The people's city report card.

Zeitlin, Steve

For a while, I've wanted to give a People's Hall of Fame Award to the casting director of law and Order. That's not just because I'm a hopeless addict. In addition to the gritty stars, the casting always features that man putting boxes in a van or the secretary in a doctor's office, nailing the cast of characters that populate this remarkable city. Every episode mixes the wealthy lawyers, socialites, and art collectors with the landlords, cops, and working men and women trying to make ends meet. The magic is in the mix.

Most New Yorkers recognize--and even the tourists know--that the heart of New York is not at the Met or Lincoln Center, but in the hustle and bustle, the cacophonous mix of ethnic groups, social classes, and the arts. At a time when the mayor and Chancellor Joel Klein are hell-bent on testing students, we at City Lore decided to grade the city on what is being done to preserve the grassroots creativity that makes this city unique, endlessly interesting, and forever replenished by the immigrant tides and the diverse accents, foodways, and customs they bring.

PRAISEWORTHY

1. Religious Tolerance and Respect. We applaud Mayor Bloomberg for taking a courageous stand on the Islamic Center at Ground Zero. On August 3 he stated, "We would be untrue to the best part of ourselves--and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans--if we said 'no' to a mosque in Lower Manhattan." This year, the New York City Council also passed a resolution adding Eid Ul-Adha, marking the end of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, and Eid Ul-Fitr, the end of Ramadan, as official school holidays, along with the Christian and Jewish celebrations.

2. Open Markets. According to foodways consultant Makale Faber, GrowNYC, a city agency, has done commendable work opening new markets and expanding existing ones. She mentioned that many more of the city's markets are doing well according to the "protein factor," which suggests that markets are stable when meat, fish, and cheese are sold in them.

TROUBLING

3. Community Gardens. New York City Community Gardens Coalition is campaigning against a new set of rules for community gardens that eliminates the legislative language that protects them and makes it easier for the gardens to be sold to developers.

4. Arts in the Schools. For many low-and middle-income New Yorkers, access to the arts begins in the schools. Reorganization of the Department of Education eliminated Project Arts, which guaranteed that a certain amount of school funding would be spent on arts education. The city gave principals discretion on how to spend their funds, and then rated them principally on their schools' math and English language test scores. This change, along with budget cuts, has decimated arts education in the schools.

5. Drumming Circles and Ethnic Celebrations in the Parks. As a result of a brawl in the park unrelated to the drumming, the wonderful weekly Haitian drumming circle on Sundays in Prospect Park has been shut down indefinitely by the police.

MIXED

6. Street Performers. I and my fellow advocate Susie Tanenbaum were pleased that the new Chief of Transit Bureau, Ray Diaz, allowed us to address the transit police commanders and that he is sympathetic to street performers rights. However, we are still receiving about one call a week from performers who have been thrown out of Washington Square, Union Square, and Times Square.

7. Street Vendors. A conversation with Sean Basinski, director of the Street Vendor Project run by the Urban Justice Center, revealed that a few years ago the city increased fines for vendors operating in the wrong places from $250 to $1,000. On the other hand, Mayor Bloomberg and British Prime Minister David Cameron did share a hot dog from a stand outside of Madison Square Garden recently, and the city is now offering permits allowing fresh fruits and vegetables to be sold in a number of additional neighborhoods.

8. Street Parades. Robert De Vito, who outfits most of the city's parade floats at Bond Parade Floats in Clifton, New Jersey, said that parades are still thriving in New York, though with fewer floats, as a result of the economy. But he also pointed me toward a series of articles about the recent city crackdown on parades. As Andy Newman wrote in the Times, "Everyone may love a parade, but ... the department notified parade organizers throughout the city ... that starting April 1, their processions must cover 25 percent less distance and may no longer exceed five hours in duration.

9. Places that Matter. Coney is such an important release valve for New York City that it deserves a category of its own. We are thrilled that New York's State Historic Preservation Office has declared Coney Island's amusement district eligible for listing in the State and National Registers of Historic Places. The new Luna Park, on land the city bought back from Thor Equities, was a wonderful addition to Coney this summer. Thor appears to have begun demolition work, however, on Coney Island's Henderson Music Hall on Surf Avenue, one of the few remnants of historic Coney.

10. Ethnic Social Clubs. No news is good news.

Overall, the Bloomberg administration has improved on the record of the Giuliani administration for supporting New York's grassroots cultural life. Nonetheless, administrators seem intent on creating an upscale, tourist-friendly city, without recognizing that street parades and performers and places like historic Coney Island are part of what attracts visitors, makes the city distinctive--and liveable. The magic is in the mix.

Steve Zeitlin is the founding director of City Lore in New York City.