MORNING BULLETIN: CONFLICTS OVER UNDERGROUND STREAMS AND ‘SUSPICIOUS TEXTING’

A strange but amusing site at the 79th street subway station. Who did this? Photo by Chris Louie.

November 23, 2015 Weather: Sunny, with a high of 44 degrees.

Notices:
Free concerts, Rick Moody and more events on our calendar.

Real estate broker Jason Haber is giving out turkeys on Tuesday at the Warburg offices at 451 Columbus Avenue between 81st and 82nd. To sign up to receive a turkey, fill out this form. If you’re into donating turkeys, participate in the 1,000 Turkey Challenge.

A Broadway-themed fundraiser on Dec. 14 to pay for repairs at the Church of St. Paul and St Andrew. Info here.

News:
The Times had a story this weekend about a real estate battle on 76th street that features an ancient underground stream, a neighborhood activist, and a real estate developer with political connections. “A battle unfolding on the Upper West Side of Manhattan comes with a twist that if not unprecedented, is certainly unusual — a meandering subterranean river that is just one of many such streams that once coursed through the pristine and undeveloped island centuries ago.”

Is this a case of the dangers of “texting while black?” An American medical student of Haitian and Mexican lineage was texting friends while waiting to see a movie at the 84th street Loews when he was approached by a man: “He was killing time in the lobby by futzing around on his phone when he was approached by another patron, a middle-aged man, who said to him, ‘You know what happened in Paris. Guys like you texting and standing…that’s suspicious.'” The man also tried to reach inside the student’s jacket. The student videotaped the man, and wrote this on Facebook: “To the guy who wouldn’t stop badgering me in the lobby of the movie theatre for texting while being Black and wearing a jacket for 5 minutes: You are setting a terrible example for your daughter, and you are NOT a patriot. You are not a brave man; you are a coward for giving into fear and targeting an innocent person in a public space trying to live their life the same as you.”

An Israeli executive felt he was discriminated against by Avis when a clerk wouldn’t accept his Israeli license as valid ID although the rental car agency had accepted it in the past. Avis says the man simply provided the wrong documents and is now “unfairly maligning us.”

A lengthy explanation of why the lettered subway lines don’t have countdown clocks.

A lawyer for Congregation Shearith Israel says it never really fired a woman who is suing the synagogue for allegedly letting her go after they found out she had had sex before marriage.

An ode to late-night walks on the Upper West Side. “Sidewalks don’t have names anymore; I recognize the places. There’s the gate where someone once pulled me back for a kiss. And the church that felt so peaceful the first time I sat on a pew. That’s the building where I once got lost and laughed, because it was okay to be lost in those days. And that park—I never did visit the peacocks.”

Two teens were taken in for questioning after a bomb threat to a school last week. “The two students, both 15-year-old boys, placed a phone call to the main office of the Success Academy Charter School on West 84th Street around 11 a.m. and said that there was a bomb in the building, cops said.”