This is a big deal folks.  Look what I just read in my inbox (it actually arrived yesterday):

Tomorrow the New York City Franchise and Review Commission (FCRC) will hold a public hearing regarding Verizon’s entrance into the New York City Cable Television market. On April 29, 2008 Deputy Mayor Lieber and Commissioner Cosgrave of the Department of Information and Technologies (DoITT) announced an agreement with Verizon to offer cable service throughout the City of New York. Currently, an overwhelming majority of New York City residents have only a single choice in cable television providers. If approved, the agreement would require Verizon to offer cable service to all residences in New York City, potentially establishing a competitive marketplace in an industry that has been dominated by single providers and a lack of competition since its creation. We encourage you to attend tomorrow’s public hearing taking place at NYC College of Technology, 285 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY. The hearing begins at 3:00pm and is anticipated to run until at least 6:00pm. As with all public hearings, feel free to attend and testify regarding your concerns.

I’m no fan of Verizon the company, but I think the FiOS product is a good one, and the rigor of a full cable franchise agreement would hold Verizon to the same standard as today’s cable providers in NYC (Time Warner, RCN and Cablevision).  This would force Verizon to serve all NYC neighborhoods, not just the more lucrative ones, and would ostensibly also compel them to provide public access programming carriage.

I’d love to have the better HD picture and faster broadband speeds that FiOS provides.  Perhaps more importantly, I’d love to see Time Warner Cable match those offerings, thus allowing me to stay with them.

I imagine a full city-wide franchise will anger Time Warner and Cablevision, who now serve mutually exclusive territory (Cablevision in the Bronx and Southern/Eastern Brooklyn; Time Warner everywhere else) because the previous franchise areas and awards prevented them from wiring the whole city.  And they’d have a valid point.  Let’s see what happens.  Maybe they’ll each get the opportunity to serve a city-wide area as well.  More competition.  Something the cable industry needs.

Florent is closing.  I could have predicted it.  I still find it sad.  The place that transformed the Meat Packing District from no-go zone to hip, fun precinct is now, apparently, seeing its monthly rent rise from $5K a month to $60K.  No, that’s not a typo.  The irony, of course, is that the landlords wouldn’t even be able to get their current rent were it not for this pioneer. 

I’ve been going there since it opened in the 80s.  It was a place filled with beautiful people, and yet friendly and devoid of ’tude.  A combination that is increasingly rare now.  One of my best friends took his wife there on their first date.  I’ve taken 20+ years of friends and girlfriends, not to mention my wife

The growing list of disappearing, important Manhattan fixtures is becoming too large to maintain.  My childhood and young adulthood memories are being plundered.

Florent is going out in style though. For details, see The Gothamist.

Ever since I was a high scool student programming on a Commodore 64, I thought that the New York City Subway system could benefit greatly from technology.  All the way back then I tried, in vain, to create an electronic version of the Subway map and dreamed of a more high-tech system.

So imagine my surprise and geeky delight, when last Thursday morning I boarded a Queens-bound N train at Union Square that was made up of what, I have since learned, are called the R160 subway car.  From the outside, these look almost identical to the cars used on the L train (which I belive are R143 cars), but inside there’s something much different.

The R163s have special electronic strip maps…every station on the map is displayed via LEDs, rather than simple light bulbs on printed maps:

Take a closer look at the train route and destination info in the panel to the left of the map:

That square is actually a video screen, and it displays messages and full motion video announcments from the MTA alternating with the route info.

Anyway, as the train moves along its route, the station that the train just left disappears off the map, and everything scrolls to the left.  The train shows the next 10 stops (or the current one and nine more), as well as several “further stops” and the very last stop (if necessary).  It also tells you how many stops away each station is (and for the “further stops” that has to be calculated):

How cool is that?  By the way, I hear it’s now illegal to take photographs in the subway.  Oh well.  Here are links to some other lawbreakers who took photos and videos of the R160 and “FIND” (Flexible Information and Navigation Display — the official name of the electronic map):


NYCSubway.org Photos

'>
'>

Forget about Web 2.0 (really, forget it, it’s a dumb name).  Bigger stuff is coming over IP (BSCoIP?).  And it’s about time for cable broadband in New York City to get faster, cheaper, or both.  Time Warner Cable has an excellent product and service in RoadRunner, but it’s starting to show its age.  Downstream speeds run at (a theoretical maximum of) 5Mbps, with upstream speeds of only 384Kbps.  RoadRunner Premium, running at 8Mbps down/512Kbps up, costs an extra $20/month.

While these speeds are pretty fast, CableVision trumps them: Optimum Online’s standard service runs at 8Mbps down and its new Optimum “Boost” service, available for a surcharge of between $9.95 and $14.95, claims speeds of up to 30Mbps down / 2Mpbs up.  CableVision doesn't offer service in TWC's franchise areas, so they're not technically a competitor.  But service that fast will generate demand that Time Warner will find unstoppable.

Worse yet, even with bundle discounts, RoadRunner costs $44.95/month.  While I’d never trade it for its archrival Verizon DSL, that service costs only $14.95/month for 768Kbps service.  If Verizon’s FiOS fiber optic service ever gets pulled through New York City’s conduits (which, you should know, are owned by a company called Empire City Subway, itself a division of Verizon), Time Warner Cable had better watch out.  FiOS offers a 15Mbps down / 2Mbps up service for the same $44.95 monthly charge.

Time Warner Cable’s also got to watch out for its traditional cable TV service as well; FiOS itself offers a digital cable service with a nearly identical channel lineup, equivalent video on demand capabilities, HDTV and DVR options.  The “expanded basic” service is only $34.95/month when bundled with its broadband service and $39.95 otherwise.  Compare that to Time Warner’s DTV service at a net cost of $53.95/month when combined with RoadRunner.

Rounding out the so-called “triple play” of broadband Internet, digital video, and VoIP phone service, Time Warner’s Digital Phone service costs $15 more per month more than Vonage's unlimited plan and that’s without voice mail.

While these premiums may be helping TWC today, they're going to create a huge backlash for them later.  It’s time for them to revamp their services and pricing.  They should also consider seriously a build-out of their system to once and for all get rid of the coax and pull the fiber all the way on-premises.  Yes, it will cost them a lot.  But without such a move, Verizon will eventually eclipse them as the internet provider of choice.  And once video programming is fully IP based, it’s only the Internet pipe that will matter.

On the northeast corner of West 8th Street and 6th Avenue (as in the opening lyrics to the Rolling Stones’ “Dance (Pt. 1)”), for years and years, there was a trusty old-fashioned neighborhood drugstore, complete with a soda counter, called Whelan Drug.  For a long time, Whelan Drug was 8th Street to me.  Eventually, like everything on 8th Street, Whelan went out of business.  Alas, that was to be my first experience with loss of the seemingly permanent.

Anyway, if memory serves, the store stood vacant for quite a while.  And then in came a new tenant.  Whelan was a hard act to follow, but its successor was pretty good: the first outpost of the Upper West Side’s hot dog mecca, Gray’s Papaya (excellent photo here).  I used to take the subway up to 72nd Street to eat those hot dogs, and now I no longer had to.  Yum!

If you’re not from New York, you might know Gray’s anyway as it’s been featured in films and television.  For some reason, the only movie example I can think of is a really silly film with Matthew Perry and Selma Hayek called “Fools Rush In.”  Perry’s character moves to Vegas and Hayek’s sends him a care package with a bunch of Gray’s dogs topped with sauerkraut.  Uh huh, sure; it’s Gray’s, not Katz’s.  The latter traditionally let you “send a salami to your boy in the army” (in New York, that rhymes). But Gray’s doesn’t ship; they don’t even deliver.  HBO’s “Sex and the City,” had a much more accurate portrayal of Gray’s featuring the 8th Street location in an episode where Carrie hits the place for a snack after a late night out.  As usual, Sex and the City got the true NY experience down pat.  I miss that show.  Macho of me, eh?

But I digress.  Gray’s Papaya, as the name would imply, pretends to be famous for its various tropical fruit-derived beverages, but is in fact truly famous for its hot dogs.  It’s also infamous for its awkward diction and grammar, with signs asserting that the hot dogs are “better than filet mignon” and a while back assuring its customers that “not all hot dogs are not all alike.”  In some languages, double-negatives actually have the same meaning as single negatives.  These guys are working hard to get English in that linguistic family.

Anyway, the hot dogs really are terrific.  One reason is that they’re grilled and not boiled (unlike the Sabrette stand variety that we used to call “dirty water dogs”); another is, I think, that the hot dogs are seasoned with paprika and a few other ingredients a little more sophisticated than MSG.  Another reason the place is so good is that it’s quintessentially New York, in the same way the subway is.  That is, people of all economic strata are in there, dining next to each other while standing, sharing the same humongous mustard dispenser, with a couple weeks’ encrusted residue at the end of the spigot.  Get the picture?  It’s not pretty, but it’s real.  I think the grit may be more important than the paprika.

Meanwhile, back uptown, where the world is broken down into West Side and East Side, Papaya King has long been the East Side rival to Gray’s.  They make a good dog too, and they’ve been around since 1932, making them quite a bit older than Gray’s.  And yes, you can check out the history of the place at www.papayaking.com.

The funny part is that the King, in addition to Gray’s, has extended his empire to the Village!  A spanking new Papaya King has opened at the southwest corner of 14th Street and 7th Avenue.  I haven’t gone yet, but I will.  And last night, I noticed a new Papaya-come-lately called Papaya Dog, on the corner of W 4th Street and 6th Avenue.  Not sure I’ll patronize such a derivative competitor.

So what’s with all the hot dog places in the Village?  Could it be a response to inflation of the average entrée price in the neighborhood?  Could it be all the newcomers to downtown are trying to make the neighborhood more like what they left behind uptown?

Or could it be history repeating itself?  Way back, in the 1970’s, on 8th Street, about half a block down and across the street from where Gray’s is now, stood Orange Julius.  I know that “Julius” still exists in other cities and towns, but it used to be a New York joint (to me, it's a bit like H&H Bagels leaving town to set up shop in South Bend, Indiana, but again, I digress).  The fact is that 8th Street has hot dogs and fruit drinks in its blood, and a revival of the hot dog tradition in the neighborhood is just fine by me.  One day, maybe Whelan Drug will make a comeback.

A reunion of sorts took place today.  Along with my wife and 7-month old son, I joined two of my high school classmates, their kids and their husbands, at the playground in Peter Cooper Village.  The kids had fun (right now, my son thinks anything with people is fun) and the adults, who have stayed in contact over the years but are not super-close, caught up with each other.

The three of us grew up in Manhattan, and the three of us want to continue living here.  But the truth is that my two classmates cannot stay, nor could I but for my parents and landlords being one and the same.  I feel it reasonable to say that we are all successful, and were able to withstand the real estate inflation of the 80s and early 90s.  We recognize we need to spend more, even in inflation-adjusted dollars, to live in a city that is far cleaner and safer than it was when we grew up here.

But the last four years or so have put Manhattan, and indeed many parts of Brooklyn and Queens, out of reach financially for most people with families.  Between rent or mortgage and maintenance, not to mention schooling, New York has become the increasingly exclusive domain of the ultra-wealthy.  The alarmist rhetoric of ten years ago and more has proven uncannily accurate.

Even Peter Cooper Village, where my erstwhile classmates live (and one grew up) and Stuyvesant Town have become expensive.  Originally established as affordable housing for veterans of World War II and forever places known for their long waiting lists (up to 15 years) and low rents, Cooper and Stuy Town have effectively converted into luxury rental developments.  I didn’t even see one of the famously friendly squirrels.

In general, I support free market economics and am not a fan of protectionist policies.  But I know full well that this city’s historical strength has been its sometimes almost overwhelming diversity, both of ethnic and economic strata.  And if New York becomes the exclusive domain of the moneyed class, its very fabric, its core, will disintegrate.

Indulge my perhaps Utopian analysis, but I believe New York has bred an ambitious, high-functioning, successful citizenry precisely because many of its members started with little and lived side-by-side with those who had more.    Many, though certainly not all, of the wealthy in this city have traditionally encouraged and admired those with high ambition and achievement and little monetary means.  That symbiosis has been the story of this city and is what has made it invincible.

Invincible.  Through gang wars, through unimaginable political corruption, through a fiscal crisis in the 1970s that made everyone want to leave and almost destroyed a now century-old subway system.  Invincible.  Through every horrible facet of what happened here when the planes hit the buildings and attacked all of us.  Invincible even through the political dissonance that has followed those attacks.

But perhaps New York will not be invincible in the face of its own success.  A success that makes people want to live here who might once have been afraid even to visit.  A success that brings the city, in fact, to evict its champions, its advocates, its lifeblood.  Surely we are smart enough to reconcile our success with our strength, our attractiveness with its contributors and architects.

Surely we can do better than outright self-betrayal.

Seventh Avenue South (the extension of Seventh Avenue below Eleventh Street) is a funny, crooked street.  It was actually created specifically to provide a “cut and cover” connecting corridor for the West Side IRT subway (today’s 1, 2, 3, and 9 lines) between the southern end of Seventh Avenue and the northern end of Varick Street.  (Some excellent background info is available here.)

When the street was built in 1917, buildings in its way were demolished, or cut right through.  If you look at all carefully, you can see evidence of Seventh Avenue South’s disruption to the buildings around it.  To this day, many buildings that face the street are of odd triangular shapes, and some of them are even “shaved” at their corners.  Since the street proceeds on a diagonal, it intersects with streets that run perpendicular to each other, creating awkward intersections all along its route.  Most businesses that open on Seventh Avenue South don’t stay open for very long, and I attribute this to the street’s challenge to simple navigation by pedestrians.

One notable exception to the perennial business failures on the street is the Village Vanguard, one of Jazz’s most important landmarks, which first opened at its present location in 1935, 18 years after Seventh Avenue South was created.  The basement location and odd triangular shape forced on it by Seventh Avenue South have, for whatever reason, created an atmosphere that seems to nurture Jazz music and the audience’s appreciation of hearing and seeing it performed live.

My wife Lauren took me there for my birthday last week to hear Bill Charlap, a superlative Jazz pianist, and his trio colleagues, Peter and Kenny Washington, on bass and drums respectively (no relation).  The music was great, but hearing it at the Vanguard made it even better.  Looking at photos of Jazz greats adorning the walls (including a great one of Charlap playing mid-note with his ear to the piano) while the music’s playing, and knowing that they all played there, is just a great experience.

The Internet is actually a wonderful way to discover the prominence and continuity that is the Village Vanguard.  Try doing a Google search on “Live at the Village Vanguard” and you’ll see how many Jazz artists have performed and recorded there.  (By the way, Joe Lovano’s “Quartets Live at the Village Vanguard” album is terrific.)  If you click through the search results, you might come across this album cover of “John Coltrane Live at the Village Vanguard Again!” which was recorded in 1966 (the year I was born):

The clothes may be dated, but I can tell you that the outside of the club looks exactly the same today as it does in that photo.  There’s nothing more exciting than visiting places that persist in this way, as ongoing businesses.  I think it provides the closest possible thing there is to time travel.

If you’ve never been to the Vanguard, you should go (even if you don’t live in New York).  It may have been there for 70 years, but I worry that New York’s real estate market hyperdrive could one day spell the venue’s demise.  Make sure you experience its history before it becomes history, or else hope for a crash in the real estate market.

The headlines tonight make it look almost certain that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s board will vote to approve the New York Jets’ bid to build a stadium over the LIRR rail yards in Manhattan’s West 30s.  I am extremely pleased with this probable outcome and I think the Bloomberg administration was right to push hard for it.  Many people I know, and with whom I often agree on matters of city politics and policy, do not share my view on this issue and have been (and will be) very surprised by it.  What follows is a first attempt at explaining why I think the stadium initiative is good for New York and for New Yorkers.

Most importantly, New York City needs a convention center that equals or exceeds in size that of other major cities.  From attending industry conferences around the U.S., many of which are very far from New York, I can tell you that Javits is a laughing stock in comparison to its counterparts in other cities.  Besides gnawing at my innate New York snobbery and assumption that New York should have the biggest and best everything, this disparity infuriates me in terms of the economic misfortune it brings to this city.  Javits’ inadequate size kills our prospects for most serious convention business.  Has Microsoft ever had a major conference in New York?  Even VSLive, for the first time in 10 years, won’t be coming here.  We’re too small at the high end and too expensive at the low end.  Something needs to change.

I want New York hotels to have the room nights, I want New York cab drivers to have the fares, I want New York restaurants to have the revenues, and I want New Yorkers to have the jobs that a constant flow of convention and conference business can bring.  I want people who wouldn’t ordinarily come to New York to come here because a conference is in town, and I want them to discover how much fun it is here, and then I want them to come back on vacation.

The Jets stadium gets us a bigger Javits Center.  It also gets the Jets back to New York.  I have never been a big sports fan, but I grew up here and I went with my dad to see the Jets play at Shea.  And when the Jets left Queens to play in New Jersey, it really kind of broke my heart.  In the 70s, New York had all the “ets” teams…The Mets for baseball, the Jets for football, and the Nets for basketball.  With two out of three going to NJ, it’s just felt unnatural.

And another thing.  The campaign by Cablevision to scuttle this deal is one of the most cynical, dishonest, and corrupt political ploys I’ve seen in a long time.  Anyone who thinks a company based in Bethpage, Long Island gives a damn about the quality of life of residents of Manhattan’s West Side is dreaming.  Although the TV spots they ran were meant to look like they were paid for by a consortium of Chelsea block associations, they were in fact a desperate attempt by a failing media and entertainment company that is not based in New York City to protect its Radio City Music Hall and Madison Square Garden franchise.  Period.

I’m as troubled as anyone by the hyper-gentrification of Manhattan, and I do acknowledge that the stadium project has the potential to make it worse.  But I also know that protectionist policy to keep the West 30s a relative wasteland is wrong-headed.  And I feel strongly that many people who oppose the stadium truly do not realize how much economic activity we are losing without such a project.  Further, I have a feeling that the number of home games played and nighttime events held at the stadium will make for traffic congestion that is far less than what many people fear.  When I was a kid, I marched against Westway.  That would have caused traffic nightmares all throughout the West Side.  I can’t imagine a Jets stadium doing any such thing.

And a final word with regard to New York’s bid for the 2012 Olympics (another underpinning of the case for the stadium).  I think the campaign is improbable, and maybe even Quixotic.  I think having the Olympics here will ultimately make no sense economically.  I also think chances are very good that the games will go to Paris.  But maybe we should still try.  It would be a royal pain to be the host city, but I have to admit it would be fun.  And with our stadium plan in place, and the specter of labor unrest in Paris during the games, you just never know…the IOC may just decide to give us a chance.

But a bigger Javits is my mantra, and this project looks to me, on balance, like the best way to build it.

Friday night took us to Jazz at Lincoln Center, to hear the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, led by Wynton Marsalis.  This was, nominally, a late Christmas gift to my mother-in-law and her husband, but it was also a treat for us.

The funny thing about Jazz at Lincoln Center is that it’s not at Lincoln Center, but rather on the fifth floor of the new Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle.  This “off-campus” facility has three performance venues (and, apparently, classroom space) and we were in the largest of the three, Frederick P. Rose Hall.  Although a larger setting than I prefer for jazz, this was a very nice space, with good acoustics (unlike some of the venues at Lincoln Center proper).  The other two spaces offer a smaller auditorium and a small club (albeit with “Coca Cola,” its corporate sponsor, embedded in its name) and I’m going to make it a point to get to both.

The music, not surprisingly, was excellent.  In addition to the full orchestra, trombonist Wycliffe Gordon and bassist Rodney Whitaker were on the program.  Whitaker was great, but Gordon was just positively amazing.  Check out his incredibly prolific discography on his Web site.  Unfortunately, a search of Napster (the new, legal one), MusicMatch, and MSN Music turned up only one album, “Bone Structure.”  I bought this and think it’s great, but not a good showcase of what I heard on Friday night.  I’m going to have to hit the Tower or J&R jazz dept. and pick up some of his CDs.

There were two other very special guests, a singer and a guitarist…so special that they weren’t on the program, and I can’t remember either of their names.  This is frustrating because the singer had a stunning voice – it was a cross between Aretha Franklin’s and Ella Fitzgerald’s -- and she was just a freshman in college!  She only did vocals on one number, but she had the audience mesmerized.

The great thing about the program was that all the numbers followed a train theme…music about trains, and music that really sounded like trains.  I was a bit surprised that the band finished their set without playing “Take the ‘A’ Train.”  Luckily they came back and played it for an encore, and because the gig was at Columbus Circle, Lauren and I took the A train home immediately afterward.

I am enjoying immensely the reruns of "Welcome Back, Kotter", running in syndication and on an odd, seemingly religious/family values channel, called the Good Life Network.  My Windows Media Center PC is recording these reruns in the wee hours for me.

On a recent episode, in a scene in the schoolyard, I noticed that even though the 1970s set was wildly fake-looking, one of its attempts at NYC public schoolyard graffiti was rather realistic: "B.M.T. Sheiks."  For those who don't know, BMT is one of three disused names for divisions of the NYC Subway system.  The BMT lines were once run by the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation, a private concern whose holdings were eventually taken over by the agency that is now the NY State government authority called the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.  I don't know if the Sheiks actually existed, but the BMT Lines did (and do) serve the neighborhood where the show's Buchanan High School is seemingly located.

The B.M.T. Sheiks "tag" reminds me of a strange Manhattan public access cable show in the 80s called the "Crank Call Show."  The show basically consisted of private school teenagers calling in, saying something stupid, giggling, and then hanging up.  There was one guy who kept calling in saying his name was Muhammad, and that he sold incense on the D Train and the (Times Square - Grand Central) Shuttle.  That was funny, because there really was such a person who really did that.

Why did I put this posting into the Tech Industry category?  Because it turns out that Steve Lasker, a member of the VB Team and a former RD, grew up here in NYC and worked on the crew of the Crank Call Show.  I was in stitches when he told me this a few weeks ago, and he was impressed that I even knew what the Crank Call Show was.

I never in a million years would imagine that my VB world would collide with my NYC 80s public access TV show/subway riding world.  I guess Times Square really is the crossroads of the world.

NBC put on a terrific two-hour special last night with clips from, and interviews with stars and writers of, the original Saturday Night Live.  The special really went a long way toward showing what genius (and eccentricity) went into that show all the way back in the latter half of the 1970's.

If you were a kid growing up in New York at that time, as I was, there's no way you could watch this show and not feel huge nostalgia, and sadness.  The show was really an embodiment of a bygone era in New York: grit, grime, danger and an abundance of brilliant, creative people who could afford to live here even if they were under-employed.  The show hasn't been funny since the original cast left a quarter century ago.  And New York, while still the greatest city in the world, has seen a gradual and dangerously complete erosion of the sort of creative vitality it had back then.

More from my dad on Bone Lick Park BBQ, and other new West Village eateries....

A new neighborhood place opened recently (in the West Village) and it turns out to be one of the only legal, authentic BBQ places in Manhattan.  It's called Bone Lick Park BBQ and it's at 75 Greenwich Avenue, between Bank and 11th (just northwest of the intersection of 7th Avenue and 11th Street, for those of you who find Village geography confusing).  My wife and I have been there once (and really liked it, except for the cornbread) on the advice of my dad, Norman.  He and my mom have now gone back a second time and he emailed me this review:

"We had dinner [at Bone Lick] tonite.  Your mother had the back ribs and I had a combo of beef ribs and chopped pork.  I am enormously impressed with this food because of its authenticity.  I asked and was told that the smoker is right in the basement.  I don't know how the hell they get away with this.  Danny Meyer spent two years trying to get the city to allow a smoker at Blue Smoke.  The BBQ style is Tennessee, which means they rely on the rub for the flavor instead of smothering it in sauce.  You can taste the wood smoke in every bite.
 
Although I still insist that the collards are timid and I agree that the cornbread is insipid, we tried two different sides tonite and were extremely pleased with the limas and the okra.  Makes you forget about the collards. 
 
The beef ribs look like they came off an elephant.  There's about a half pound of meat attached to each one.  They serve two on the combo plate and I could only eat one.  No prob with doggy bags.
 
I asked for the Tabasco and the waiter brought the McIlhenny along with a squirt bottle of their home-made.  This is not the stuff that's already out on the table.  Be sure to ask for it.
 
Finally, we shared a slice of key lime pie.  Wow!  The last time we had anything this good was when we were in Islamorada decades ago. They use real key limes (tart and bitter).  There's nothing like this in NYC."

For a neighborhood joint, this place is really good.  Go sample the fare if you have a chance.

Lauren, Miles (wife, 4.5 month-old son) and I met friends Jeanette and Ben in Central Park to see "The Gates."  For those of you outside of New York, "The Gates" is a mega installation, by artists (and spouses) Christo and Jeanne-Claude, of orange quasi curtains/banners arranged throughout the entirety of Central Park.  According to the New York Times, the project "has required more than 1 million square feet of vinyl and 5,300 tons of steel, arrayed along 23 miles of footpaths throughout the park at a cost (borne exclusively by the artists) of $20 million."

For those of you in or near New York: go.  No matter what you think of the work specifically or of public art in general, you can't help but be impressed by the sheer scale of the project.  And once you see everyone in the park marveling and talking about the work, or just using the event as an excuse to go out and socialize, you'll tangibly appreciate why public art can be important and powerful.  My own photography skills won't do justice to the installation, but a couple of my photos should at least add some personal context.

Here's a snap of Lauren, Miles and Jeanette taken near the 72nd St and Central Park West entrance to the park:

and here's another photo where I tried to convey the scale of the work.  In your mind, you'll need to extrapolate these flags winding up, down and around the entire park (3 miles from north to south, and about a half mile from east to west).

The "exhibit" will only be up for two weeks.  Anyone who can go should do so, even if just for a few minutes.  I do think it will end up being an important bit of New York City history.