Odds and Ends in Springtime

So, how are we doing?

Residents and their guests (or anyone else for that matter) can now partake of the Oval Cafe once again.  The patio seats and tables have been changed, slightly for the better, as well as some of the interior seating. Now it looks more like a pseudo-Martha Stewart stepped in, briefly, to oust much of the Kubrick design that was there before. Expect the students who can't use Oval Study anymore to fill up the seats here all day.  Free Wifi is being pushed, as well as a new menu that has, yes, peanut butter & jelly sandwiches!

You can also pick up your "loyalty card" from the Cafe.  Yes, it sounds somewhat Soviet Bloc totalitarian.

For you old geezers, you may want to sit outside because whoever manages the cafe has decided to have music played inside that no one over 25 will appreciate.  Bad move and surely distracting to any students doing homework, too.

And why does the poster artwork for the cafe show coffee that looks like mud or a mixture of concrete ready to be poured?  What an unappetizing, even disturbing, retching graphic.

Lady Maya must know something about the coffee being served at Oval Cafe, because she's been spotted, once again, picking up her java at Starbuck's on 1st Avenue, rather than partaking of the mud brew at the Cafe, which surely is just for the peasants and market-rate paying suckers living here.

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It seems that there are quite a few familiar things in Stuy Town that are not working properly.  The place is falling apart, I tell ya!  The Oval Fountain, the pride of Stuy Town, has still not functioned since being turned off in the winter, though workers are trying to make a go of it.  Perhaps today the fruit of their labors will gush forth.

 

And the clock at Playground 12 is not working well either:

And don't even mention the persistent major troubles at Peter Cooper Village, post Hurricane Sandy. 

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Hey, another commercial activity spotted!  Yes, it's Super Soccer Stars coming to Playground 10.

 

Yes, pay your dues and then come one, come all (of Manhattan) to Stuy Town. No need to be a resident or a guest, it seems.  Older residents may remember the times when all sporting activities for PCVST kids in the complex were FREE!  But that's terribly old-fashioned and, just like lawns, not with the times.  Thank you, Councilman Dan Garodnick, for you flexible stance on commercial activities in Stuy Town!

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I realize that an editor wants the paper she's working on to have a lively Letters Column, but did Sabina Mallot have print that idiot letter from "Name Withheld," whose suggestion is that "in the interest of diversity, we should ensure that at least 10 percent of the customers of the farmers market reside outside of ST/PCV itself."  Yes, you read right.  Outside of ST/PCV.  This person is either a shill for management or the farmers market, a troll just trying to provoke or have a good laugh, or possibly someone with one screw in New Jersey and another in Staten Island.

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So, the post office at 14th Street that serves the Lower East Side and Stuy Town (Peter Stuyvesant Station) is going to be banished some time in 2014.  This post office, with its rude, fat-ass, lazy-ass tellers and one Asian chic who can barely speak English (at least she's not abusive) is THE WORST POST OFFICE IN THE WORLD.  A nightmare whose entertainment value is limited to the comments it gets on Yelp.  I only regret losing the mail delivery person I have now, but probably the delivery people will be the same, just working from a different location.

There's an attempt afoot to save this post office, but I would only be for it if we could get rid of its unfriendly, unhelpful and unknowledgeable staff.  And you know that's never going to happen given the power of the Postal Union.  No private company would tolerate such workers, and we as the public shouldn't either.

Though it will be a hassle to walk to other post offices when necessary, it's good riddance to the Peter Stuyvesant Station, I say.  Perhaps, on its last day of operation, we should organize a celebration outside by the public it has mis-served.  I'll bring the champagne.