City Limits articles from January 2004

City Limits archives from January 2004

No sex in the city.(Editorial)
January 1, 2004... STOP THE PRESSES. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has discovered an up-tick in the number of gay men who consider themselves "versatile"--as comfortable in the role of bend-over boy as they are being man-ramming tops. The...

Rezoning blues.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... In "Twilight Zoning" [December 2003], author Laura Wolf-Powers hits the mark on the Greenpoint-Williamsburg rezoning controversy. The neighborhood, particularly the upland portion, is home to a number of small movie studios, set design...

Display of kindness?(Frontlines)
January 1, 2004... WHEN ETTA WHEELER, a charity worker serving Hell's Kitchen boarding houses in 1874, wanted to save 8-year-old Mary Ellen Wilson from an abusive stepmother, she had nowhere to turn. The concept of "child protection" did not yet exist. So she...

The Jig(getts) is up; state welfare officials look to end rent supplements.(Frontlines)
January 1, 2004... MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG couldn't attend the annual meeting of the Brooklyn neighborhood group Families United for Racial and Economic Equality, but he was there anyway. A giant photo of the mayor's face sat propped near the podium, as FUREE's...

Koranic healing.(Urbanlegend)
January 1, 2004... DRESSED IN TRADITIONAL SKULLCAP AND GOWN after a recent prayer service, Reda Shata, a 36-year-old imam from Cairo, storms into his office on the third floor of the Bay Ridge Islamic Society. Clutching a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee, he quotes...

Friends in high places: In the shadow of the High Line, other open-space efforts wither.(Frontlines)
January 1, 2004... IT'S HARD NOT TO FALL IN LOVE with the High Line. Anyone lucky enough to have glimpsed the abandoned West Side railway from above--or better yet, walked its tracks--is quickly seduced by the accidental elegance of its rusted railings, tangled...

Queer eye for free speech.(Civil Rights)
January 1, 2004... THE USAGE of a single word--queer--has sparked an unusual tangle between a Manhattan graduate student and the New York Department of State that has as much to do with freedom of expression as it does linguistics. With the help of two...

In the zone.(Housing)
January 1, 2004... A CITYWIDE EFFORT to require affordable housing in new, market-rate developments came one step closer to fruition in November, with the introduction of a key zoning amendment. Filed by Brooklyn Councilmember David Yassky and Community Board 1,...

Dog days: the city makes millions renting out park space to businesses--and turns its back on labor abuses.(Inside Track)
January 1, 2004... NEXT TIME YOU BUY a hot dog in Central Park, be careful: the guy selling it to you might be ill. He doesn't want to sneeze on your order. But park vendors don't get sick days from their employer, M&T Pretzel. And when an irate customer...

Charity busters: why Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's nonprofit crackdown may not be all it's cracked up to be.
January 1, 2004... IN 1998, DURING THE FINAL WEEKS of his second race for state Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer called a confidential meeting for less than a handful of nonprofit leaders and philanthropy experts. The candidate wanted to learn more about the...

Amazing Grace: an Allen Street mega-church offers Fuzhounese immigrants the solace of heaven--and begins to help them deal with their troubles on earth.
January 1, 2004... God saved Liu Zhu'en's life. He was smuggled out of China to New York a decade ago, at age 19--an ordeal that gained him $24,000 of debt and a painful disorder in his legs from the beatings he got when he didn't pay quickly enough. "It was so...

Journey to the golden mountain: indentured servitude, locked-down borders and the prosecution of a smuggling kingpin--none of it deters Chinese migrants from making it to East Broadway.
January 1, 2004... He lives in Chinatown and wears a white t-shirt draping down to the knees of his baggy jeans. But Kevin, who's 13, still remembers vividly one particular moment when he was a toddler in Fuzhou. His father bought him a dog, then left for New...

Down for the (re) count: the Census counts prisoners in their cells, not their neighborhoods. Now a move is afoot to change their addresses.(The Big Idea)
January 1, 2004... EVERY TIME NEW YORK CITY sends a convicted criminal to an upstate prison, it also gives up money and power. That's because the Census Bureau counts prisoners as residents of the towns they are incarcerated in, instead of the neighborhoods...

New reports.(Americans' views and politics)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Americans are more starkly divided than they have been since the Reagan years, according to this survey. The Pew Research Center polled about 4,000 adults during four weeks in July and October 2003, on topics ranging from religious involvement...

New reports.(immigration statistics)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... September 11 and the sluggish economy have had virtually no effect on the pace of either legal or illegal immigration, to the U.S. in general and New York in particular, according to this counter-intuitive report. Looking at unpublished 2003...

New reports.(nonprofits' standards)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Only one in three New York nonprofits met all of the Better Business Bureau's standards in the watchdog's 2003 holiday giving guide. BBB surveyed 676 nonprofits and found that only 41 percent could provide an annual report, and 13 percent...

Bowling with organizers: real-world answers to academic worries about the breakdown of community.(Roots for Radicals: Organizing for Power, Action, and Justice)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Roots for Radicals: Organizing for Power, Action, and Justice By Edward T. Chambers with Michael A. Cowan Continuum Press, 160 pages, $18.95 IT WAS THE MID-1950S in Buffalo, and Ed Chambers was working his first organizing assignment for...

Mystics, Mavericks, and Merrymakers: An Intimate Journey Among Hasidic Girls.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Mystics, Mavericks, and Merrymakers: An Intimate Journey Among Hasidic Girls By Stephanie Wellen Levine NYU Press, $26.95 Levine delves into Crown Heights' Hasidic community with an anthropologist's zeal for stripped-bare observation....

Yo' Mama!: New Raps, Toasts, Dozens, Jokes and Children's Rhymes from Urban Black America.(Brief Article)(Children's Review)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Yo' Mama!: New Raps, Toasts, Dozens, Jokes and Children's Rhymes from Urban Black America By Onwuchekwa Jemie Temple University Press, $19.95 It's cliche to note that academics can suck the life out of any conversation, but one...

Keeping Up with the Dow Joneses: Debt, Prison, Workfare.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Keeping Up with the Dow Joneses: Debt, Prison, Workfare By Vijay Prashad South End Press, $17 Prashad's latest assault on American hypocrisies presents three well-argued essays deconstructing our late 20th century policy obsession...

Dressed to skill: why the city's newest workforce authority is well suited to its job.(NYC Inc.)(Department of Small Business Services)
January 1, 2004... THIS TIME, it might be more than just a motto. The slogan on the Workforce One Web page of the city Department of Small Business Services (DSBS) proudly proclaims: "Where job seekers and businesses come together." While this has always been...