NYC’s ice rinks offer chilly fun
amNew York
BY ElaiNE PaoloNi
Spinning on the ice in Rockefeller Center or Central Park may be what winter dreams are made of. But if you forego the iconic imagery, you can also escape the tourist crowds. So whether you can land a double axel like Michelle Kwan or are more of a human Zamboni, sweeping the ice with your rear, check out some of the city’s “other” ice rinks.
Long Island City
47-32 32nd Pl.
718-706-6667
Around Thanksgiving through May
$5 weekdays, $8 weekends; $6 skate rental
Set up on a rooftop, the brand new City Ice Pavilion is an NHL sized ice-skating dome. Public skating will be offered daily, and open hockey sessions will also be scheduled. In addition, there will be skating classes and a youth hockey league. Individuals and organizations can rent out the space out for special events, including birthday parties. And if you’re worried about running out of energy on the ice, rest assured there will be a coffee bar and a snack bar to refuel.
South Street Seaport
Pier 17, South and Fulton streets
212-661-6640
Nov. 28 to Feb. 28
$5; $7 skate rental
The plans to redevelop South Street Seaport may still be in the early stages, but this season’s addition of Seaport Ice is already a big change. The 8,000-square-foot rink — large enough for 325 skaters — will be open to the public seven days a week. An adjacent 3,500-square-foot heated tent area will include lockers, a bag check and a snack shop. Private and group lessons will also be available. Non-skating events include live music and the annual lighting of the Seaport Chorus Tree.
Flushing Meadows Corona Park
Avery Avenue and 131st Street, Queens
718-271-7572
Year-round (scheduled to open mid-December)
$5 weekdays, $8 weekends; $7 skate rental
The ice may have melted for good at the Worlds Fair Ice Skating Rink earlier this year, but the park’s new aquatic center and 85-by-200-foot, NHL-standard indoor rink (still under construction) is gearing up for action. The World Ice Arena, just a short walk from the No. 7 train, will be open 365 days a year for general skating. It will also host a number of hockey leagues under its super-high ceilings.
American Museum of Natural History
Columbus Avenue and 79th Street
212-769-5200
Nov. 21 to Feb. 28
$10 adults, $9 students and seniors, $8 children, $2 less for members; FREE skate rental
For an arctic-like experience, check out the museum’s new outdoor Polar Rink. Situated on the Arthur Ross Terrace, the 150-by- 80-foot rink will accommodate 200 people during 45-minute skating sessions. The synthetic ice will be visually anchored by a 17-foot, stainless steel polar bear. And, of course, the rink will be educational: Skaters will whiz by information about polar bears and the polar regions, as well as tips on environmentally responsible living. There will be benches surrounding the ice for those who want to rest; those who want to warm up can head inside for hot chocolate and other snacks.
Prospect Park
Near Parkside/Ocean Ave. entrance, Brooklyn
718-287-6431
Nov. 19 through March
$5 adults, $3 children; $6.50skate rental (cash only)
Although construction on two new rinks is expected to begin next year, you can still spend an afternoon at Kate Wollman rink skating with friends. Sign up for a group or private lesson; for those looking for a starry-eyed “Serendipity” moment, rent out this Wollman rink for just you and your sweetheart. Snacks and beverages are sold on-site. Free lockers are also available, but bring your own lock.
Bryant Park
Sixth Avenue at 41st Street
212-661-6640
Through Jan. 25
FREE; $12 skate rental
The combination of The Pond at Bryant Park, its heated rink-side lounge and the surrounding market stalls (from Nov. 22 to Dec. 28) make this a fun holiday destination. The 17,000-squarefoot ice rink can accommodate 500 people. A number of special performances and events, including live music and wine tastings, are also part of the spectacle.
Chelsea Piers
Pier 61, West Side Highway at 23rd Street
212-336-6100
Year-round
$12.50 adults, $10 children; $7 skate rental
Ice-skating gets comprehensive coverage at Chelsea Piers’ indoor Sky Rink. In addition to general ice-skating, you can go to skating school, join youth and adult hockey leagues and send the kids to summer ice-skating camp. There’s also a shop that offers skating apparel and equipment, and skate sharpening and repair. From 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Sundays through Nov. 23, check out the rink’s Fall Family Special, which includes admission, skate rental, a slice of pizza and a fountain drink for $15 per adult and $10 per child.
Riverbank State Park
679 Riverside Drive at 145th Street
212-694-3600
Mid-November through first week of April
$5 adults, $3 children; $5 skate rental
Although this alfresco rink has a roof to protect skaters from the harsh winter elements, you still have to bundle up when you’re out on the ice. Beginner kids and adults can start with basic skating lessons and progress to more advanced levels. Other programs include ice hockey, ice dancing and figure skating. In the off-season, the neighborhood arena becomes a roller/ inline skating facility.
Fired Wall Street Workers to Seek Jobs at `Pink Slip Party'
Bloomberg, 11-Nov-08
By Elizabeth Hester
As many as 500 fired Wall Street workers will pay $20 tonight to network, commiserate and drink discount beer for a good cause.
The Pink Slip Party, to be held at midtown Manhattan bar Public House, will also feature at least 15 recruiters and performance coaches, according to one of the organizers, Rachel Pine. It aims to raise $10,000 for Ronald McDonald House of New York, which provides temporary housing for pediatric cancer patients and their families.
``I'm absolutely going to sniff around and see if I can pick off some talent,'' said Joseph Saluzzi, co-head of equity trading at Themis Trading LLC, an eight-person firm in Chatham, New Jersey. ``If I see somebody who lives out in our area who is interested in setting up, we'd give them a shot.''
The party, sponsored by Wall Street blog Dealbreaker.com and TheLadders.com, a job search site, mimics events held after the Internet bubble and the Sept. 11 attacks. The credit crisis that claimed Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co.
and Bear Stearns Cos. may cost New York about 45,000 finance- related jobs, according to Governor David Paterson.
``If you've got misery, we've got company,'' is Dealbreaker's way of advertising the party on its Web site.
Resumes to Collect
Stacy Lentz, managing director at recruiting firm Taylor Grey Inc., said she plans to attend the party to help fill about 20 positions. Her company works with clients in financial services including hedge funds and private-equity firms.
``I want to collect as many resumes as possible because I may not have a job today, but I might tomorrow,'' said Lentz, who has been recruiting for 15 years.
Ronald McDonald House already had a brush with the fallout from Wall Street's meltdown. Its gala fundraiser in May honored Alan Schwartz -- the Bear Stearns chief executive officer who was forced to sell his firm to JPMorgan Chase & Co. in March.
That event met its goal of raising $3 million.
Like many non-profits, Ronald McDonald House expects fundraising to slow next year as the economy enters recession, said Rick Martin, the director of development. Its $13 million annual budget is funded almost entirely by donations.
``We're kind of starting from square one for next year on a few things,'' Martin said. About 80 percent of its board members, such as Kenneth Langone, former head of the New York Stock Exchange compensation committee, work in financial services, Martin said.
Charitable giving rises about 4.3 percent in a year when the economy is strong and drops by at least 1 percent when a recession hits, according to a four-decade study by Indiana University's Center on Philanthropy and the Glenview, Illinois- based GivingUSA Foundation, which tracks U.S. trends in donations.
``The idea was charities are going to be hurting this year,'' Pine said. ``People have much less money to give and we wanted to help a great New York charity.''
Wall Street's Jobless Try Cupcakes, Cheap Haircuts, Maybe Omaha
Bloomberg, 15-Aug-08
By Caroline Salas and Pierre Paulden
Jessica Walter didn't go to Harvard University to study cupcakes, but they're what she does since losing her job as a vice president in credit strategy at Bear Stearns Cos.
``I want to teach kids to cook,'' said Walter, 27, who founded Cupcake Kids! in New York to provide birthday parties and cooking classes for children. ``The goal is to have this be my full-time job and make enough to live.''
Wall Street professionals are trying new careers, and fetching smaller salaries, amid the elimination of 76,670 investment jobs in the Americas following the global credit crunch that started a year ago, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Bankers are ``buying businesses for themselves, moving west or to Europe, including Russia, or to Dubai,'' said Jeanne Branthover, managing director of Boyden Global Executive Search in New York. ``They're also moving totally outside what they do, buying a retail store or a ranch.''
About 33,300 finance jobs in New York City, or 7.1 percent of the 2007 peak, will be cut by June 2009, the Independent Budget Office, a non-partisan monitor of city finances, estimated in a May report.
Expansion Plan
``The job market is in the worst, most chaotic state I've ever seen it in fixed income,'' said Michael Maloney, who recruits finance professionals for Maloney Inc. in New York.
``I've been doing this for over 30 years and I've never seen anything like this.''
Half the people working in debt sales, trading or research in New York at the beginning of 2007 will have been fired by the end of this year or won't get a bonus, Maloney estimated.
Jeff Salmon said job jitters prompted him to swap investing in asset-backed securities at Bank of New York Mellon Corp. for keeping the books at a hair salon. He and his wife, Olga, opened a Great Clips franchise in Mercerville, New Jersey, that offers
$12 haircuts for both men and women.
``The structured finance market is so bleak right now, it makes sense for us to focus our energies on this,'' said Salmon, 49. ``It's refreshing to not have to worry about whether I am going to have a job next week.'' The couple plans to open another Great Clips in October.
Pay Cuts
Traders and bankers who leave finance can expect to earn a fraction of what they used to make. Compensation for employees on Wall Street averaged $399,360 in 2007, compared with $62,390 for New York City jobs outside the securities industry, according to the state comptroller's office.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which has cut 1,500 jobs, paid its employees an average of $661,490 last year, company filings show.
Walter, who studied economics at Harvard, is among those welcoming the opportunity to try something radically different.
``The biggest thing that I enjoy is being the jack-of-all trades of having my own business,'' she said. ``It's a challenge.''
Bear Stearns, where Walter worked, was facing bankruptcy before being acquired in May by JPMorgan Chase & Co., which fired 55 percent of Bear's 14,000 employees. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. has eliminated 6,390 employees and Citigroup Inc.
has cut 14,100, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Turning to Teaching
``The most affected areas are structured finance, CDOs and mortgages,'' said Arturo Cifuentes, managing director of New York-based R.W. Pressprich & Co., which trades derivatives.
``Over one-third of jobs in this area are gone for the next five or ten years.''
Gary Witt left as a managing director in structured finance at Moody's Investors Service to teach finance and statistics at Temple University in Philadelphia.
``It's hard to say if things were going well would I have left,'' said Witt, 49. ``It didn't look like the industry would be any fun for the next few years.''
Moody's, the oldest credit-ratings company, eliminated 275 jobs, or 7.5 percent of its workforce, to cope with a plunge in bond sales that sliced revenue from credit ratings.
Bond salesmen and traders are trying everything from bartending to real-estate sales to make insurance and tuition payments for their families, Maloney said.
``I know a few guys that started gambling, playing poker to pay the bills,'' he said. ``Especially ex-traders.''
Joshua Perksy took to the streets after being laid off as an investment banker at Los Angeles-based Houlihan Lokey. He strolled New York's Park Avenue in June wearing a sandwich board reading ``Experienced MIT Grad For Hire.''
``It's been slow and frustrating,'' said Persky, 48. ``The only places to turn are hedge funds and boutique banks. I've never been unemployed this long.''
While his gambit generated some job leads, none has panned out so far, Persky said. He's considering a move to Omaha, Nebraska.
Obama Takes His Outside Game to the Inside
Bloomberg, 6-Nov-08
By Margaret Carlson
How fast we journalists move so as not to be left behind or be seen as sentimental.
I expect a story any minute that President-elect Barack Obama is moving too fast, or not fast enough. That his first hire, that of Representative Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff by way of the Clinton Administration, is a sign he's just a hack. That he isn't doing enough to grasp the gracious olive branch extended by the man he defeated, Senator John McCain. The puppy he promised his daughters is the wrong breed.
It's coming. It always does.
For a day at least, let's stop and celebrate the improbable assumption of the highest office in the land by this outsider with no birthright, no connections, no mentors. Lyndon Johnson had Sam Rayburn. Harry Truman had the Pendergast gang. Dwight Eisenhower had George Marshall and the Lodges. John F. Kennedy had his dad. Ronald Reagan was mentored by an entire movement looking for a new face.
Obama's would-be rabbis came to him in Chicago and tried to persuade the community organizer to abandon his first bids for office. He once went to a Chicago bigwig and was asked who sent him. ``Nobody,'' Obama answered. ``We don't want nobody nobody sent,'' he was told.
At the 2000 Democratic convention, he couldn't get a floor pass. He couldn't even cadge an invitation to the Illinois delegation's parties. He watched most of the speeches on television. He left early.
Unknown Obama
In 2004, he got a speaking part at the convention but not when the networks were broadcasting. Still, the speech was so captivating, he entered the Fleet Center in Boston unknown and left a local hero. The delegates cheered. Cops reached out to shake his hand. The party sent money for his Senate race.
His 15 minutes was interrupted as he made his way home the next day on the $285 ticket he had purchased himself. He was pulled out of line to be frisked for flying while black with a Muslim name.
Even as he won his Senate seat, the skinny kid with the funny name was an island of one belonging to no easily recognizable group. His father grew up in a tin hut in Kenya. His Kansan flower-child Mom, who rose at 4 a.m. to tutor her son, turned him over to his grandparents at age 10 while she finished a graduate degree in anthropology.
They were Kansans who ended up in Hawaii: Obama's grandfather, who fought in World War II, was an outgoing furniture salesman; his grandmother, whom he spied watching him shoot hoops from their two-bedroom condo, worked her way up from secretary to vice president of a bank, saving enough along the way to send Obama to the best private schools.
Role of Race
In his early days running for president, the party and the presumption of success belonged to Senator Hillary Clinton, who initially claimed the lion's share of the black vote as well. He was too black for some in the white power structure, too white for many African-Americans who couldn't identify with someone nobody in the civil-rights movement sent. Obama pointed out that when he hailed a cab, he was black.
Race played a role in the election, but not the one we expected. Obama won more than 90 percent of the black vote, but Al Gore came close to that, the difference being how many cried casting their ballots Tuesday. People who said race was important to them, voted for Obama. People who said it wasn't important voted for Obama. He won more white votes than John Kerry.
Somewhere some couldn't bring themselves to vote for Obama because he's black, but they are a minority in this country now.
Avoiding the Personal
As a loner, Obama didn't run a predictable campaign, mouth the standard lines, get personal. In September, he passed up an easy three-pointer as the momentum was shifting to McCain, and Governor Sarah Palin was a fresh shooting star. When asked about the newly revealed pregnancy of Palin's 17-year-old unwed daughter, he didn't sniff ``no comment'' as if a pile of manure beyond acknowledgement had been set before him. He said it had no relevance.
``My mother had me when she was 18,'' he said. ``How family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn't be the topic of our politics.'' It didn't matter that Republicans would have had a field day had positions been reversed. Whoever started the dirty fighting, someone had to stop it.
He had help in toppling the barrier as old as America itself: from McCain who lost his way with a running mate 60 percent of the country didn't trust to be president; from two wars; and from a crumbling economy. A friend said that if the cost of electing Obama was losing 80 percent of her 401(k), it was worth it.
All for One
On the eve of the election in Manassas, Virginia, where battles once were fought to keep blacks as slaves, almost 100,000 people came to an open field to hear Obama. The remarkable part of the evening wasn't Obama's speech but that a fully integrated crowd in the Confederate home state of Robert E. Lee heard it.
Unlike a high-school cafeteria, a church, or many neighborhoods, blacks and Latinos were sprinkled throughout, elbow to elbow, mingling happily. It was a county fair without the prize bull and cotton candy, a wedding without the bride, the Fourth of July and the World Series rolled into one.
And so it was Tuesday night in Grant Park in Chicago, as the outsider became the ultimate insider and begins the humbling task of repairing the country. We are not ``red states and blue states,'' Obama said. ``We are and always will be the United States of America.''
Margaret Carlson, author of ``Anyone Can Grow Up: How George Bush and I Made It to the White House'' and former White House correspondent for Time magazine, is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.
Prachanda’s secret life unraveled
ekantipur, 18-Oct-08
In 2006, Anirban Roy was on assignment to report on the April Movement targeting the autocratic regime of King Gyanendra. While in Kathmandu, Roy heard a lot about Maoist chief Prachanda who had stolen the national and international limelight through his avant-garde ideologies.
“Everywhere you went, people talked about the radical communist leader,” he recounts in the preface to the book. “Prachanda was the new epicentre of Nepal's political dynamics.”
The 38-year-old journalist is today the Kathmandu-based correspondent of The Hindustan Times. Though he visited Nepal five times between 2001 and 2006 as a tourist, it was during his sixth visit that he became inquisitive about the persona of the Maoist top brass. He was truly enamoured of the aura of the Maoist chief and his disputable ideology that “gave a voice to the millions of poor and oppressed people” and at the same time “led a bloody civil war killing 13,000 people”.
“The Maoist chief led an underground life for more than 25 years, and piecing together the stories about him and authenticating them were the most difficult part,” he writes. The result, Prachanda: The Unknown Revolutionary, is a work of investigation. The writer has interviewed almost all of Prachanda's close associates and relatives.
The book gives the reader a glimpse into Prachanda's hidden life with rare anecdotes and photographs. A photo of a young Pushpa Kamal Dahal shows him staring coyly and tightly clutching his fists. It goes without saying that he was a determined young man. He was obsessed with books on revolutionary icons such as Fidel Castro, Mao Zedong and Naxalite leader Kanu Sanyal, of whom he considers himself a “self-proclaimed” disciple. In school, he often sneaked into the library or bookstores that imported books on communist ideology from India. In college, he would borrow profusely from teachers, his compatriots and libraries run by socialist states.
His infatuation with communism began from the time he was a school-goer, and he would often bunk classes to participate in communist programmes. Then two things happened that would shape his communist beliefs—the Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China initiated by Mao Zedong and the Naxalbari uprising in India headed by Kanu Sanyal. While the Naxalbari movement next door provided Prachanda moral support to envisage a similar kind of revolution in Nepal, Mao Zedong's strategy of a prolonged People's War taught him the benefits of setting up bases in the countryside and surrounding the cities.
At 19, Prachanda was already giving lectures to locals on the new theories of communism. Upon his graduation from the Institute of Agriculture and Animal Science (IAAS) at Rampur, he was already a pukka communist. Life took a U-turn when his family became unable to pay for his university education. He could not even secure a government job, and had to be satisfied with being a teacher. He was never fond of teaching, however, and he kept hopping from one teaching job to another. Teaching allowed him much free time which he could devote to the burgeoning communist movement. The radical communist leader even took a job in a U.S. sponsored development project for three months owing to acute poverty.
After he was appointed general secretary of the All Nepal Youth Organization headed by Matrika Yadav, Pushpa Kamal Dahal for the first time campaigned openly in support of the communist movement and against the draconian panchayat regime. The police soon raided his house on the charge of inciting youths against the panchayat regime, and he was forced to go underground. He was 27. After that, he constantly shifted from one hideout to another with his wife and four young children.
The first thing Prachanda did after becoming general secretary was convince his father to sell their house and land at Bhimsen Nagar to raise money for the party. He was lucky to have a wife who did not mind surviving on rice and green vegetable soup and cooking on a single kerosene stove. Despite the difficulties and hardships, his children also have fond memories of him. His youngest child Prakash recalls how his father was different from other fathers. “He never had to hurry in the morning to go to the office. Instead, he stayed home reading books or discussing something with friends.”
Prachanda's disillusionment with the Nepali political system was incited by ceaseless political squabbling for power and negligence of the plight of the rural poor. He dreamt of destroying government institutions and replacing them with a revolutionary peasant regime. He wholeheartedly followed the methods laid down by Peru's Shining Path rebels. Prachanda dealt with dissent ruthlessly, hence there was a tremendous rise in extrajudicial killings, kangaroo courts and cases of torture.
Unfortunately, Roy makes no mention of the wrong ways that Prachanda allowed his cadres to pursue to get their way. From the start of the civil war, Maoist cadres have indiscriminately indulged in threats, extortion and intimidation. They have tortured, maimed and killed hundreds of people who refused to do as they said. Prachanda has described the People's War as the means to end feudal structures. Ironically, the city-centred elite whom the Maoist view as feudal have remained untouched by the civil war.
Despite the flaws in his strategies, Prachanda received immense support from people at the periphery -- Dalits, the socially marginalized and minorities—who have been historically oppressed by the establishment. There are still a substantial number of Nepalis who see the Maoists as their messiah—the only alternative to the old, repressive social order.
The unexpected performance of the CPN-Maoist in the Constituent Assembly election has brought Prachanda to the forefront of politics. He has made it to the prime minister's chair and accepted that there is no alternative to multiparty democracy in the country. However, there are challenges ahead. Now he has to deliver peace, stability and economic prosperity to a nation reeling under acute poverty. The people have willingly given him the mandate to draft a new constitution and initiate new economic development. If he fails to deliver, the euphoria will die down.
The best thing I like about the book is the conciseness with which it has approached the life of the rebel leader. Descriptions of the battles between Maoists and security forces given from a Maoist perspective also make captivating reading. The best account is that of the attack on Beni Bazaar in which the Maoists destroyed the Kali Prasad barracks, the district police office and the district administration office. They also took 33 persons captive besides seizing a huge quantity of arms and ammunition.
There are two things that I cannot fail to mention. First, Roy has concentrated on only one side of the coin: Prahanda's charming personality. The writer has showered him with praise and justified the bloody civil war as the best way to establish a new Nepal. What he needs to do is also dig up Prachanda's ruthless side, the factors that prompted him to choose armed struggle and if a bloodbath is indeed a prerequisite for revolution. Second, as Roy has admitted in an interview to The Hindustan Times, the book that he has written is merely a skeleton. There are many autobiographical elements that are missing, and Roy needs to do more research to give the skeleton flesh and blood in the subsequent editions.
Reviewed by Monica Regmi
Spinning on the ice in Rockefeller Center or Central Park may be what winter dreams are made of. But if you forego the iconic imagery, you can also escape the tourist crowds. So whether you can land a double axel like Michelle Kwan or are more of a human Zamboni, sweeping the ice with your rear, check out some of the city’s “other” ice rinks.
The plans to redevelop South Street Seaport may still be in the early stages, but this season’s addition of Seaport Ice is already a big change. The 8,000-square-foot rink — large enough for 325 skaters — will be open to the public seven days a week. An adjacent 3,500-square-foot heated tent area will include lockers, a bag check and a snack shop. Private and group lessons will also be available. Non-skating events include live music and the annual lighting of the Seaport Chorus Tree.
For an arctic-like experience, check out the museum’s new outdoor Polar Rink. Situated on the Arthur Ross Terrace, the 150-by- 80-foot rink will accommodate 200 people during 45-minute skating sessions. The synthetic ice will be visually anchored by a 17-foot, stainless steel polar bear. And, of course, the rink will be educational: Skaters will whiz by information about polar bears and the polar regions, as well as tips on environmentally responsible living. There will be benches surrounding the ice for those who want to rest; those who want to warm up can head inside for hot chocolate and other snacks.
