Podcasts about rockaways

On a September morning in 2024, two Jonathan Cohens — one from the Rockaways in Queens, the other from London — stood in an empty 15,000-square-foot parking garage near Hudson Yards in New York City. As they walked over chipped yellow lines, they explained how the space would help Joco, their shared e-bike startup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Evan Simko-Bednarski, transit reporter at the New York Daily News, talks about the planned shutdown of subway service to the Rockaways for repairs, alternative travel options, plus other transit news.

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the renowned German painter, Katharina Grosse. Hailed for her site-specific paintings which she spray-paints onto rocks, walls, landscapes and architecture, Grosse's works explode with luminous colour. Working both indoor and outdoor, she upends all traditions when it comes to painting: dissolving framing devices, vantage points, or a clear indication of where a work begins and ends. Witness one of her all-engulfing work in person, and your perspective constantly shifts: from afar they feel like giant swathes of colour, but up close, details of the paint reveal themselves. Grosse is architect, sculptor and painter all at once. In her words, she aims to ‘reset' what painting is and can be. But while she employs the artforms in the most imaginative and inventive ways, she also gets us to think about their histories and traditions – for example, how we could compare her work to an all-encompassing painted renaissance chapel in Florence, something that became apparent to her on a year abroad to Italy in her youth. Fascinated by colour and light since childhood, Grosse was raised at a pivotal moment in German history. Born in 1961 in Freiberg, West Germany, but often visited family in East Germany, she grew p in a post-Second World War society – when artists were grappling with the identity of German art. As a teen she studied in Cambridge in the UK, before completing her studies at the University of Fine Arts Müster and Fine Arts Dusseldorf. She then went to live in Marseille and Florence, where she was an artist in residence at the Villa Romana… Today, she lives and works in Berlin, and has gone onto have some of the most important, mind-expanding exhibitions of the 21st century – from a installation at the Venice Biennale in 2015, to transforming the Historic Hall of Hamburger Bahnhof; her Colossal takeover at Sydney's Carriageworks and, for MoMA PS1, spray painting reds and whites on a former military site in the Rockaways. Today we meet her at her current exhibition at Gagosian in New York – titled Pie Sell, Lee Slip, Eel Lips – where she is exhibiting an extraordinary collection of works that she calls Studio Paintings – and I can't wait to find out more. -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

The MTA says A train service in the Rockaways will be shut down for five months starting on January 17th. Plus, nurses at three Northwell Health facilities in Manhattan have called off a planned strike. Also, WNYC Radio Rookies reporter Marcellino Melika explores how anxiety over climate change is influencing the lives of some young people in New York City. And finally, WNYC's Sean Carlson and Ryan Kailath discuss some cool things to do around the city this month.

In episode five, I introduce my connection with the sea, a reverence passed down from my female lineage. I'm then joined in conversation with Dr. Easkey Britton, a surfer, artist, filmmaker, and marine social scientist who lives in County Donegal, Ireland. She shares stories about her original belonging and her passion for connecting human vitality with the health of our blue planet.I loved the ocean early on, living only four miles away. The expanse of the sea connects me to the divine, the feminine, to primal energy. I tell the story of my mother's love for the ocean in the Rockaways, in New York, where she once was a bathing beauty. I share my tale of empowerment as the sea becomes my place of refuge, accessible by bike. Coming of age in the LA suburbs, I sensed my FBI agent father's fear escalate as he watched an emboldened free spirit take hold of me. When I began to write at age 14, I felt the primal energy of motion, like flowing water, awaken in me as a reassurance. The ocean became a mirror to my soul. After sharing my story, I welcome Dr. Easkey Britton who explores her through-threads of elemental healing, the spiritual intelligence of water, and restoring a sense of belonging. We discuss Easkey's family connection to the sea in Ireland, her coming-of-age years as a champion surfer, her blue heritage, and her ongoing work in ocean therapy. Easkey's creativity has a deep connection with the ocean. Her work in art, marine science, and social ecology focuses on the health of water as a mirror of the health of society. Water is wise; it is the ultimate life source as it moves through all our bodies. The planet's health depends on it. If we care for the ocean with reverence, we begin to restore that which has been lost. Topics Covered:(04:21) My life is a love story for the sea(08:51) The ocean as wisdom's metaphor (24:41) Easkey Britton joins me in conversation(36:59) Oceanic belonging (43:08) Irish mythology's connection to land and language(49:14) From surfer to artist to marine scientist (57:49) Role of ocean therapy in the healing journey(1:04:03) Ecologies of careResources Mentioned:Pauline BewickWomen Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola EstesManchán MaganRobin Wall KimmererThe Red SchoolDr. Easkey BrittonDr. Easkey Britton | websiteDr. Easkey Britton | InstagramFinisterre | InstagramEbb and Flow | bookSaltwater in the Blood | book50 Things to Do by the Sea | bookSurfboard portrait credit: Will...

Students at Laura Donovan Elementary School in Freehold, New Jersey will start the year scattered at other elementary schools after mold was discovered in school building classrooms. Also, New York City high school students taking the ferry to school can get a ticket for $3 less than the regular ticket price for a total of $1.35 per ride. In other news, a historic military building in Ft. Tilden in the Rockaways will soon be demolished. And lastly, Happy Labor Day! As the West Indian Day Parade takes over Brooklyn's Eastern Parkway, WNYC's Janae Pierre talks with content creator Nicolas Nuvan who has gained a major social media following by sharing stories, trying local dishes, and shining a spotlight on the vibrant traditions of Caribbean communities.

On this week's episode, bar manager and co-host of the FOH podcast, Kelly Sullivan, tells us about the time she made a day of going to The Rockaways with no plans, and wound up on a party subway car home! Check out Kelly and FOH on InstagramHave fun like KellyDonate to RWCFThis weeks Rachel's Recs: St. Jardim & grace landWhat did you think of this week's episode?They Had Fun on Instagram, YouTube, and our website

Some hospitals in New York and New Jersey are delaying medical care because of the ongoing global tech outage. In other news, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries isn't pushing Joe Biden to exit the presidential race, at least publicly. Meanwhile, the MTA says the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel will be closed to traffic overnight from July 19 to the 24th. The Queens Midtown Tunnel will also close at midnight on the 27th and 28th, as well as through the following weekend starting August 3rd. Plus, New York City apartment buildings with fewer than ten units must now put their garbage in trash bins. But what do you do if yours is stolen? WNYC's Liam Quigley reports. Finally, New York City's medical examiners say they're dealing with a staffing crisis. WNYC's Michael Hill speaks with health reporter Caroline Lewis for more on the situation.

Dozens of weed business owners attended a hearing this week as a judge considers whether to pause the crackdown on illegal weed shops in New York City. Plus, WNYC's Michael Hill talks with New York City Council Member Selvena Brooks-Powers about funding for a new long-awaited medical trauma center in the Rockaways. And finally, stargazers are in for a treat this month! WNYC's David Furst and Rosemary Misdary discuss some astronomical highlights expected in July.

Three people are dead and at least 11 are injured after a 44-year-old pickup truck driver plowed into a crowd during 4th of July celebrations on the Lower East Side Thursday night. Officials say the driver, who was under the influence, has been arrested. In other news, the National Weather Service warns New York and New Jersey beachgoers to avoid swimming without lifeguards this weekend due to high rip current risks. Meanwhile, city data shows increased particle pollution from fireworks on Thursday. Plus, New Jersey's congressional delegation is asking the federal government to investigate issues on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor tracks over the last 11 weeks. WNYC's Sean Carlson speaks with Representative Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey's 11th district about the efforts. Finally, the drowning of two Brooklyn teens at Riis Park in the Rockaways raises safety concerns. WNYC's Liam Quigley reports that Riis Beach is rapidly eroding, making rip currents stronger.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams says he's committed to helping build a trauma facility in the Rockaways, despite the city only allocating $50 million in funding instead of a proposed $200 million. In other news, phase two of the G train shutdown has begun, with no trains running between the Court Square and Bedford-Nostrand stops from Friday, July 5th, until August 12th. Meanwhile, a new court settlement aims to make it easier for people to change their names to match their gender identities in New York. WNYC's Samantha Max reports. Finally, WNYC's David Furst speaks with food critic Robert Sietsema of Eater NY about some of his favorite dishes to help us stay cool this summer.

This is the 1010 WINS 4PM All Local.

This is your 4 P.M. All Local update on June 22, 2024.

With beach season getting started, Chris Allieri, founder of the NYC Plover Project, and Aydon Gabourel,  founder of Laru Beya Collective, talk about their work in the Rockaway Beach community. 

I first met Kenny Vance at one of the hardest times in his life.  It was a few months after Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and his house on the beach in the Rockaways of New York had been completely destroyed.  And yet even that couldn't dampen his sweet spirit, his good humor and the joy he has gotten out of a life in music. Kenny grew up in Brooklyn hearing music in the neighborhood, in all of the neighborhoods.  That eventually led to him being a co-founder and original member of a very successful 1960's vocal group, Jay and the Americans.  And now he's bringing it all back home, directing a documentary about his beloved doo wop, a love letter to those forgotten by time, but not by Kenny Vance.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

GETTIN' SALTY EXPERIENCE PODCAST Ep. 174 Our special guest will be 35 Veteran FDNY Battalion Chief Robert Ingram. Appointed to FDNY: 1/9/82 Assigned to L-163 Woodside, Queens Ladder Chauffeur School in late 1983 1984, Transferred to HMC1 as a charter member. 1986, Fire Service Instructor I in FLTSP in order to instruct in HM courses. 1991, Promoted to Lt, assigned to the 35 Battalion 1992, Detailed to Fire Academy (HazMat Command request) to develop 1 st FDNY HM Ops training program. Joined later by Capt. Pete Stuebe and Lt. George Meyers. Worked in same room with then Lt. Mike Weinlein and FF John McConnel who were working on the initial Rescue training program. Selected & amp; trained 12 officers to deliver HM Ops to the members in 4 sites. 1993, Detailed to HMC1 as the 4th Lt. 1994, Promoted to Capt. Assigned to the 13th Division Contracted by the IAFF to deliver HM programs. Apr 94-Jan 95 UFO Captain Eng 303 1995, Covering Captain 13th Division 1996, Assigned Captain, E-273 1997, Detailed to Fire Academy at the request of BC Fanning to Develop and organize HM Training School for Technicians, Mission Specific companies in Building 8. Assigned to be the Radiation Safety Officer for the FDNY at this time also. Assumed responsibility for continuing to train CPC ladder companies Assumed responsibility for continuing to train ALS/BLS HazTac personnelWith Chief Fanning and Operations, planned “ICE” (Interagency chemical exercise.) With Chief Fanning and Con Edison VP for Emergency Operations Dick Morgan, developed the Joint CBRNE program with Con Edison for their WMD Response Team. 1998, Assigned as Executive Officer to BC Fanning, HM Operations. From 1996-2001, Chief Fanning and I made many trips to DC to work with the DOD in the Pentagon to support the NGB development of urban response and in return they provided the first WMD training to FDNY. This training focused mainly on chemical weapons. Under Chief Fanning, with Capt. Doherty (now Tech school Commanding Officer) worked with Operations and SOC to train newly formed Squads 18, 61, 252, 270, 288 in HM capabilities. 1998, FC Ven Essen ordered the training of Rescues 1. 2. 3. 4, and new members of 5 in HM capabilities. With Chief Fanning and Operations, planned citywide “BAD” (Biological Agent Drill) With Chief Fanning, Capt. Doherty, we all became charter members of the IAB, The Interagency Board, implemented by then attorney General Janet Reno, and co-chaired by the DOJ-FBI and DOD-NGB to enhance coordination between federal agencies and local responder organizations to combat WMD attacks. 1999, With Chief Fanning and Operations, planned citywide Maritime Radiation exercise. 2000, Promoted to BC Assigned as Executive Officer to Assistant Chief Cruthers, The Executive officer handled issues from Chiefs Downey (Rescue), Fanning (HM), and Guido (Marine) while Chief Cruthers was off duty. During this time, I worked with Chiefs Cruthers, Fanning, and Downey on the FDNY/NYPD Matrix for managing Special Incidents meeting regularly with NYPD Chief of SOD and others. Sept. 11, Was in my office when the 1 st plane hit the North Tower. Responded with Chief Ganci and the 7th floor staff, Incident Command at the down ramp to the WFC when the 2nd plane hit the South tower.Sept 12-Oct 12 Worked with Vinny Doherty to establish the US&R base camp at the school yard. Served as the H&S Officer of the WTC site. Took command of HM Operations. Worked with Chief Norman when he assumed command of Rescue Operations to equip and manage rescuers from SOC. Maintained my duties as the Executive Officer of Special Operations under Chief Cruthers. Oct 12-Jan 1, 2002, Moved out of the WTC H&S role and worked with Chief Tom Purtell of NYPD SOD to establish and manage “White Powder Teams” until NYPD took control of 911 and cut out the FDNY member position on Jan 1 2002. Nov 2001 Responded to the Plane crash in the Rockaways. Dec. 2001 Responded to the 1 NY Plaza titanium chiller explosion. Testified before the Senate Science & Technology Committee Jan 1-Sept 1, 2007, Commanded/managed the rebuild of HM Operations Capabilities. Re-organized HM Operations to manage grants, capital budgets, equipment Developed Managing 25-50 LD FFs and Officers (9/11 related) in HM Operations Developed HM Battalion over several years bringing in 5 additional BCs Trained & equipped HM Tech Engines 44, 250, 274, and 165. Maintained all external organizational commitments. HM Command by 2007 Sep 2007-Dec 2017 Assigned as the WMD Branch Chief for the FDNY Center for Terrorism and Disaster Retired Dec 20, 2017 Join us at the kitchen table on the BEST FIREFIGHTER PODCAST ON THE INTERNET! You don't want to miss this one. You can also Listen to our podcast ...we are on all the players #lovethisjob #GiveBackMoreThanYouTake #Oldschool www.youtube.com/gettinsaltyexperience.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/show/gettin-salty-experience-podcast/support.

Bill Horan and Stacy Raine talk with a Long Island entrepreneur who started an apparel business that started in his bedroom and garage and now runs out of a full-scale production shop in East Rockaway, called Wakes and Waves. His name is Anthony Capellupo, the Founder, Owner and CEO.

On this week's episode, voiceover artist, actress, fashion original, and maître d' at The Odeon, Roya Shanks, tells us about remembering who she is and why she loves New York while on a whale-watching excursion in The Rockaways!Check out Roya on Instagram and at The OdeonHave fun like RoyaDonate to NY Marine Rescue CenterThis week's Rachel's Recs: Happy Hour at Decades and riding the busThey Had Fun on Instagram, Youtube, and our website

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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May 25, 2023 Julian McKinley, Senior Communications Director, at Democracy At Work Institute (DAWI), discusses DAWI's work with the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives to track, measure, and support worker co-ops through research, and the launch of its bi-annual census with Robert McClinton and Pat Thornton. DAWI staff are excited, because when the results of the census are evaluated, they will be able to look at 10 years of worker co-op data for the first time in history. Julian McKinley leads DAWI's communications initiatives in support of its work to expand worker ownership. He is a passionate and mission-driven storyteller with deep roots in community empowerment and economic development, previously leading organizational storytelling and strategic communications around community and systems-level economic change at United Way of Central and Northeastern Connecticut and Capital Institute. Julian began his career as a community news editor in Connecticut, where he founded and managed operations of multiple hyperlocal news websites. Julian is also a certified Master Composter and founder of Rockaway Waste Ed, a community organization helping local nonprofits and community gardens divert food waste, rebuild soil, and increase access to nutrient-dense food through compost management, education, and consultation. He lives in the Rockaways, Queens, New York, and holds a bachelor's in communications from Springfield College (Mass.).

All Local Morning for 7/3/23

Jacob Riis Park, located in the Rockaways in Queens, New York, first established as a park in 1912, has a long history as an unofficial nudist beach. During the 1930s, the beach was informally known as "the people's bath," due to a historic art deco bath house that was first built there in 1932. In the 1950s and 1960s, the beach was a popular destination for members of the LGBTQ community, who faced discrimination and harassment at other beaches. As the decades went by and the beach became more mainstream, Jacob Riis Park became a site for tension of culture clashes.

New York's beaches kicked off the summer season over the last month with plenty of wind, sun, nutcrackers, and an extremely limited number of lifeguards. As the Parks Department revealed earlier this spring, the City currently has roughly a third of the lifeguards needed to fully open the City's beaches and pools. The lifeguard shortage isn't new—the City struggled last year to hire enough lifeguards before the summer season, waiting months to take action and raise pay to entice the part-time employees to get back in the tower.Knowing full well that this would be an issue heading into the summer, City Hall worked to make the lifeguard test easier and less opaque, and redoubled outreach efforts to high schools to get people into training programs. But the new push only yielded 200 new lifeguards, and just 280 returning lifeguards. So what's standing in the way of the city hiring lifeguards? Is it part of a national phenomenon, or is this way more of a local issue? While New York City's Park Department, which runs many of its beaches, is way below its hiring goals—adjacent beaches, run by the National Parks Service, or the state, are doing just fine—and don't plan on closing any stretches. So what gives? Are we just going to live with limited pool hours and closed beaches forever? Hell Gate went to the Rockaways to find out. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mary Yuter, RN, founder of Heart to Soul Cardiac Wellness, LLC, worked as a cardiac ICU nurse at Bellevue Hospital in New York City for over 13 years. As a nurse, Mary saw the need to provide people with more practical holistic health and wellness information to apply in their daily life, complementing their doctors' medical plan, in order to maximize their overall health possibilities when the Western medical system alone was not fully enabling wellness. It is with coaching and community where real transformation can happen, so Mary created The Heart Health Accelerator cardiac wellness program. This program provides the resources and live coaching necessary to recover from a cardiac event such as a heart attack, and serves as a step by step guide to prevent and reverse heart disease. This program supports those who want to mitigate cardiovascular damage from pharmaceutical injections. Mary lives in Brooklyn, NY, where you can find her walking on the local beach picking up seaglass to make necklaces, riding her beach cruiser with her fiancé to the Rockaways to get tacos, take a dip in the ocean and get her nose in a great book, or serving dinner in the gazebo for her family and friends with bounty from her garden, while her tri-pawd dog "Banksy" chases squirrels in the yard.Mary is learning how to play the drums and her neighbors are really enjoying her new hobby, too! Mary encourages you to follow your passions and to do something every day that makes your heart smile.Find the Heart Health Accelerator program and connect with Mary on her website:www.hearttosoulcw.comGet daily inspiration from Mary's Instagram:@hearthealthaccelerator@hearttosoulcwConnect and tag me at:https://www.instagram.com/realangelabradford/You can subscribe to my YouTube Channel herehttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDU9L55higX03TQgq1IT_qQFeel free to leave a review on all major platforms to help get the word out and change more lives!

This might be the single best pitch ever thrown.Like, not hyperbole. That might be the single best pitch ever thrown.Since Shohei Ohtani is beyond describing with words, numbers, music, electromagnetic fields… let's let baseball sit for a moment and focus on the home front.The folks at Hell Gate have presented a field of 64 for NYC hot takes, and, yeah, okay… it's good to have this forum because this could be an entire day's worth of tweets.So, I'm just gonna go through their bracket, give you the winners, and provide all the correct analysis along the way to find out the champion take. My analysis in bold, winners in italics.BROOKLYN REGION(1) The best pizza in NYC can be found at Domino's. Domino's is underrated, but no. vs. (16) No one should live remotely close to Newtown Creek or the Gowanus Canal. Probably, and Willets Pod just touched on this.(8) Free concerts are a trap. You get what you pay for. vs. (9) Coney Island is a better beach than the Rockaways. If you'd said Brighton Beach, maybe. Coney Island is a lousy beach.(5) There are too many bars in NYC. No, there are too many bars in close proximity to each other. vs. (12) Jazz in bars should be banned. This is ludicrous. Don't go to jazz bars, then.(4) Public urination should not be against the law. Correct, especially given the public bathroom situation in this town. vs. (13) Chinese food ranking: Sunset Park > College Point > Flushing > Chinatown. How are you even quantifying this? Remarkably stupid to even try wading into it. Go away.(6) We should bring back speed dating. Okay? Isn't that just what apps are now, basically? vs. (11) The City MUST subsidize beer at BRIC events (should cost no more than $5). Oh please.(3) You should be able to park for free at metered spots on Saturdays, too, not just Sundays. If anything, you should have to pay on Sundays, too. vs. (14) To find the best Italian food, look for an elderly man whose political views are not for public consumption. This is a lazy take, but at least it's not completely wrong.(7) Prospect Park > Central Park. In some ways, at least, sure. vs. (10) Prospect Park is boring and I don't want to go to your birthday picnic there. That's a you problem.(2) Rats are fine. They're not, but this is a better take than its more obnoxious opponent. vs. (15) If well drinks cost more than $10 at a bar, vandalism should be legal there. Good lord, people, dive bar attendance is not a personality.REGIONALS: (4) Legalize public urination > (8) Free concets are a trap; (7) Prospect Park > (14) Old racists know good food. Winner: (4) Public urination should not be against the law.MANHATTAN REGION(1) The Astor Place cube sucks. Yeah. vs. (16) East River park was falling apart and it's fine to rebuild it. They should expand the park and close the FDR forever.(8) The Oculus is actually pretty cool. But it still sucks. vs. (9) Cars should be banned below 96th Street. Cars should be banned on the entire island.(5) The NYU student who hated studying abroad in Florence is right – studying abroad sucks. This is another you problem. vs. (12) The Empire State Building is ugly and the Chrysler Building should be more famous instead. The Empire State Building is maybe the most overrated place in the entire city.(4) All Broadway musicals are terrible. Ludicrous blanket statement. vs. (13) Gramercy Park should be municipalized. And all of the key holders should be egged on opening day.(6) The Elizabeth Street Garden should absolutely become housing. Eh… there are so few gardens, and turning that one into housing is not going to solve anything, really. vs. (11) It's fine to wear open-toed shoes out and about. Grow up! Why are you looking at everyone's feet, Quentin? Mind your business.(3) The new white CitiBike e-bikes are too heavy and bumpy and bad. They look ridiculous, too. vs. (14) Tammany Hall was good. I'm gonna do the whole Matt Damon “do you like apples” scene if this becomes an actual topic.(7) Everyone should shop at Whole Foods – it's cheaper! This is just weird? vs. (10) We must drain and pave over the East River. Pave, no. Turn into a miles-long wildlife preserve? Let's talk.(2) The Vessel is actually cool/good/beautiful. No it ain't. vs. (15) Food halls are overrated. It's not exciting on I-95 and it's not exciting in the city.REGIONALS: (13) Municipalize Gramercy Park > (9) Ban cars below 96th Street; (3) Disappointing CitiBikes > (10) Drain and pave the East River. Winner: (13) Municipalize Gramercy Park.QUEENS REGION(1) George Santos rules. Way funnier than the last fascist we sent to Washington. vs. (16) Kiss > Ramones > Simon and Garfunkel. Put Simon and Garfunkel according to your taste, but the order is Ramones > Kiss, and that's not up for debate.(8) Clubs and dive bars should have a separate bathroom for people who want to do drugs. Suck it up. Or snort it up. Whatever. vs. (9) Breezy Point should be seized through eminent domain and turned into a public beach. Obviously.(5) People who say there's good BBQ in NYC are lying to themselves. It's not as bad as people make it out to be, but it's also not GOOD BBQ. vs. v(12) Either the Whitestone Bridge or the Throggs-Neck must be torn down – we can't have both. Put trains on them.(4) Street cleaning should always be just once a week. Duh. vs. (13) There are too many firehouses. What drugs were you doing in that bathroom?(6) The NYC public school year should end in May, not the end of June. Then they'd start in August, which is worse. vs. (11) The subway should have a smoking car. Deranged, but in the new weed capital of the world…(3) The Mets are not uniquely cursed. Oh baby, how much time do you got? vs. (14) Douglaston is on Long Island, not in Queens. You can't just make shit up and call it a take.(7) The Queens/Nassau border doesn't exist. This is a way better version of the 14 seed, and spiritually accurate. vs. (10) People that throw bread for pigeons are assholes. Mind your business.(2) Actually, the street numbers make sense, you just want an excuse not to go to Queens. It's a little confusing in Astoria, for about 30 seconds. But keep not coming to Queens, you don't deserve it. vs. (15) Sunnyside Spider-Man > Forest Hills Spider-Man. This isn't even a hot take, it's just true. Unfortunate matchup.REGIONALS: (4) Die, alternate side parking! > (1) George Santos; (3) Mets > (7) Queens/Nassau border isn't real. Winner: (3) The Mets are not uniquely cursed.THE BRONX REGION(1) Bill de Blasio is the best mayor NYC has ever had. LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. vs. (16) Riverdale is not in the Bronx. Spiritually, again, understandable, but stop arguing with maps.(8) The New York City Council should be dissolved. I'd like to hear more? Useless organization for the most part. vs. (9) The ferries are the best way to get around the city. From a comfort standpoint, absolutely.(5) The Yankees should allow facial hair, but only full handlebar mustaches and failing that their players must be completely hairless. Are we talking full body wax, too? vs. (12) City outdoor pools should be open year-round. In some form or another… yes.(4) The city's health rules for restaurants are too strict (and racist…….) The famously strict New York City restaurant health codes??? vs. (13) We should have corporal punishment for a select few absentee landlords, just to keep them all in line. Embrace having to live in the places they neglect as “corporal punishment,” and let's roll.(6) Showtime subway dancers deserve more love and respect. A lot of them suck. Standards have dropped. But they're still out there putting on better shows than Jerry Seinfeld reading a list of complaints. vs. (11) Staten Island should be given independence (come what may). Here's my hot take: Staten Island is actually good.(3) We need to give firefighters more things to do. THEY. FIGHT. FIRES. vs. (14) Park conservancies should be abolished. NIMBYs dressed up as environmental advocates. 100% accurate take.(7) Just make Marble Hill part of the Bronx, this is stupid. Unlike some of the others, this one is a good take. They changed the course of the Spuyten Duyvil Creek between the tip of Manhattan and the Bronx, and it left Marble Hill, once part of Manhattan Island, as part of the mainland. If you redraw the river, redraw the map. vs. (10) New York City should not have any zoos. Quite possibly the worst take on the list.(2) Bagels have become too big. You've become too weak. vs. (15) All cars entering the city must have internal horns that are louder than their external horns. It's really not the horns that are the problem, but love the idea.REGIONALS: (5) Yankees must be either mustachioed or fully hairless > (9) Ferries; (7) Marble Hill should be part of the Bronx > (14) Abolish park conservancies. Winner: (7) Just make Marble Hill part of the Bronx, this is stupid.CITY CHAMPIONSHIP(13) Gramercy Park should be a public park > (3) The Mets are not uniquely cursed.The nature of the Mets' cursing may not be unique, but the way they go about living through it sure is. Way too many of these takes were simply awful, so here's the First Four Out, as I see it anyway…Brooklyn: (17) The Nathan's on the Coney Island boardwalk is better than the main Nathan's on Surf Avenue.Manhattan: (17) They should've built that stadium at Hudson Yards even though NYC didn't get the Olympics, at least everyone expects the Jets to suck.Queens: (17) LaGuardia > JFK and it isn't even really that close. MUCH LIKE KENNEDY AIRPORT.Bronx: (17) Orchard Beach is the best beach in the city.Staten Island (1): The Hudson-Bergen Light Rail should be extended over the Bayonne Bridge and to the St. George ferry terminal along Richmond Terrace.But the champion of all NYC takes? Every road in the city with multiple lanes for automobile traffic should be reduced to one lane, with the rest of the space given to bikes, light rail, green space… anything but cars. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit willetspen.substack.com/subscribe

Anthony and Curtis talk about the first St. Patrick's parade in the Rockaways and how things have changed since then. They also talk about Eric Adams involvement with the current St. Patricks Day parade. Tune In Now! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is it attainable to live on a beach in New York City without going broke? Sharon Lew has proven so. Sharon grew up near the water on Long Island, but spent most of her adult life in Manhattan while having a beach house in Fire Island, New York. In an attempt to be on the ocean, near Manhattan, and without debt, she sold her Fire Island home and purchased a fixer-upper apartment in Rockaway, Queens. She loves hearing the sound of the surf and the security of having low monthly costs. Find out more about Sharon's route to a low-cost life on the beach on Episode 112 of Retire There with Gil & Gene.See Sharon Lew's creative talent management agency, Lew & Co, for her latest works. Sharon Lew ‘s article in the New York Times, Heading to the Rockaways for the Sand and the Subway. Which Apartment Did She Choose? is about her search for a home in Rockaway.

I had a fascinating discussion about Robert Moses and The Power Broker with Professor Kenneth T. Jackson.He's the pre-eminent historian on NYC and author of Robert Moses and The Modern City: The Transformation of New York.He answers:* Why are we so much worse at building things today?* Would NYC be like Detroit without the master builder?* Does it take a tyrant to stop NIMBY?Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here.Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.If you end up enjoying this episode, I would be super grateful if you share it, post it on Twitter, send it to your friends & group chats, and throw it up wherever else people might find it. Can't exaggerate how much it helps a small podcast like mine.A huge thanks to Graham Bessellieu for editing this podcast.Timestamps(0:00:00) Preview + Intro(0:11:13) How Moses Gained Power(0:18:22) Moses Saved NYC?(0:27:31) Moses the Startup Founder?(0:32:34) The Case Against Moses Highways(0:51:24) NIMBYism(1:03:44) Is Progress Cyclical(1:12:36) Friendship with Caro(1:20:41) Moses the Longtermist?.TranscriptThis transcript was produced by a program I wrote. If you consume my podcast via transcripts, let me know in the comments if this transcript was (or wasn't) an adequate substitute for the human edited transcripts in previous episodes.0:00:00 Preview + IntroKenneth Jackson 0:00:00Robert Moses represented a past, you know, a time when we wanted to build bridges and super highways and things that pretty much has gone on. We're not building super highways now. We're not building vast bridges like Moses built all the time. Had Robert Moses not lived, not done what he did, New York would have followed the trail of maybe Detroit. Essentially all the big roads, all the bridges, all the parks, the United Nations, Lincoln Center, the World's Fairs of 1939 and 1964, and hundreds of other things he built. And I think it was the best book I ever read. In broad strokes, it's correct. Robert Moses had more power than any urban figure in American history. He built incredible monuments. He was ruthless and arrogant and honest. Okay.Dwarkesh Patel 0:00:54I am really, really excited about this one. Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Professor Kenneth T. Jackson about the life and legacy of Robert Moses. Professor Jackson is the preeminent historian on New York City. He was the director of the Herbert H. Lehman Center for American History and the Jock Barzun Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University, where he has also shared the Department of History. And we were discussing Robert Moses. Professor Jackson is the author and editor of Robert Moses and the Modern City, the Transformation of New York. Professor Jackson, welcome to the podcast.Kenneth Jackson 0:01:37Well, thank you for having me. Okay.Dwarkesh Patel 0:01:40So many people will have heard of Robert Moses and be vaguely aware of him through the popular biography of him by Robert Caro, the power broker. But most people will not be aware of the extent of his influence on New York City. Can you give a kind of a summary of the things he was able to get built in New York City?Kenneth Jackson 0:02:03One of the best comparisons I can think of is that our Caro himself, when he compared him to Christopher Wren in London, he said, if you would see his monument, look around. It's almost more easier to talk about what Moses didn't do than what he did do. If you all the roads, essentially all the big roads, all the bridges, all the parks, the United Nations, Lincoln Center, the World's Fairs of 1939 and 1964, and hundreds of other things he built. I mean, he didn't actually do it with his own two hands, but he was in charge. He got it done. And Robert Caro wrote a really great book. I think the book was flawed because I think Caro only looked at Moses's own documents and Moses had a very narrow view of himself. I mean, he thought he was a great man, but I mean, he didn't pay any attention to what was going on in LA very much, for example. But clearly, by any standard, he's the greatest builder in American history. There's nobody really in second place. And not only did he build and spend this vast amount of money, he was in power for a long time, really a half century more or less. And he had a singular focus. He was married, but his personal life was not important to him. He did it without scandal, really, even Caro admits that he really died with less than he started with. So I mean, he wanted power, and boy, did he have power. He technically was subservient to governors and mayors, but since he built so much and since he had multiple jobs, that was part of his secret. He had as many as six, eight, ten different things at once. If the mayor fired him or got rid of him, he had all these different ways, which he was in charge of that the mayor couldn't. So you people were afraid of him, and they also respected him. He was very smart, and he worked for a dollar a year. So what are you going to get him for? As Caro says, nobody is ready to be compared with Robert Moses. In fact, compares him with an act of nature. In other words, the person you can compare him with is God. That's the person. He put the rivers in. He put the hills in. He put the island in. Compare that to Moses, what Moses did. No other person could compare to that. That's a little bit of exaggeration, but when you really think about Robert Moses and you read the Power Broker, you are stunned by the scope of his achievement. Just stunned. And even beyond New York, when we think of the interstate highway system, which really starts in 1954, 55, 56, and which is 40-something thousand miles of interstate highways, those were built by Moses' men, people who had in their young life had worked with the parkways and expressways in and around New York City. So they were ready to go. So Moses and Moses also worked outside New York City, mostly inside New York City, but he achieved so much. So probably you need to understand it's not easy to get things done in New York. It's very, very dense, much twice as dense as any place in the United States and full of neighborhoods that feel like little cities and are little cities and that don't want change even today. A place like Austin, for example, is heavy into development, not New York. You want to build a tall building in New York, you got to fight for it. And the fact that he did so much in the face of opposition speaks a lot to his methods and the way he… How did Moses do what he did? That is a huge question because it isn't happening anymore, certainly not in New YorkDwarkesh Patel 0:06:22City. Yeah. And that's really why I actually wanted to talk to you and talk about this book because the Power Broker was released in 1974 and at the time New York was not doing well, which is to put it mildly. But today the crisis we face is one where we haven't built significant public works in many American cities for decades. And so it's interesting to look back on a time when we could actually get a lot of public works built very quickly and very efficiently and see if maybe we got our characterization of the people at the time wrong. And that's where your 2007 book comes in. So I'm curious, how was the book received 50 years after, or I guess 40 years after the Power Broker was released? What was the reception like? How does the intellectual climate around these issues change in that time?Kenneth Jackson 0:07:18The Power Broker is a stunning achievement, but you're right. The Power Broker colon Robert Moses and the fall of New York. He's thinking that in the 1970s, which is the… In New York's 400-year history, we think of the 1970s as being the bottom. City was bankrupt, crime was going up, corruption was all around. Nothing was working very well. My argument in the subtitle of the 2007 book or that article is Robert Moses and the rise of New York. Arguing that had Robert Moses not lived, not done what he did, New York would have followed the trail of maybe Detroit and St. Louis and Cincinnati and Pittsburgh and most cities in the Northeast and Midwest, which really declined. New York City really hasn't declined. It's got more people now than it ever did. It's still a number one city in the world, really, by most of our standards. It's the global leader, maybe along with London. At one point in the 1980s, we thought it might be Tokyo, which is the largest city in the world, but it's no longer considered competitive with New York. I say London too because New York and London are kind of alone at the top. I think Robert Moses' public works, activities, I just don't know that you could have a New York City and not have expressways. I don't like the Cross Bronx expressway either and don't want to drive on it. How can you have a world in which you can't go from Boston to San Francisco? You had to have it. You have to have some highways and Carroll had it exactly wrong. He talked about Moses and the decline of public transit in New York. Actually what you need to explain in New York is why public transit survived in New York, wherein most other American cities, the only people who use public transit are the losers. Oh, the disabled, the poor and stuff like that. In New York City, rich people ride the subway. It's simply the most efficient way to get around and the quickest. That question needs, some of the things need to be turned on its head. How did he get it done? How did he do it without scandal? I mean, when you think about how the world is in our time, when everything has either a financial scandal or a sexual scandal attached to it, Moses didn't have scandals. He built the White Stone Bridge, for example, which is a gigantic bridge connecting the Bronx to Queens. It's beautiful. It was finished in the late 1930s on time and under budget. Actually a little earlier. There's no such thing as that now. You're going to do a big public works project and you're going to do it on time. And also he did it well. Jones Beach, for example, for generations has been considered one of the great public facilities on earth. It's gigantic. And he created it. You know, I know people will say it's just sand and water. No, no, it's a little more complicated than that. So everything he did was complicated. I mean, I think Robert Caro deserves a lot of credit for doing research on Moses, his childhood, his growing up, his assertion that he's the most important person ever to live in and around New York. And just think of Franklin Roosevelt and all the people who lived in and around New York. And Moses is in a category by himself, even though most Americans have never heard of Robert Moses. So his fame is still not, that book made him famous. And I think his legacy will continue to evolve and I think slightly improve as Americans realize that it's so hard, it's hard to build public works, especially in dense urban environments. And he did it.0:11:13 How Moses Gained PowerDwarkesh Patel 0:11:33Yeah. There's so much to talk about there. But like one of the interesting things from the Power Broker is Caro is trying to explain why governors and mayors who were hesitant about the power that Moses was gaining continued to give him more power. And there's a section where he's talking about how FDR would keep giving him more positions and responsibilities, even though FDR and Moses famously had a huge enmity. And he says no governor could look at the difficulty of getting things built in New York and not admire and respect Moses' ability to do things, as he said, efficiently, on time, under budget, and not need him, essentially. But speaking of scandal, you talked about how he didn't take salary for his 12 concurrent government roles that he was on. But there's a very arresting anecdote in the Power Broker where I think he's 71 and his daughter gets cancer. And for the first time, I think he had to accept, maybe I'm getting the details wrong, but he had to accept salary for working on the World's Fair because he didn't have enough. He was the most powerful person in New York, and he didn't have enough money to pay for his daughter's cancer. And even Caro himself says that a lot of the scandals that came later in his life, they were just kind of trivial stuff, like an acre of Central Park or the Shakespeare in the park. Yeah, it wasn't... The things that actually took him down were just trivial scandals.Kenneth Jackson 0:13:07Well, in fact, when he finally was taken down, it took the efforts of a person who was almost considered the second most powerful person in the United States, David Rockefeller, and the governor of New York, both of whom were brothers, and they still had a lot of Moses to make him kind of get out of power in 1968. But it was time. And he exercised power into his 70s and 80s, and most of it was good. I mean, the bridges are remarkable. The bridges are gorgeous, mostly. They're incredible. The Throgs Neck Bridge, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, the Triborough Bridge, they're really works of art. And he liked to build things you could see. And I think the fact that he didn't take money was important to it. You know, he was not poor. I wouldn't say he's not wealthy in New York terms, but he was not a poor person. He went to Yale as a Jewish person, and let's say in the early 20th century, that's fairly unusual and he lived well. So we can't say he's poor, but I think that Carol was right in saying that what Moses was after in the end was not sex and not power, and not sex and not money. Power. He wanted power. And boy, did he get it.Dwarkesh Patel 0:14:37Well, there's a good review of the book from, I'm not sure if I remember the last name, but it was Philip Lopgate or something. Low paid, I think.Kenneth Jackson 0:14:45Okay.Dwarkesh Patel 0:14:46And he made a good point, which was that the connotation of the word power is very negative, but it's kind of a modern thing really to have this sort of attitude towards power that like somebody who's just seeking it must necessarily have suspicious motivations. If Moses believed, and in fact, he was probably right in believing that he was just much more effective at building public works for the people that live in New York, was it irrational of him or was it selfish of him to just desire to work 14 hour days for 40 years on end in order to accumulate the power by which he could build more public works? So there's a way of looking at it where this pursuit of power is not itself troubling.Kenneth Jackson 0:15:36Well, first of all, I just need to make a point that it's not just New York City. I mean, Jones Beach is on Long Island. A lot of those highways, the Northern State Parkway, the Southern State Parkway are built outside the city and also big projects, the Power Authority in upstate New York. He also was consultant around the world in cities and transportation. So his influence was really felt far beyond New York City. And of course, New York City is so big and so important. I think also that we might want to think about, at least I think so, what do I say, the counterfactual argument. Can you imagine? I can remember when I was in the Air Force, we lived next door to a couple from New York City. We didn't know New York City at the time. And I can't remember whether she or he was from the Bronx or Brooklyn, but they had they made us understand how incredibly much he must have loved her to go to Brooklyn or the Bronx to see her and pick her up for days and stuff like this. You couldn't get there. I mean, it would take you three hours to go from the Rockaways in Brooklyn to somewhere in the Northern Bronx. But the roads that Moses built, you know, I know at rush hour they're jammed, but you know, right this minute on a Sunday, you can whiz around New York City on these expressways that Moses built. It's hard to imagine New York without. The only thing Moses didn't do was the subway, and many people have criticized him because the subways were deteriorated between the time they were built in the early part of the 20th century in 1974 when Carol wrote to Power Broker. But so had public transit systems all over the United States. And the public transit system in New York is now better than it was 50 years ago. So that trajectory has changed. And all these other cities, you know, Pittsburgh used to have 600,000 people. Now it has 300,000. Cleveland used to have 900,000 and something. Now it's below five. Detroit used to have two million. Now it's 600 something thousand. St. Louis used to have 850,000. Now it's three hundreds. I mean, the steep drop in all these other cities in the Midwest and Northeast, even Washington and even Boston and Philadelphia, they all declined except New York City, which even though it was way bigger than any of them in 1950 is bigger now than it was then. More people crammed into this small space. And Moses had something to do with that.0:18:22 Would NYC Have Fallen Without Moses?Dwarkesh Patel 0:18:22Yeah, yeah, yeah. You write in the book and I apologize for quoting you back to yourself, but you write, had the city not undertaken a massive program of public works between 1924 and 1970, had it not built the arterial highway system and had it not relocated 200,000 people from old law tenements to new public housing projects, New York would not have been able to claim in the 1990s that it was a capital of the 20th century. I would like to make this connection more explicit. So what is the reason for thinking that if New York hadn't done urban renewal and hadn't built the more than 600 miles of highways that Moses built there, that New York would have declined like these other cities in the Northeast and the Midwest?Kenneth Jackson 0:19:05Well, I mean, you could argue, first of all, and friends of mine have argued this, that New York is not like other cities. It's a world city and has been and what happens to the rest of the United States is, I accept a little bit of that, but not all of it. You say, well, New York is just New York. And so whatever happens here is not necessarily because of Moses or different from Detroit, but I think it's important to realize its history has been different from other American cities. Most American cities, especially the older cities, have been in relative decline for 75 years. And in some ways New York has too. And it was its relative dominance of the United States is less now than because there's been a shift south and west in the United States. But the prosperity of New York, the desire of people to live in it, and after all, one of its problems is it's so expensive. Well, one reason it's expensive is people want to live there. If they didn't want to live there, it would be like Detroit. It'd be practically free. You know what I mean? So there are answers to these issues. But Moses' ways, I think, were interesting. First of all, he didn't worry about legalities. He would start an expressway through somebody's property and dare a judge to tell him to stop after the construction had already started. And most of the time, Moses, he was kind of like Hitler. It was just, I don't mean to say he was like Hitler. What I mean is, but you have such confidence. You just do things and dare other people to change it. You know what I mean? I'm going to do it. And most people don't have that. I think there's a little bit of that in Trump, but not as much. I mean, I don't think he has nearly the genius or brains of Moses. But there's something to self-confidence. There's something to having a broad vision. Moses liked cities, but he didn't like neighborhoods or people. In other words, I don't think he loved New York City. Here's the person who is more involved. He really thought everybody should live in suburbs and drive cars. And that was the world of the future. And he was going to make that possible. And he thought all those old law tenements in New York, which is really anything built before 1901, were slums. And they didn't have hot and cold water. They often didn't have bathrooms. He thought they should be destroyed. And his vision was public housing, high-rise public housing, was an improvement. Now I think around the United States, we don't think these high-rise public housing projects are so wonderful. But he thought he was doing the right thing. And he was so arrogant, he didn't listen to people like Jane Jacobs, who fought him and said, you're saying Greenwich Village is a slum? Are you kidding me? I mean, he thought it was a slum. Go to Greenwich Village today. Try to buy anything for under a million dollars. I mean, it doesn't exist. You know what I mean? I mean, Greenwich Village, and he saw old things, old neighborhoods, walking, is hopelessly out of date. And he was wrong. He was wrong about a lot of his vision. And now we understand that. And all around the country, we're trying to revitalize downtowns and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and gasoline and cars. But Moses didn't see the world that way. It's interesting. He never himself drove a car. Can you believe that the man who had more influence on the American car culture, probably even than Henry Ford, himself was always driven. He was chauffeured. In fact, he was so busy that Carol talks about him as having two limousines behind each other. And he would have a secretary in one, and he would be dealing with business and writing letters and things like this. And then she would have all she could do. They would pull off to the side of the road. She would get out of his car. The car that was following would discharge the secretary in that car. They would switch places. And the fresh secretary would get in the backseat, Moses, and they would continue to work. And the first secretary would go to type up whatever she had to do. He worked all the time. He really didn't have much of a private life. There are not many people like Robert Moses. There are people like Robert Moses, but not so many, and he achieved his ideal. I think that there are so many ironies there. Not only did he not drive himself, he didn't appreciate so much the density of New York, which many people now love, and it's getting more dense. They're building tall buildings everywhere. And he didn't really appreciate the diversity, the toleration. He didn't care about that, but it worked. And I just think we have to appreciate the fact that he did what was impossible, really impossible, and nobody else could have done what he did. And if we hadn't done it then, he sure as heck wouldn't be able to do it in the 21st century, when people are even more litigious. You try to change the color of a door in New York City, and there'll be—you try to do something positive, like build a free swimming pool, fix up an old armory and turn it into a public—there'll be people who'll fight you. I'm not kidding this. And Moses didn't care. He says, I'm going to do this. When he built the Cross Bronx Expressway, which in some ways is—it was horrible what he did to these people, but again, Carol mischaracterizes what happened. But it's a dense working class—let's call it Jewish neighborhood—in the early 1950s. And Roses decides we need an interstate highway or a big highway going right through it. Well, he sent masses of people letters that said, get out in 90 days. He didn't mean 91 days. He meant—he didn't mean let's argue about it for four years. Let's go to legit—Moses meant the bulldozers will be bulldozing. And that kind of attitude, we just don't have anymore. And it's kind of funny now to think back on it, but it wasn't funny to the people who got evicted. But again, as I say, it's hard to imagine a New York City without the Cross Bronx Expressway. They tore down five blocks of dense buildings, tore them down, and built this road right through it. You live—and they didn't worry about where they were going to rehouse them. I mean, they did, but it didn't work. And now it's so busy, it's crowded all the time. So what does this prove? That we need more roads? But you can't have more roads in New York because if you build more roads, what are you going to do with the cars? Right now, the problem is there are so many cars in the city, there's nothing to do. It's easy to get around in New York, but what are you going to do with the car? You know, the car culture has the seeds of its own destruction. You know, cars just parking them or putting them in a garage is a problem. And Moses didn't foresee those. He foreseed you're all going to live in the Long Island suburbs or Westchester suburbs or New Jersey suburbs. Park your car in your house and come in the city to work. Now, the city is becoming a place to live more than a place to work. So what they're doing in New York as fast as they can is converting office buildings into residential units. He would never have seen that, that people would want to live in the city, had options that they would reject a single family house and choose high rise and choose the convenience of going outside and walking to a delicatessen over the road, driving to a grocery store. It's a world he never saw.0:27:31 Moses the Startup Founder?Dwarkesh Patel 0:27:31Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like the thing you pointed out earlier about him having the two limousines and then the enormous work ethic and then the 90 day eviction. I mean, I'm a programmer and I can recognize this trope immediately. Right. Robert Moses was a startup founder, but in government, you know, that attitude is like, yeah, it's like Silicon Valley. That's like we all recognize that.Kenneth Jackson 0:27:54And I think we should we should we should go back to what you said earlier about why was it that governors or mayors couldn't tell him what to do? Because there are many scenes in the power broker where he will go to the mayor who wants to do something else. And Moses would, damn it. He'd say, damn it, throw his pages on the desk and say, sign this. This is my resignation. You know, OK. And I'm out of here because the mayors and governors love to open bridges and highways and and do it efficiently and beautifully. And Moses could do that. Moses could deliver. And the workers loved him because he paid union wages, good wages to his workers. And he got things done and and things like more than 700 playgrounds. And it wasn't just grand things. And even though people criticize the 1964 World's Fair as a failure and financially it was a failure, but still tens of millions of people went there and had a good time. You know, I mean, even some of the things were supposedly were failures. Failures going to home, according to the investment banker, maybe, but not to the people who went there.Dwarkesh Patel 0:29:20Right. Yeah. And I mean, the point about the governors and mayors needing him, it was especially important to have somebody who could like work that fast. If you're going to get reelected in four years or two years, you need somebody who can get public works done faster than they're done today. Right. If you want to be there for the opening. Yeah, exactly.Kenneth Jackson 0:29:36And it's important to realize, to say that Moses did try public office once.Dwarkesh Patel 0:29:41Yeah.Kenneth Jackson 0:29:42And I think it's true that he lost by more than anybody in the history of New York. He was not, you know, he was not an effective public speaker. He was not soft and friendly and warm and cuddly. That's not Robert Moses. The voters rejected him. But the people who had power and also Wall Street, because you had to issue bonds. And one of the ways that Moses had power was he created this thing called the Traverse Bridge and Tunnel Authority to build the Traverse Bridge. Well, now, if in Portland, Oregon, you want to build a bridge or a road, you issue a couple hundred million dollars worth of bonds to the public and assign a value to it. Interest rate is paid off by the revenue that comes in from the bridge or the road or whatever it is. Normally, before, normally you would build a public works and pay for it itself on a user fees. And when the user fees paid it off, it ended. But what Moses, who was called the best bill drafter in Albany, which was a Moses term, he said he was somewhere down in paragraph 13, Section G, say, and the chairman can only be removed for cause. What that meant was when you buy a bond for the Traverse Bridge or something else, you're in a contract, supported by the Supreme Court. This is a financial deal you're making with somebody. And part of the contract was the chairman gets to stay unless he does something wrong. Well, Moses was careful not to do anything wrong. And it also would continue. You would get the bond for the Traverse Bridge, but rather than pay off the Traverse Bridge, he would build another project. It would give him the right to continually build this chain of events. And so he had this massive pot of money from all these initially nickels and dimes. Brazil made up a lot of money, the 30s and 40s and 50s and 60s, to spend more money and build more bridges and build more roads. And that's where he had his power. And the Wall Street, the big business loved him because they're issuing the bonds. The unions loved him because they're paying the investors. Now what Carroll says is that Moses allowed the investors an extra quarter percent, I think a quarter percent or half percent on bonds, but they all sold out. So everybody was happy. And was that crooked? It wasn't really illegal. But it's the way people do that today. If you're issuing a bond, you got to figure out what interest am I going to pay on this that will attract investors now.0:32:34 The Case Against Moses HighwaysDwarkesh Patel 0:32:34And the crucial thing about these tales of graft is that it never was about Moses trying to get rich. It was always him trying to push through a project. And obviously that can be disturbing, but it is a completely different category of thing, especially when you remember that this was like a corrupt time in New York history. It was like after Tammany Hall and so on. So it's a completely different from somebody using their projects to get themselves rich. But I do want to actually talk in more detail about the impact of these roads. So obviously we can't, the current system we have today where we just kind of treat cities as living museums with NIMBYism and historical preservation, that's not optimal. But there are examples, at least of Carroll's, about Moses just throwing out thousands of people carelessly, famously in that chapter on the one mile, how Moses could have diverted the cross Bronx expressway one mile and prevented thousands of people from getting needlessly evicted. So I'm just going to list off a few criticisms of his highway building and then you can respond to them in any order you want. So one of the main criticisms that Carroll makes is that Moses refused to add mass transit to his highways, which would have helped deal with the traffic problem and the car problem and all these other problems at a time when getting the right of way and doing the construction would have been much cheaper. Because of his dislike for mass transit, he just refused to do that. And also the prolific building of highways contributed to urban sprawl, it contributed to congestion, it contributed to neighborhoods getting torn apart if a highway would crossKenneth Jackson 0:34:18them.Dwarkesh Patel 0:34:19So a whole list of criticisms of these highways. I'll let you take it in any order you want.Kenneth Jackson 0:34:27Well first of all, Moses response was, I wasn't in charge of subways. So if you think the subways deteriorated or didn't build enough, find out who was in charge of them and blame that person. I was in charge of highways and I built those. So that's the first thing.Dwarkesh Patel 0:34:41But before you answer that, can I just ask, so on that particular point, it is true that he wasn't in charge of mass transit, but also he wasn't in charge of roads until he made himself responsible for roads, right? So if he chose to, he could have made himself responsible for mass transit and taken careKenneth Jackson 0:34:56of it. Maybe, although I think the other thing about it is putting Moses in a broader historical concept. He was swimming with the tide of history. In other words, history when he was building, was building Ford Motor Company and General Motors and Chrysler Corporation and building cars by the millions. I mean, the automobile industry in the United States was huge. People thought any kind of rail transit was obsolete and on the way out anyway. So let's just build roads. I mean, that's what the public wanted. He built what the public wanted. It's not what I was looking historically. I don't think we did the right thing, but we needed to join the 20th century. New York could have stayed as a quaint, I don't know, quaint is not the right word, but it's a distinctly different kind of place where everybody walks. I just don't think it would have been the same kind of city because there are people who are attached to their cars in New York. And so the sprawl in New York, which is enormous, nobody's saying it wasn't, spreads over 31 counties, an area about as large as the state of Connecticut, about as large as the Netherlands is metropolitan New York. But it's still relatively, I don't want to say compact, but everybody knows where the center is. It's not that anybody grows up in New York at 16 and thinks that the world is in some mall, you know, three miles away. They all know there is a center and that's where it is. It's called Manhattan. And that's New York and Moses didn't change that for all of his roads. There's still in New York a definite center, skyscrapers and everything in the middle. And it's true, public transit did decline. But you know those, and I like Chicago, by the way, and they have a rail transit from O'Hare down to Dan Ryan, not to Dan Ryan, but the JFK Expressway, I think. And it works sort of, but you got to walk a ways to get on. You got to walk blocks to get in the middle of the expressway and catch the train there. It's not like in New York where you just go down some steps. I mean, New York subway is much bigger than Chicago and more widely used and more. And the key thing about New York, and so I think what Carol was trying to explain and your question suggests this, is was Moses responsible for the decline of public transit? Well, he was building cars and roads and bridges. So in that sense, a little bit, yes. But if you look at New York compared to the rest of the United States, it used to be that maybe 20 percent of all the transit riders in the United States were in the New York area. Now it's 40 percent. So if you're looking at the United States, what you have to explain is why is New York different from the rest of the United States? Why is it that when I was chairman or president of the New York Historical Society, we had rich trustees, and I would tell them, well, I got here on a subway or something. They would think, I would say, how do you think I got here? Do you know what I mean? I mean, these are people who are close to billionaires and they're saying they used the subway. If you're in lower Manhattan and you're trying to get to Midtown and it's raining, it's five o'clock, you've got to be a fool to try to get in your own limousine. It isn't going to get you there very quickly. A subway will. So there are reasons for it. And I think Moses didn't destroy public transit. He didn't help it. But his argument was he did. And that's an important distinction, I think. But he was swimming with history. He built what the public wanted. I think if he had built public transit, he would have found it tougher to build. Just for example, Cincinnati built a subway system, a tunnel all through the city. It never has opened. They built it. You can still see the holes in the ground where it's supposed to come out. By the time they built it, people weren't riding trains anymore. And so it's there now and they don't know what to do with it. And that's 80 years ago. So it's a very complicated—I don't mean to make these issues. They're much more complex than I'm speaking of. And I just think it's unfair to blame Moses for the problems of the city. I think he did as much as anybody to try to bring the city into the 21st century, which he didn't live to. But you've got to adopt. You've got to have a hybrid model in the world now. And I think the model that America needs to follow is a model where we reduce our dependence on the cars and somehow ride buses more or use the internet more or whatever it is, but stop using so much fossil fuels so that we destroy our environment. And New York, by far, is the most energy efficient place in the United States. Mainly because you live in tall buildings, you have hot floors. It doesn't really cost much to heat places because you're heating the floor below you and above you. And you don't have outside walls. And you walk. New Yorkers are thinner. Many more people take buses and subways in New York than anywhere else in the United States, not just in absolute terms, in relative terms. So they're helping. It's probably a healthier lifestyle to walk around. And I think we're rediscovering it. For example, if you come to New York between Thanksgiving and Christmas, there's so many tourists in the city. I'm not making this up. That there is gridlock on the sidewalks around. The police have to direct the traffic. And in part, it's because a Detroit grandmother wants to bring her granddaughter to New York to see what Hudson's, which is a great department store in Detroit or in any city. We could be rich as in Atlanta, Fox, G Fox and Hartford. Every city had these giant department and windows where the Santa Claus is and stuff like this. You can still go to New York and see that. You can say, Jane, this is the way it used to be in Detroit. People ringing the bells and looking at the store windows and things like that. A mall can't recapture that. It just can't. You try, but it's not the same thing. And so I think that in a way, Moses didn't not only did he not destroy New York. I think he gets a little bit of credit for saving it because it might have been on the way to Detroit. Again, I'm not saying that it would have been Detroit because Detroit's almost empty. But Baltimore wasn't just Baltimore, it's Cleveland. It's every place. There's nobody there anymore. And even in New York, the department stores have mostly closed, not all of them. And so it's not the same as it was 80 years ago, but it's closer to it than anywhere else.Dwarkesh Patel 0:42:16OK, so yes, I'm actually very curious to get your opinion on the following question. Given the fact that you are an expert on New York history and you know, you've written the encyclopedia, literally written the encyclopedia on New York City.Kenneth Jackson 0:42:30800 people wrote the encyclopedia. I just took all the credit for it.Dwarkesh Patel 0:42:34I was the editor in chief. So I'm actually curious, is Caro actually right that you talked about the importance just earlier about counterfactual history. So I'm curious if Caro is actually right about the claim that the neighborhoods through which Moses built his highways were destroyed in a way that neighborhoods which were in touch by the highways weren't. Sorry for the confusing phrasing there. But basically, was there like a looking back on all these neighborhoods? Is there a clear counterfactual negative impact on the neighborhoods in which Moses built his highways and bridges and so on?Kenneth Jackson 0:43:10Well, Moses, I mean, Caro makes that argument mostly about East Tremont and places like that in the Bronx where the Cross Bronx Expressway passed through. And he says this perfectly wonderful Jewish neighborhood that was not racially prejudiced and everybody was happy and not leaving was destroyed by Moses. Well, first of all, as a historian of New York City, or for that matter, any city, if a student comes to you and says, that's what I found out, you said, well, you know, that runs counter to the experience of every city. So let's do a little more work on that. Well, first of all, if you look at the census tracts or the residential security maps of S.H.A. You know, it's not true. First of all, the Jews were leaving and had nothing to do with the thing. They didn't love blacks. And also, if you look at other Jewish, and the Bronx was called the Jewish borough at the time, those neighborhoods that weren't on the Cross Bronx Expressway all emptied out mostly. So the Bronx itself was a part of New York City that followed the pattern of Detroit and Baltimore and Cleveland. Bronx is now coming back, but it's a different place. So I think it's, well, I've said this in public and I'll pay you for this. Carol wouldn't know those neighborhoods if he landed there by parachute. They're much better than he ever said they were. You know, he acted like if you went outside near the Bronx County Courthouse, you needed a wagon train to go. I mean, I've taken my students there dozens of times and shown them the people, the old ladies eating on the benches and stuff like this. Nobody's mugging them. You know, he just has an outsider's view. He didn't know the places he was writing about. But I think Carol was right about some things. Moses was personally a jerk. You can make it stronger than that, but I mean, he was not your friendly grandfather. He was arrogant. He was self-centered. He thought he knew the truth and you don't. He was vindictive, ruthless, but some of those were good. You know, now his strategies, his strategies in some were good. He made people building a beach or a building feel like you're building a cathedral. You're building something great and I'm going to pay you for it and let's make it good. Let's make it as best as we can. That itself is a real trick. How do you get people to think of their jobs as more than a job, as something else? Even a beach or a wall or something like that to say it's good. He also paid them, so that's important that he does that and he's making improvements. He said he was improving things for the people. I don't know if you want to talk about Jane Jacobs, who was his nemesis. I tend to vote with Jane Jacobs. Jane Jacobs and I agree on a lot of things or did before she died a few years ago. Jane Jacobs saw the city as intricate stores and people living and walking and knowing each other and eyes on the street and all these kinds of things. Moses didn't see that at all. He saw the city as a traffic problem. How do we tear this down and build something big and get people the hell out of here? That was a mistake. Moses made mistakes. What Moses was doing was what everybody in the United States was doing, just not as big and not as ruthless and not as quick. It was not like Moses built a different kind of world that exists in Kansas City. That's exactly what they did in Kansas City or every other city. Blow the damn roads to the black neighborhoods, build the expressway interchanges, my hometown of Memphis crisscrossed with big streets, those neighborhoods gone. They're even more extensive in places like Memphis and Kansas City and New Orleans than they are in New York because New York builds relatively fewer of them. Still huge what he built. You would not know from the power broker that Los Angeles exists. Actually Los Angeles was building freeways too. Or he says that New York had more federal money. Then he said, well, not true. I've had students work on Chicago and Chicago is getting more money per person than New York for some of these projects. Some of the claims, no doubt he got those from Moses' own records. If you're going to write a book like this, you got to know what's going on other places. Anyway, let's go back to your questions.Dwarkesh Patel 0:48:10No, no. That was one of the things I was actually going to ask you about, so I was glad to get your opinion on that. You know, actually, I've been preparing for this interview and trying to learn more about the impact of these different projects. I was trying to find the economic literature on the value of these highways. There was a National Bureau of Economic Research paper by Morgan Foy, or at least a digest by Morgan Foy, where he's talking about the economic gains from highways. He says, the gains tend to be largest in areas where roads connect large economic hubs where few alternative routes exist. He goes on to say, two segments near New York City have welfare benefits exceeding $500 million a year. Expanding the Long Island Expressway had an estimated economic value of $719 million, which I think was Moses. He says, of the top 10 segments with the highest rate of return, seven are in New York City area. It turns out that seven of the top 10 most valuable highway segments in America are in New York. Reading that, it makes me suspect that there must have been... The way Cairo paints Moses' planning process, it's just very impulsive and feelings-based and almost in some cases, out of malice towards poor people. Given that a century later, it seems that many of the most valuable tracks of highways were planned and built exactly how Moses envisioned, it makes you think that there was some sort of actual intelligent deliberation and thought that was put into where they were placed.Kenneth Jackson 0:50:32I think that's true. I'm not saying that the automobile didn't have an economic impact. That's what Moses was building for. He would probably endorse that idea. I think that what we're looking at now in the 21st century is the high value put on places that Moses literally thought were something. He was going to run an expressway from Brooklyn through lower Manhattan to New Jersey and knock down all these buildings in Greenwich Village that people love now. Love. Even movie stars, people crowd into those neighborhoods to live and that he saw it as a slum. Well, Moses was simply wrong and Cairo puts him to task for that. I think that's true.0:51:24 The Rise of NIMBYismDwarkesh Patel 0:51:24Okay. Professor Jackson, now I want to discuss how the process of city planning and building projects has changed since Moses' time. We spent some good amount of time actually discussing what it was like, what Moses actually did in his time. Last year, I believe, you wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal talking about how the 27-story building in Manhattan was put in limbo because the parking lot, which we would replace, was part of a historic district. What is it like to actually build a skyscraper or a highway or a bridge or anything of that sort in today's New York City?Kenneth Jackson 0:52:06Well, I do think in the larger context, it's probably fair to say it's tougher to build in New York City than any other city. I mean, yeah, a little precious suburb, you may not deploy a skyscraper, but I mean, as far as the city is concerned, there'll be more opposition in New York than anywhere else.It's more dense, so just to unload and load stuff to build a building, how do you do that? You know, trucks have to park on the street. Everything is more complicated and thus more expensive. I think a major difference between Robert Moses' time and our own, in Robert Moses' time, historic preservation was as yet little known and little understood and little supported. And the view generally was building is good, roads are good, houses are good, and they're all on the way to a more modern and better world. We don't have the same kind of faith in the future that they did. We kind of like it like it is. Let's just sit on it. So I think we should say that Moses had an easier time of it than he would have had he lived today. It still wasn't an easy time, but easier than today. Yeah.Dwarkesh Patel 0:53:40Well, actually, can you talk more about what that change in, I guess, philosophy has been since then? I feel like that's been one of the themes of this podcast, to see how our cultural attitude towards progress and technology have changed.Kenneth Jackson 0:53:54Well, I think one reason why the power broker, Robert Carroll's famous book, received such popular acclaim is it fits in with book readers' opinions today, which is old is better. I mean, also, you got to think about New York City. If you say it's a pre-war apartment, you mean it's a better apartment. The walls are solid plaster, not fiber or board and stuff like that. So old has a reverence in New York that doesn't have in Japan. In Japan, they tear down houses every 15 years. So it's a whole different thing. We tend to, in this new country, new culture, we tend to value oldness in some places, especially in a place that's old like New York City. I mean, most Americans don't realize that New York is not only the most dense American city and the largest, but also really the oldest. I mean, I know there's St. Augustine, but that's taking the concept of what's a city to a pretty extreme things. And then there's Jamestown and Virginia, but there's nobody there, literally nobody there. And then where the pilgrims landed in Massachusetts, Plymouth plantation, that's totally rebuilt as a kind of a theme park. So for a place that's a city, it's Santa Fe a little bit in New Mexico, but it was a wide place on the road until after World War II. So the places that would be also, if you think cities, New York is really old and it's never valued history, but the historic preservation movement here is very strong.Dwarkesh Patel 0:55:33What is the reason for its resurgence? Is it just that, because I mean, it's had a big impact on many cities, right? Like I'm in San Francisco right now, and obviously like you can't tear down one of these Victorian houses to build the housing that like the city massively needs. Why have we like gained a reverence for anything that was built before like 80 years?Kenneth Jackson 0:55:56Because just think of the two most expensive places in the United States that could change a little bit from year to year, but usually San Francisco and New York. And really if you want to make it more affordable, if you want to drop the price of popsicles on your block, sell more popsicles. Have more people selling popsicles and the price will fall. But somehow they say they're going to build luxury housing when actually if you build any housing, it'll put downward pressure on prices, even at super luxury. But anyway, most Americans don't understand that. So they oppose change and especially so in New York and San Francisco on the basis that change means gentrification. And of course there has been a lot of gentrification. In World War II or right after, San Francisco was a working class city. It really was. And huge numbers of short and longshoremen live there. Now San Francisco has become the headquarters really in Silicon Valley, but a headquarters city is a tech revolution and it's become very expensive and very homeless. It's very complex. Not easy to understand even if you're in the middle of it.Dwarkesh Patel 0:57:08Yeah. Yeah. So if we could get a Robert Moses back again today, what major mega project do you think New York needs today that a Moses like figure could build?Kenneth Jackson 0:57:22Well if you think really broadly and you take climate change seriously, as I think most people do, probably to build some sort of infrastructure to prevent rising water from sinking the city, it's doable. You'd have to, like New Orleans, in order to save New Orleans you had to flood Mississippi and some other places. So usually there is a downside somewhere, but you could, that would be a huge project to maybe build a bridge, not a bridge, a land bridge from Brooklyn to Manhattan to prevent water coming in from the ocean because New York is on the ocean. And to think of something like that's really big. Some of the other big infrastructure projects, like they're talking about another tunnel under the river, Hudson River from New Jersey to New York, the problem with that is there are already too many cars in Manhattan. Anything that makes it easier to bring cars into Manhattan because if you've not been to New York you don't really understand this, but there's no place for anything. And if you bring more cars in, what are you going to do with them? If you build parking garages for all the cars that could come into the city, then you'd be building over the whole city. There'd be no reason to come here because it would all be parking garages or parking lots. So New York City simply won't work if you reduce the density or you get rid of underground transportation because it's all about people moving around underneath the streets and not taking up space as they do it. So it won't work. And of course, it's not the only city. Tokyo wouldn't work either or lots of cities in the world won't work increasingly without not just public transportation but underground public transportation where you can get it out of the way of traffic and stuff like that. Moses probably could have done that. He wouldn't have loved it as much as he loved bridges because he wanted you to see what he built. And there was an argument in the power broker, but he didn't really want the Brooklyn battle very tunnel built because he wanted to build a bridge that everybody could see. So he may not have done it with such enthusiasm. I actually believe that Moses was first and foremost a builder. He really wanted to build things, change things. If you said, we'll pay you to build tunnels, I think he would have built tunnels. Who knows? He never was offered that. That wasn't the time in which he lived. Yeah. Okay.Dwarkesh Patel 1:00:04And I'm curious if you think that today to get rid of, I guess the red tape and then the NIMBYism, would it just be enough for one man to accumulate as much influence as Moses had and then to push through some things or does that need to be some sort of systemic reform? Because when Moses took power, of course there was ours also that Tammany Hall machine that he had to run through, right? Is that just what's needed today to get through the bureaucracy or is something more needed?Kenneth Jackson 1:00:31Well, I don't think Robert Moses with all of his talents and personality, I don't think he could do in the 21st century what he did in the middle of the 20th century. I think he would have done a lot, maybe more than anybody else. But also I think his methods, his really bullying messages, really, really, he bullied people, including powerful people. I don't think that would work quite as easy today, but I do think we need it today. And I think even today, we found even now we have in New York, just the beginnings of leftists. I'm thinking of AOC, the woman who led the campaign against Amazon in New York saying, well, we need some development. If we want to make housing more affordable, somebody has got to build something. It's not that we've got more voter because you say you want affordable housing. You got to build affordable housing and especially you got to build more of it. So we have to allow people, we have to overturn the NIMBYism to say, well, even today for all of our concern about environmental change, we have to work together. I mean, in some ways we have to believe that we're in some ways in the same boat and it won't work if we put more people in the boat, but don't make the boat any bigger. Yeah.Dwarkesh Patel 1:01:59But when people discuss Moses and the power accumulated, they often talk about the fact that he took so much power away from democratically elected officials and the centralized so much power in himself. And obviously the power broker talks a great deal about the harms of that kind of centralization. But I'm curious having studied the history of New York, what are the benefits if there can be one coordinated cohesive plan for the entire city? So if there's one person who's designing all the bridges, all the highways, all the parks, is something more made possible that can be possible if like multiple different branches and people have their own unique visions? I don't know if that question makes sense.Kenneth Jackson 1:02:39That's a big question. And you've got to put a lot of trust into the grand planner, especially if a massive area of 20, 25 million people, bigger than the city, I'm not sure what you're really talking about. I think that in some ways we've gone too far in the ability to obstruct change, to stop it. And we need change. I mean, houses deteriorate and roads deteriorate and sewers deteriorate. We have to build into our system the ability to improve them. And now in New York we respond to emergencies. All of a sudden a water main breaks, the street collapses and then they stop everything, stop the water main break and repair the street and whatever it is. Meanwhile in a hundred other places it's leaking, it's just not leaking enough to make the road collapse. But the problem is there every day, every minute. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.1:03:44 Is Progress CyclicalDwarkesh Patel 1:03:44I'm curious, as a professor, I mean you've studied American history. Do you just see this as a cyclical thing where you have periods where maybe one person has too much power to periods where there's dispersed vitocracy and sclerosis and then you're just going to go through these cycles? Or how do you see that in the grand context of things, how do you see where we are, where we were during Moses and where we might be in the future?Kenneth Jackson 1:04:10Well you're right to say that much of life is cyclical. And there is a swing back and forth. But having said that, I think the person like Robert Moses is unusual, partly because he might have gone on to become a hedge fund person or didn't have hedge funds when he was around. But you know, new competitor to Goldman Sachs, I mean he could have done a lot of things, maybe been a general. He wanted to have power and control. And I think that's harder to accumulate now. We have too much power. You can demonstrate and you can stop anything. We love demonstrations in the United States. We respect them. We see it as a visible expression of our democracy, is your ability to get on the streets and block the streets. But you know, still you have to get to work. I mean at some point in the day you've got to do something. And yeah, Hitler could have done a lot of things if he wanted to. He could have made Berlin into a... But you know, if you have all the power, Hitler had a lot of it. If he turned Berlin into a colossal city, he was going to make it like Washington but half-sive. Well Washington has already got its own issues. The buildings are too big. Government buildings don't have life on the street and stuff like this. Like Hitler would destroy it forever because you build a monumental city that's not for people. And I think that was probably one of Moses' weak points is unlike Jane Jacobs who saw people. Moses didn't see people. He saw bridges. He saw highways. He saw tunnels. He saw rivers. He saw the city as a giant traffic problem. Jane Jacobs, who was a person without portfolio most of her life except of her own powers of judgment and persuasion, she thought, well what is the shoe repairman got to do with the grocery store, got to do with the school, got to do with something else? She saw what Moses didn't see. She saw the intricacies of the city. He saw a giant landscape. She saw the block, just the block.Dwarkesh Patel 1:06:45Yeah there's a common trope about socialist and communist which is that they love humanity in the abstract but they hate people as individuals. And it's like I guess one way to describe Robert Moses. It actually kind of reminds me of one of my relatives that's a doctor and he's not exactly a people person. And he says like, you know, I hate like actually having to talk to the patients about like, you know, like ask them questions. I just like the actual detective work of like what is going on, looking at the charts and figuring out doing the diagnosis. Are you optimistic about New York? Do you think that in the continuing towards the end of the 21st century and into the 22nd century, it will still be the capital of the world or what do you think is the future ofKenneth Jackson 1:07:30the city? Well, The Economist, which is a major publication that comes out of England, recently predicted that London and New York would be in 2100 what they are today, which is the capitals of the world. London is not really a major city in terms of population, probably under 10 million, much smaller than New York and way smaller than Tokyo. But London has a cosmopolitan, heterogeneous atmosphere within the rule of law. What London and New York both offer, which Shanghai doesn't or Hong Kong doesn't at the moment is a system so if you disagree, you're not going to disappear. You know what I mean? It's like there's some level of guarantee that personal safety is sacred and you can say what you want. I think that's valuable. It's very valuable. And I think the fact that it's open to newcomers, you can't find a minority, so minority that they don't have a presence in New York and a physical presence. I mean, if you're from Estonia, which has got fewer people than New York suburbs, I mean individual New York suburbs, but there's an Estonian house, there's Estonian restaurants, there's, you know, India, Pakistan, every place has got an ethnic presence. If you want it, you can have it. You want to merge with the larger community, merge with it. That's fine. But if you want to celebrate your special circumstances, it's been said that New York is everybody's second home because you know if you come to New York, you can find people just like yourself and speaking your language and eating your food and going to your religious institution. I think that's going to continue and I think it's not only what makes the United States unusual, there are a few other places like it. Switzerland is like it, but the thing about Switzerland that's different from the United States is there are parts of Switzerland that are most of it's Swiss German and parts of it's French, but they stay in their one places, you know what I mean? So they speak French here and they speak German there. You know, Arizona and Maine are not that different demographically in the United States. Everybody has shuffled the deck several times and so I think that's what makes New York unique. In London too. Paris a little bit. You go to the Paris underground, you don't even know what language you're listening to. I think to be a great city in the 21st century, and by the way, often the Texas cities are very diverse, San Francisco, LA, very diverse. It's not just New York. New York kind of stands out because it's bigger and because the neighborhoods are more distinct. Anybody can see them. I think that's, and that's what Robert Moses didn't spend any time thinking about. He wasn't concerned with who was eating at that restaurant. Wasn't important, or even if there was a restaurant, you know? Whereas now, the move, the slow drift back towards cities, and I'm predicting that the pandemic will not have a permanent influence. I mean, the pandemic is huge and it's affected the way people work and live and shop and have recreation. So I'm not trying to blow it off like something else, but I think in the long run, we are social animals. We want to be with each other. We need each other, especially if you're young, you want to be with potential romantic partners. But even other people are drawn. Just a few days ago, there was a horrible tragedy in Seoul, Korea. That's because 100,000 young people are drawn to each other. They could have had more room to swing their arms, but they wanted to crowd into this one alley because that's where other people were. They wanted to go where other people were. That's a lot about the appeal of cities today. We've been in cars and we've been on interstate highways. At the end of the day, we're almost like cats. We want to get together at night and sleep on each other or with each other. I think that's the ultimate. It's not for everybody. Most people would maybe rather live in a small town or on the top of a mountain, but there's a percentage of people. Let's call it 25% who really want to be part of the tumble in the tide and want to be things mixed up. They will always want to be in a place like New York. There are other places, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia a little bit. They're not mainly in the United States, but in Europe, Copenhagen. Copenhagen is not a big city, neither is Prague, but they have urbanity. New York has urbanity. I think we don't celebrate urbanity as much as we might. The pure joy of being with others.1:12:36 Friendship with CaroDwarkesh Patel 1:12:36Yeah. I'm curious if you ever got a chance to talk to Robert Caro himself about Moses at someKenneth Jackson 1:12:45point. Robert Caro and I were friends. In fact, when the power broker received an award, the Francis Parkman Prize from the Society of American Historians, it turned out we lived near each other in the Bronx. And I drove him home and we became friends and social friends. And I happened to be with him on the day that Robert Moses died. We were with our wives eating out in a neighborhood called Arthur Avenue. The real Little Italy of New York is in the Bronx. It's also called Be

It's been 10 years since Superstorm Sandy devastated so many places in the tri-state. Long Beach, NY, and the barrier islands stretching from the Rockaways to Suffolk County as well as the Jersey Shore,  sustained massive damage from the storm surge and pounding of the ocean. CBS 2's meteorologist Lonnie Quinn and Bishop Mark Moses of the New Life Church of Christ in Long Beach joined Michael Wallace to talk about this and a special CBS 2 is presenting on the 10 year anniversary of this destructive storm.PHOTO: A sign reading "Sandy was here October 29, 2012" hangs at Vagabond Kitchen and Tap House in Atlantic City, New Jersey on October 25, 2022. - Ten years after the devastating hurricane Sandy, the seaside town of Atlantic City, on the American east coast, has fortified its famous promenade between its casinos and the Atlantic Ocean. But behind the beaches, for the inhabitants of certain neighborhoods, the flooded streets are almost part of everyday life. (Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)

Season 5, Episode 1: The RockawaysBy Ayasha Guerin

For this all new, mega episode, we go coast to coast, starting with author & chef, Jess Damuk, whose new cookbook, Salad Freak, is out now.  She talks about the stories behind the salads, working with the legendary Martha Stewart and the perfect songs to play while prepping in the kitchen. Then we head over to the Rockaways to chat with the visceral duo, Sky Creature.  They talk about coming off their biggest tour this year, what they eat on the road and share some special tunes recorded with their buddy, Steve Albini.Snacky Tunes: Music is the Main Ingredient, Chefs and Their Music (Phaidon), is now on shelves at bookstores around the world. It features 77 of the world's top chefs who share personal stories of how music has been an important, integral force in their lives. The chefs also give personal recipes and curated playlists too. It's an anthology of memories, meals and mixtapes. Pick up your copy by ordering directly from Phaidon, or by visiting your local independent bookstore. Visit our site, www.snackytunes.com for more info.

This is the All Local Morning for Wednesday, August 24th 2022

On this episode of WeSurf, Nigel and Kwame sit with local legend, Fernando Pires. Fernando grew up surfing on vibrant beaches of Rio de Janeiro and worked for a board maker there as a teenager before moving to New York City at age 20. He eventually realized there was surf here and moved out to the Rockaways in the early 80's. In the 1990s he opened the Secret Spot surf shop and began collecting surfboards over the years. His dream was to open a surfing museum stocked with the dozens of classic boards he has collected from all over the world. Nigel and Kwame discuss with Fernando the changes over the years in Rockaway, The forgotten art of jumping off the jetties into the lineup, his collection of boards, the surf museum and so much more. to know Fernando is to know a bit of Rockaway surf history. We hope you enjoy... The Swell Season Podcast is recorded by The NewsStand Studio at Rockefeller Center in the heart of Manhattan and is distributed by The Swell Season Surf Radio Network. www.swellseasonsurfradio.comCover Photo: Mark Kauzlarich/The New York TimesMusic: Artist: Stan Getz & Joao GilbertoSong: DoraliceAlbum: Getz / Gilberto

All Local Morning for 08/19/22

This is the All Local 4pm update for Monday, August 8th 2022

Sean Adams reports from the Rockaways

On this episode, hosts Peter Ravella and Tyler Buckingham talk to Lou Harris, the founder and director of the East Coast Chapter of the Black Surfing Association. Based out of the Rockaways in New York City, Harris and BSA offer boards and surfing lessons free of charge. With a compelling social media presence and strong community support, Harris has organized paddle-outs that can bring as many as 500 surfers to the beach to support reforms in police violence and gun control, and has earned the endorsement of major surf brands that donate gear and clothing to the cause. Don't miss this great July 4th show, only on ASPN!

All Local Morning for 7.2.22.

A string of drownings in the Rockaways have prompted public outcry over the city's decision to not staff the popular beaches while undergoing a federal resiliency project to fix the jetties. Jake Offenhartz, a reporter at Gothamist, joins to discuss the incidents and take your reactions.

When you think about surfing and catching waves, Brooklyn, New York is definitely not the first place that comes to mind. However, the community of Rockaway, Brooklyn is home to a very vibrant and well-connected surf community. Atongular Monique is a mentor at Laru Beya Collecting, a surfing-focused, non-profit organization based in the Rockaways in Brooklyn, New York. She is also an avid climber and outdoor enthusiast.Faith first met Atongular while climbing at the Women's Climbing Festival in Bishop, California, back in 2018. Today, Faith and Addie chat with Atongular about her entry into the world of surfing, climbing, and other outdoor spaces. They have an important discussion all about the work that Laru Beya Collective does, particularly their focus on supporting young women of color in their surfing journey. Laru Beya Collective also plays a huge part when it comes to supporting the Rockaway community in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.Atongular also recounts and shares her experience of often being the only Black woman in climbing spaces and other outdoor activities. This sparks an important discussion on why representation matters in sports and the world of outdoor activities. More specifically, representation in leadership roles in these spaces can often break down barriers for younger members of the BIPOC community. This is an important episode all about the importance of representation, leadership, and the different ways in which individuals can support outdoor communities in order to make them a more inviting and inclusive space.Resources MentionedLaru Beya https://www.larubeyacollective.com/Young Women Who Crush https://www.instagram.com/youngwomenwhocrush/Hurricane Sandy Facts https://prospect.org/infrastructure/hurricane-sandy-inequalities-resilience-new-york/NYC Water Safety Bill https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2021/S2207Short film about Brothers of Climbing https://www.rei.com/blog/climb/brothers-of-climbingBrown Girls Climb https://www.browngirlsclimb.com/Flash Foxy Women's Climbing Fest https://www.flashfoxy.com/climbing-festTry Hard Climb Crew https://tryhardcrew.com/This Land Doc - Play https://www.thislanddoc.com/playThe Venture Out Project https://www.ventureoutproject.com/

On this almost-Summer Friday, enjoy some of our favorite recent conversations: Building on her New Yorker essay, Elizabeth Alexander, president of The Mellon Foundation, poet, educator, memoirist and scholar, examines the challenges of young Black Americans in her new book, The Trayvon Generation (Grand Central Publishing, 2022). First, listeners discuss ways they've changed their diet to help combat climate change.  Then, Eric Goldstein, New York City environment director at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), explains how the various ways of composting help in the fight against climate change. Suzanne Nossel, PEN America chief executive officer, and Elie Mystal, justice correspondent for The Nation and the author of Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution (The New Press, 2022), debate the state of free speech in America. Piping Plovers are tiny endangered shorebirds who spend part of the spring and summer right here in the Rockaways. Chris Allieri, founder of the NYC Plover Project, talks about how volunteers are working to protect the birds as they begin nesting on the beach. These interviews were lightly edited for time and clarity; the original web versions are available here: Young and Black in America (Apr 6, 2022) Climate Change and What You Eat (Feb 22, 2022) Climate Change and Composting (Mar 3, 2022) Debating Cancel Culture (Mar 30, 2022) Protecting Piping Plovers (Apr 5, 2022)

The All Local, 12PM Update, 5/20/22

Guests discuss the Rockaways - a hidden gem - and the areas' long journey from an urban wasteland of multi acres of vacant land, through rezoning, mapping to rental apartments, two-family homes, shopping center and a YMCA, along with new development centers of affordable housing and the "bungalow," for entry-level and second home buyers, and more, all designed to encourage community living.

Piping Plovers are tiny endangered shorebirds who spend part of the spring and summer right here in the Rockaways. Chris Allieri, founder of the NYC Plover Project, talks about the work of the volunteers to protect the birds as they begin nesting on the beach -- and how to be a volunteer this season.

“Wenn Du hier mit Brett kommst, fällst du auf wie ein bunter Hund“ – Das sagt Lou Harris: Er ist Surfer. Und er ist schwarz. Und er hat erfahren: Den Surfsport verbinden die Meisten noch immer mit weißen Bay-Watch-Typen. Ex-Nachtwächter Harris hat das geändert: „Der erste schwarze Surfer“ an New Yorks Hausstrand, den Rockaways, bewegt die Bürgerrechte mit seiner „Black Surfing Association“. Mit kostenlosen Surfkursen gibt er Kindern aus sozialschwachen Familien nicht nur Selbstbewusstsein – er hat auch eine Community geschaffen. Harris ist ein Promi der Rockaways. ONLY in New York, heute ein Gespräch mit Korrespondentin Antje Passenheim. Von Miriam Braun.

In this episode, Chris and Sarah exchange memories of when they started the mission of building their gym. They shared all the triumphs and downfalls of their adventure. They had a vision of being a staple in the Rockaways. Still, an unexpected situation arose that threw up many struggles, but their faith and dedication in pursuing their goals are much more substantial. According to Chris and Sarah, building your dream, you'll face some hardships, challenges, and disappointments, which is a part of the process. But, It depends on you if you let those situations define you, or you're going to use that as a stepping stone to keep yourself up.

Jainey Bavishi is the director of the New York City Mayor's Office of ​Climate Resiliency — overseeing more than $20 billion worth of investments to prepare New York City for the impacts of climate change. This includes bolstering the city's coastline ​against coastal storms and high-tide flooding, preparing for intense rainstorms, and protecting New Yorkers against deadly heat waves.  We met with Jainey the spring of 2021, well before the current hurricane season provided a dramatic demonstration for why these efforts are so critical to the city's future. She brought us to the newly rebuilt boardwalk of Edgemere, an oceanfront community on the Rockaway peninsula, not far from JFK airport, in Queens. The Rockaways were hit hard by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, and Edgemere, whose very name means “at the sea's edge,” is among the communities still grappling with the hard choices, presented by changing weather and rising sea levels. Jainey got her start working on equitable disaster recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina, and went on to lead climate preparedness efforts for the Obama administration's Climate Action Plan. In 2017, she joined the de Blasio Administration to lead a team of urban planners, architects, engineers, lawyers, and policy experts who to develop ​science-based programs and policies that address impacts of climate change. From heatwaves to hurricanes, flooding to FEMA grants, our conversation ranged through the myriad ways our communities will need to think differently about how we build for an ever-changing future. Jainey's insights humanized and made tangible the profound social justice and economic impacts of climate change, and the complexity in designing an equitable recovery plan. Jainey was recently nominated by President Biden to a top leadership position at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), and is awaiting Senate confirmation.