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Only on Piggington does a thread about Carnegie Hall employees turn into a flamewar about cops. *sigh*!

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Monthly Metrocard = $112.

Kitchen — I have a normal 4-burner stove, normal full-height fridge (though both are 24″(?) wide), dishwasher, and a usable amount of counter space. I cook fairly frequently.

I wouldn’t want a kitchen that’s less functional than what I have.

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Lemon law the dern thing?! Leave it in East Palo Alto and let someone steal it?

And as an American, I should be loath to buy Japanese cars. Remember the Bataan Death March!

(And German cars, since my non-American grandfather died fighting the Nazis in the resistance.)

It’s been almost 70 years at this time. Let the best product win.

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More info:

Sewer: almost always included, as is water.
Trash pickup: that’s part of city tax for anything residential, so also included.

Very basic cable (i.e. the air channels + C-SPAN + a few other channels): generally included
Internet/phone/advanced cable: virtually never included. Choices for phone/internet are generally Verizon (FiOS or DSL), or cable (Time Warner or Optonline, depending on area). Without advanced cable TV, you’re talking $60-80/mo.

Question is, is downtown SD vs Manhattan an apples-to-apples comparison, or are the more residential parts of Manhattan equivalent to North Park, with the trency parts of Brooklyn being equivalent to the beach cities? Or vice versa, or something.

Downtown SD seems more equivalent to Midtown Manhattan and the Wall St. area, if anything.

[spdrun]

Why are dues much higher…?

They almost always include:
(1) Heat
(2) Hot water
(3) Gas
(4) Water

They sometimes include electricity, especially in older buildings built with no electrical submetering. There are much fewer buildings with doormen, elevators, and live-in supers in SD than NYC.

Co-op dues also include property taxes, which are unfortunately higher than those for single-family up to three-family brownstones. Tax on apartments ends to be about 1% of value as opposed to 1/5 that for brownstones, though the formula is based on rental price and other factors, not sale price.

Lastly … you’re dealing with much older buildings which require more upkeep than your typical 1970s condo development in San Diego. Maybe the most apt comparison would be the El-Cortez Hotel Condos in San Diego, which also has pretty high HOA dues. Co-op boards can also take their own mortgages, so some of the dues can be underlying debt service.

Interestingly, if you get the right building, you can end up with very low dues including taxes. Like under $600/mo for a two-bedroom, or $250-400 for a 1/1.

[spdrun]

More a matter of questionable management and a year-long shutdown in 2009(?) due to construction in the building that they were using. It never really recovered from either one.

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Other than the undercover cops in the crowd which should have done something, the NYPD lacks the ability to teleport to the scene of a crime in progress. Especially if traffic is backed up along a fairly narrow highway (look at the map — 3 very narrow lanes per direction /w no shoulder) and the crime scene is moving.

Though I’ve heard the complaint that they focus too much on lower (below 100th St) Manhattan due to tourism, which may be a valid one.

Police are people, not superhumans. Yes, they have helicopters, but getting a helo into the air isn’t as simple as jumping into a squad car.

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FlyerInHI: basically, when it comes down to it, stupidity has a way of punishing itself. I wouldn’t hesitate to tell someone doing something stupid that what they’re doing is stupid. But if they don’t heed good advice, who am I to interfere with the natural course of the law of evolution?

Let the cops have enough free time to concentrate on the real menaces, like the people who hurt that driver.

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we all are trying to get somewhere. Does that justify breaking the law?

Lane splitting like that mainly has a risk of hurting the biker. I really don’t think that laws to protect people from their own stupidity should exist or be well-enforced. (Especially if the biker’s insurance covers damages to cars around him.)

I certainly wouldn’t report such a biker to the cops. Nor would I report someone shooting drugs on my street — if people want to hurt themselves through their own asshattery, they should be allowed to do so.

[spdrun]

If a motorcycle is dumb enough to slam his breaks in front of you, woe to him/her if you forget to stop and run them over. They should do something to “ban” this type of motorcycle behavior.

Last I checked, deliberately causing a crash is already illegal. Vehicular assault.

Though the driver is lucky there were multiple cameras, since rear-enders are normally seen as the fault of the person in back.

[spdrun]

A free for all with guns in this case would mean 30 guns vs 1 gun. A few of the 30 guns would probably be assault style weapons capable of spraying down the Rover.

AFAIK, full-auto guns are not legal in most states, are all but banned for sale on the Federal level, and are expensive to obtain.

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The complete lawlessness of the whole affair in the middle of NYC just seem so bizarre.

In some ways, it makes me glad that the police aren’t all-seeing and all-knowing, even in Manhattan.

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OK Corral, meet West Side Highway. West Side Highway, meet OK Corral. I’m sure you’ll hit it off with a BANG.

Everyone being armed doesn’t sound like a good answer here, though I suppose it may have diminished the likelihood of Mr. Lien being messed with in the first place. Or maybe not, since gang violence happens out West as well.

I wonder if they’d have played the same game with an old Bronco with NRA and HAMC stickers plastered on it, driven by a big goateed guy who looked like he could break bones by looking at them.

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*Two* cops were possibly with the group. Looks like they’re been suspended after it came out that they didn’t lift a pinky to help Mr. Lien, and good riddance.

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A few months ago, I know I was joking about bullet armor SUVs, and laughed it off as being waco…But these days, I’m not so sure it’s that crazy at all. I don’t like the idea that people think we’re easy targets, both on the street, and in the courtroom.

I’m still more likely to be hit by a bus walking to my car than set upon by a frothing gang of motorcyclists bent on trouble. No market for an armored SUV here 🙂

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