run a cafe that's staffed by refugees in the church social hall. We sell really good meals for like $6. I think it's $6 still. It might be $7 by now. Yes, the church is the best.

Brian Lehrer: Cecilia, thank you.

Cecilia: I just wanted to share that.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. All right. Folks, there's a little improv call-in on news from your block, news from your neighborhood after a guest canceled at the last minute. Who needs guests when we have callers like you to report the news, right? If we think we're supposed to talk about the big issues of the country, the big issues of the world all the time, there are so many things at the hyperlocal level. Frankly, it's one of the reasons why we cover things like the mayoral race and the governor's race in New Jersey as closely as we do, because those are the elected officials who you get some local responsiveness from, although, in the case of many of our callers, not so much, right?

Hopefully, some of the calls, some of the suggestions, maybe others of you who have heard about some of the issues in some of the neighborhoods will rally with your neighbors and help solve some of those problems. Yes, a little improv call-in. Listeners, we'll continue to do that from time to time, our occasional call-in of news from your block, news from your neighborhood. Thanks for those calls today.

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