The Koch Bridge

I saw the headline for this, and the first thing I thought of were the Koch Brothers and privatizing infrastructure.  Damn Democrat blogs.  Anyway:

Edward I. Koch is many things to many people: larger-than-life mayor, cantankerous commentator, amateur movie critic. Now he will be a bridge.
The City Council voted 38 to 12 on Wednesday to rename the Queensboro Bridge after Mr. Koch, who led New York City from 1978 to 1989 and emerged as one of its most familiar faces. The city is expected to officially christen the bridge the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge next month.
The bridge, which serves as connective tissue between Manhattan and Queens, is a signature of the New York skyline, depicted in movies and memorialized in song. Its steel frame extends from 59th Street over the East River.
“It just makes me feel marvelous,” Mr. Koch said in a telephone interview after the vote. He said he used the bridge frequently because he liked to go to Telly’s Taverna in Astoria for Greek food. “I’m going to feel very, very comfortable on that bridge,” he said.
The Queensboro Bridge, also known as the 59th Street Bridge, opened in 1909 and helped transform Queens from a collection of rural communities into an urban center of commerce and housing.

I have a hard time imagining that in 1909, Queens was a collection of rural communities.   Things can change dramatically in a short period of time.  When I rode the bus from LaGuardia to the 7 train, I learned that these days Queens is full of people from nearly all nations on the globe.  Leaving the airport, I and some other corn-fed hick were the only people on the bus.  He was such a hick that he was wearing a "W the Convention, 2004" baseball cap, in 2008. I can't fathom how out-of-touch (or smugly conservative) somebody is to wear that in New York in 2008, although I guess it signifies that he was in New York previously for the Convention. 

Anyway, the first stop was in a Hispanic neighborhood.  The second stop was in a Haitian neighborhood, the third stop was in an Indian neighborhood, etc.  Pretty soon, the bus is full, and we are clearly the only out-of-town, Midwestern white backwater folks on the bus.  He's on the other side of the aisle from me, one row back, and we are both sitting against the window.  He gets up, walks over, and asks me how far to the Roosevelt Avenue stop, to switch to the 7 train.  Mind you, I didn't even know that the 7 train was at Roosevelt Avenue, I just assumed I would be able to tell where the 7 train was.

Of course, I had no idea when the stop was coming up.  An Indian guy behind me waved his hand and said, "Further up."  I just had to laugh that this white bread flyover hayseed felt like he couldn't ask the Hispanic guy beside him or any of the other people sitting around him where Roosevelt Avenue was.  He had to get up and ask the only other person on the bus who had never been there, where to get off of the bus, because he was white and a hick also. 

Maybe, I was wrong, and he tried to ask the guy beside him for directions, but the guy didn't speak English.  But I'll go with my gut, and say that the guy in the "W the Convention" hat didn't feel comfortable talking to brown people.  Anyway, it made my day to see that.  Once I boarded the 7 train, I stood in a part of the train that was full of Chinese immigrants reading a Chinese language newspaper.  Sarah Palin may be right about one thing, New York City is much different that Middle America, but I can't say that Middle America is any more Real American than New York City or any of the other major cities.  Once all the 2010 census data comes out, I want to expand on that idea.