Depending on how long you’ve lived in Harlem, you may remember different iterations of bus access to Randall’s or Wards’ Island. Here are the 3 (former) ways to get to the island by MTA bus:
M34 operated between Lexington Avenue/125th Street to Randall’s/Wards Island to Astoria – shortened to operate between Lexington Av/125th Street and Randall’s/Wards Island, and renamed as the M35 in 1995
X81 Special Events bus between Randall’s Island and 61st St 7 station/LIRR in Woodside – This service was provided for special events such as concerts and a premium fare was charged. This service was no longer provided as of 2009 or 2010.
Bx21 operated between Lexington/125th Street, Randall’s/Wards Island and Morris Park, Bronx. This service was discontinued in 1984.
Today, with less than 200 people riding it per day on average, here’s the route:
The Business Side of Sylvia’s
Sylvia’s Restaurant – a legendary Harlem restaurant – is featured in a Harvard business podcast that looks not only at the foundations of this icon, but where the family envisions taking the business in the future.
The M35 has only got an average weekday ridership of 176 people per day:
The worst in Manhattan.
Not only that, the drop in ridership, from 2016 to 2021 is also the most precipitous. The M35 lost 83% of its ridership between 2016 to 2021. Again, the worst in Manhattan:
The M35 is a ghost bus.
The Intelligencer Reports on NIMBYs and YIMBYs
The Intelligencer has an article on how a few of New York’s socialists are coming to terms with the data analysis from NYU’s Furman Institute that building market-rate housing does not increase nearby rents.
The author of the Furman Institute’s article notes that market-rate development actually slightly decreases nearby rents:
Abstract
There is a growing debate about whether new housing units increase rents for immediately surrounding apartments. Some argue new market-rate development produces a supply effect, which should alleviate the demand pressure on existing housing units and decrease their rents. Others contend that new development will attract high-income households and new amenities, generating an amenity effect and driving up rents. I contribute to this debate by estimating the impact of new high-rises on nearby residential rents, residential property sales prices and restaurant openings in New York City. To address the selection bias that developers are more likely to build new high-rises in fast-appreciating areas, I restrict the sample to residential properties near approved new high-rises and exploit the plausibly exogenous timing of completion conditional upon the timing of approval. I provide event study evidence that within 500 ft, for every 10% increase in the housing stock, rents decrease by 1%; and for every 10% increase in the condo stock, condo sales prices decrease by 0.9%. In addition, I show that new high-rises attract new restaurants, which is consistent with the hypothesis about amenity effects. However, I find that the supply effect dominates the amenity effect, causing net reductions in the rents and sales prices of nearby residential properties.
Harlem’s City Council member is mentioned in the Intelligencer article and is contrasted with Council Member Caban:
In this particular manner, a darling of the left behaved like a typical politician. And so did Kristin Richardson Jordan, a self-identified socialist city councilmember (the DSA did not support her campaign) who blocked a proposed development that would have built over 900 units of housing in Central Harlem. Half of the development would have been designated affordable housing, though not quite at the deep levels Cabán won in Astoria. Richardson Jordan called the development “nothing less than white supremacy,” a statement that was hyperbolic and absurd — a mixed-use housing development has nothing to do with racial terror. But more telling, perhaps, was another comment the councilmember made to a local publication. “I would rather have lots sit empty than have them filled with further gentrification,” she said. A NIMBY couldn’t have put it better.
On April 1st, the 1950 US Census was released to the world. US law only releases the detailed/full census details 72 years after the census year. Thus 2022 is the year for the 1950’s census full debut.
If you want to find detailed information about relatives or others, you can start here at this site:
Because the hand-written census sheets have not been transcribed, there is no easy search (yet). You can begin by using the census search page: https://1950census.archives.gov/search/ with these suggestions/parameters:
In my case, I was not interested in people, but rather the building where I live. To start I focused on New York County within New York state:
And clicked on one of the “ED Maps” (Enumeration District Maps) links;
and saw that map P2 showed Harlem:
By zooming in you can find the book you’re looking for:’
Unfortunately, when I finally managed to find the book/sheet I was looking for I got this:
No one had been at home when the census taker had tried to get information. Fortunately, there was a “See Sheet…” that I could then use to find out what was learned in a follow-up visit from a census worker. Sure enough, on an “Out of Order” sheet:
I was able to find out information based on the following headings/questions:
And here’s what I found:
11 people lived in this building, 9 of which were listed as Lodgers
6 men, 5 women (no children – the youngest was 25 years old)
2 people are listed as “White” (one of whom was Italian) and 9 are listed as “Negro”
the majority came from the south (South Carolina, Texas, Virginia) while two were born in New York
professionally they were dress operators, porters, tailor shop workers, waiters in restaurants and night clubs, hospital attendants, and post office clerks
Your input is valuable as my team and I work to improve the customer experience on board buses. The results will help inform decision making and improve service.
This survey should take about five minutes of your valuable time. It will remain open until Tuesday, May 24. Customers who complete our survey will be entered into a drawing to have lunch with me so I can hear your concerns firsthand.
Thank you, Richard Davey New York City Transit President
A couple of years ago HNBA learned that a developer was going to build a new residential building on Park Avenue between East 126 and East 127, on the west side. For over two years now the vacant lots have just sat there. In the summer of 2019, there was a flurry of activity to do test borings which seemed to portend that development was imminent.
Recently it appears that plans for any development have been scrapped and parts of the lots have now been paved over, and are being used for large truck storage/parking.
Anyone familiar with this property knows that it’s a convenient location for many of the M35 homeless people who hang out on East 126th street between Lex/Park to urinate, defecate, and use drugs with no prying eyes on the street (Jane Jacobs) so it’s a shame this potential site for more housing remains an underutilized parking lot.
Article in The Columbia Spectator
The issue of medical redlining, the oversaturation of addition programs in communities of color, and the evidence that Black and Hispanic New Yorkers are steered towards methadone at greater numbers than white New Yorkers, all came up in a recent article from The Columbia Spectator.
“The opioid addiction is a national crisis. It transcends class; it transcends race; it transcends gender; it transcends geography; and yet time and time again, the location of those facilities is not transcending those factors. The location is always in low-income communities of color,” Hill said.
