Business

They give the Washington Dome a good clean


Good morning. Today is Friday. We’ll take a look at how Mayor Eric Adams’ focus on crime may have confounded his efforts to weather the pandemic and get the city back on track. But first, what’s developing on the Washington Arch?

It’s official. It’s so majestic. And, as architecture critic Paul Goldberger once wrote, “it pulls you to the square like a magnet.”

It’s the Washington Arch. And it also entails what the Parks Department calls “biological growth”.

Algae. Mold. Moss.

And invasive plants like reeds grow from seeds dropped by birds on mortars with blocks of white Tuckahoe marble. Even London’s plane trees could be 57 feet taller than the monument if they weren’t cut down like the saplings – which they have been, in the last week or so.

Rebecca Rosen, head of the Parks Department’s relic conservation team, said: ‘You can tell some of the roots are actually in the joints. “There is an entire ecosystem there. There are ants crawling around”.

And, for the next week, there was Rosen, riding the elevator with two co-workers, weeding, washing, and fixing.

They removed the vegetation and washed the monument from top to bottom, using mild soap and a low-pressure water jet to remove the moss without harming the stone. On Thursday, like a dentist drilling a hole, Rosen used a small grinder to excavate the damaged mortar before placing it in new masonry.

And on the ground floor, other workers with paint rollers are applying a completely but invisible graffiti fence, which Jonathan Kuhn, the Parks Department’s director of art and antiquities, said at the Washington nonprofit. Square Conservancy has contributed to the rise of graffiti during the pandemic.

The arch was once in such bad shape that it had to be fenced off to create distance between the falling masonry and people walking through the park. A full-scale restoration in the early 2000s replaced the roof and replaced the grout joints. It is now renewed every year by conservationists including Rosen, who said she has worked for the Parks Department for three years and has been “dirty most of the time.”

Kuhn says that cleaning up a monument is a bad thing. “It’s real work,” he says, “and you come across the full spectrum of humanity, from kindness to aggression. Some people are very interested. There’s a lot of thanks, and then there’s – it’s New York. There are many opinions. “


Weather

It’s another sunny day near the mid-’90s. At night, it’ll be cloudy in places, with temperatures dropping to a high of the 70s.

PARKING OUTSIDE

Valid until August 15 (Hang Thuan Festival).


Mayor Eric Adams seems constantly focused on crime. Perhaps that’s not surprising – he’s spent 22 years with the Police Department. But what a mayor says and does attracts attention. I asked my colleague Emma G. Fitzsimmons To assess.

Adams said early on that he wanted to be mayor with a swagger. Is that how he sees it?

There’s no doubt that the mayor has charisma and style. He seems to love his job and keeps a non-stop public schedule.

But I think one of the questions that is emerging is whether he is a good manager and focused on solving the big problems of the city. His poll numbers are not large – in the recent Spectrum News NY1 / Siena College, only 29 percent New Yorkers rated his performance as good or excellent. Some New Yorkers support Adams and want to give him time to solve crimes, but others are concerned about the path he is taking us.

Adams seems to emphasize crime. He ran to the crime scene. Has that increased the perception of just how unsafe the city is – and doesn’t that perception contradict crime statistics?

Violent crime has increased during the pandemic and is still higher than in 2019. But shootings and homicides have dropped this year, and crime is nowhere near what it was 30 years ago. Adams talks about crime almost every day and about the prevalence of guns, and I think that has contributed to the perception that the city is not safe.

The mayor also received criticism from progressive black leaders who think the tactics he is using to fight crime are too aggressive.

How does his criminal fixation complicate his push to get the city out of the pandemic and get workers back to their desks?

The mayor is telling us to take off our pajamas and go back to the office and take the subway, but he is also saying that he feels unsafe on the subway because there are so many homeless and sense of disorder. And he urges people to return to bars and restaurants and enjoy the city’s nightlife. But people need to feel safe to embrace those activities.

Was Adams a bit conflicted about the coronavirus?

Sometimes. He said the city is leading the nation in our response to the pandemic, and he has started a first-in-country program to deliver the Paxlovid antiviral at mobile testing sites. .

But he also quietly removed the city’s color-coded risk warning system that let people know when cases were on the rise and closed testing sites.

The mayor says the city needs to learn to live with Covid, and he has resisted reintroducing public health measures like wearing masks indoors to slow transmission. Seniors and people with disabilities are at higher risk of feeling left behind, and others are worried about the lingering effects of Covid.

One thing he has always been consistent about is fundraising for his 2025 re-election campaign. In six months of work, how much did he earn, and why now? Election Day 2025 is about 1,200 days away.

Adams raised a lot of money, more than $850,000, in his first six months in office, which is unusual for a new mayor. Almost half of those donations come from outside the city – he’s trying to raise the bar for his country.

The mayor wants to show his strength soon and ward off potential challengers. I think Adams very well understood the fact that he was the second Black mayor of New York City, and the first Black mayor, David Dinkins, did not win a second term.


METROPOLITAN . Diary

Dear Diary:

It was a hot summer night. I’m 22 years old, and the guy I’m dating has just returned home from a movie shoot in Berlin.

We fought over email during his absence, and the fight continued when he returned. We circled Washington Square Park for hours through an unremembered night, glued even more by tears and screams.

At 3am, he finished it while calling a taxi for me. Dazed, I dropped into the backseat, a cool, air-conditioned oasis.

When the taxi was speeding in the street, I lost it. The driver spent 20 minutes of the trip telling me why I shouldn’t be sad, that anyone who was mean to me would never make me cry like that.

He told me about his happy marriage and three young children, and when we got to my building he sat there with the clock off until I could laugh at a his jokes.

I knew I was home by then.

– Alyssa Shapiro

Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and Read more Metropolitan Diary here.




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