Briefly Noted: Budgets, Beards, & Bad Behavior
- The 200th birthday of Walt Whitman, the famed Brooklyn poet, was this past Friday, May 31st. In celebration of his “contribution to poetry and hipsterism”, the Brooklyn Public Library is throwing a Walt Whitman Beard & Moustache Competition this coming Saturday. Participants, or, as the event calls them, “hirsute competitors,” are asked to offer up their beards and mustaches in competition, with prizes named after Whitman’s famous works.
- The MTA has ended operation of the free shuttle buses between the L train and the J/M line due to low ridership. According to the MTA, each of the new buses—the B91 and B92—failed to pick up more than a few passengers each trip. The line will be replaced by a new route, the B91A, which will not stop at the Lorimer St. L station. According to NYC Transit President Andy Byford, riders have already adapted their commutes according to L train changes, riding preexisting bus lines instead of the B91 and B92.
- The Brooklyn, Queens, and New York library systems are facing cuts of $11 million in the upcoming budget, the Brooklyn Eagle reports. Librarians and library advocates say this could have major repercussions in the nearing 2020 Census. Large portions of the Brooklyn population reside in “hard-to-count” areas, which necessitates resources like the public library.
- In “Brooklyn Board Manager Defends SUV Splurge: ‘I’m not going to parties,” THE CITY reports on Gerald Esposito’s purchase of a $26,000 SUV with public funds. Esposito, district manager of Brooklyn’s Community Board 1, has received criticism for this purchase, though he rejected allegations, stating that the car is a “city vehicle.”
- Last Thursday, May 30th, WNYC published, “Teens Say the Reason They’re Loud on the Subway Is They’re Having Fun (Ever Heard of FUN, Grown Ups?)”. After adults complained about rambunctious teenagers in survey responses about their daily subway commute, WNYC reporter Shumita Basu asked teens about their ‘disruptive’ behavior. The teens’ response? They’re just having fun.
- The MTA is changing its vocabulary. Instead of mystifying riders with “service changes” and “delays”, they have made a new commitment to transparency in their descriptive language. Instead of vague, convoluted announcements, conductors’ vocabularies will now be standardized, with specific phrases like “part suspended,” “local to express,” and “slow speeds”. Check out their website to check out the definitions of each phrase, and study up.
