Looking Ahead

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
If Union Square has been the perfect weather wane for the arrival of the recession, may it also well be one for the recovery? We saw, with much regrets, the departure of Circuit City and Virgin Records, both within the same One Union Square South block, both seemingly solid corporate citizens, particularly since the collapse of Tower Records ten blocks south. But both businesses live in the marginal disposable income fringe, unlike food and clothing, the near utilities. Well, fellow watchers of the economic ball and counters of the paychecks, if consumption is the key to recovery, the arrival of new brave retail tenants for the vacant spaces signifies something.
Yes, Nordstrom Rack, discount sister of the solid Nordstrom chain of solid values, is taking over the 32,000 sq. ft. of the Virgin downstairs space (23,000 sq. ft upstairs are still available), also including 30 feet of front space facing Broadway. That will complement the discount ladies clothing at Forever 21 and Filene's Basement up in the Whole Foods neighborhood, T.J. Maxx and Marshall's on Sixth Ave and all the other class buying emporiums at discount prices that our neighborhood has been famous for since S. Klein's On The Square ceased to exist.
Further, Best Buy is taking the entire 46,000 sq. ft. Circuit City space, supplementing their 34th Street emporium. That's faith in electronics, and also photography, not well served in the neighborhood since other departures.
Yet further, Verizon has taken space with P.C. Richards to sell up-to-the minute electronics. Don't stop reading.
Somebody smart - ok, it was David Browne in the NYTimes Styles section - identified the music and TV various generations yearn for - Springstein and the Woodstock music for the Boomers, Curt Cobain for Gen X, and Harry Potter, also Britney Spears, warts and all, for Gen Y. Yes, there is a Gen Y, born 1990-2003, the post Y2K and 9/11 crowd. Nostalgic for their childhood? Yes.
I too should like to propose a nostalgic journey, of the department stores of our youth, starting with the aforementioned Klein’s for the pre-boomers and boomers. It has to include B. Altman's on 32nd Street, the ultimate class store for the area. Back at E. 14th, Ohrbach’s (until in 1954 they moved to 34th Street), Mays ( closed in 1960s), Bradlees (closed around 2000) up in 6th Ave area served the boomer and GenX, and sort of hit the ultimate edge, the GenY, when that building became the site of Whole Foods Market, Filene’s Basement, Forever 21 and DSW. We never got to be the fashion center, maybe just as well. Those are the stores that expire, $900 jeans and all.

Back on 14th Street wavelength, here are the press releases. First, from the Union Square Partnership, with good figures: Nordstrom Rack and Best Buy are a perfect complements to the district, which has seen an increase in pedestrian traffic by 59 percent over the past five years and more than 35.5 million riders who used our subway stations this past year. As one of the most vibrant districts in New York City, we are thrilled that Nordstrom, a trusted brand with exceptional customer service, has chosen Union Square for its Manhattan debut. In addition to the jobs that Nordstrom as well as Best Buy will bring to the area, the leasing of the retail space at One Union Square South will ensure that the retail blocks surrounding the park remain as popular as ever. Nordstrom’s has 175 stores in 28 states, eight of them in NYC area, plus three Racks.
As to the district, the Partnership notes that Union Square is one of the most vibrant districts in New York City, Union Square is a dynamic center of food and fashion, culture and cutting edge businesses. The approximately 12,000 businesses located within a ½-mile radius of Union Square employ approximately 140,000 people. Home to the City's oldest Greenmarket, a beautiful historic park, and hundreds of the best restaurants and shops, the Union Square district has earned a reputation as the ultimate New York City neighborhood destination.
If these were not enough boosters for the economy, Verizon Wireless has expanded its retail presence with the addition of a new store within the P.C. Richard & Son showroom near Union Square. Verizon claims that, with the addition of the Verizon Wireless kiosk, P.C. Richard & Son customers now have easy access to the latest wireless phones, devices and accessories, plus a variety of service plans on the nation’s most reliable wireless network.
Located at 120 East 14th Street, the new Verizon Wireless store keeps long hours.
The new kiosk offers consumers a broad range of services and equipment, including popular devices like the BlackBerry® Tour™ and service features like Verizon Wireless Friends & Family® which lets customers on eligible calling plans enjoy unlimited calling to up to 10 numbers on any network, anytime, anywhere in America without using plan minutes.

Wally Dobelis also thanks Garrett Sloane (amNewYork)

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis

My sweet Bronx, where, before air-conditioning appeared on the scene, retired garment workers sat late into the night, on park benches grouped in the median of Grand Concourse, enjoying the breeze and arguing Socialism. It has changed. Of course, that was before the burnings, and the exodus to Coop City. Now the borough’s fame and notoriety come from its Hispanic contingents.

The madness in the NYS Senate has been continuing. Senator Pedro Espada Jr. of Bronx, who with Senator Hiram Monserrate of Queens joined the Republican coalition on June 8, giving GOP a 32-30 control, on July 9 rejoined the Democrat caucus (Monserrate had done so earlier), returning Senate control to the donkeyheads and reclaiming his post as Majority Leader. What is Spanish for chutzpah? This happened when, a day earlier, Governor David Paterson made a smart move, appointing Richard Ravitch as Lieutenant Governor, to get in a tie-breaker vote, solving the 31-31 deadlock. This elicited an instant lawsuit from Espada and Dean Skelos, the GOP leader, claiming the action to be unconstitutional, and a restraining order from a Long Island magistrate, seeking to block Ravitch from assuming office. The order was overturned by a judge, Espada made his countermove, returning to the Democratic caucus on July 9, and claiming his Majority Leader role (you should see the cover photo of Albany’s Times Union of July 10, showing Espada slithering his hand towards Smith, the crocodile eyes ready to grasp, or withdraw, or strike) while the Espada /Skelos lawyers still maintain the lawsuit, asking for more time to prepare for resolution of the issue. Meanwhile, the Four Amigos -_ Espada and his allies Monserrate, Carl Kruger from Brooklyn and Ruben Diaz Sr. of Bronx – have been threatening a reorganization of the Democratic conference, and some of it has happened. On July 16 in a joint statement the transformed Senate leaders, Senate President Smith, Majority Leader Espada, Dep. Majority Leader Jeffrey Klein, Conference Leader John Sampson, and Minority Leader Skelos passed reforms to the Senate rules, making the Senate “more open, accountable and all inclusive.” The changes empower individual Senators to get bills out of committees, limit committee chairmanships to eight years, liberalize the hiring of committee staffs, provide members with access to mailing and printing services, and propose more equal distribution of discretionary amounts for legislative incentives. The last is a Republican initiative – after squeezing the Democrats during their 40 years of GOP Senate majority, they wanted equality; the staffing liberalization is an Espada demand. In the deal Monserrate also got his committee chairmanship back! But Mayor Bloomberg’s continued authority over the city’s schools was denied, and some of the Governor Paterson’s requests still need be enacted, such as reducing party jumpers to junior status. He has experienced threats beyond those from the Four Amigos.

Third parties and party changers have had significant impact in American politics. In 1948 George C. Wallace took 8% of Presidential vote; Ross Perot as Independent/Reform scored 19% in 1992 and 8% in 1996. And then in 2000 there was Ralph Nader with his crucial history-changing 3% Green party vote. None have been as blatant as the benefits-seeking NY Senate Democrats, looking for perks, committee chairmanship pay and contract influence, staff jobs for supporters and suppression of legislation (e.g. gay marriage) in committee. Perhaps the best comparison is the defunct Liberal party in NY, a small group that would provide the crucial swing votes, some initially based on idealism, and Shas in Israel that votes Labor or Likud for education and social benefits for its faithful.

Let us move now to the glory of Hispanic Bronx, the US Senate confirmation hearing of Judge Sonia Sotamayor, a woman of humble origin who is reaching for an accolade higher than that of the term-limited Presidency of the US, the lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. She has been mercilessly scrutinized by Southern Senators, asking for her opinions on birth control, gun ownership, executive power and eminent domain, all of which she has parried correctly, issues that should be judged on past performance and rulings, public statements and affiliations, all fair subjects. Questions about ethnic identification and gender and political preferences, based on one paragraph spoken to encourage minority women to strive for better accomplishments go too far in imputing preferences. However, one would also object to the Kabuki dancer masks that someone suggested are assumed by Supreme Court candidates, trying to project the images of middle-of-the-roaders, the preferable role. The Supremes are our most important rulers, even to the point of electing an American President in 2001, and we should endeavor to know all we can about them, the books that they have on their shelves, the music and drama they prefer, whom do they share their dinners with, the inner man or woman or child that they are. Five Supremes are in their seventies and we will see more candidates before long. The lives of candidates for the lifetime appointment to Supreme Court should be open books, more so than those of elected high officials. That is how I feel.

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis







Les Paul, the great innovator and wonderful musician who died on August 13, 2009, at the age of 94, was a long-time neighbor and an important attraction to tourists visiting our East Midtown music scene and checking out New York’s significant architectural mementos.

For 12 years he was the main musical draw at Fat Tuesday’s Jazz Club , from 1983 until it closed in 1995. It was located in the basement of Scheffel Hall (a/k/a Allaire’s and Joe King’s Rathskeller), 190 Third Avenue, at 17th Street, now Sal Anthony’s Movement Salon, a Pilates studio. When the former upstairs restaurant was demolished and rebuilt, the new owner invited me to view the strange stained glass ceiling of the main floor, featuring pipe-smokers and other Germanic figurations, an early 20th Century decorative scheme.



Scheffel Hall, designated as a NYC Landmark in 1997, is built on the grounds of Peter Stuyvesant’s old farm, and the bicycle shop on 17th Street, past the Greek Orthodox Church, still has, in its subterranean structure, some remnants of the framing of a prior 1600’s farm building. The original Hall, with a narrow storefront, reached a ways back towards Irving Place. The known names associated with the current structure are those of Carl Goerwitz, who after 1904 sublet it to Fred Ahrens, who sold the lease to restaurant owner William Allaire, who combined four properties into restaurant/ meeting hall/rental space for weddings enterprise, until in 1928 it became the German American Athletic Club, with some suspected sympathies with the new rulers of Germany. Joe King assumed management in 1937, returning n 1947 after WWII service in the US Air Corps, and the basement of his German American club reverted to serving as a popular collegiate beer/music hall, with beer mug thumping and sing-along of the falling of 99 bottles off the wall (one by one), about buckling up Winsocki, and events Far Above Cayuga’s Waters, not forgetting the Halls of Montezuma. In 1979 a jazz club took over the basement, and Helen Merrill, Stan Getz and Ahmed Jamal were the music names, until in 1982 came Les Paul.



Born Lester William Paulfuss in Waukesha, WI, as a youngster he learned to play the harmonica, the banjo and eventually the guitar, figuring how to attach the pickup arm of the family Victrola to the music baffle, thus converting the record player into an amplifier. By 1941 he had developed an electric amplifier, and a solid-body guitar, which could hold a tone indefinitely (“The Long”). Then, the echo effect, and an eight-track tape recorder, tools that permitted a solitary instrumentalist in a studio enrich a melody by recording many variations over an original tune. Meanwhile his Les Paul Trio, started in 1936, became an important studio music group, backing up radio shows.



Les Paul met Colleen Summers, a Gene Autry westerns singer in the 1940s, and changed her name to Mary Ford . Her cool voice, with space age sound effects that are still impressive decades later, gave the couple some 10 hits for Capitol Records. I still feel shivers when recalling the sonorous Tennessee Waltz, the thrills of Mockingbird Hill and How High The Moon, and the soft Vaya Con Dios. The marriage lasted 15 years, till 1964, broken seemingly due to the musician’s total devotion to his craft. Their Mahwah NJ house was a sound and film studio, and he even had his broken shoulder, hurt in a 1948 car accident, obliquely reset to facilitate his guitar-playing. The venerable Gibson instrument people named their Long guitar after him, TV and recording successes multiplied. Only after a 1981 bypass surgery did he slow down, concentrating on NYC club work for his trio.

My personal involvement came, when I met a young street person, Cornell, who had an ingratiating manner and a coffee cup out during the day, just outside Fat Tuesday’s. At night he acted as a street guide, earning tips by telling stories and taking tourists to the hidden stairs leading down to the club’s dinky premises. Just about then Readers Digest had published a four page article about Les Paul, which I photocopied and stapled in a booklet form, in some 20 copies. I gave them to Cornell to earn him some extra money (it was then that Cornell’s reading and writing difficulties became apparent), and he had Les inscribe and sign them, good for a decent tip. I lost track of further progress of the enterprise, and when the jazz club closed (the upstairs became the Highlander Brewery and Restaurant ), Les Paul moved to the somewhat more sumptuous Iridium Club, across Eight Avenue from Lincoln Center. When we met him there, some years later, he inquired about Cornell, who still continues the street life, interspersed with helping at the supermarket, telling stories and collecting small weekly support dues, as becoming to the longest lasting local street character faithful to the neighborhood. Les is now gone, he too continued in character, as the longest lasting active club musician, until June, when complications of pneumonia took him from us.

This column is dedicated to the late Old Curmudgeon, a beerhall companion of my youth. If you want to hear or suggest more local bar stories, write to wally@ix.netcom.com

Traveling to Key Largo by Wally Dobelis

Whether you are an owner or renter in the Keys makes a load of difference. Renters drive, because they bring clothes and tools and books, sometimes a winter’s supply. Owners fly because they keep the gear locked in their closets all year round.

The East Coat driver comes down I-95, some 1350 miles from New York City. The trip can be divided easily into three 450 mile segments with stopovers in Rocky Mount, NC and Kingsland/St. Mary’s in GA on the Florida borderline. Both towns have lots of hotels, Best Westerns, Day’s Inns and such, with discount coupon books available in the states preceding – thus, you will find NC coupons for I-95 at roadside food stops and gas stations in VA, and they will be honored if you do not delay your checking to after nightfall, since budget rooms are limited. Animals are accepted at $10 or so extra per, but these designated rooms are somewhat less clean – but do not smuggle, you can be fined.

Flying is easier, Miami Airport is 50 miles away, and car rentals are a snap. Ft. Lauderdale (FLL) is 20 miles further north, but the fares are cheaper on Spirit, and the car rental specials are better. If you are staying for the winter, say two months, try to ask for a short-term or mini-lease. Don’t be surprised if Avis or Hertz at times offer better numbers than Alamo and other second-line vendors. If you are planning to bicycle while in the Keys or are depending on friends’ transportation, take the Keys Limo service, at $70/person, or better yet, rent an Enterprise car, to be dropped off at the destination rental station. They will deliver you to your condo colony.

Return to FLL via the Turnpike is easy, we pay four $1 tolls at exits 11, 23, 36 and 49, then take Exit 54 into 595, and follow exit signs to the FLL airport. Normally, the 20 miles across the bridge and the 54 miles to the Turnpike exit take 1 ½ hrs, and the balance of the trip and return of the rental car (now mostly in the airport annex), a short bus ride away another ½ hr.

Coming from FLL airport, take 595 and watch for the exit to the Florida Turnpike, the tolls as shown above, or else you will end on the busy I-95, then the even busier and slower US 1with frequent traffic lights. The MIA exit 4.will pot you on 836, the Dolphin Expressway, busy but easy to follow, leading to the Turnpike South at its exit 17.

Returning to MIA, take exit 17 into 874 the Don Shula Expressway (Miamians take their Dolphins leadership seriously). It leads into 824,Palmetto Expressway, then turn right into 836 the busy Dolphin Expressway, and watch for the left turn into the Airport access, Lejeune Rd., and car return.???

There are interesting cruises leading out of Ft. Lauderdale. Park?
If your cruise of Panama Canal, Honduras, Guatemala or Belize requires a flight out of MIA, store your car at the airport – Dolphin or Flamingo long-term parking; whichever is closer to your airline terminal, for $12/day.

The Turnpike will end and drop you on US 1 just before the Florida City traffic light with a white cross, marking, to the right, entry to the 993x, access to the Everglades national Park, Here is Roberts, the legendary fruit stand, and Krome Avenue, doorway to Homestead, all importsnt places, to be discussed later. Drive right through towards the Keys, unless you want to stop at the Tourist Information center a 100 yards down, for maps and guides and hotel reservations. Stay on the right, unless you are going to the rich Ocean Reef condos.

Now, the famous 18-mile causeway, or bridge, to the Keys. It is a road through the Everglades-like prairie sites on Florida Bay, pink clouds and a sunset if you are arriving in the afternoon, then some open water , blue on the ocean, green on the bay side, a boat basin on the ocean side at MM , In January the initial bridge posting highlighted 18 deaths this year, intended to scare us. It worked. The one-track each way road presents a clean, double yellow stripe, broken when passing is permitted) all the way, and four –deep raised caution bricks across them, to warn the dozing driver that he is crossing into opposite traffic.

For the legitimately nervous drivers who re worried about being pushed by other beyond the 55MPH limit, there are two passing zones where you can let the fast movers pass you. Once past the Jewfish Creek draw bridge and into Key Largo, the road turns two lane each way, with a wide median, planted with palms and orange-blossoming Geiger trees. Access paths widen to many points to crossing lanes, permitting you to slide in at high speed, without impeding traffic. Exits from condo colonies and most restaurants and the tiny malls along the way have short access lanes, to wait for lulls in the ever-present traffic, so that you can pick up speed and slip into the stream. Stop signs are rare, you are expected to be cautious and safe. Even the most cautious drivers have enough space and time to wait until they feel absolutely certain of their safety. The notorious Florida slow driving old-timers are not part of the Keys scene.

The two-lane roads are only in the main towns, Key Largo, Islamorada, Marathon and Key west, otherwise it is single track, through some of the most beautiful seascapes, picturesque settlements with white two story verandahs, egrets on the roadside and boats in the distance – not too many of those, since Wilma. Traffic moves fast, unless you are stuck behind an orange school bus making pickup or discharge stops. Most people going to Key West for the day will choose their travel hours with care.

More about The Seven Mile Bridge tk

A Condo in the Keys, or My Boat Is In My Closet and Other Simple Pleasures of Life in Key Largo by Wally Dobelis. Copyright M. C. Dobelis

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis, excerpt from a forthcoming book with the above title

The Florida Keys are rocky outcroppings in the Atlantic Ocean, not very sandy. For beach life in Key Largo we depend on the John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park's small sandy halfmoon at MM 102, the Harry Harris State Park near MM 92.5 and, particularly, the beautiful Sombrero Beach in Marathon, turn left at the traffic light at MM 50. Most of the time we swim in the bay, right off the marina pier, ignoring the tarpons who live under it.

Most pleasant swimming companions are the manatees, who come to the pier in search of sweet water, and the kids, squealing with joy, lower the water hose right into their open mouths.

Swimming with the manatees is another pleasure, touching their rough and cold skin. A friend and real esstate broker, whose father has a house on a canal where th manatees come frequently, in search of discarded wilted cabbagess and other enticements, often sjumps in the water to scrub their backs, freeing them of barnacles and other adhesions. All of the above activities involving the protected gentle giant sea cows are illegal, but manatee lovers just cannot desist.

The big water activity in the Keys is boating, whether you fish, trap crabs, catch lobster, snorkel or scuba dive. Snowbirds often arrive with boat trailers, bringing their cabin cruisers along, some of them quite large. My friends have 16-footers, good for the bay and also the ocean, on easy days. The canal at MM 104 connects the two.

Boats are a pleasure and a care. Having a dock site is great but you also have to store your trailer (a seasonal rental fee), and find a winted docing space, unless you are willing to pull them up and down the North American continent every season I say continent because some of my fellow condo people are from Quebec. Professional three-story boat storages can be found all along US 1 , a scary sight when one thinks of the high wind seeason. During Wilma they survived. People who want to save money, find storage with locals who have back yards, the same people who will store your trailer during the season, a source of small but steady income.

Some years ago, wanting the pleasure of boating upon demand but not willing to have the trouble of boat care, this family invested in a 10 1/2 ft. Zodiac, a chambered inflatable and rebuilt one closet in the 2nd bedroom, to accomodate it, as well as an 8 HP outboard engine.
Evry season we drag it out, inflate it with a foot pedal, drag it in the water, down the condo's boat ramp, attach the engine and hold our breaths while pulling the cord to start the works. Since the tank gets thoroughly drained in an environmentally sound way (the Hobo boatyard people accept our leftover oil and gasoline), we have had no trouble. The license is renewed by the Monroe county tax people by mail every year, we attach the sticker and hang out the boot number, on a board, toss in our life jackets and paddles. The engine has enough power to plane, skimming the bay's surface, and we cross the Blackwater Sound towards the Duesenberry Gap, an alley leading through the mangrove islands, with many narrow channels, where you can slowly troll, nearly soundlessly, observing the fish and the birds at leisure. The only other mankind are the rare fellow boaters, although a dereligt boat was anchored for years in one of the channels, housing some homeless people who would not respond to being hailed, we were told. We respected their solitude.

Homelessness in the Keys is present, in Key West, while sippig tea at the Pier Hotel's deck you can observe some similad derelict boats, desk covered with worn household items, people living on whatever income comess their way, perhaps by doing juggling or telling stories on the Mallory Pier at sunset. In Key Largo the homeless are invisible, the town park does not have such residents, and only once on an early walking visit, have I seen an unkempt youth furtive ly slide into the immaculate bathrooms, for morning washup.

Back to boating the canals and meeting crocs and aalligators -to be continued

A Condo In The Keys, or My Boat Lives in My Closet, And Other Pleasures Of The Simple Life in Key Largo, by Wally Dobelis. Copyright M. C. Dobelis, 2006.

New York State legislature has been at a standstill much of the time since the election of November 2008 that gave the Democrats control of both of its houses. Disputes among the Senate Democrats have affected their ability to govern, despite multiple extensions of the legislative session. The logjam at NYS Senate has incurred some financial costs – since June 22, the official closing date, the 59 out-of-town senators have racked up $160 per diem reimbursements. This is nothing compared to the expense and hardships their bickering has cost, starting with letting the NYC school control law lapse, and including the expiries of local pay, tax collection and expense laws throughout the state, which will incur major dollars to redress, once a compromise is reached.

How then did the NYS Senate come to this disgraceful state of affairs, after the Democrats won a 32-30 majority in November? Well , first there was the "Gang of Four," Senators Pedro Espada Jr., Carl Kruger, Hiram Monserrate, and Ruben Diaz, Sr., who wanted chairmanships, apportionments and suppression of the gay marriage issue before accepting Sen. Malcolm Smith as Majority Leader. The affairs of state were next disrupted on June 8, when Republican Senator Thomas Libous proposed a resolution for selection of a new leadership of the Senate, which was accepted by a vote of 32, including those of renegade Democrats Espada and Monserrate,. Thus, the GOP party head Dean Skelos was elected Majority Leader and Espada was chosen as Senate President pro tem, the position from which he can become Acting Governor, since NYS hyas no Lieutenant Governor. Governor Paterso has already declared that he will not travel away from the state, to avoid usurpations of his job. To confuse matters further, Monserrate rejoined the Democrats a week later, after they nominated Sen. John L. Sampson as caucus leader, satisfying Monserrate's wishes to downgrade Smith. This resulted in a 31-31 tie in the Senate, further hobbling the Governor's efforts to move necessary legislation along.

The sequence of betrayals, coups and deceits, dubbed Shakespearean by Steven Sanders in an earlier column, was followed by a ridiculous Democratic caucus move on June 30, claiming a 32-member quorum just because Queens Republican Senator Frank Padavan had walked through the rear of the Chamber during their strategy meeting, on his way to get a cup of coffee in the members' lounge. A truly Shakespearean dramatic device, the arrival of a stranger, as in The Tempest. Against the Republicans' protests, the caucus proceeded to pass a bunch of laws - not the ones that Paterson needed – and the Governor refused to sign them, because of their legal ambiguity.

The deadlock in Senate continues, with the parties discussing such solutions as joint leadership. The Republican leadership claims willingness to cooperate, provided apportionments are equalized, and admits that during the past 40 years of their leadership in the Senate the Democrats were denied their share of monies. Henceforth, though, going forward, they would be magnanimously willing to share.
As of the moment, the issue is at standstill. The Governor’s calls for extension of the sessions have been ignored by some Senators, with the Rev Ruben Diaz daring Albany to arrest him while he performs religious services.

Who are these elected mighties that they can get away with disrupting the legal processes of the Empire State? Pedro Espada, age 55, a Puerto-Rico born well educated, community organizer in the Bronx, acquired his reputation by setting up the Soundview Health Center in a badly neglected housing complex. His political career started in 1988, by running for the US Congress and being beaten. In 1993-96 and 2001-2 he was NYS senator from 32nd SD, (replaced by the Rev. Ruben Diaz, whose son is the Bronx Borough President), then moving on to NY City Council, 18th Councilmanic District, then, in 2008, to the 33rd NY Senate District. His son, Pedro G. was an Assemblyman, Feb-Dec 1996, then a Councilman, 1998-2002, subsequently running for the Assembly as an Independent and losing. The Bronx seems to run to dynastic elected officials. Espada Jr. , the father, has been indicted more than once, for use of the Soundview HMO monies to pay the family campaign expenses, an accusation which he successfully overcame. He has currently been fined $74K by the NYC Campaign Finance Board for misusing funds, and State Attorney general Andrew M. Cuomo and Bronx District Attorney Robert L. Johnson are both investigating his campaign financing. Monserrate, an ex-Marine , purportedly a gulf war veteran, also an ex-policeman released for psychological reasons, was recently in the news for cutting his girlfriend with a broken bottle .

Is there any hope for New York State? NYTimes, in an editorial, details a dozen complex reforms to remedy the legal failures in the sate constitution and laws, measures that only could pass if we were to have a California –like referendum scheme. A popular revolt would be necessary, and even a strong governor would be stymied by the ethnic and other state power group reactions. More anon.