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Dept Of Buildings Still Sans Balls In NYC

April 20, 2010 Bay Ridge Bastards / Trickle Down Ethics
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Over the past few weeks we’ve been receiving steady word that construction has been taking place at the long established illegal and unsafe construction site at 123 87th Street — located on the left and middle of the photo below. 

Despite there being three longstanding complete stop work orders issued by the NYC Department of Buildings and the fact that the construction is both illegally over the property line and out of zoning — as found by the New York State Supreme Court – or the fact that engineers have deemed the construction to have been unsafely attached to the neighboring foundation, construction activity has continued to go on at the address. 

People have been reporting the latest construction activity to 311 and we’ve both seen and heard the construction with our own eyes and ears about a week and a half ago (too many hired goons with tools that could easily be transformed into weapons lingering about to dare snap photos), but whenever the Department of Buildings has come around to check things out again and again, they weren’t able to find any signs of new illegal construction activity — they couldn’t even find what we’ve heard to be about a large 10′ x 18′ structure that has been built in the backyard.

When they have found construction activity going on at the site, despite there being a full stop work order, the Department of Buildings deemed the work legal, since it was merely the drilling of probes – go figure how drilling is within legal bounds of a full stop work order.

Given all of this illegal and unsafe construction, the best thing that the Department of Buildings has been able to do was to reattach a stop work order to the fence, which they did yesterday.

Our sources have informed us that this posted stop work order is at least the fourth one posted to the site, yet the homeowners and construction crew at 123 87th Street keep doing as they please, both removing the posted stop work orders and continueto get by doing as they please with the site – failing to safely remove illegal construction that is unsafely attached to a neighboring home.

For now, the neighborhood will continue to have to live with the obnoxious, illegal, unsafe and unsightly activities of the homeowners…

It simply amazes us how a supposedly civilized society cannot get any sort of results and all of this makes us wonder:

How long will the newest stop work order remain posted?

How much longer will it take for criminal charges to finally be leveled against the homeowners of 123 87th Street? 

What will it take for the Department of Buildings and the City of New York to finally grow some balls and force the owners of 123 87th Street to tear down the illegal construction in a safe manner?

Furniture Store Doubles As Smoke Lounge

January 15, 2010 Uncategorized
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We recently passed by this ‘furniture’ showroom along 5th Avenue in Bay Ridge and noticed a polite note taped to the front gate.

We’ve had to deal with the unwanted smoke from neighbors who are clueless that smoke doesn’t just disappear within a building.  Storefronts like the one above are supposed to be smoke free by law…so we hope that they call 311 if the smoke condition continues from the employees of the storefront.

Even if they don’t call 311 we hope that they can keep making signs for we really appreciate the combination of both upper and lower case letters as well as different style of lettering with the various ‘a’ used. 

I Hate NYC #53 – Terribly Inept H1N1 Vaccination Services

November 14, 2009 I Hate NYC
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In case you don’t already know this, we’re in the middle of the H1N1 ‘Swine Flu’ Pandemic. 

While millions of people around the world have contracted swine flu and survived there is a greater chance of dying from swine flu than the regular old flu – especially if you have an underlying medical issue.

In a step to help combat swine flu NYC itself has taken control of its H1N1 vaccination supply. 

Some of you might say, “Hey, that’s great!  They can give it to the people who need it most!” 

Well my friend, if you said that, you are an idiot.  We’d love to sell you a bridge for $500 and then drop a pair of broken glasses next to you, tell you that you broke them and that we need $135 from you immediately for a new pair of lenses.

None of our current doctors have been able to get their hands on the H1N1 vaccine and the city has set up weekend clinics in schools to give out the vaccines to school kids beginning last weekend.

Well, last weekend’s clinic didn’t work out so well as barely anyone brought their children to get vaccinated.  This allowed for the city to expand on who can get vaccinated at weekend clinics to “people with an underlying medical issue.”

Since we have an underlying medical issue in the form of IG-A deficiency — which essentially means that if we contract swine flu we’d likely die since we don’t have a full immune system, we’re trying our best to get the vaccine.

We went to the official NYC.gov website.  Found the widget and performed a search based off of our zip code.

(Click on the above image to read the page in a larger format.)

Our search gave this webpage as a result.

(Again, click on the above image to read the page in a larger format.)

P.S. 186 located on 19th Avenue at 77th Street was the closest weekend clinic given.  We got up bright and early this morning, walked the three miles the P.S. 186 and found the school to be closed.  It was 100% locked up and there was no weekend clinic going on.

We called 311 and the recorded message told us that this weekend has only two schools open in each borough as weekend clinics.  Both of the Brooklyn schools are located so far away that we could fly to Chicago in the same amount of time it would take us for us to get to them – one in Bushwick and the other along the Sheepshead Bay/Marine Park border.

We waited for a 311 Specialist to come on and see if there were any other available options.  They asked for our zip code.  We gave it to them and they informed us that P.S. 186 was the weekend clinic that we should go to today.  Go figure.

As it turns out, had we clicked on the link to P.S. 186 we would have been given this webpage.

(Again, click on the above image to read the page in a larger format.)

Everything within the search results would lead anyone to conclude that P.S. 186 would be open this weekend as a weekend clinic that gives out H1N1 vaccine; yet it’s not open this weekend and we were told by a 311 Specialist (after we informed them that P.S. 186 was not open) that it is only open the weekend of December 12th and 13th – although we’re not 100% sure about this since the whole system is all f’ed up.

Things just shouldn’t have to be this difficult given the situation at hand being a pandemic.  We’d hate to see how terrible the vaccination process would be on a rather quick working virus that kills people at a higher rate.

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