Tag Archives: good samaritan

Letters to the editor, Mar. 28

Cartoon by Jim Meadows

Pricing won’t help with congestion

To the editor:

Apparently April Fool’s Day is Judgment Day for congestion fees here in New York City. It is the day, following Mr. de Blasio on WNYC, when wisdom will be brought to bear and traffic congestion will be made a thing of the past.

Unfortunately, while congestion fees may help the cash-strapped MTA, the practice will do nothing for congestion… and we all know it!

The reason: Traffic congestion was not caused by a cash shortage in the MTA. Congestion is an above-ground problem, and no amount of MTA money, and no amount of on-time public service will get at its causes. The first cause was the deliberate increase years ago in the number of yellow cabs. The second cause is the number and sizes of Uber and Lyft vehicles that found their way onto our streets — 100,000 if current figures are correct. And finally, though not causal, the introduction of bike lanes has squeezed cars, cabs, vans, trucks, limos and buses into an already crowded center-of-the-road.

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Angel earns her City Wings (and a $100 tip from customer)

Eliana Polanco holds up a thank you note and $100 given to her by a woman she’d tracked down to return a handbag left behind at City Wings.

Eliana Polanco holds up a thank you note and $100 given to her by a woman she’d tracked down to return a handbag left behind at City Wings.

By Sabina Mollot

The mensch of the month award officially goes to Eliana Polanco, a cashier at First Avenue restaurant City Wings, who went above and beyond her duties in order to return a forgotten handbag to a customer.

William Hsu, a manager at the restaurant, contacted Town & Village to share the story which began on Sunday evening, April 3, when a customer left her handbag behind. It was soon found by Polanco, who then stayed over an hour past her shift, which ended at 11 p.m. to see if the customer would return. She didn’t yet know who the bag belonged to, but when no one came to claim it that evening, Polanco rifled through it in search of identification.

She then learned that the bag’s owner’s name was Lauren and she lived on 18th Street, so after her shift at the restaurant, at the corner of East 20th Street, Polanco walked over to the apartment building. Once there, however, she saw that it was under renovation and all the tenants had been moved to a midtown hotel.

“That’s when Eliana decided to come back to the store to wait for the customer because Lauren had also left both of her cell phones inside the bag,” Hsu said.

Sure enough, a frantic Lauren did come back, asking if her bag was there. Polanco said it was and also confessed to having had to look through it.

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Letters to the Editor, Feb. 12

Cartoon by Jim Meadows

Cartoon by Jim Meadows

Bare floors create worse noise in converted apts.

Kudos to “Whatever happened to the carpet rule?”! (letter, T&V, Feb. 5)

I would like to add that when apartments are sub-divided and the dining area and another three feet becomes the new living room area and when there are several people in that area (as is often the case), the noise volume is exponentially increased because of the small enclosed space and the echo created when there is no carpeting.

It is sad and unfair that we (I am a lifelong tenant) are unable to enjoy peaceful days or nights in our apartments anymore. I am surrounded both next door and above, with new tenants who either stomp all of the time, drag furniture across the bedroom floor (between midnight and 3 a.m.) and/or who frequently have noisy company, in the “mini living area” during the day and late at night.  And I won’t even mention the constant loud slamming of the apartment doors!

In fairness, I have called security several times and they did speak to the offending tenants and remind them that they are supposed to have carpeting as well as that the noise level was unacceptable. One time, when the stomping and noise level did not abate, security retuned again and spoke with them. They also assured me that they would file the requisite reports.

Although I am a lifelong tenant, I have had several apartment inspections, which I was told were normal protocol – to verify that we did not put up an illegal wall, which we had not.

How are these other apartments not having the same inspection, including for carpeting?

Perhaps the solution is for management to inspect new tenant apartments for compliance and install commercial carpet remnants (cheap enough) when a violation of the carpeting rule is discovered. Since many tenants are transient, they are not motivated to comply with the rules, if there is no penalty imposed.

Name withheld, ST

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