Liberté, Fraternité, Mobilité!

 2018 Citroën Bastille Day Rally & RendezVous, Washington Square, NYC

On July 15th the annual Citroën Bastille Day Rally & RendezVous toured the streets of New York, starting at Grant’s Tomb on Riverside Drive and cruising down to the Waverly Place side of Washington Square. Most vehicles were the Deux Chevaux (2CV) model, the beloved “parapluie sur quatre roues” (“umbrella on four wheels”). At the same time these fanciers of French cars were on the road, France was winning the World Cup. Quelle ironie!

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Photos by Mike Licht. Download copies here and here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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America

“America,” composed by Leonard Bernstein with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, from the 1961 film West Side Story. Rita Moreno (Anita) and George Chakiris (Bernardo) are the principal singers in the movie; their roles were originally created on Broadway by Larry Kert and Chita Rivera in 1957.

“Life is all right in America, if you’re all white in America”

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NYC: In a Hurry? Get On a Bike.

” … a huge share of taxi and bike-share trips cover comparable distances in New York City. In 2014, nearly 34,000 trips were taken using the Citi Bike system per day, while more than 400,000 trips were made by taxi. About 55 percent of the taxi rides spanned less than two miles; so did the average bike-share trip.”

“On average, the researchers found that taxis hailed within range of a Citi Bike station were a slightly faster option than grabbing the rental bike. But when travel distances were shorter, and at times when roads were more likely to be congested, the difference in travel times dropped. On weekdays, more than half of trips shorter than 3 kilometers (about 1.8 miles) went as fast or faster on Citi Bike than in a cab. Citi Bike’s advantage is stronger as trips cover less distance: between 20 and 36 percent of weekday trips shorter than 2 kilometers (about 1.2 miles) went faster on rented spokes than in a backseat.”

— “In New York City, Bike Share Is Faster Than Cabs When It Matters,” Laura Bliss, CityLab

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Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Rebuilding Little Pakistan in Post-9/11 America

In 2002, Mohammad Razvi started the Council of Peoples Organization (COPO) in Brooklyn. A video from The New Yorker.

More:

“Fighting for the Immigrants of Little Pakistan,” Jennifer Gonnerman, The New Yorker

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Commuter Barbie

Commuter Barbie, created by Carina Hsieh and Claudia Arisso.

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A Restaurant Kitchen of Grandmas

Enoteca Maria, a restaurant and wine bar in Staten Island, features two special dishes each day. One is by an Italian nonna, the other by a grandmother from another part of the world. Video by Jessica Leibowitz.

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Big Apple Manhole Covers: Cast in India

When you’re crossing the street in New York, look down. See that heavy iron manhole cover? It was cast in India.

A film by Natasha Raheja.

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Rock & Roll High School Street

New York City’s borough of Queens, home of LL Cool J, Run/D.M.C., and Donald Trump, has named a street after it’s premier punk band, The Ramones. Members of the band met while they were teenage inmates students at Forest Hills High School, and the intersection at 67th Avenue and 110th Street at the school’s front steps is now known as Ramones Way.

More:

“Street Corner In Front Of Forest Hills High School Renamed To Honor The Ramones,” Mike Smeltz, CBSNewYork

Related:

“The Ramones return home for Queens Museum exhibition,” Maria Alvarez, Newsday

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New York Plagued by Ice Cream Rustlers

New York City was once known as “A Summer Festival” but this year, with Climate Change, the the Big Apple’s summer is big, hot, sweaty mess. And now there are ice cream thieves.

Shoplifting swarms have been emptying retail freezers at Manhattan CVS, Duane Reade, and Gristedes chain stores. Thieves steal the $6.00 containers of Häagen-Dazs, Ben and Jerry’s, and Talenti ice cream and sell them cheaply to corner stores, which retail them for $5.00.

Things are so bad this summer that John Catsimatidis, billionaire owner of the Gristedes grocery chain, is offering a $5,000 bounty for the arrest of ice cream rustlers. So get your posse together, ride them varmints down, and get the reward. Quick, before it melts.

More:

“Ice cream bandits are wreaking havoc on NYC supermarkets,” Reuven Fenton and Linda Massarella, New York Post

“So Maybe Don’t Buy Ice Cream At A Bodega,” Nell Casey,  Gothamist

Update:

“Stolen, Sold and Savored: Ice Cream Is a Hot Commodity in Manhattan,” Michael Wilson, New York Times

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Image (“Lady With an Ice Cream Sundae, after d’Agesci”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Soul Sixteen

In New York City during the 1960s, radio station WWRL-AM (1600 kHz) exerted a cultural force well beyond its 5000 watt signal. Under program director Hal Jackson the “Soul Sixteen” broadcast a wonderful blend of regional Soul and R&B, including a healthy dose of Memphis Soul as well as Motown.

Disk Jockeys included Jerry Bledsoe, Hank Spann, Gary Byrd, and above all Frankie Crocker, a master of oral-formulaic composition who was so influential that there was an LP of his DJ patter.

Here’s an excerpt. If you don’t dig it you’ve got a hole in your soul and you never eat chicken on Sunday: