The Fall of the House of Bobst The Fall ...
NYU's Elmer Holmes Bobst Library isn't the coziest place to study. From the gray marble floor of the atrium, said to be patterned after the forecourt of the 16th-century church of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, to the ceiling that glows like the underbelly of a spaceship, it's a structure that oozes gloom, replete with cold drafts and echoes in its stacks.
Add to its already dark mystique?two suicides. On Fri., Oct. 10, freshman Stephen Bohler, 18, jumped to his death in the inner atrium. His dry dive came exactly four weeks after John Skolnik, a 20-year-old junior, took his own plunge from the 10th floor. No one seems to know why they killed themselves, but some students suspect that dangerous convergence of depression and opportunity.
Bobst itself may be blamed. Designed by the same architects responsible for NYU's Tisch Hall, Meyer Hall of Physics and the aptly named Kevorkian Center, Bobst is the most sinister of the campus' many buildings. In fact, when the building proposal was made public in the late 60s, community activists, Washington Square residents and park users raised objection to the shadow that it would cast over the southeast corner of the park.
Last week, the administration began glassing in the walkways that look out over the atrium from dizzying heights, and access to the ledges is now monitored by security guards. This might just solve the problem, if one is to believe Keith Guthrie. The freshman was quoted in Newsday as describing Bobst's high balconies as "asking for it" and believes "[i]t's too easy, much too easy to jump" to death in the building.
Page Two hereby proposes a moratorium on all NYU structures over the height of 30 feet, lest more students crack under the pressure and find themselves unable to resist the temptation of tall buildings.
The Wrath of God
Seems you can't turn around these days without kicking another pair of Siamese twins on their way to getting separated. This past year we've seen an unprecedented bumper crop of separations, some more successful than others. They've become so commonplace, it's getting hard to tell them apart anymore?you mention a Siamese twin separation to someone, and they'll more likely than not ask you, "Which one?"
Last week, a pair of two-year-old Egyptian boys joined at the top of the head was successfully (apart from a little brain damage) separated in Dallas. This week, New York finally gets its own?a pair of Filipino boys who, like that pair in Dallas, are also two years old and joined at the top of the skull.
The surgery on Carl and Clarence Aguirre will begin this month at the Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. The procedure?and the risks?are almost exactly the same as those faced in Dallas (separate brains, but lots of shared blood vessels)?but unlike those showoffs in Texas, the surgeons in the Bronx are taking their own sweet time. Instead of whipping through the operation in about 15 minutes with a paper cutter and a windshield scraper, the local team will be proceeding slowly, spreading the separation out over a four-to-six-month period.
Now that's real showmanship, if you ask us! Play it out, let the anticipation mount! Will they make it? Will they die? Will there be brain damage? Will there be wagering? Tune in next week!
Finally, a bit of sport for those of us who can't stomach another Yankees World Series.
Some Places Deserve to be Robbed
Ah, those charming melonheads in City Council?the elected officials who, in theory at least, are supposed to be right on top of everything that's happening in New York?apparently only last week realized that the past 12 months have witnessed a heartwarming spike in local bank robberies. Don't these guys read the papers?
Not a week has gone by since last November when one or more banks hasn't been robbed?some of them multiple times. If you work out the numbers, it averages out to about one bank robbery a day. And city officials are just catching on now?
What do they intend to do about it? Why, hold a committee meeting, of course.
The council's Committee on Public Safety met last Tuesday to figure out why it's happening, and come up with some solutions. (Answering the first part is simple: "Because it's easy.") They even invited Ray Kelly, who probably informed them that the NYPD met with bank officials?oh, seven or eight months ago and hashed everything out. In the end, the banks agreed, if a bit half-heartedly, to try and improve security.
But that simply wasn't enough.
"These banks are too wide open and too inviting!" the committee and Kelly concluded. "They need to be reconstructed as baffling mazes in order to slow any would-be robber's escape!"
Okay, ummm?
Then they suggested that the banks start doing things like installing surveillance cameras and hiding explosive dye packs in the bags they hand over to the crooks.
Yes, well?
What's more, the committee now wants to require that all banks install bulletproof glass at all teller windows.
Let's think about that one. Given that about 95 percent of the bank robbers in question have been armed only with notes and not weapons, what in the hell is bulletproof glass going to prevent?
Jesus Christ?nobody's been hurt. The thieves never get away with all that much. The banks don't give a damn because they've already figured the occasional robbery into their budgets. And face it?a low-rent, gun-free robbery every now and again just makes everyone's life a little more exciting.
So, yeah, it's clear that the Public Safety Committee took all the facts into account and thought this one clear through to the end. We sometimes get the impression that city councilmembers simply aren't very bright.
Make Room! Make Room!
Overcrowding in New York is a problem, and apparently the mayor has just now decided that something must be done. His efforts to make New York an affordable and desirable place to live for no one except him and a few of his closest friends having fallen short of the mark, he's concluded that the time has come to start weeding out all those undesirables who presently clog the outer boroughs.
The mayor and other local officials first spoke of the problem in terms of disappearing open space, congested blocks and a lack of parking. Which is all fine and dandy. Curtailing over-development?even on Staten Island?is a fine and wonderful idea. Last week, however, talk of "overdevelopment" quietly slipped into talk of "overpopulation."
Simply put, housing complexes are built because we need a place to put everyone. Naturally, more people means more congestion. If you stop building them, where are all those people going to live? Maybe some will be forced out of town, which is how the mayor would apparently have it. But what about the rest? Those stubborn ones who won't budge? Where are they going to live?
It would be insane to imply that the mayor wants more homeless people on the streets of New York. And that wouldn't do anything to ease overpopulation anyway. No, he's got a plan to thin the herd, some sort of "template" that will be put into action soon?though the specifics remain a well-guarded secret.
After seeing how this mysterious "template" of his works on Staten Island, we're told the mayor intends to move on to Bay Ridge, College Point, Bayside and Throg's Neck to see how it works in those communities as well. And if it works in those places, who knows what neighborhoods might be next?
On the bright side, if this plan works, we'll all be breathing free and easy again; the subways won't be crowded even during rush hour, and you'll be able to stick out your arms on the sidewalk and spin around without hitting anyone. The schools won't be crowded anymore, so our students will learn better. There'll be less crime in the streets. We'll all be nicer to one another.
And soon we'll have more Soylent Green on the shelves than we could ever possibly imagine.
Maybe the movies were right all along?when a cop hangs around criminals all day, something's bound to rub off. Maybe they just notice that the criminals are having much more fun than they are. Hardly a week goes by when some officer of the law in some capacity isn't busted for dealing, or beating up his girlfriend, or organizing an art heist.
It's not just cops, either?all sorts of city employees these days are getting in on the racket. Teachers, firefighters, sanitation workers, MTA employees, city councilmembers?all of them apparently inspired by the dim hope that crime will indeed pay this time?or at least pay them.
It's mostly cops, though.
Speaking of dealing, a 43-year-old Suffolk County correction officer named Barbara Frisina was caught on videotape earlier this month selling six grams of coke to?of all people?an undercover cop!
Someone apparently ratted out the 16-year vet, and she'd been under surveillance for a while before they finally caught her in the act. Let's just hope that over the years she's been nice to all those new cellmates of hers in the Suffolk County Jail.
Those of you who got busted in last summer's ticket blitz might feel a mix of cold horror and warm revenge-by-proxy to learn that a traffic agent's been busted. Agent Gary Hoyte was arrested in Queens on Oct. 9 when cops saw him breaking into a BMW in an apparent attempt to grab some goodies. A set of professional burglar tools was found in his possession when he was searched, landing him in more hot water, and leaving area residents wondering if maybe it wasn't just some homeless guy who swiped all their CCR tapes that night.
That same day in Brooklyn, another female correction officer, together with a friend of hers, was picked up after the two of them socked a third woman in the head following a "traffic dispute." As usual, one car cut in front of another, requiring fisticuffs. Officer Charice Watts and her friend were charged with assault. Their victim had been punched just hard enough to press charges, but not quite hard enough to visit the hospital.
Still another female cop, if you can imagine it, was busted in the early hours of Monday, Oct. 13, after vandalizing a neighbor's car and then getting in a street brawl with him (or her?it was unclear). Officer Tselanee Kitching of the 70th precinct has been charged with assault and with messing with a neighbor's vehicle.
You expect a lot of creepy things from Board of Elections employees, but you don't expect them to pull the same sort of crap you'd expect from a traffic officer. Yet that's exactly what 56-year-old Raymond Crews was busted for. Plainclothes cops spotted Crews breaking into a car in East Flatbush on the afternoon of the 13th. He grabbed the car stereo, but didn't get very far with it. Crews' rap sheet prior to this was apparently nothing to sneeze at, which may explain why he was hired by the Board of Elections in the first place.
And finally, four firefighters from Brooklyn are currently under investigation for allegedly smashing the windows and slashing the tires of a CNN truck at the scene of last week's ferry accident. They apparently had nothing better to do at the time.
You have to wonder?if these people are indeed seduced by the dark side after years of witnessing so much depravity (and in many cases, thousands of examples of the criminal arts), why are the crimes they've chosen for themselves so damned stupid?