Saturday, April 6, 2013

Odds and Ends in Springtime

So, how are we doing?


Residents and their guests (or anyone else for that matter) can now partake of the Oval Cafe once again.  The patio seats and tables have been changed, slightly for the better, as well as some of the interior seating. Now it looks more like a pseudo-Martha Stewart stepped in, briefly, to oust much of the Kubrick design that was there before. Expect the students who can't use Oval Study anymore to fill up the seats here all day.  Free Wifi is being pushed, as well as a new menu that has, yes, peanut butter & jelly sandwiches!

You can also pick up your "loyalty card" from the Cafe.  Yes, it sounds somewhat Soviet Bloc totalitarian.

For you old geezers, you may want to sit outside because whoever manages the cafe has decided to have music played inside that no one over 25 will appreciate.  Bad move and surely distracting to any students doing homework, too.

And why does the poster artwork for the cafe show coffee that looks like mud or a mixture of concrete ready to be poured?  What an unappetizing, even disturbing, retching graphic.


Lady Maya must know something about the coffee being served at Oval Cafe, because she's been spotted, once again, picking up her java at Starbuck's on 1st Avenue, rather than partaking of the mud brew at the Cafe, which surely is just for the peasants and market-rate paying suckers living here.

* * *

It seems that there are quite a few familiar things in Stuy Town that are not working properly.  The place is falling apart, I tell ya!  The Oval Fountain, the pride of Stuy Town, has still not functioned since being turned off in the winter, though workers are trying to make a go of it.  Perhaps today the fruit of their labors will gush forth.


And the clock at Playground 12 is not working well either:


And don't even mention the persistent major troubles at Peter Cooper Village, post Hurricane Sandy. 

* * *

Hey, another commercial activity spotted!  Yes, it's Super Soccer Stars coming to Playground 10.



Yes, pay your dues and then come one, come all (of Manhattan) to Stuy Town. No need to be a resident or a guest, it seems.  Older residents may remember the times when all sporting activities for PCVST kids in the complex were FREE!  But that's terribly old-fashioned and, just like lawns, not with the times.  Thank you, Councilman Dan Garodnick, for you flexible stance on commercial activities in Stuy Town!

 * * *

I realize that an editor wants the paper she's working on to have a lively Letters Column, but did Sabina Mallot have print that idiot letter from "Name Withheld," whose suggestion is that "in the interest of diversity, we should ensure that at least 10 percent of the customers of the farmers market reside outside of ST/PCV itself."  Yes, you read right.  Outside of ST/PCV.  This person is either a shill for management or the farmers market, a troll just trying to provoke or have a good laugh, or possibly someone with one screw in New Jersey and another in Staten Island.

* * *

So, the post office at 14th Street that serves the Lower East Side and Stuy Town (Peter Stuyvesant Station) is going to be banished some time in 2014.  This post office, with its rude, fat-ass, lazy-ass tellers and one Asian chic who can barely speak English (at least she's not abusive) is THE WORST POST OFFICE IN THE WORLD.  A nightmare whose entertainment value is limited to the comments it gets on Yelp.  I only regret losing the mail delivery person I have now, but probably the delivery people will be the same, just working from a different location.

There's an attempt afoot to save this post office, but I would only be for it if we could get rid of its unfriendly, unhelpful and unknowledgeable staff.  And you know that's never going to happen given the power of the Postal Union.  No private company would tolerate such workers, and we as the public shouldn't either.

Though it will be a hassle to walk to other post offices when necessary, it's good riddance to the Peter Stuyvesant Station, I say.  Perhaps, on its last day of operation, we should organize a celebration outside by the public it has mis-served.  I'll bring the champagne.

46 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wish you had posted photos of the shipping containers all over Peter Cooper Road and across one of our lawns. They've been there since Sandy and Management shows now sign of removing them, not even to complete the landscaping that was scheduled for this month. I wish you had posted a nighttime photo of Peter Cooper showing how dangerous it is at night. From one vantage point I counted at least 6 streetlights that were out--and haven't worked in months. I've reported this to Maintenance and was told by Security last night that they report it every day. What does it take to get the basics attended to here?

Anonymous said...

Management is about to remove the security guard in our building because the keycard system is functioning but the intercom still doesn't work . How are emergency workers, delivery people and other nonresidents supposed to get into building if they can't use the intercom? Of course, they are keeping the guard who makes sure noone goes down to the basement. Guess management doesn't want anyone checking out how little, if any, work has been done in the 5+ months since Sandy to repair the basements and bring back the laundry rooms. And management refuses to discuss this with anyone, I am told.

Anonymous said...

"What does it take to get the basics attended to here?"

Rent strike?

Anonymous said...

Re the Post Office. I've never had a problem with the tellers, though the line to bail out any parcels is always a horror. Too many people on the line and only one "study in still life" getting the goods from the back.

When it comes to mail delivery, as far as I'm concerned our letter carrier is the worst of the worst. Getting you mail is a crap shoot. Sometimes she puts all of one person's mail in another person's box; frequently, mail is left for people to sort out and claim their own on the ledges by the mailbox. We can only hope that neighbors are honest enough and not too lazy enough to bring mail to its rightful owner when it is put in the wrong box. I'm sure the letter carrier's job is made more difficult by the fact that we have such a transient tenancy and people move in and out all the time and don't bother to notify the PO of their forwarding address. Or maybe they do, but the PO ignores it. Whatever the reason, the mail delivery works as well as if all the mail was thrown up in the air and left to be sorted by the tenants. Even mail order medication has been left on the ledges. It's really a bad scene in my building.

Anonymous said...

I can't understand why no work has been done in the flooded PCV basements for over three months now. Management got rid of the guards posted outside the doors and locked them, with no updates since. The timeframe of completion in September is basically telling the residents straight-up that they are too busy with concerts, greenmarkets, and all the other bullshit they use to lure in market rate suckers to even begin the basement repairs right now.

And what about the mold in the T entrance of 285 Ave. C?

Anonymous said...

To the poster who keeps clamoring for a rent strike:

Rent strikes are only going to be validated by the courts when the landlord does not provide basic necessities of housing, i.e.; heat, hot water, working bathrooms and intact living spaces (meaning no holes in the roof/ceilings). Minor (or as DHCR refers to them, "de minimus") conditions like laundry rooms and storage rooms don't count, nor would maintenance work on one of the 2 functioning elevators (no elevator would be a different story). Mold would be a reason, but it would need to be fairly wide spread and uncontrollable.

If you were to withhold rent, there are specific procedures to be followed, and you would be required to set up an escrow account where all rent payments would be held until matters are settled.

If you decide to withhold your rent without proper grounds (or "strike" as you put it), the landlord will simply evict you and they will win.

It is not something to be taken lightly and despite the tremendous disregard the landlords have shown for their tenancy, almost nothing they have done here could be grounds for a rent strike. OTOH, there's plenty of stuff they've done that should be cause to put them behind bars, save for a sympathetic government that's prone to look the other way.

Anonymous said...

This place has reached BOTTOM!!!!! Lived here for a long time n it's sad to see this happen The management is the worst n nothing is being done to improve the situation. Where is the TA??? I refuse to have any family or friends over because this looks like a slum. No info re: containers or bicycles strewn all over. What gives?

Anonymous said...

Good points Apr 6 3:01PM.

And once again, more thanks to Dan Garodnick.

Anonymous said...

Anyone who needs to rely on weight and ethnic stereotypes -fat ass, lazy ass, Asian chic-when complaining about the Post Office has already lost me. There is a war on working people in this city right now. So you had to wait on line-post office people are losing their jobs along with other municipal workers who I(gasp) belong to unions. Unions are a dirty word right now and you, STR, with your nasty remarks are not helping.

Anonymous said...

Life here has become a nightmare. We have NYU students living above us and the noise never stops. Haven't had a decent night's sleep in years! We have a filthy laundry room with constantly broken equipment and the recycling room is so bad that we don't even go into it any more. It gives us the heaves. Forget about recycling here because it is a waste of time. Certainly this management company is the worst we have ever had. Even worse than Tishman Speyer and I didn't think it could possibly get any worse than that. The grounds are a mess and I don't think they are rescuable at this point. All they (management) care about is suckering in more and more students and twenty-somethings who stay a while, do their partying and then leave. It's horrible.

Anonymous said...

Management never responds to anything. Emails, phone calls - nothing. They have taken stonewalling to a new level. I would love to see the 60-minutes news team show up at their offices!

Anonymous said...

Why is Dan Garodnick being blamed?

Stuy Town Reporter said...

>>Anyone who needs to rely on weight and ethnic stereotypes -fat ass, lazy ass, Asian chic-when complaining about the Post Office has already lost me<<

Hmm, seems you are being racist here in making the equation: fat-ass, lazy-ass=ethnic.

>>So you had to wait on line-post office people are losing their jobs along with other municipal workers who I(gasp) belong to unions.<<

I never said anything about waiting on line, which indeed is terrible at certain times and particularly if you are picking up a parcel or registered/certified mail. I wrote about rude and incompetent window clerks. And, yes, they should lose their jobs or go back to sorting mail because when you deal with the public, particularly a public that is your prisoner, then you should be courteous. To these window clerks (most of them) the concept of being courteous to the public has no meaning. As for the Postal Union... Since I once worked for the post office, I know what I'm talking about. The ONLY people who ran to the union to complain were the fuck-ups and lazy asses, the same types that we see at Peter Stuyvesant Station.

Stuy Town Reporter said...

>>Why is Dan Garodnick being blamed?<<

Because he let CWCapital win on the commercialization of Stuy Town. He took a firm stance initially and just let it go.

Anonymous said...

Another weekend morning blasted away at 9 AM by the yelling and screaming and hooting and hollering outside my 13th floor window from the coach having to bellow and yell and shout and scream at 4 year olds. This man cannot speak in a normal voice, because if he did the kids might realize they are not having fun, but if he's screaming and yelling... WOW! it must be fun. Oh, we suffered all winter with that lousy ice rink and now the mini-soccer league is down there ready to wreck every weekend morning. Yes, the 20 families who have kids in the soccer group are ecstatic that they don't have to leave Stuy Town. And the hundreds and hundreds of families in apartments that ring the Oval and have to listen to the screaming and yelling are miserable. Sounds like a good deal to me.... NOT!

Anonymous said...

Does anyone know why there were several fire trucks over by the 14th Street Wash and Clean last night? Was there a fire? They seemed to be there for quite a while, so I don't think it was a "false alarm."

Tommyboyardee said...

Unfortunately the rental office was stacked with possible new renters. How can they be educated regarding the diminished services designed to ouster long term tenants? I understand the attraction of presiding here! However you are paying up to 300% more for rentals and at best ignorant to the "best in practice" business plan.

Anonymous said...

Re the Post Office - don't care about what ethnic group they are, my experiences there have been awful. My mail comes decently now, but there was a period where I was lucky to get 80% of the mail sent to me. I can't believe there is a worst P.O. in the country

Anonymous said...

"Unfortunately the rental office was stacked with possible new renters. How can they be educated regarding the diminished services designed to ouster long term tenants? I understand the attraction of presiding here! However you are paying up to 300% more for rentals and at best ignorant to the "best in practice" business plan."

They should be shown the crappy, substandard laundry equipment before they sign their leases!

Anonymous said...

Does anyone on this blog know if it is feasible (never mind legal because management style here isn't conducive to legal) to have a washing machine in their apartment? I find that when I use our laundry room my clothes come out looking dirtier than when they went in! The dryers require two cycles to get things really dry and every time I go to do a wash/dry at least one of the machines craps out on me! I know the renovated apartments have dishwashers, so I don't see why a clothes washer wouldn't work ok with the plumbing and electricty.

Anonymous said...

why are there bicycles locked up to the railings n benches throughout PCV? it's unsightly n takes up space when you sit on the benches. oh, i forgot-there are NO rules here in PCVST. it's a free for all.

Anonymous said...

They should be shown the crappy, substandard laundry equipment before they sign their leases!>>

These are the inferior machines purchased by Tishman Speyer. As far as I'm concerned, the terms: Tishman Speyer, Inferior, Substandard are all synonymous.

Anonymous said...

To Anon @ 6:56pm
There is currently someone in my building who has a washer/dryer in their apt. Not sure how they did it...but they did.

Anonymous said...

Dear STR - Thank you for putting a spotlight on the newest illegal commercial enterprise now operating as of Sunday in PG 10. This new business which operates 7 days a week has removed PG 10 out of the free use of ST/PCV residents. Super Soccer Stars is now programmed to occupy PG 10 7 days a week. They charge $300 per person for their 45 minute sessions which are back to back for 3 to 5 hours a day in that space. And there is no requirement to be a Stuyvesant Town resident or a guest of a resident. Super Soccer Stars' online registration is open to all; anyone can register for a class here. In addition to this illegal business, the operation of this soccer school is impacting our family's right to the quiet enjoyment of our home which overlooks PG10. I will be contacting Dan Garodnick and the TA about this today. Meanwhile the website for Super Soccer Stars is https://www.supersoccerstars.com/classes/map/map.asp?season=Spring&year=2013

Anonymous said...

Does anyone on this blog know if it is feasible (never mind legal because management style here isn't conducive to legal) to have a washing machine in their apartment? I find that when I use our laundry room my clothes come out looking dirtier than when they went in! The dryers require two cycles to get things really dry and every time I go to do a wash/dry at least one of the machines craps out on me! I know the renovated apartments have dishwashers, so I don't see why a clothes washer wouldn't work ok with the plumbing and electricty.

Growing up here we had a stackable washer/dryer in that space in the kitchen. Worked great. Only issue was getting it in and eventually out without being seen and we needed a $1.50 connector for the faucet. Make sure the hose stays in the sink or you'll flood your neighbors...

AA said...

The simpletons who write the PCVST Facebook page are ecstatic over their BLT's with turkey. I can't wait to choke one down with some of their cement colored coffee!

The free WiFi at Stepford Cafe must be a consolation prize for the tenants still without laundry, intercoms or storage.

Nothing but the best from CampusJoke!

Anonymous said...

so what happens now that the roberts case is settled(officially )? Is a bidding war beginning soon?

Anonymous said...

Excellent Mega-Post STR!

You covered a lot. Too bad there is so much to cover--and none of it good.

Stuy Town Reporter said...

>>This new business which operates 7 days a week has removed PG 10 out of the free use of ST/PCV residents. Super Soccer Stars is now programmed to occupy PG 10 7 days a week. They charge $300 per person for their 45 minute sessions which are back to back for 3 to 5 hours a day in that space. And there is no requirement to be a Stuyvesant Town resident or a guest of a resident.<<

Dan? Hello. Dan....?

Anonymous said...

It is absolutely disgusting that they have taken Playground 10 away from residents and turned it into a commercial enterprise. I question the legality of that and would definitely like to hear from our elected representatives about that. How do these people get away with all this crap?

John said...

Maybe the Post Office will relocate to Oval Film.

Anonymous said...

The problem with the PO closing, as pointed out by the EV Grieve blog, is that the one story small businesses that are directly south of the PO that extend to Ave A, what will happen to them if there is the sort of massive development that is also going to take place on 14th street between Aves A&B? More chain stores?

Anonymous said...

Funny, you post that the Oval fountain is not working and behold, it is now working. Are you Moses? :)

Anonymous said...

And maybe ST will relocate to the ocean with the next Superstorm!

Anonymous said...

Come on TA. Come on Garodnick. Playground 10 isn't for sale. They made a big deal on their Facebook page on March 29th about Playground 10 reopening. What they're doing with this soccer club is wrong and has to be stopped.

Anonymous said...

"directly south of the PO"
Sorry, I meant directly east.

Anonymous said...

Now the whiners on the TA Facebook are complaining about people feeding squirrels. One complains about all the nut shells on the property. Duh! They are biodegradable, unlike all the plastic bags that are all over the property and hanging in the fucking trees! Another whiner is upset about the squirrels being fed because her precious snowflake suffers peanut allergies. Duh! Don't let your kid pick up the shells because he/she might get a fistful of dog shit or a used condom or broken beer bottle in his/her sticky little paw, never mind a peanut shell. I am so sick of these people.

Anonymous said...

Just watched one of the promo videos on PCVSTLiving website. Not much carpeting featured in those apartments! Lots and lots of bare hardwood floors and, of course, the model in the video is wearing high-heeled shoes.

Anonymous said...

Wow! How miserable of a person are you?!? I understand that charging people to enjoy the playground is wrong but are you seriously complaining about the noise of kids playing? The great thing about Stuy Town is that kids are able to go out and play right by their houses. You must have so little happiness in your life to be that riled up over that

Anonymous said...

"You must have so little happiness in your life to be that riled up over that."

7AM - Employees scream and walkie talkie each other while planting flowers

10AM - An hour of leaf blowing but there's no leaves

12Noon - Beeping trucks doing construction

2PM - Employees scream and walkie talkie each other while ripping up flowers

4PM - Kids crying while their fathers berate them in the playground for not being "good enough"

6PM - New set of kids racing through the gardens on razor scooter. More screaming

8PM - College kids drinking, smoking and screaming on the stoop

10PM - College kids drinking, smoking and screaming on the stoop

Midnight - College kids drinking, smoking and screaming on the stoop

2AM - College kids drinking, smoking and screaming on the stoop

4AM - College kids drinking, smoking and screaming on the stoop

Anonymous said...

Playground 10 is obviously for sale.

Ice skating rink and now soccer clubs.

Way to go Councilman Dan.

Anonymous said...

I just can't believe it! Those idiots on the TA facebook are whining about people feeding the squirrels. I've been feeding the squirrels since I move in here over 30 years ago and will continue to do so. The squirrels are part and parcel of STPCV and anybody who doesn't like it will just have to get used to it. Peanuts and walnuts do not hurt the environment. They are biodegradable and the squirrels cannot find much to eat since most of the plants and trees have been decimated by stupid managements since MetLife. Why don't these people get a grip and accept that the squirrels and birds are part of the ecology around here. Can't say the same for all the dog shit, plastic cans and bottles and ever-present plastic Associated bags that litter the landscape and are of no use whatsoever.

Anonymous said...

@ anon April 13, 2013 at 9:40 PM, I'm glad someone else finally noticed this has become Scream-Town. There's no way to say this without sounding inappropriate, but I have to deal with these maintenance workers congregating outside my window every morning at 7 while they scream at each other and into their walkie talkes in Spanish. If I wanted to live in the projects, I would live in the projects. Then at night the woo-hoos seem to think that a normal level of conversation is to SCREAM AT A PERSON THAT'S STANDING RIGHT NEXT TO YOU. Thursday-Saturday, this goes on from about 9 pm to 5 am.

Anonymous said...

Because I recently accessed the Management's resident website, I now get the following when I go to other sites:

Still NYC Apt Searching?
PCVSTLiving.com
Spacious No Fee Apts Starting at $2,850/mo. Pet Friendly. View Now!

Thank you, Google. Not!

Anonymous said...

" If I wanted to live in the projects, I would live in the projects. "

Newsflash: you Do live in the projects. I can't believe that at this point people still have doubts about that.

Anonymous said...

leaf blowers are the biggest joke. All the noise for about a hour for a few leaves. Someone could pick them up and put them in a bag in about 2 minutes.