There's been an unusual amount of mail-related news lately. First, the Church Street post office just a block away from the World Trade Center has finally reopened. Tribeca residents, who had previously walked by the closed post office (where someone does stand guard), now rejoice in not having to go to Canal Street, Bowling Green or other locations for their mail. Also yesterday, a man robbed a post office at 340 West 42nd Street of $2,300 - and the surveillance cameras weren't working. Though the USPS is looking into whether it was an inside job, they are offering $50,000 for information that leads to an arrest and capture. Finally, the Times looked at what happens when you send mail to streets using their honorary names; one woman who works on Alvin Ailey Place, aka West 61st Street, explains by numbers rule:
No one is ever going to call 61st Street 'Alvin Ailey Place.' Only a crazy person would call it that. The beauty of New York City is, you can't get lost because everything is numbered until you get to Greenwich Village, and I'm a mess in Greenwich Village. So to start calling these streets by names, it would take away the cleanliness of the grid. It would lead to chaos.
Long live the grid, but there's nothing wrong with Joey Ramone Place.
An article about honorary street names in NYC, the Sesame Street song "People In Your Neighborhood" talks about the postman, there's the group Postal Service, and back in the day, the postman would ring twice.
