Park smoking ban smells funny
To The Editor:
I’m not a cigarette smoker, but what public safety purpose is achieved by banning cigarette smoking in New York City parks while actively soliciting for hundreds of food-vending carts and trucks to set up in the exact same parks, many of which are using toxic fuel for cooking and are running their diesel engines for 10 hours a day? There is far more pollution and smoke from one such truck than 10,000 cigarette smokers might cause in the same location.
Likewise, the Greenmarket in Union Square Park runs gasoline generators, as well as having the diesel engines of many trucks running all day while parked right inside the park. And the Holiday Markets that run huge fuel-powered generators for more than a month straight in various city parks — are their fumes supposed to be a healthy addition to the experience of our public parks?
Just wondering where the consistency is in such a policy.
Why is it artists — who by law cannot even use a battery-powered light — that must be eliminated? Could the answer be that the Parks Department gets $100 million a year from concessions and food trucks, but nothing from cigarette smokers or First Amendment-protected artists?
Robert Lederman
Lederman is president, ARTIST (Artists’ Response to Illegal State Tactics)
Teachable moment for Black
To The Editor:
Re “Parents see red after Black makes birth-control quip” (news article, Jan. 20):
It’s obvious from the recent verbal gaffes of new Schools Chancellor Cathie Black that she is in a new culture, that of parents and educators, and that while she is used to a quick-paced and perhaps clever-tongued corporate milieu, she doesn’t understand the sensibilities or lingo of her new environment, yet. By her accounts, she was not serious.
While just listening might be a challenge, until she knows the language of her new job, she should lay low on her metaphors and jokes.
Tequila Minsky
Gold was one of a kind
To The Editor:
Re “Ed Gold, C.B. 2 elder statesman, dies at age 84” (obituary, Sept. 16, 2010):
Ed Gold considered me his oldest friend. We met in third grade at P.S. 70 on Weeks Ave. in The Bronx. We stayed in the same class together during elementary school and graduating from P.S. 117/Joseph H. Wade Junior High School. We attended DeWitt Clinton High together for one semester until residential geography separated us. Ed transferred to Taft High School and I went on to Christopher Columbus High. I live in Austin, Texas, and did not hear of his passing.
Ed was a wonderful friend and a wonderful man. One of a kind. Ed, I will miss you!
Gabriel Nossov
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