Arun Venugopal

New York, NY —

A slew of legislative proposals would mark the biggest expansion of city recycling in over 20 years. WNYC's Arun Venugopal has more on the effort in the City Council.

REPORTER: If you're the kind of armchair environmentalist who wants to do their part but are too ...

A weary traveler outside Grand Central

New York, NY —

The MTA says it'll have to reduce its expenses by $378 million, above and beyond the nearly $400 million in service cuts and layoffs already announced. Once again, the agency attributes the problem to a shortfall in the payroll tax and state budget cuts.

MTA officials ...

This is the second post in my 'Just Out of Jail' series. The idea, as I mentioned earlier, is to understand what got someone into jail in the first place, what their experience was like inside, and how they're planning to re-enter society. Let me know if you like these profiles and how you think it should evolve.

I met Jonathan Stewart the same day I met Tia Evans, the ex-con who hopes to become the next John Grisham. Having just watched the startling and brutal French film 'Une Prophete' ('A Prophet'), about one man's journey through the penal system, I couldn't help but see the 22-year-old Jonathan in a similar, if less sensational way. He grew up in Red Hook and was imprisoned at the age of 16, for five years. He was released last May. Here he talks about his drug use, his side business of fashioning razor blades in jail, and his plan to become gainfully employed as a plumber.

Why did you go to prison?

At the time I was using drugs: PCP, marijuana, alcohol. Trying to block out the past of my life, which was kind of hard to go through. I wound up doing a couple of robberies and wound up getting caught. I did jail time -- I was facing five years, and five years of parole time. They found the weapon -- it was an Army switchblade.

You didn't want to make the choice of something as extreme as a gun?

Yeah. Where I was raised, people pass on guns when they're used for like shootouts or murders. I didn't want to get involved with my fingerprints being involved in a situation with handguns, so I used a knife instead, which I purchased. I went into a neighborhood called Jefferson Projects, which is on 115th street in East Harlem.

And how much money did you make?

Not much. Just enough to get high again. Basically it was a stupid idea. I just liked to shut the world out and think of no worries, and be in my own world.

So once you get the cash you went to the dealer. What did you get?

I got either some marijuana or some alcohol. Once in a while, I'd smoke PCP, but not that much.

It's more expensive also?

Yes, but it's more exotic. It's a different type of hallucinogen than marijuana.

What got you into drugs?

What got me into drugs... basically the abuse I went through as a child. I just didn't know how to bear knowing how all this happened to me and how to cope with it. So the only way I learned how to cope with it was to be intoxicated or high off something. So that was my only way of basically dealing with my situation.

What kind of abuse are we talking about? Were you hit a lot?

Physical abuse. Mental. Emotional. I was taken away from my mother at the age of three. So basically my whole life I've been in the foster care system. From group homes to foster homes to prison to now.

Did she get into jail as well?

No, she was a crack addict. She was an alcoholic. And just couldn't manage taking care of her kids. ACS felt she couldn't do that, couldn't manage it. I was snatched away when I was three. My sister was snatched away when she was one. My brother was 10 or 11.... Knowing that all my life, I've been trying to just have that comfort of being with my mother. I've never had the opportunity . So I've had a lot of rage in me, a lot of anger, a lot of hate. And the only way to block out a lot that happened in my life was to use a drug. It would work, but I'd have to keep doing it to make sure I'm under that high.

The other day, I attended a memorial service at Greenwood Cemetery, in Brooklyn. It's a gorgeous place, marked by rolling hills and ponds and architectural gems, including the 1911 chapel in which the service was held. Afterward, we roamed the grounds -- there are 478 acres of them -- and competed to see who could find the oldest gravestones. At some point, the question came up: How many dead people are buried here?

The answer, it turns out, is about '560,000 permanent residents,' as the Greenwood website puts it.

That's pretty impressive, but it begs the question: How many people have actually died within the five boroughs?

I reached out to the city's Department of Health, which has posted its birth and death records online. If you click on 1961, you'll see the breakdown all the way back to 1898. It took a while but according to my calculations... 8,360,144 people died in this city between 1898 and 2008. Coincidentally (or... not), that's almost exactly how many people currently live in the city.

Here's my math, if you're interested...

Apparently these signs in the DC Metro system have been around a while, and apparently they're considered successful enough to have kept in place (Note the conspicuously evasive 'which will remain nameless').

Wounding, no? I think the MTA needs to respond with its own campaign. Maybe something like 'Please, don't ...

New York, NY —

The Census Bureau is reaching out to gay and lesbian couples across the country, encouraging them to mail in their forms and indicate whether they think of themselves as married or not.

George Takei, who played Captain Sulu on "Star Trek," now stars in a YouTube ...

How many Sikhs live in New York City, or for that matter, in the entire country? No one really knows, not even Sikh community activists.

'It's really hard to say,' says Jaspreet Singh, a local staff attorney with United Sikhs, a group that formed in New York in the late 90s but now has offices around the world. 'Nationwide people estimate there are between 400,000 and 900,000 Sikhs. We contacted the Pew Survey and asked them some questions. Their estimate, based on some of their telephone analysis, was about 700,000. Half a million is a very common estimate – but that may be 200,000 off.'

Its a cold day. You're underground, on the subway platform. The train pulls up. Your heart leaps at the sight of an empty seat. The doors open, and you step inside. But you immediately sense something's wrong. Where is everyone?

And then it hits you - engulfs you - a sour, uncomfortably powerful odor. The source: a homeless man at the end of the car, his sleeping face buried within the hood of his jacket.

As of Friday, when the city released its latest homeless count, that scenario has officially become more common. According to the Department of Homeless Services, there are now 3,111 homeless living on the streets and subways. That's a 34 percent spike from last year and the first time it's increased in five years.

But if you ride the subways, those figures may not be surprising -- something you've instinctively felt for a while. While the subway homeless represent only a fraction of the overall numbers, they are much harder to ignore, because commuters share closed spaces with them and often have to make choices about whether or not they'll sit next to someone who appears alcoholic or mentally ill or who simply hasn't bathed in many days.

So here's my question: How do you, as a commuter, deal with those situations?

I'm fine with ethnic humor. For instance, I find Apu on The Simpsons a true pleasure, silly accent notwithstanding.

But on the matter of this weekend's Saturday Night Live skit, "Talk Show with Ravish," I have to agree with my friend (and official Apuhater), Ultrabrown's Manish Vij. He calls it a "shoddy racial throwback":

It’s all here, from the fake Indian names to the craptastic bud-bud-ding-ding accents to the random turbaned guy with a head wrap like a collapsed soufflé faking a bharatnatyam move. How does a show filmed in New York City manage to execute so badly?

Something kind of sad, isn't there, about the New York Stock Exchange becoming a promotional stage for March Madness, of all things. Yeah, I know: capitalism.

These last couple weeks, my home has been deluged with Jose Peralta campaign literature. We get at least one glossy, multicolor mailer a day, if not two, each of them bearing the big, grinning face of this-or-that politico: Senator Schumer, Senator Gillibrand, Borough President Helen Marshall, Councilman Danny Dromm, you name it. They speak to Peralta's record, and urge voters to get to the polls Tuesday, March 16.

This bad.

The trial of the officers who shot and killed Sean Bell ended nearly two years ago -- Not Guilty, in case your memory is hazy. But even for those of us who are expert forgetters, there are some details that remain vivid.

Like Fabio Coicou.

Here's news we can use more of: According to Mayor B, while people stopped buying as much stuff, attendance at cultural institutions actually rose five to eight percent last year. He cited a study by NYC Arts that I can't find anywhere, but is validated by this survey by The Art Newspaper. And at least with the Museum of Modern Art, the study rang true. Attendance for the fiscal year ending in June, 2009, was at a record high of 2.8 million.

Last week a friend sent me this long piece in New York magazine, "Brooklyn Killed Manhattan, and is Dead Itself."

"A nice take on a tired topic," is how he put it.

The city is trying to make the local film industry a bit more racially diverse.

New York, NY —

The city is trying to make the local film industry a bit more racially diverse. A new program will use city funding to train people of color for jobs on set, including positions for gaffers, riggers, and dolly grips.

An existing program to train minority production ...

It may seem a bit behind the times to say that independent bloggers are just as legit as their peers in the mainstream media, but in the real world of covering crime, or disasters, or the mayor of New York, that's not the case. Independent bloggers can't get press credentials, nor the special access those credentials bring, such as crossing police lines or a seat at certain mayoral events. That gives reporters with traditional media outlets a disproportionate amount of influence when it comes to covering local politics and city affairs. And it means that City Hall can manage a limited set of reporters as it tries to shape the news.

No longer.