It’s that time of year again when New Yorkers debate how much to tip the – deep breath – doorman, super, handyman, locker room attendant, trainer, baby sitter, dog walker, beauty salon, cleaning person, day care center, garbage collector, mail carrier, paperboy and parking attendant(s). Sewell Chan, the Times’s Man on the Web, has tied himself to the tipping post with a 1,780 word monograph on the subject, largely sourced from Doorman, a book by Professor Peter Bearman, statistician and sociology professor at Columbia University. more ›

The NYPD decided not to appeal a judge's decision that the NYPD should declassify its surveillance documents from the 2004 RNC, so it has set up a special NYPD RNC Documents website with the documents. Of course, you have to scroll down to the very bottom for a zip file of the 600 pages of documents. And what's above the documents is the NYPD's rather thorough explanation/ defense justifying why it did such extensive surveillance of disparate groups and people, listing various terror incidents between 2001 and the convention as well as other incidents of protest. Here is Police Commissioner Ray Kelly's statement:

“I think a close examination of the documents is going to show that the New York City Police Department did an outstanding job in protecting the City during the Republican National Convention. People wanted to come here and shut down the City, to replicate what happened in Seattle, Montreal and Genoa. We simply didn't let that happen, and I think it'll just underscore the outstanding work of the men and women of the Department. In terms of gathering information, the vast majority of information that was gathered was open-source information. It was gathered from the Internet; these groups that were coming here were advertising what they were going to do — bragging about what they were going to do. It wasn't particularly difficult to get the vast majority of this information.”

ACT UP, Sierra Club, City Council members (Charles Barron, David Weprin, Bill Perkins), Sept. 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, Johnny Cash Bloc, MSNBC, A31 Coalition, NYCLU, NOW, Planned Parenthood, New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, Stuyvesant High School Students, Westboro Baptist Church, Indymedia, Democratic National Committee, Coalition of Fire and Police Unions, Grandmothers Against War, Falun Gong, Arab Muslim American Foundation, Time's Up, Billionaires For Bush, United for Peace and Justice, The Surveillance Camera Players, ACLU, Hip Hop Summit Action Network, The Federation of East Village Artists, Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, Restaurant Opportunity Center of New York

As we appreciate the fact that last week's heat wave was last week, the NY Times' Sewell Chan has an article about that the little-known fact that turned-off appliances that are still plugged-in still draw electricity. We mentioned the "standby mode" issue last week, noting that is why Con Ed asks people to actually unplug TVs, printers, computers, and the like when the power demand is high. (It probably isn't a bad idea to unplug them at other times, too.) Many people interviewed were surprised, saying they would have unplugged their various gadget chargers or shut down their computers, with one woman commenting, "The laptop is always connected to the source. I didn’t know that made a difference.” Well, it makes some difference - the Consumer Electronics Association spokesman says that gadgets don't compare to the electricity air-conditioining or lighting sucks out of the system. Which makes us wonder if you've changed your electrical consumption habits? Gothamist thinks we're going to be a little more cautious these days - we know that our little home might not represent much, but if other people unplug one more appliance or use a fan instead of AC during milder hot days, who knows what can happen? more ›

Before the City Council approved a $52.9 billion budget yesterday, they got their desert, aka Schedule C. Also known as the Fiscal Year 2007 Adopted Expense Budget Adjustments Summary[PDF], Schedule C is the list of all the Council's pet items that successfully were restored or added to the budget. And what a crazy list of pet items got through! It's going to take a bit of time to find the goodies in the 70-odd pages of the summary (if you find anything of interest, use the comments!), but Times newsroom juggernaut Sewell Chan has already started to charge through it:

The roster is encyclopedic, from the Afikim Foundation, which provides Jewish online learning ($35,000), to the Zeta Zeta Zeta Lambda chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha, a national African-American fraternity ($10,000). It includes the Filial Piety Society of Sunnyside, Queens ($3,500); the Ghetto Film School ($28,500); the Russian American Voters League ($7,500); and the Sister Power Organization ($10,000).

“There’s a lot of great, ambitious, smart reporters in the newsroom,” Mr. Jamieson said, “but he’s the only reporter I know who actually pitched me a story while I’ve been standing at the urinal in the men’s room.”Hear that, aspiring reporters? Bathroom pitches are a new playing field. The article also notes some issues with Chan and how the Harvard Crimson mafia rules the Metro Section (there's Chan, Jennifer 8. Lee, and Michael Luo!). more ›

The MTA will be paying for the additional police presence in the subways, according to Mayor Bloomberg. Police overtime to put one police officer on every train is costing the city $1.9 million a week, and Bloomberg said, "Let me give some credit to the MTA. They're willing to do this. They have some money. The governor has pushed them," even though he hasn't been happy about the MTA's footdragging on spending security funds. During his weekly radio talk, Mayor Bloomberg also said he "couldn't disagree more" with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's decision to focus on securing airline travel. Many of our commenters have questioned our anger at Chertoff's remarks, and there were quite a few valid points, but Gothamist thinks that this quote from the NY Times' Sewell Chan's Week in Review piece (which is a helpful overview of mass transit security) sums it up:

The United States mass transit system also lacks the aviation system's built-in security: limited accessibility, a ticketing system that requires identification and a single governing agency, the Federal Aviation Administration. By contrast, the Federal Transit Administration has little say over security policies. That's left to the country's 6,000 mass transit agencies.

Surprise, surprise! The City Council put together a team of investigators to inspect the cleanliness of the subways, and found that they are stinking nasty! And what's more, the worst stations just happen to be in the poorest neighborhoods and/or the Bronx. No one is really that shocked, maybe just slightly surprised. The NY Times' Sewell Chan points out that the City Council's survey and the survey from the NYC Transit Riders Council had generally similar results - terrible stations in the Bronx - but each study had a different list of worst stations (all in the Bronx). The worst station, per the City Council, is the East 149th Street stop, while the NYC Transit Riders found the Moshulu stop on the 4 to be the worst. Look, net net, the subways are gross. Here's the most oft-quoted part of the study.

"Subway riders...encounter papers and bottles obstructing stairways, platforms littered with food, pungent odors and track beds cluttered with sludge and debris. In one case, investigators even found human waste."

The NY Times's Sewell Chan follows up the Campbell Robertson story about subway riders not being that fazed by subway by the robberies (the one that got a Fader employee fired) noting that none of the iPod-toting commuters would stop using them on the subway and that during the early 90s, gold chain snatchings were the big subway crime of the day. There's also this great quote from MIT's Henry Jenkins about why iPods and other gadgets, like cellphones, are targetted:

The participation gap creates techno-envy, where the kids who are locked out of participation in the culture covet those tools and devices that are considered essential to being a young person.

What has your experience with token booth clerks been? Gothamist has to say that we've been lucky, they've been attentive, if a little tight with the subway maps (only one per person). Also, the NY Post tries to advise people on how many rides they need to get out of their new unlimited Metrocards; we can only assume reporter Clemente Lisi (whose subway reporting we do enjoy reading, alongside the NY Times' Sewell Chan and Newsday's Joshua Robin) checked out Grant Barrett's awesome subway fare analysis (here's the PDF) after we posted about it. Gothamist on bothering token booth clerks.
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