Rich Mintz  

I’m reading the detailed press release about Governor Andrew Cuomo’s State of the State address, and I have to say I’m impressed. (No, I’m not watching the video; who the hell has time for that? but you can, if you want, here.) I was prepared to be impressed, based on the buzz, but I’m quite a bit more impressed than I expected.

The guy has turned out to be a better communicator than I expected, a better political operator than I expected (hello! gay marriage in New York!), and a much more committed progressive than I expected. I suppose the latter should have been expected — he was quite progressive at HUD — but after a few years in the governor’s office (or “on the second floor in Albany,” as I recently learned the insiders say), he’s really hitting his stride.

This isn’t a PlaNYC 2030, but there’s still a lot of meat in here — “no kid hungry,” “Office for New Americans,” economic development, energy efficiency, public service training. He proposed building an enormous convention center in Queens, for God’s sake, and freeing up the windswept Javits zone on the West Side for dense mixed-use development, patching a hole in the city and bringing organic life to a part of Manhattan that’s gone artificial. In a year in which my home state of California seems mired in budgetary troubles that seem they may never end, it’s exciting to see the governor of my adopted state reaching so high.

On the way back from DC to New York last week, I took the iPhone map’s advice and headed up Georgia Avenue into Silver Spring rather than cutting east along New York Avenue. And I hit so much traffic at the Beltway that rather than circling around that way, I continued up Colesville Road, thinking I’d cut east somewhere (Laurel? Columbia?) and back to the Parkway.

I didn’t stop in downtown Silver Spring, but I did drive through. I haven’t been to Silver Spring in more than a decade.  Obviously downtown Silver Spring has tarted itself up nicely in that time, and in the best light, with its prettiest face to the camera, it now looks to compete with Bethesda for the role of queen of Montgomery County.

I kept expecting traffic to get lighter, but as I headed north further and further without any slackening, getting more and more off course, I lost heart, and decided I’d cut east anyway. And on the spur of the moment, I decided to bypass Baltimore entirely, and turned south on 97 toward Annapolis and the Eastern Shore route. You wouldn’t think it, but once you’re out of DC and moving, travel times via I-95 and via US 13 are roughly comparable, give or take half an hour, and the Eastern Shore route is more interesting.

Annapolis is always worth a stop, and so I stopped. When I lived in DC, I used to drive to Annapolis for a couple of hours just to escape. People who don’t know DC don’t realize that despite being along the “Eastern Seaboard,” the city itself is a zillion (well, like 2) hours from the beach, and heading to a little historic seaport city, with a boat dock and a maritime culture and the Naval Academy and so forth, is a nice little getaway. And so I made my rounds of the places I remember from past trips to Annapolis, like the City Dock Cafe (where I bought a new T-shirt to replace the ancient one that’s falling to pieces), and then got back on the road, heading over the Naval Academy Bridge and east to the Bay Bridge.

On the islands crossing over to the Eastern Shore, I remembered the place I used to stop for crab cakes, but I couldn’t think of its name, so I wondered if I’d find it. I did — it’s Holly’s, serving holidaymakers and locals since 1950 and still very much in business, and looking more or less the same as it did when I was last there in about 1997. I’m not a big crab eater in general, but when you go to the Eastern Shore, you sort of have to, and I did.

The drive up US 13 is so different from the turnpike, passing actual farmhouses and actual farms on a four-lane highway for most of the way, until you cut east through the most awful first-growth suburbia to Delaware Route 1 to the Delaware Memorial Bridge. I had Rdio playing and the time passed much more pleasantly than the turnpike drive does.

From the Delaware to New York, you’re back on the regular route — but now that I’ve tried 295 in place of the New Jersey Turnpike, I don’t think I’ll ever go back. If you can get almost all the way to New Brunswick on a regular Interstate highway, within easy reach of towns and diners and services, rather than in the hermetically sealed travel tube that is the Turnpike, why wouldn’t you?

All in all, with all the delays and all the stops, and a stop for coffee and a stop for crab cakes and a stop for gas (at a gas station in the middle of nowhere near the Maryland-Delaware line, where I was the only customer not on a ginormous motorcycle), and a stop for a milkshake at a New Jersey diner, it was still only a six-hour trip, and even via turnpike with no stops at all it’s hard to do in less than four and a half.  So I think I’ll try this route again.

Annapolis photos:

New Jersey photos:

It was a nail-biter for sure; 50,000 New Yorkers gathered around their streaming video players late into the night on Friday watching the proceedings in the Senate live, and hundreds of thousands more compulsively reloaded their browsers, and another million or two watched NY1 and CNN. But at the end of the evening, something amazing had occurred: a Republican-led State Senate, in a close vote that turned on the decisions of a handful of Republicans, voted to extend the social sanction of marriage to New York’s gay and lesbian citizens, bringing us a little closer to equal treatment under the law.

“Activist judges” didn’t have anything to do with it, and this wasn’t a matter of Democratic political horse-trading, either. Most of the money in this fight came from Republicans, as did a good portion of the back-room lobbying (notably from Mike Bloomberg, who had no problem at all putting himself on the line for equality, and has proven himself yet again to be a mensch).

It’s clear from Michael Barbaro’s post-mortem in the Times that even back in 2009, there were Republican legislators who had no problem with gay marriage, but who voted against it out of political expediency. This isn’t news, but it’s nice to see it stated so unequivocally. It’s also clear that among the many people who helped make this happen, three people played an outsized role.

One was Governor Andrew Cuomo, who threw his considerable political weight behind the issue and was willing to invest himself personally in legislative advocacy of both the institutional and personal varieties. In contrast to 2009, he insisted on a tight coalition, and a tight coalition was what he got, and that made much of the difference. (We learn yet again: old-fashioned political organizing matters.) Far from hurting Andrew Cuomo, strong advocacy on this issue will only prove to have helped him politically, and not just with gay people; he’s demonstrated a willingness to cross the aisle, to insist on the issues that matter, and to use his political power to ensure they get considered.

The second was Mike Bloomberg, in this context quite a bit more than nominally a Republican (he’s the single biggest donor to Republican State Senators), who was blunt and eloquent by turns, spending more time in Albany this year than we had any right to expect him to, despite having nothing personally or politically to gain here, at least in the short term. The definition of a mensch.

And the third was Brian Ellner, head of HRC’s New York marriage task force. Ellner ran what by all accounts was an extremely professional two-pronged campaign. On the one hand, he did a better job in six months of mobilizing public figures (from all over the political and cultural spectrum) to voice their support for marriage equality than any other group had managed to do in ten years. And on the other, he was responsive and effective in the field. Barbaro credits Ellner personally, and the field campaign he ran, with turning Joseph Addabbo from a “nay” into a “yea”; it’s not inconceivable that without that piece, the whole puzzle might have fallen apart. So thanks, Brian, for what you’ve done for New Yorkers.

The true heroes here, though, are the Republican Senators who cast off the demands of politics and voted their consciences. A special thanks to Senators Kruger, McDonald, Alesi, Addabbo, Grisanti, and Saland, who might easily have come down on the other side, but weighed the issues against their personal vanity and voted the right way. Senators Grisanti and Saland, each in his own way, did New York proud with their speeches on the floor Friday night, and they in particular should be remembered.

Shelley Bernstein at the Brooklyn Museum has appealed for our help with a fascinating project: Historypin is building a localized database of historical photos, pinned to a map of the world, and they need our help marking the location where their historical Brooklyn photos were taken.  So be part of this crowdsourced project — take 30 seconds and look over these historical photos of Brooklyn and see if you can suggest a location for them.

The “religious protection” issue has raised its head with regard to the New York marriage equality bill at the eleventh hour (it’s more like 11:58 at this point). And, with all due respect to religious institutions (and respect is due them), it’s a manufactured objection. It’s a red herring. Marriage equality is about civil marriage, and about religious marriage in the context of any religious denomination who wants to go there. Period.

No member of the clergy, or denomination, has ever been obligated to perform a religious wedding under any circumstances in this country; as just the most obvious example, Catholic churches routinely decline to perform religious marriages for couples whom they believe are not worthy of the Catholic sacrament of marriage. As they should! (Or, rather, in my opinion, of course they shouldn’t. But that’s a doctrinal argument to be had within the church, not in the statehouse, and I certainly shouldn’t be able to make them.)

As a person who contributes to society and pays taxes and etc. etc., I’m tired of having my basic rights held up by the irrational fears of the most fearful, “other”-averse people in New York. Let them live as tribally and narrowly as they like in their houses and in their churches, but when they come out into the public square, equality should be the rule. And thankfully, increasingly it is.

Just wanted to speak up yet again (as I have on Twitter) on behalf of New York State Senators Jim Alesi and Roy McDonald, the Republicans who have come out in favor of marriage equality in New York State.

Say what you will about political motives, these two are the only Senate Republicans (so far) who won’t be looked back on with shame in 25 years. (And what’s wrong with politics as a motivating factor?) On marriage equality, unlike many other issues, there’s a right side and a wrong side.

Interracial marriage was illegal across much of the United States during my lifetime (though thankfully not in California, where I lived). That prohibition and the arguments made to protect it seem as ridiculous now as the ravings of the anti-gay lobby will sound in 25 years (indeed, sound now to most people under 50).

But all the culture panic in the world won’t stop the right thing from happening. We already know how this story will end, in a country founded on equality and on freedom of worship, in a state with 300 years of history as a multicultural refuge; we just don’t know exactly when. I’m betting on “soon.”

Is it that the national market is incrementally smaller and tighter? Or that the population is incrementally smarter? Or a bit less cowed by corporatism? Or just a bit more demanding, in environmental and quality-of-life terms? Is it the cultural affection for London’s grand food halls? I don’t know what it is driving it exactly (although I have some thoughts below), but it’s clear that the quality of groceries is higher in London than in the United States.

I’m not necessarily talking about the quality of provisions at the high end. Certainly the produce and meat at Fairway, or Whole Foods — or, for that matter, a large, well-stocked Publix or Ralphs — rivals anything commonly available in London.  What I’m talking about is the quality available to the great middle market across the country, from the four or five national mass-market purveyors.  It seems that the average Briton has access to far better (fresher, more wholesome, better-tasting) food, and especially prepared food, than the average American.

In the United States, once in three months I might come across a store-brand prepared (i.e., perishable) dish from Kroger or Safeway or A&P that I found worth mention, and maybe once a month a boxed or canned (dry-goods) product that’s interesting.  And specialty grocers like Trader Joe’s score better.  But everything I ate this month from Waitrose, Sainsbury’s, and even Tesco was excellent: good-tasting, well-labeled, made from wholesome ingredients, free of artificial preservatives, sustainably sourced and proud of it. The prepared Indian food and fresh pasta sauce I bought from Sainsbury’s (and from a limited-stock city centre store, mind you) were both restaurant-quality, and Waitrose’s baked goods were on a par with their artisanal equivalents costing three times as much.  (And don’t get me started about Waitrose, the only mass-market supermarket I’ve ever seen to rival Harris Teeter for quality and visual experience.)

This isn’t the Harrods food hall, or even Marks & Spencer’s, that I’m discussing; it’s the ordinary supermarket chains that feed the overwhelming majority of the British public day in and day out.

What makes the difference?  Here are some thoughts:

• Because there’s a single national market — and everywhere on the island of Britain is within delivery distance — it becomes cost-effective to offer the full range of products to every community in the country.  It’s also less necessary to use preservatives, which means (on the downside) that fresh prepared food in the UK lasts only three or four days rather than the week or more that’s common in the US.
• It’s clear that the culture is more accepting of sustainability and authenticity as a value worth paying for — although to be honest, the prices of the sorts of food I tend to buy (i.e., excluding the heavily processed grain-based items such as sugar breakfast cereals that are subsidized in the US) did not seem significantly different here.
• This may be my urban bias talking, but most people here, even in the cities, seem to be culturally closer to the land than the average American is; certainly there is a larger share of the population in the UK than in the US that is a generation or less removed from rural or village life, and even in the cities, the health of the countryside seems to be treated as a community value to be respected.

Whatever it is, I’m sorry to be going back home. I eat very well indeed in New York, but I do have to shop carefully (I almost never set foot in any of New York’s four largest grocery chains) and it costs me.

I don’t know what possesses someone like Brooklyn’s State Senator Marty Golden to undertake to curtail the civil rights of hundreds or thousands of New Yorkers, by introducing a bill to enjoin the state from treating a certain class of legally married New Yorkers as married under the law.

It’s not like he said “gosh, you know, I have mixed feelings about marriage equality, so I’m going to arrange to be out of town when we vote on this or that.”  It’s not even like he said “you know, I don’t like gay people, so I’m going to lobby my colleagues to vote in this way or that.”  No. He spent staff time and state money to conceive of, draft, and introduce a bill whose sole purpose is to use the power of the state to take de facto protections away from people who currently have them.  He took an affirmative action whose only purpose and only outcome is to hurt actual families — not theoretical members of a theoretical class, but actual New York families.  (Hey, Marty, try getting out of the house sometime. There are gay people in Bay Ridge now and everything.)

This isn’t about saving money, or clarifying the law; it’s about hurting people to score political points. Don’t stand for it! Call Marty’s office at 718-238-6044 and let him know he’s made a mistake.  More here and here.

So spring is here, more or less, and everyone is out on the street today in New York in as little clothing as they can get away with. Unfortunately it’s not quite as warm out there as it looks — as I type this, in early afternoon, it’s in the upper 40s — so everyone’s chillier than they expected to be.

I went out right after I woke up, to buy butter (don’t ask), in shorts, and I was really sorry I did — I barely made it to the end of the block.

Still, spring! Enjoy it while it lasts, because it’ll be disgustingly hot and humid before you know it.

From today’s NYT Real Estate section:

A few months ago, Michael Bolla gave up his independent brokerage, Luxury Lofts & Homes, to join Prudential Douglas Elliman because he was about to handle some large developments and was not willing to invest the money to upgrade the servers for his Web site to handle the increased volume in his listings.

“If you have a 120-unit development on a small guy’s Web site,” Mr. Bolla said, “it will crash.”

Um, excuse me? For $50 a month, Pair Networks (for instance) will give you 240 monthly gigabytes of transfer on a redundant network that I bet you is more reliable than whatever Prudential Douglas Elliman is using. You can sign up with Pair online right now, and it’ll be ready for you in an hour! And capacity and reliability in the marketplace scale up very quickly from there, much faster than cost.

If the brokerage you’re about to list your house with runs its own servers,you’ve picked the wrong broker — they’re spending money on in-house infrastructure they should be spending on marketing your house.

I’m not surprised to hear people blaming their business decisions on technology, but I am surprised to see the Times passing it along unevaluated, even in a vanity story about New York real estate.

It reminds me of this gem, which I see every time I log into AT&T’s website:

Excuse me? My “connection speed” has nothing to do with why I’m sitting here waiting for your (apparently) underdesigned, underpowered authentication infrastructure to log me in. Didn’t your granny teach you not to lie?