Bleak Beauty Blog

When I was born here Roosevelt was president. When I was twelve I would take the subway alone. A token cost ten cents, and then it was raised to twelve cents. I collected them, each a small brass coin with a Y punched in the middle. My mother, born under the Czar of Russia would yell as I walked out the door “do you have a token for the subway?”
Yesterday I tried to get to AIPAD which is on a pier, built on land fill, stuck out into the Hudson River. Using my 50% discounted senior citizen Metro Card on a bus got me within a few blocks of Pier 54, I began to walk across the street, when I was hit with a gust of wind so powerful that I grabbed onto a light post to keep from being knocked over. I made it across Eleventh avenue, but frankly, feared to be blown to the ground, so I stuck out my hand, and told the Yellow cab that stopped; “take me to Pier 94” a very short distance away. When we got there I looked at the meter and it said I owed $9.00!
Congestive pricing has come to New York. The cab drivers hate it. So do the Uber drivers. I looked out in the street. Did the normally clogged streets seem a hair less crowded? Cars may soon pay as much as $12 , and buses $25 just to enter the city. Anyone in a car below 60th street must pay for the privilege. The billions they hope to raise will be used to improve the subway and the buses, long the most extensive city public transportation system in the world. Much of the subway is over one hundred years old.
Los Angeles and Philadelphia are watching. So is every other traffic crowded American city. London gives discounts to fuel efficient cars. An instant, radical, painful treatment for a serious menacing problems. In just half a year almost 6000 pedestrians and cyclists were injured, some killed by motor vehicles in NYC. I love biking around Manhattan. Nothing like waiting on your bike at a corner, when a turning truck slowly crushes you against the light pole you’re leaning on. Walking, running and biking next to traffic jams is not good for your health.
As we responded to the Fascist Japanese and the Nazi’s in World War Two, we need to respond now as if we were in a war, because we are. We are at war with the Climate Criminals and Greedy Fossil Fuel Corporations, that would kill their grandchildren in order to make a few bucks. And taxes are a good way to do it. Every city and any state can and should punish the uses of fuel driven cars, and reward the few people that are using all electric vehicles. New York City is doing exactly what we need; immediate, radical and painful solutions.