A friend is stage managing a series of one-act plays on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday nights here in New York. If you have time, check them out. If the descriptions are any indicator they should be interesting! Flier: pdf.
You know what people in the future used to wear? Jumpsuits and shorts. By Blade Runner and Fifth Element, we had pretty much done away with that. But in a future in which air conditioning is shunned as unhealthy for ourselves or our planet, can we assume folks will be trading in their three-season wool for three-season linen and cotton suits, and doing away with neckties?
My partner’s white shoe firm is one of several known for forgoing the white shoes and encouraging “dress casual,” and now the UN building in New York is encouraging staff to forgo dark wool so that they can raise the temperature in the building and save power and the emissions that go with it. This makes a lot of sense in a walking city like New York, where the shift from inside hits the sinuses and the wardrobe alike.
Of course, at the same time there is a push back to 3-piece suits in men’s fashion; as seems always to be the case during economic downturns, there is a swing to the conservative. Hints of Victorian formality are pushing though as well, not least thanks to the influence of goth fashion in various forms.
I doubt we’ll see a sudden influx of Bermuda shorts or more extreme above-the-knee fashions for men, but if you don’t already have some linen, cotton, and bamboo to balance out the wool in your closet, it might be time to think about it.
Went on a harbor tour last night—a hidden harbor tour. Fun stuff. I’ve always loved the shipping industry, and almost ended up going in that direction at one point. Containerization is awesome.
The photos are mostly “scenic” rather than of the working harbor. Unfortunately, I am relying on my old Minolta until they replace my new camera, but I still got a few shots. There’s also some short video as part of the set on Flickr. Would be great to go out and do this with a serious telephoto lens at some point.
Although few people know this, you were supposed to be paying taxes for all that stuff you ordered online if you had it delivered to New York State. That whole renewal of a the “tax holiday” for the internet? Doesn’t matter if you live here (or many places, it turns out).
And to make sure that you scofflaws out there who aren’t reporting your online purchases don’t keep doing so, a new law actually makes retailers charge the tax. So when you buy from Amazon, you get sales tax tagged on your purchase. Amazon has sued the state over this tax (saying that it is a regulation of interstate commerce), but for now, I have a more practical issue. There’s nothing that says I can’t go over to Jersey or Connecticut to do my shopping, and no reason I wouldn’t have things delivered there. Indeed, for Amazon, it makes sense for books to go to my office (in Connecticut) rather than my home (in New York). But what happens if I then bring one of those books home?
Or, what about those who do not have a legitimate address in Connecticut? Can they have their orders sent to a rented address (Mail Boxes, etc., etc.) and pick it up once a month. This certainly makes sense to me: the sale occurred “in” Connecticut, and you carried goods you own back to New York. The lines of cars with New York plates at gas stations Fort Lee suggest that many people engage in interstate arbitrage. I’m reminded of the tax hole that exists (existed?) in Portland, Oregon, which is just across the border from Vancouver, Washington. One state is sales-tax-free, the other is income-tax-free, making for an interesting cross-border flow. Yet, there are indications that any such workaround may not be legal.
So, next question. Would it be legal to set up a reshipping service in one of these neighboring states? Could I set up an operation that picks up goods from Newegg’s Edison, NJ warehouse and delivers things around New York City if I wasn’t Newegg. In other words, rather than buying goods delivered from Newegg, I purchase them undelivered (EXW, as it were), and then contract a separate entity to pick them up and deliver them to me in New York. That just feels wrong to me—it seems like it is a fairly direct an obvious attempt to evade a tax by decoupling the purchase and the shipping. And yet, if I hire a taxi to take me from New York City out to an address in New Jersey where I had something delivered, that doesn’t seem that strange, and on a large enough purchase—say, a television or a diamond ring—it would save a great deal in tax. That holds even when it is a question of choosing a sales tax in White Plains (7.88%) or Paramus, NJ (6%, or free for clothing) over that in New York City (8.38%), leaving aside the online issue.
Or, is your tax home determined by where you actually claim residence? That was the case when we bought our car in New Jersey. Because we lived in New York City, we were required to pay NYC tax. But this seems to be specific to automotive purchases.
Anyway, I find the whole thing too confusing. Do I have to worry now that by having books delivered to my office from Amazon, I’m illegally evading tax? Or, should I start having all my friends’ books delivered to my office and charge a “handling fee”? And we haven’t even touched eBay yet.
As an aside, I don’t think that online sales tax is necessarily a bad thing, but requiring online retailers or consumers to keep track of the tax policies of states and municipalities around the world is just stupid. If this is the way we are going, we need a federal “online sales tax”—or better yet, a federal “VAT” for all sales.
New York is a great place to live, in large part because of the informal infrastructure: the texture of neighborhoods that deftly interweaves the past, the present, and the future; the “texture,” for want of a better word, that New Yorkers seem to love, and visitors often dismiss as “grime” or urban decay. Call it “GTA IV chic.”
On the other hand, there are times when I return home from another city, and really wish that some of that texture could be ironed out. I’ve already noted that I am vexed by New Yorkers’ love of the subway—we use public transportation more than any other city in the US, and yet, almost every other subway system I’ve ridden on is cleaner and has more frequent trains. Yes, watching the rats frolic provides some level of entertainment, and who doesn’t want to pick up bedbugs from the benches, but I’ll take the modern subways of Singapore or Barcelona any day. And it’s not just a matter of age, as the subway system in metropolitan Tokyo shows, by being old, yet clean and on-time. And hey, how about a high-speed train for the Atlanta-Boston Corridor? Acela doesn’t cut it.
It’s not surprising—though it is embarrassing—that John Gapper uses the trip between JFK and Manhattan as an example of just how bad the US’s infrastructure has become:
If anyone doubts the problems of US infrastructure, I suggest he or she take a flight to John F. Kennedy airport (braving the landing delay), ride a taxi on the pot-holed and congested Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and try to make a mobile phone call en route.That should settle it, particularly for those who have experienced smooth flights, train rides and road travel, and speedy communications networks in, say, Beijing, Paris or Abu Dhabi recently. The gulf in public and private infrastructure is, to put it mildly, alarming for US competitiveness.
That historical texture—”this is the way we’ve always done it”—is our bane. It doesn’t mean we do everything wrong. I heard a report from someone visiting from Philadelphia who was awed by the military precision of trash collection and snow removal. The increase in public safety over the last decade has been just short of miraculous. Nonetheless, if New York wants to remain a Global City, it can’t rest on its laurels… or on its history. Historical inertia only gets you so far.
Dear Assembly Member O’Donnell:
Thank you for taking the time to reply to my email. Naturally, I am extremely disappointed to see the proposal, supported here in my own city, die in Albany with your help.
In the email below, you note we “can do better.” I can’t disagree with that notion, nor with some of the flaws that you outline. You know as well as I do, however, that politics is never a matter of perfect policy: not what “can” be done, but what “will” be done. If this measure dies this week in Albany, we won’t see a reduction in congestion in this city for another decade or longer. That decade matters to my health and wellbeing, and to the health and wellbeing of my family.
I agree that despite the rhetoric, this does not do enough to improve public transportation in New York. We can do better. But this does not mean you should block a measure that will improve the health and livability of our city, merely because it is imperfect. Pass it now, collect federal funding, reduce downtown traffic, and build on that win.
This is a time for change, please help make that change happen.
Sincerely,
Alex Halavais
Why was the left so mean when it went after Larry Craig, among others? Why, some said, would those who described themselves as broadminded be so adverse to a wide stance among their politicians? They failed to see that the issue was not Mr. Craig’s sexual orientation, nor even his relationship with his family, but his advocacy for policies that his experiences would seem to completely contradict. In other words, he was a victim of his own political positions.
It doesn’t particularly bother me that Elliot Spitzer, as the New York Times is reporting, made use of the Emperors Club VIP (“Every client is an emperor… ” even if he’s only a governor), a high-priced prostitution service. The public loves a sex scandal, and no doubt this will be front-page news for some time. There are lots of reasons Spitzer should be held to the fire for this. First, he violated the law when he was charged with enforcing it. I think that alone is the biggest issue. The cops in our neighborhood rarely bother to stop for red lights, even when it’s pretty clear they aren’t on their way somewhere, and I’ve seen a lot of near-misses for that reason. You expect those sworn to uphold the law to apply that to themselves as well.
The second issue, whether he violated the trust of his spouse, is chiefly, in my opinion, a private matter. The public does have a right to judge the character of their leaders, but how someone relates to their family is really only the family’s business.
I suppose you could suggest that the money that was spent was a waste of his taxpayer-supplied salary. After all, these were not inexpensive professionals (though the claim of $5,500 an hour seems to contradict the agency’s price list). But I don’t think this has a lot of traction.
The biggest issue seems to be that Spitzer made prostitution rings a special target of prosecution. This, to me, raises a lot of pretty substantial issues: most pointedly whether this group received protection in trade for their services. Even the appearance of this besmirches his office, his reputation, and the reputation of the state of New York.
What it doesn’t change is my opinion that prostitution should be legalized. I am perfectly capable of condemning Spitzer for hypocrisy and for breaking the law, and at the same time recognize that what he did shouldn’t have been illegal. Too bad he couldn’t stand up for what he thought was right, either by not patronizing sex workers, or advocating for legal structures (i.e., legalization) that would provide them with fuller access to the law.
