Tag Archives: NYC

First Shift at the Park Slope Food Coop

NYC, ,

This was a really cool experience. I wish I had joined earlier.

Today I did my first shift at the food coop. I actually liked it. It was tough, because being a newbie at things is tough. Not knowing what to do is tough. But learning is fun!

The shift started at 8:30pm and ended at 11. Yikes. I did “case maintenance” which means breaking down a produce case, storing the produce temporarily, washing and cleaning everything in the case and re-assembling it all, then stocking it all.

One thing I learned – tell people what to do. Tell them to put the damn label for the apples they are bagging with the apples so we don’t sit around later wondering what variety they are like apple detectives. I’ll probably do this shift more, but I want to try others and see what it’s like to be a cashier or do repairs.

Bike Angels – Citibike Gamification

Economics, Incentives, NYC, , , ,

Well, friends, I just found myself seeking points. I’ve become a Bike Angel.

I love CitiBike – being able to grab a bike whenever for a short trip is just magic.

And then I saw a video about Bike Angels, and it grabbed me. It’s genius.

CitiBike has a clumping problem. Bikes flow like tides across the city, and they clump in popular destinations. Some docks end up with lots of bikes and some end up with very few.

They already have some overhead – the electric bikes need someone to come out and swap fresh batteries for dead ones. Repairs need to happen. They also have vans that pull up to overweight docks and transport them over to underweight docks. That’s not great though, using a motor vehicle to move bikes around. Better if people just did it cheaper on the bikes themselves.

That’s the bike angel program. It gives you points for moving bikes from crowded docks to emptier ones. More extreme docks give you more points. Doing it a lot is a streak and racks up your points. It’s all very silly and the very base rate of it all has a point worth around a dime. But it’s enough to make me OK with walking a little farther when I’ve got the time and riding a little farther to drop off at a dock that needs it.

And then I got a streak. And then I got to triple points. And then I found myself taking a ride between two docks to just not break my streak.

They got me!

Magical Clouds of Central Park

NYC, Pals, Photos, , , ,

It’s a beautiful misty spring morning and I climb the stairs out of the Q train. I look up and see one of those magical New York sights. The clouds are hanging so low that I can see them actually flow through the trees of Central Park.

Beautiful low clouds flowing through Central Park
I’m struck still. This is so rare and beautiful.  I’ve got to share a picture of it with you. You need to see these low clouds hanging out in the park, slowly ambling by.

Of course, then I turn around and look behind me, because who can trust beauty to just be simple and perfect.
Clouds clearly coming out of a steam pipe in the road

Joanna Ebenstein of Morbid Anatomy is raising funds to create a new public cabinet of curiosity within a 3-floor, 4,200 square foot building in Brooklyn, New York.

via BoingBoing!.

I wandered into Morbid Anatomy while roaming around the Gowanus and it was a wonderfully weird moment. I love this place.

The NYC Government IT has given up.

Dev, Incentives, Pals, , , ,

My buddy Ian has a great post about his experience trying to find out if he had to move his car. Seems the DOT updates this info on Twitter rather than putting it out on their own website.

Retweet by DOT of 311's tweet that parking rules are suspended

Now that’s just crazy, but I know why. Sam used to work for the city and I’ve heard some stories about trying to get things done there.   The municipal IT department is paid below average wages, there are no negative incentives like being let go, and they are given no positive incentives like promotions or bonuses.  IT at the city seems to be a job that you take and show up for until you collect your pension.

So it isn’t that this is a bad strategy, it’s just that the city is so completely incompetent at IT that they can’t even put in a CMS. Therefore, private sources have built really good communication tools that are actually working. It sucks that the city can’t do IT, but it is good that they are doing what it takes to help people know. Twitter is a single point of failure, it falls over all the time, but at least it has RSS feeds and it’s open for anyone to read. I think the city should do better, I just don’t know that they can.