It's Actually the Eighth USS New York

A Wikipedia search for USS New York brings up seven predecessors burned, sold, scuttled and sunk:

USS New York may refer to:

• USS New York (1776), was a gondola, built on Lake Champlain in 1776, that participated in the Battle of Valcour Island.

• USS New York (1800), was a 36-gun frigate commissioned in 1800 and burned by the British in 1814.

• USS New York (1820), was a 74-gun ship of the line, laid down in 1820 which never left the stocks, and was burned in 1861.

• A screw sloop named Ontario was laid down in 1863; renamed New York in 1869, and sold while still on the stocks, in 1888.

• USS New York (ACR-2), was an armored cruiser commissioned in 1893, in action in the Spanish-American War, renamed to Saratoga in 1911, renamed Rochester in 1917, decommissioned in 1933, and scuttled in 1941.

• USS New York (BB-34), was a battleship laid down in 1911, commissioned in 1914, in action in both World Wars, decommissioned in 1946 and sunk as a target after surviving two atomic bombs tests in 1946.

• USS New York City (SSN-696), was a Los Angeles class submarine launched in 1977 and retired in 1997.

• USS New York (LPD-21), is an amphibious transport dock, launched in 2007 and partly constructed with metal salvaged from the World Trade Center

USS New York Arrives in New York Harbor

The naval assault ship whose bow was made with 7.5 tons of World Trade Center steel arrived in New York this morning at the end of her maiden voyage from Louisiana.  The ship paused near Ground Zero where it was given a 21-gun salute.  The ship will be docked at Pier 88 where it will remain through Veteran's Day.  It will be officially commissioned this Saturday, November 7th.

The seal from the ship's website:

Seven rays of sunlight signify both the crown atop the Statue of Liberty and the seven seas

Central focus placed on the Twin Towers and the bow of the ship, forged from the towers' steel

Breastplate of the phoenix bears the colors of first responders from the New York Police Department, New York Fire Department, and Port Authority of New York and New Jersey

Blood drops represent the fallen

Three stars for those earned by the battleship USS NEW YORK (BB34) in WWII at Iwo Jima, Okinawa and North Africa

Read the Associated Press article and visit the ship's site which includes a schedule of events and an interactive tour of the vessel.

Update on Central Park Storm Damage

More than 200 trees were felled in that brief Tuesday storm. 

The Central Park Conservancy, already operating on a reduced budget, needs your help.

Storm Damage Update

 

"The staggering cost of clean-up is estimated at several hundred thousand dollars, but it is impossible to attach a monetary figure to some of the losses. "We had a wonderful chestnut tree at 100th Street and Central Park West," said Neil Calvanese, VP of Operations for the Central Park Conservancy. "Records indicate the tree was planted by the Park's designer, Frederick Law Olmsted, more than 150 years ago." The tree was devastated by the storm and will be removed."

To remind yourself how terrific the park is:

Teeny tidbyte from stormin' Cayce

Today in New York History

Today is Tuesday, Aug. 18, the 230th day of 2009. There are 135 days left in the year.

On Aug. 18, 1969, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in Bethel, N.Y., which had fallen behind schedule, finally wound to a close after three nights with a midmorning set performed by Jimi Hendrix.

If you want something more current:

Actor-comedian Andy Samberg (TV: "Saturday Night Live") celebrates his 31st birthday.

 

Yes, that makes him younger than BOTH of us, Robert!

This has been a terse Tuesday tidbyte from Cayce.

G.M. Declares Bankruptcy at the Old Customs House

Last week, General Motors filed papers at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in lower Manhattan.

This court is located in the old Customs House, the lavish building replete with colored marble and covered in elaborate statuary. 

This court is also situated directly behind the rear end of the city's most famous bull.

Appropriate.

For all the symbolism, watch our Bowling Green, Part 2.

 

Tiny Tidbytes...Cayce Recommends:

A lesson learned about books and their covers.
If you haven't seen it yet, you may shed a tear.
Not sophisticated, but moving.

Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent

Demi Moore said on Twitter.com that it reduced her to tears as well.

An Interim Video

Our newest video will be up next Monday. Please enjoy this earnest substitute in the meantime:

Jim Dykes of Rich & Famous Tours on the Liz Smith Firing

Today we have a guest writer:  Jim Dykes, friend and co-founder of Rich and Famous Tours, who appeared in the Little Byte, Madison Square, Part One.  Who better to respond to the loss of yet another New York City mainstay, Liz Smith's column in the New York Post?

 

OMG, I couldn’t believe it when it was announced that the reigning “queen” of NYC gossip columnists, Liz Smith, was being canned by the New York Post after nearly 20 years.  I mean, the woman is an institution--older than the Empire State Building.  Liz Smith calls herself “The 2000-year-old gossip columnist.” She arrived in Manhattan from the University of Texas journalism school in 1949 and has worked constantly in celebrity/show biz media for 57 years including a stint as a radio and TV producer.  I immediately called a friend who is a theatre reviewer/columnist  who knows Liz and who has ghost-written her column on occasion and I asked him what was going on with Liz and Rupert Murdoch, publisher of the NY Post and owner of Fox News (where Liz still appears).

“Rupert Murdoch and Liz’s agents just couldn’t come to an agreement because of several reasons.  Her money demands are ridiculous.  Murdoch had already cut her back to 3 columns a week instead of daily.  Also, because of her advanced age (Some sources say she was born Feb. 2, 1921, some say 1923; either way, the woman is over 85), Murdoch didn’t want to give her a multi-year contract which her agent was insisting on, for the fact that at her age she might drop dead at any moment.  He wanted to keep her on a month by month retainer.”

 

Heck, most of her columns aren’t even written by her any more.  They are written by a team of younger writers.  Liz is too busy going out on the town and being feted by all of her celebrity friends and attending charity galas. She herself started out in 1949 as a ghost writer for Cholly Knickerbocker and Walter Winchell.

Birthday Singing!

Another delightful tidbyte from Cayce:

Spread the LOVE!!!

The Vandalism at Bethesda Terrace

(Photograph by Jen Chung/Gothamist)

At the beginning of the month, The Gothamist posted photos of the graffiti wilding that took place at Bethesda Terrace on Saturday night, January 31st.  Less than two years after the arcade was finally reopened to the public, it was criminally defaced by four socially defective morons--David Gonzalez Jr., 20, Aisha Calow, 18, Victoria Deniaminova, 16, and Sabrina Santiago, 16.  I would print their addresses if I had them.

My first view of the damage (estimates for its repair range from $50,000 to $100,000) was on Sunday.  Heartbreaking and infuriating.  My photos after the break. 

Oprah's Birthday and Cat Playing Piano

Another tidbyte from desperate Cayce:

In an obvious attempt to drive traffic to the blog, I give you Oprah's birthday(she turns 55 today) and the old, tried and true favorite, Nora, the cat, playing the piano. What do these 2 things have to do with New York? Well, Oprah produced a successful show on Broadway, The Color Purple, and people in NYC love cats. Oh yeah, there was a very successful Broadway show called CATS. Are you buying any of this?

Here's Oprah(and her close friend, TOM)!

Here's the ever enchanting Nora!

...she did pick the president.

How Long Was That Lame Duck Period Anyway?

For a visual measurement of the weeks between the election and the inauguration, let me present the growth of my niece, Celia Virginia, who was born during voting hours on November 4th, 2008...

 

...and who had become a Love Bug by January 20th, 2009...

Here's a comparison using a basketball signed by Michael Jordan (her parents used to work for ESPN):

 

November

January

Obama Gets the Full Peal

This afternoon, to celebrate the swearing-in of Barack Obama as the nation's forty-fourth president, twelve men and women in the belfry of Trinity Church will strike a full peal for over three hours.    

From Newsday:

"The exact sound cannot be heard anywhere else in the country: Trinity has the only change-ringing tower - in which each bell is rung individually - with 12 bells, two more than the National Cathedral in Washington.

"A full peal of Trinity's bells consists of 5,000 changes. A "change" occurs when each bell is rung individually in a sequence, without duplication. The ringers, who are about 20 feet below, yank ropes to swing the bells and cause the bells' clappers to strike."

For a video demonstration and more specific details, visit the Newsday feature.

A few interesting bytes of significance:

 

Washington took the oath of office down the street from the second Trinity Church.  The first had been burned in 1776; the second was under construction when Washington took his oath.  In the scene above, painted for the centennial of the first inauguration, the third and present Trinity Church is depicted mistakenly.

 

Trinity Church will be giving the full peal at the end of Wall Street, whose troubles this fall very much contributed to the outcome of the 2008 election.

 

Columbia College began in the basement of Trinity Church (the first structure) in 1754.  The college has since graduated many illustrious public figures, but it has never been able to boast a president until today.  Another nice Trinity/Columbia twist is that buried in the church's cemetery is arguably its most important graduate--Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, who helped create the financial system now teetering and which Columbia's more recent graduate inherits this afternoon.

Arkansas Group Bound for the Inauguration with a Stop in NYC

I'm not writing with a snow-covered quill, but I am typing with frostbitten fingertips after three days of touring in some of the coldest weather New York has felt in years.  This weekend I worked with high school students from Arkansas who were on the east coast for a New York-DC trip focused on the Inauguration.  (They were able to get tickets for all of them through their senator as well as one from Utah who happened to have a few extra.)

This group was also lucky enough to get Ellis, a very experienced driver from Richmond, who not only knew how to navigate the blocked roads and detours of Washington this week, but who was also the official bus driver for Barack Obama whenever he campaigned in Virginia.  A picture of Ellis and our new president hung proudly from his rear view mirror.

 

Everyone seemed to be excited about this trip and they appreciated the history that they were going to witness firsthand.  Several were journaling about the trip and this provided my favorite line one morning on the way to breakfast.  I was talking to seventeen-year-old Kayla (the age is very important to keep in mind) that by journaling they would be able to remember and process a lot more of the trip. 

Robert:  It's a really historic moment in our country's history and you'll be able to say you were there.

Kayla:  Definitely.  I'm journaling so that when I'm thirty I can sit down and show my grandkids.

Besides thirty-year-old grandmothers, this group also included a 6'5" football player with size 18 shoes.  Here's a picture of one of my shoes (size 11) next to one of his:

 

And here's a shot of his size 18 boot unable to fit in the large stirrup of his carousel horse.

 

 

 

Two Planes Floating in the Hudson

This is one of my favorite amateur shots taken yesterday--if you look beneath the plane, at the edge of the water, you can see the tail fin of a Concord jet in the river as well.  The Concord and part of the aircraft carrier, which you can see to the right of the water tower, belong to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum.  The US Airways flight crashed four blocks north of the Intrepid's flight deck, an irony that went unreported.  Both the Concord and the Airbus are facing east and until 3:30 yesterday afternoon the Concord was the only plane floating in the Hudson.  An interesting byte of trivia--when the Intrepid first brought the Concord to the museum, headlines described the move as "Concord Lands in Hudson River."

The Intrepid, by the way, is where we began our video tour of 46th Street which features the video, "Things That Fall from the Sky."  Another irony is that this view is very close to the view from the window of Leo--the World Record Breaking Cat who a few years ago jumped from the 46th floor of Manhattan Plaza and survived. I think yesterday's miraculous (and still unbelievable) survival of all 155 passengers and crew (and the George Washington Bridge which the plane only cleared by 900 feet) win out over Leo. 

Two things I wanted to note about the city yesterday.  I was with a friend in a coffeeshop exactly three blocks east of the crash but thirty minutes passed before we heard anything about a plane and we learned about it the same way that most in the world do--by television.  As we were getting up to go, we noticed the footage and titles but didn't believe they were real.  Everyone around us in the coffeeshop and on the streets were going about their lives as though there weren't 155 people standing on the wings of a downed jetliner three blocks away.  I'm often in awe of how many major events this city can absorb without breaking its stride.  I'm also in awe of all the people who stop what they're doing to help whenever they see someone in trouble--that goes for all the ferryworkers and first responders who turned their attention to rescuing the US Air crash victims as well as to the ten people on Ninth Avenue who helped the older person passed out in the cold, calling 911 and finding blankets.  It is an amazing city.

And about that cold:  for those out west or down south, it is FREEZING here!  If you walk outside for two minutes, you talk about it for three.  I cannot imagine standing, without a jacket, my feet submerged in frigid water, on the wing of a jet in the middle of the Hudson.  Shock and relief were probably useful tools.

Well, I'm off now to meet a group landing at LaGuardia.  Hoping there are no geese...

Tourism Stats from 2008

Last Monday, Mayor Bloomberg and NYC & Company announced that tourism in 2008 broke three records:  an estimated 47 million visited the city, one million more than came here in 2007, bringing spending to $30 billion for the first time, which could not have happened without the number of international tourists (9.8 million) lured here partly because of the weak dollar.  

For more details, see the press release from the mayor's office.

Things We Lost in 2008

Recently, every year seems to be a banner year of lost NYC institutions, but 2008 is one for the record books.  Here are ten off the top of my head:

Wall Street 

(If you think that one way arrow should be pointing down, realize that it is pointing south.) 

However Wall Street survives, it's going to be drastically transformed with the loss of 40% of the Dow's value since its high last October, and the fall of some of the largest investment banks around including:

Trivia of the Week--the RFK, the Schwarzman, and the Koch

It's been one full week and I still haven't heard anyone calling the Triborough Bridge by its new name--the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial.  I'm counting the days until I hear it--perhaps "take the RFK to JFK"--and will post it here when I do.  Connecting the three boroughs of Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx, the Triborough opened in July of 1936 as a network of bridges (including not only a suspension bridge but the world's highest vertical lift bridge as well).  Its construction was one of the largest public works projects during the Great Depression and, according to the author of The Power Broker, Robert Caro, created thirty-one million man hours of work for the 5000 men at the site and for others in 134 cities and 20 states.

 

Photo by Margaret Bourke-White

THIS WEEK'S TRIVIA:  What two other major institutions are currently being renamed?  What will be known as the Schwarzman?  What will be known as the Koch?  Answers after the jump.

Little Bytes Recommends...

..."Black Watch."

After an all-too-brief, sold-out run at St. Ann's Warehouse in DUMBO last year, the National Theatre of Scotland returned this fall for another limited engagement.  Following more critical raves (the kind that urge you to do anything short of murder to snag a ticket), the show was extended and is now playing through December 21st.  It's a riveting, hyper-theatrical production improvised from interviews and full of high octane physicality that tells the history of Scotland's most celebrated regiment, focusing on their most recent deployment in Iraq (their last tour of duty under their historic name).  Much of the emotion comes from the stylized, choreographed sequences set to music, all of which build to the theater company's own version of a military show parade, an unforgettable finale.

Watch another preview video after the jump.

A Byte of Citibank

This morning Citigroup announced that it would be cutting 50,000 jobs in the current economy.  We shot a brief history of Citibank on our walk across Wall Street. 

New York's Historic Legislative Results

The Staten Island seat, relinquished by outgoing Republican, Vito Fossella (in the news this year for a drunk driving arrest and an extramarital affair), was won last night by Michael McMahon, which means that the entire congressional delegation of New York City will be Democratic for the first time in 35 years!

And with last night's capture of 32 seats of the State Senate, Democrats will be in control of the governorship and BOTH houses of the Legislature for the first time in MORE than 35 years...in fact, for the first time since 1935!

The Apollo in Harlem Congratulates the President-Elect!

From Little Byter, Bruce Roberts, who appeared in Herald Square, Parts One and Two.

 

"Last night as soon as Barack Obama won the presidency Harlem erupted.   It was amazing.  We filmed a great deal of the celebration out our window.  I got my coat on and followed the parade up to 125th Street.  I lived history a few hours ago but was amazed to see this picture not even 5 minutes after it was announced."

 

 

Photo by Bruce Roberts

A TAD OF TWEED IN TED

Last week, Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska was found guilty on all seven felony counts for failing to report a quarter of a million dollars in gifts and services.  While that is indeed an impressive take, let's not forget our own Boss Tweed who in the nineteenth century managed to steal so much more.  Here's a byte we made last summer about New York's most corrupt politician--coincidentally titled "Twice the Price of Alaska."

Notes and credits for this byte as well as the rest of this video tour up Broadway from Bowling Green to Columbus Circle can be found HERE.

TRIVIA QUESTION OF THE WEEK

Here's a timely trivia question:

What beloved Manhattan statue was presented to the city (deposited early one morning in front of the New York Stock Exchange) by an artist trying to convey the resilience and optimism of the American people after the 1987 stock market crash?

This outdoor bronze is featured in one of the Little Bytes on the tour up Broadway from Bowling Green to Columbus Circle.  Watch it this week on the home page.