Faster than St. Vincent’s
To The Editor:
Re “Assessing Northwell’s stand-alone E.D.” (news article, April 18):
Much as I miss St. Vincent’s Hospital, I do not miss its emergency room. At St. Vincent’s, I waited hours and hours before anyone was free to examine me, and more hours to be admitted into a hospital bed.
By contrast, I was taken as an emergency to Lenox Hill Greenwich Village and was seen immediately. It took only a few minutes, with the use of specialized equipment, for me to be diagnosed with an AFib stroke. Within an hour, I was rushed by ambulance to Lenox Hill Hospital and instantly admitted to a semi-private room. That was on a Monday. I was treated and sent home with proper medications on Wednesday. Who knows? I might still have been waiting in the emergency room at St. Vincent’s before a room opened for me. I thank my lucky stars for the Lenox Health Greenwich Village emergency department!
Susan E. Meyer
This is not for us
To The Editor:
Re “Visioning and planning report coming soon” (A Salute to Union Square, May 2):
This is really all about attracting more tourists and bowing down to the upwardly mobile portion of residents. It is a continuation of the Bloomberg years, when the big corporations and rich people were the only ones that mattered. This is about catering to people from other parts of the country and the world who came to live in the city because it is “fun” and “exciting,” but then once they settled in, they gentrified it and turned it into a milquetoast strip mall.
Union Square Park and its surrounding areas are among the last standing remnants of how amazing our city used to be before the gentrification of the ’80s. They ruined the East Village. They moved in and cast out the mom-and-pop businesses and displaced all the people who had lived in the surrounding areas all their lives, the ones who raised future generations here and contributed to the culture that made up the beautiful cornucopia of the area and the city as a whole. They turned it into a place where only the rich can live and where chain stores flourish.
New York has lost most of its vital elements that once made it fun exciting and one of the greatest art centers of the world. If Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat and so many others who blessed this city were alive today, they would be horrified to see what has become of this once amazingly eclectic and beautiful city.
We don’t need pop-up food kiosks. We don’t need performance space that will congest an overly congested area.
Carla Parsi
‘Experiment by Ph.D.’s’
To The Editor:
Re “Thrown under the bus on 14th” (op-ed, by Elissa Stein, May 2):
The 14th St. “experiment” needs to be rethought. This was designed by newly minted Ph.D.’s who do not live here. Let’s halt it now. How about feet on the ground from Department of Transportation and NYC Transit Authority top staffers to see the reality and direct traffic?
Great op-ed.
Gail Fox
The problem is cars
To The Editor:
Re “Thrown under the bus on 14th” (op-ed, by Elissa Stein, May 2):
You are aware that the buffer right now is paint on the road and does not block any vehicle from passing another vehicle if the driver wishes to. I am pretty sure that you have observed the 12th and 13th Sts. bike lanes being used as de facto loading zones for delivery, utility and passenger drop-off and pickup vehicles.
As I have mentioned, I agree with you that street space needs to be allocated for contractors and delivery services. Let’s go together to 11th St., which still has free parking on both sides, with a tape measure and see how many cars are being stored on the street and are never moved except to be double-parked, engines running, twice a week for an hour for street cleaning.
The street space cannot accommodate parking for residents, people who work in the neighborhood, students at local colleges and law schools, visitors, people visiting doctors, doing local shopping, and more because there is not enough room for all these vehicles. All these vehicles are creating congestion, noise and air pollution in the residential streets.
Choresh Wald
Co-naming overload?
To The Editor:
Re “Beastie Boys street co-naming campaign rocks on” (news article, May 2):
Will the city name one corner with three names? It’s already Rabbi Yaakov Spiegel Way and Rivington and Ludlow Sts.
Clayton Patterson
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