I was biking along the crowded Hudson River Greenway, all my focus on avoiding pedestrians, roller-bladers and darting toddlers, when suddenly two guys whipped by me on their bikes (passing on the right, no less) at super high speed. Annoyed at their recklessness, I was deciding exactly what withering thing to yell at them when I overhead one saying to the other, “…the real problem with our education system, the one no one ever talks about, is…” and then they were gone. My irritation was instantly replaced with a burning desire to hear what the guy had been about to say. I wanted to catch up to them, but there was no hope of that. Darn! What about the education system? Was it something I didn’t know about? Wait up!

One of the most wonderful things about New York City is that, because we are almost always within earshot of someone else, we have unlimited opportunities to listen in on the conversations going on around us. It’s as if New York were one giant cocktail party and we are all of us guests (or audience members at an avant-garde play, held on a very large stage). And this may sound New York-centric, but people here tend to be smarter, more talented, more culturally-diverse and more engaged in what goes on around them than they are in other places, so our conversations tend to be more interesting—and often more unguarded.

You can overhear personal secrets, philosophical and psychological discussions, juicy arguments, helpful lifestyle tips, political theory, news of the day, celebrity gossip. Who needs Twitter when you are on the sidewalks of New York? And it’s almost better that you usually never get the whole conversation, but only a snippet. Sometimes the few words you overhear can spur on a conversation between you and whomever you are with. You can have fun trying to figure out exactly what was being discussed, or try to guess what would have been said next. Or, if you happen to overhear two sides of a debate, you can talk about who you think is right. Overhead dialogue from a stranger can change the timbre of your whole day.

Is this eavesdropping? When you overhear something particularly intimate (“I did not even use protection last night”), it can feel like eavesdropping, yet it’s really accidental. However, if you decide to follow strangers into a store where you have no business, solely for the purpose of listening to the story a woman is telling about her messy divorce, you may have crossed the line into stalker territory (a conversation stalker!). A conversation stalker may not be as bad as the regular kind of stalker, but there is definitely acceptable and unacceptable urban eavesdropping.

Occasionally you find yourself so drawn to a stranger’s conversation—and so sure you have something of value to contribute—that you may want to try to join in. This must be done carefully, of course. Sometimes New Yorkers don’t respond well when their illusion of privacy is shattered. If you are on a bus or train, or standing together in a line, you can often politely insert a pertinent comment at just the right juncture. But you should be respectful of people’s boundaries and never expect to become a full-fledged participant in the conversation.

Last night I was walking in Chelsea with a friend, holding forth in a completely fantastic manner about a (non-existent) movie deal for a book of mine. I had had a glass of wine or two, which is probably why I was saying, “I just won’t let them do the movie unless I get to write the screenplay,” in such a grandiose tone. Out of the corner of my eye I caught the intrigued quick glance of a passerby, who slowed as I passed. Did I see a turn of her head? Suddenly I realized that my own overheard remark was serving as someone else’s delicious tidbit, if only for a New York minute.

—
Jeanne Martinet lives on the Upper West Side and is the author of seven books on social interaction. Read her blog at www.missmingle.com.

This winter, New Yorkers will use some 475 million gallons of diesel oil as heating fuel. This oil is highly polluting, and it increases our dependence on Middle East suppliers.

Obviously we have to heat our buildings. But there’s a better way.

Over the past two decades, scientists have figured out how to make perfectly good heating oil from vegetable matter—they call it “biodiesel.” While boilers in use today wouldn’t run well using pure biodiesel, they can use a blended fuel containing up to 20 percent biodiesel (and 80 percent conventional heating oil) with no loss of function.

(Don’t confuse biodiesel, which is soy- or palm-based, with ethanol made from corn. Ethanol is costlier than biodiesel and much less beneficial environmentally. What’s more, ethanol requires the destruction of corn crops, while biodiesel allows 80 percent of each producing plant to be used for food.)

Replacing 20 percent of the city’s heating oil with biodiesel would have enormous benefits for the environment, eliminating more than 700,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. To put that in perspective, the congestion pricing plan would have eliminated only 240,000 metric tons.

Biodiesel makes economic sense, too. At various times over the past year, biodiesel has actually been cheaper than regular heating fuel. And as the science gets better, this green fuel will become even less costly.

The truth is that biodiesel isn’t just a dream for pie-in-the-sky environmentalists. The New York Home Heating Oil Association supports the use of biodiesel, and a few forward-thinking companies are already selling it here in New York. In fact, the city government has even begun using biodiesel to heat some of its own buildings.
To achieve mainstream conversion to biodiesel, however, the energy sector will need a prod from the government. Private companies have been reluctant to invest in biodiesel production for fear that new demand is only temporary. But industry experts agree that the prospect of supplying the enormous New York City market would certainly stimulate production—and would likely drive the price of biodiesel down.

To that end, I have introduced legislation in the City Council that would require heating oil retailers to begin phasing in biodiesel blends, beginning with a 5 percent blend next year and working up to a 20 percent blend by 2013.

Let’s make this the last winter that New York relies so heavily on petroleum oil for heat. The City Council should pass biodiesel legislation as soon as possible.
–
David Yassky is a City Council member from Brooklyn and a candidate for Comptroller. He grew up on the Upper West Side

Elliot Sander

Unfortunately, the MTA is facing a $1.2 billion deficit as a result of rising debt costs and a dramatic decrease in revenue due to the collapse of the economy. Make no mistake, we are doing everything we can internally to tighten our belts. We are cutting costs by 6 percent over three years, with managerial and administrative expenses cut by 7 percent this year alone. We will achieve these results by pursuing innovative programs, such as a plan to consolidate back-office operations that will save up to $40 million annually. I, along with agency presidents, will also forgo previously agreed-to raises. But administrative costs make up only 7 percent of the MTA’s budget, so no amount of cutting can solve our entire problem.

Even more worrisome is the lack of funding to pay for maintaining and expanding the system. Since 1982, the MTA has invested $76 billion on these capital projects. As a result, the subway is now literally 20 times more reliable than it was in the early ‘80s. Ridership is up 50 percent in the past dozen years, reaching levels not seen in a generation. While this progress doesn’t mean much when you’re standing on a crowded No. 2 train, it is important to acknowledge how far we’ve come from the days of graffiti-covered trains and daily track fires.

Thankfully, the commission appointed by Gov. David Paterson and chaired by former MTA Chairman Richard Ravitch has recommended a funding package to support the system’s capital needs and help limit fare increases and eliminate service cuts. The Ravitch proposal shares the responsibility for funding the transit system among everyone who benefits from it, and I strongly support these recommendations.

After 25 years of dramatic improvement, New York’s transit network is clearly at a crossroads. A lack of funding threatens to derail unprecedented progress and send us in the wrong direction. If Albany doesn’t act soon, our customers will be faced with drastic fare and toll increases and service cuts, and the system will risk falling into disrepair.

Please call or write your local State Senator and Assembly Member and urge them to support the Ravitch recommendations to provide a steady, long-term funding stream for the MTA. Make sure our legislators understand the importance of the MTA’s transit network to all New Yorkers. Providing the region with efficient and reliable transportation options will keep our hardworking men and women and our economy moving forward.
–
Elliot Sander is CEO and executive director of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

In assembling her first book, Derrow, who is 45 and single, looked for “brave, ballsy, smart, searching” women who could capture the emotional side of copulation, the boring and embarrassing aspects of the too-often taboo subject that she had always enjoyed discussing with friends in her West 96th Street apartment.

Author Paula Derrow said she tried to capture the emotional, boring and embarrassing aspects of copulation.

“I had lots of great talks about sex with women friends who I invited over and plied with cocktails and treats from nearby Gourmet Garage,” she says.

After toiling for more than 20 years behind the scenes at Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, Lifetime Television and Self, where she is currently articles director, the Harvard-educated Derrow took a two-month sabbatical to work on the book in Rome. She discovered that while she loves working in the background and cultivating new voices, she is excited to finally be in the spotlight. The self-proclaimed “half therapist, half editor” designed the book for “regular” people, those “who aren’t doing crazy sexual things portrayed in magazines like Time Out: New York. This is ‘real life,’ the truth about sex without being exploitative.”

As she read stories from women old and young, lesbian, bisexual and straight, Derrow had a number of personal revelations about lovemaking.

“Sex changes all the time,” she writes in her introduction. “It swoops, soars, occasionally stalls, always evolving, happily often for the better, as we learn what we love and what we won’t tolerate, what we can give and allow ourselves to get in return.”

While the book is geared toward women, Derrow hopes it will be shared with their partners.

“Men will relate to it,” she promises. “They’ll be astounded to learn that coital expectations are neither male nor female.”

In fact, she hopes that all people, regardless of gender, age or orientation, will realize upon reading her book that sex is an unpredictable, distinctly human gift that has progressed well beyond the proverbial birds and bees and needs to be talked about candidly.

So far, the book has been well received. Publisher’s Weekly said Derrow “has selected essays that explore the wealth and variety of female sexual experience, making for a gender-transcending tale of sex lives that manages to be philosophical, poignant—and a great bit of naughty fun.”

Derrow will be reading from Beyond the Bedroom Door at Barnes & Noble (2289 Broadway at West 82nd Street, 212-362-8835) on Jan. 15 at 7 p.m., and as part of a pre-Valentine’s Day panel on writing about sex and relationships at Borders (10 Columbus Circle and Broadway, 212-823-9775) on Feb. 13 at 7 p.m.

I was a college sophomore and was home for winter break. My city friends were away for the holidays, so I was stuck celebrating New Year’s with my 13-year-old brother, Spencer. Before leaving for a party, my parents placed a champagne bottle in the refrigerator. “Only a sip for Spencer,” my mother instructed.

College had made me a champion beer drinker (back then the drinking age was 18), so I was disappointed to be spending the biggest party night of the year shackled to a minor. While jealously imagining that my friends were standing three-deep at a bar getting drunk on watered-down drinks (yes, this was my idea of a good time), I became resigned to watching Dick Clark on the television in my parents’ Upper East Side apartment.

My brother and I ate dinner at a local diner. I had a tasteless veal parmesan, while my brother ate an especially greasy chicken souvlaki, washed down by a strawberry milkshake, that he insisted was really Bisquick and milk. Afterward, we retreated to my parents’ apartment to plan the evening.

My brother wanted to watch the ball drop live, but I saw a trip to Times Square ending with my having to fill out a missing person’s report (13-year-old Caucasian male, last seen disappearing into a frenzied crowd of pickpockets and drunken tourists).

“Does the operator say happy New Year, when you call time at midnight?”
Spencer asked. He was referring to the telephone time service, with the monotone female voice that would say, “at the tone eastern daylight time will be…”

“What a great question!” I said. “Let’s find out.”

We decided to make the crucial call from a telephone booth outside the Plaza Hotel. The Plaza was a favorite spot for us, because our parents would take us to the hotel’s Trader Vic’s restaurant for special occasions. The location would also allow us a glimpse of the Central Park fireworks display that would begin at midnight.
At 11:30 we set out on foot for the Plaza, which was 20 blocks away. As midnight approached we began running. With a few blocks to go Spencer had fallen far behind. Looking over my shoulder, I saw him standing over a garbage can regurgitating his dinner.

Panicked, I sprinted over to him. “Are you all right?” I asked.

He looked up from the garbage can, laughing hysterically.

“C’mon!” I urged. We ran to the telephone booth, both of us laughing all the way.
As I reached into my pocket for change, the fireworks went off. We were too late.
In the 30 years since then, my New Year’s Eves have mostly been unremarkable: a black-tie party, or a casual affair; a kiss at midnight, or a lonely sip of champagne; a drunken walk home, or a search for a taxi, with a freezing wind slapping me into sobriety. I have sometimes thought about calling the time lady at midnight but never got around to doing so.

Spencer moved to Los Angeles after he graduated college. Every Dec. 31 we talk over the phone, with one of us always noting that for a three-hour window we will be living in different years; this observation—much like our quest to hear the New Year’s Eve telephone recording—being a joke about the significance we place on marking time.

Unfortunately, Spencer and I will never find out if the time lady acknowledged the New Year. Telephone companies discontinued the time service years ago.
Trade Vic’s and the Plaza Hotel (converted into condos) are also gone. But the lousy diner where Spencer and I ate our greasy New Year’s meal is still around.
–
Ben Krull is an Upper East Sider and essayist.