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NY Penn station. Why 30 years have not started improvements.

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Posted by Shock Control on Tuesday, December 10, 2019 7:23 PM

charlie hebdo
Apparently neither have you. 

I have.  

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Wednesday, December 11, 2019 8:38 AM

NKP guy

 

 
Flintlock76
"To answer the question nobody's asked, 'How far are we above the river?', the answer is, eight seconds!"

 

   As a naive young teenager, I once asked my dad, a US Navy WW2 vet, if he had ever been afraid of drowning or having his ship (battleship Pennsylvania BB-38) lost way out there on the Pacific Ocean.

   "Hell, no," he snorted.  Then with a grin he said, "After all, the nearest land is always only about five miles away."  Before I could say What do you mean? he added, "straight down."

 

 

NKP, years back I worked with a man who was a WW2 carrier veteran, the USS Lexington,  to be exact.

He told me something similar, "Until you've see guys work to save a ship, you've never seen guys work!"

"When the nearest land is two miles straight down, what else are you gonna do?"

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Posted by charlie hebdo on Wednesday, December 11, 2019 8:41 AM

SC: You may have worked at one but you clearly don't know anything about the costs, which several of us laid out,  in my case the operating expense of a large symphony orchestra.  The cost to rebuild authentically the old Penn monstrosity dwarfs any symphony budget.  Further,  your analogy of orchestral works and a building is flawed. One is an attempt at a work of art; the other is performance art,  designed to be played an indefinite number of times.  

See if you can find a private fund willing to undertake your project.  Amtrak and government are not going to waste taxpayer dollars on a project of such dubious aesthetics.

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Posted by NKP guy on Wednesday, December 11, 2019 4:09 PM

Flintlock76
NKP, years back I worked with a man who was a WW2 carrier veteran, the USS Lexington,  to be exact. He told me something similar, "Until you've see guys work to save a ship, you've never seen guys work!" "When the nearest land is two miles straight down, what else are you gonna do?"

   Flintlock, weren't those guys, and their gals, one hell of a generation?

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Wednesday, December 11, 2019 7:08 PM

NKP guy

 

 
Flintlock76
NKP, years back I worked with a man who was a WW2 carrier veteran, the USS Lexington,  to be exact. He told me something similar, "Until you've see guys work to save a ship, you've never seen guys work!" "When the nearest land is two miles straight down, what else are you gonna do?"

 

   Flintlock, weren't those guys, and their gals, one hell of a generation?

 

And how!  And believe me, I mean absolutely no insult to the kids serving in uniform now, they're priceless, but in my opinion those sailors and Marines we had during WW2 were the BEST naval service we ever had.  Or anyone ever had.  Bar none.  

And the real miracle is how quickly and how well it was built!  Think about it.  Kids who a year before didn't know port from starboard, or a mainmast from a scupper,  or what end of a Browning 1917 water-cooled did what, or an M-1 from an M&M,  were turned into the most formidable fighting force the world has ever seen!  

And now we're losing them, more each year.  It has to happen of course, time marches on, but it doesn't make it any easier.  

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Posted by Gramp on Thursday, December 12, 2019 2:38 AM

My dad served on the USS Wilhoite, a destroyer escort. Both theaters. He would talk about being in the North Atlantic during a winter storm. Harrowing. In their later years, the shipmates would reunite each year. Such a strong bond among them. Something to witness!

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Posted by Shock Control on Thursday, December 12, 2019 10:26 AM

charlie hebdo
See if you can find a private fund willing to undertake your project.

Once again, let this serve as a friendly reminder that this is not MY project:  It is an existing project, the proponents of which include professional architects. I happen to support THEIR project, and merely asked about the status.  

I don't understand why so many participants here are bent out of shape because there is someone on the interwebz who supports a project that they don't agree with.  I am not invalidating anyone else's views, but a few here seem to be invalidating mine.  The entire world does not share your views.  

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Posted by Overmod on Thursday, December 12, 2019 10:41 AM

Just to stick a cork or a fork in the to-and-fro part of this 'discussion':  for some reason no one has actually posted information or links to the 'project' in question yet.  The master plan (which has links to other collateral and contact information for the principals, is here,

https://www.rebuildpennstation.org/master-plan

and a relatively recent article, from what in retrospect is a fairly obvious source, is here (from August 2019)

https://www.rebuildpennstation.org/master-plan

(The embedded links may show up properly once IT stops playing with its pacifier or whatever)

I suspect Mr. Cameron of Atelier would be the best real source for answers to any real, hard questions regarding the actuality of funding or political action being taken to advance this project; he would certainly be a likely if not first point of contact for anyone actually interested in participating.  Much of a ongoing detail discussion in a forum like this is not likely to be particularly gainful without understanding the actual details of the plan itself.

(Let me add, with all of love, that the essential point of my 'six orders of magnitude' was intended strictly rhetorically, and any further discussion of cost, or funding, should refer directly to details or numbers in the published collateral or obtained directly from people with some reasonable authority to 'know stuff' who are willing to speak from the inside on what's actually being done.)

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Posted by charlie hebdo on Thursday, December 12, 2019 12:14 PM

Shock Control

 

 
charlie hebdo
See if you can find a private fund willing to undertake your project.

 

Once again, let this serve as a friendly reminder that this is not MY project:  It is an existing project, the proponents of which include professional architects. I happen to support THEIR project, and merely asked about the status.  

I don't understand why so many participants here are bent out of shape because there is someone on the interwebz who supports a project that they don't agree with.  I am not invalidating anyone else's views, but a few here seem to be invalidating mine.  The entire world does not share your views.  

 

It's called a discussion.  Just because not everyone agrees with this "proposal" doesn't mean we are "bent out of (or into) shape." I don't know your age or situation,  but you are starting to sound like some student who insists on "safe zones" on campus so he doesn't have to hear ideas he doesn't like. I happen to believe in free speech. 

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Posted by Shock Control on Thursday, December 12, 2019 7:55 PM

charlie hebdo
It's called a discussion.  Just because not everyone agrees with this "proposal" doesn't mean we are "bent out of (or into) shape." I don't know your age or situation,  but you are starting to sound like some student who insists on "safe zones" on campus so he doesn't have to hear ideas he doesn't like. I happen to believe in free speech. 

I fully respect your right to want one thing from a future Penn Station, just as I'm sure you respect mine, given that we both believe in free speech and, presumably, freedom of thought. I'm not attempting to change your mind, and you are clearly incapable of changing mine.  

So let's accept the fact that you and I have different visions for the future of Penn Station, and then maybe we can watch some Hallmark Christmas movies together and drink some hot cocoa. 

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Posted by CMStPnP on Saturday, December 14, 2019 2:42 AM

Shock Control
So let's accept the fact that you and I have different visions for the future of Penn Station, and then maybe we can watch some Hallmark Christmas movies together and drink some hot cocoa. 

I support the new Penn Station project.   Look you would understand Charlie Hebdo and his grumpy opinions  better if you lived next to the FIB's for a while.   

I mean look what Chicago has done after the preservation to Grand Central Terminal in NYC.   Tore down Northwestern Station for a laughably ugly office tower.   Tore down LaSalle Street Station.    Attempted to tear down Dearborn Street Station but instead attempted to turn it into a retail mall with pretty crappy results.  Tore down IC Central Station, the list goes on and on.   I think Chicago Union Station is the last and if METRA had it's way it would have been torn down as well.   Thank goodness they never got their hands on it.   METRA still wants to sell off Chicago Union Station for demo for the money it can pocket on the immediate sale but Amtrak is standing in it's way currently with it's redevelopment plans and METRA is not interested in those or paying higher fees for a redeveloped CUS.

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Posted by Shock Control on Saturday, December 14, 2019 12:02 PM

CMStPnP
I support the new Penn Station project.   Look you would understand Charlie Hebdo and his grumpy opinions  better if you lived next to the FIB's for a while.

Yes

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Posted by charlie hebdo on Saturday, December 14, 2019 5:28 PM

CMStPnP never let facts stand in the way of his biased and/or contrafactual opinions, like those concerning Metra, Talgo,  Illinois, Chicago commuters, German Rail, et al.. Since CUS is owned by Amtrak, it would be pretty hard for Metra to sell it.  

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Posted by charlie hebdo on Saturday, December 14, 2019 6:21 PM

Shock Control

 

 
CMStPnP
I support the new Penn Station project.   Look you would understand Charlie Hebdo and his grumpy opinions  better if you lived next to the FIB's for a while.

 

Yes

 

Right, hide behind an acronym for a pretty vile statement about Illinoisans. Without our tourism bucks spent in Dairyland,  WI would be a disaster. 

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Posted by Overmod on Saturday, December 14, 2019 7:40 PM

charlie hebdo
Since CUS is owned by Amtrak, it would be pretty hard for Metra to sell it.  

That's silly.  The Brooklyn Bridge is much bigger than CUS and people have been selling it for well over a century!  The problem comes when the buyer wants to make money out of their investment ... and that's not likely to ever characterize CUS again...

Can we please dispense with the FIB trolling, though?  Aside from being coarse on a potentially family-friendly forum, it's an explicit violation of the published TOS.

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Saturday, December 14, 2019 8:37 PM

Wow.  And people from New York City, North Jersey, and Philadelphia think they have it rough when the year-round residents of the Jersey Shore call them "bennys" and "shoobies."

Could be worse.

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Posted by Overmod on Saturday, December 14, 2019 8:56 PM

Flintlock76
Wow.  And people from New York City, North Jersey, and Philadelphia think they have it rough when the year-round residents of the Jersey Shore call them "bennys" and "shoobies."

That's because it's so silly there's no insult when one of those folks uses it.  That is, unless you deserve it, and then you deserve it.

The Benny thing is a bit like the Sabine being the dividing line between Cajuns to the south and Coonas... well, I can't really say it in full ... north of there.  If you're from north of the Driscoll Bridge you're suspect... but then again, you have to act arrogant like a New Yorker, but not actually be a New Yorker to qualify. Does the "Ben" refer to flashing hundreds, or does it refer to Bayonne, Elizabeth, Newark, or is it obliquely anti-Semitic?  I don't know but I certainly don't want to be one!  Shoobies are for day-tripper summer people who waltz in and leave the remnants of their shoebox lunch on the beach.  You can see why locals don't appreciate it; I suspect there's more than a little of Stephen King's 'summer people' in there...

Oh, PS, as was mentioned to me more than once, people who say 'down da shore' are more often Bennies then locals ...

Now, when they get into "Poindexter" country, that gets more personal...

IS there some generic term for Jerseyites outside Jersey?  Seems like just using Jersey, as in "Jersey driver!!" is enough to get it into the language as an expression.  Nobody calls 'Massachusetts driver' as an insult, even though in most cases it is or perhaps ought to be.  Massachusetts notably used to have green lettering and red lettering on their plates, with the red denoting people with too many 'points on their record'.  I told my daughter this story, and she remarked to me when we went to Boston over the summer that now, all Massachusetts plates are red.

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Posted by Paul of Covington on Saturday, December 14, 2019 8:59 PM

   Luckily, I don't know what FIB means.   Please don't tell me.

_____________ 

  "A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner

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Posted by BaltACD on Saturday, December 14, 2019 9:48 PM

Paul of Covington
   Luckily, I don't know what FIB means.   Please don't tell me.

Urban Dictionary will clue you in.

Never too old to have a happy childhood!

              

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Posted by charlie hebdo on Saturday, December 14, 2019 10:43 PM

Overmod

 

 
charlie hebdo
Since CUS is owned by Amtrak, it would be pretty hard for Metra to sell it.  

 

That's silly.  The Brooklyn Bridge is much bigger than CUS and people have been selling it for well over a century!  The problem comes when the buyer wants to make money out of their investment ... and that's not likely to ever characterize CUS again...

Can we please dispense with the FIB trolling, though?  Aside from being coarse on a potentially family-friendly forum, it's an explicit violation of the published TOS.

 

I mentioned the facts of who owns CUS because the Milwaukee Road guy once again got it wrong.  As to his use of a vulgarity, take it up with him, not me.  Your attempt to equate a vulgarity (that clearly violates K-bach's terms) with silly, disparaging term used by Jersey Shore folks on folks from Manhattan is pretty far off the mark. 

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Posted by Overmod on Sunday, December 15, 2019 12:49 AM

charlie hebdo
Your attempt to equate a vulgarity (that clearly violates K-bach's terms) with silly, disparaging term used by Jersey Shore folks on folks from Manhattan is pretty far off the mark. 

My comments about bennies and shoobies (which are from locals, not just the sort of Jersey Shore show denizens it's so easy for cultured Chicagoites to contemptuously despise*) are in the context of Wayne's remark, which in part emphasized implicitly how much worse "FIB" was than the insult terms used for folks from my part of New Jersey.  It was humor, something more than occasionally lost on the overserious or overly touchy, and nothing more than that.  Clearly I did not equate the use of "FIB" with those words; in fact, I clearly requested that it no longer be used as a patent violation of the published language in the TOS.  Perhaps you did not read that far... oh wait, did you think

Can we please dispense with the FIB trolling, though?

was aimed in any way at you?  I apologize for even leaving that impression.  I admire your restraint in not calling out the multiple posters using that term directly, and it was to them, and others who might want to pile on with the baiting, that the comment was addressed.

(* Lest I be mistaken for a city snob, I don't much care for that bunch's ways either)

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Posted by Gramp on Sunday, December 15, 2019 7:55 AM

What I know is Chicagoans and Door County, Wi. merchants have had a mutualistic simbiotic relationship. C's think they're getting steals at the expense of the DC merchants. DC M's think they're making out like bandits at the expense of the C's. 

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Posted by charlie hebdo on Sunday, December 15, 2019 8:08 AM

Overmod

 

 
charlie hebdo
Your attempt to equate a vulgarity (that clearly violates K-bach's terms) with silly, disparaging term used by Jersey Shore folks on folks from Manhattan is pretty far off the mark. 

 

You might at least think about self-medicating for paranoia.Wink  I, at least, am not out to get you.

My comments about bennies and shoobies (which are from locals, not just the sort of Jersey Shore show denizens it's so easy for cultured Chicagoites to contemptuously despise) are in the context of Wayne's remark, which in part emphasized implicitly how much worse "FIB" was than the insult terms used for folks from my part of New Jersey.  It was humor, something more than occasionally lost on the overserious or overly touchy, and nothing more than that.  Clearly I did not equate the use of "FIB" with those words; in fact, I clearly requested that it no longer be used as a patent violation of the published language in the TOS.  Perhaps you did not read that far... oh wait, did you think

 

 
Can we please dispense with the FIB trolling, though?

 

was aimed in any way at you?  I apologize for even leaving that impression.  I admire your restraint in not calling out the multiple posters using that term directly, and it was to them, and others who might want to pile on with the baiting, that the comment was addressed.

 

Agree.  I just do not want to see such a vile insult in any way equated with fun terms like Bennies.  However, since that term now is seen as anti-Semitic, we should refrain from using it. 

My main point about his hatred for Chicago causing him to make contrafactual statements stands. 

Although you were lamely attempting sarcasm, paranoia is not a joke, nor is telling someone to take meds. 

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Sunday, December 15, 2019 10:01 AM

One last thing and I'll let everyone get back to the real topic.

"The origin of the terms 'benny' and 'shoobie' are lost in the mysteries of time..."  

Seriously, it's all conjecture.  "Benny" is supposed to originate from an amalgam of Bergen County, Essex County, Newark, and New York City.  "Shoobie" is supposedly from the habit of Philadelphia residents visiting the Shore with lunches packed in shoeboxes. 

The plain fact of the matter is no-one really knows, and the most diligent research can't uncover the origins.  

Maybe it's one of those mysteries of the universe we're not meant  to know?  Hmm  

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Posted by 54light15 on Sunday, December 15, 2019 12:52 PM

Benny and Shoobie are terms I've never heard before until I read this thread. It's always interesting to learn regional slang which is like professional slang. Isn't foamer professional slang? Here in Toronto, we used to call the suburban kids who came downtown to drink and make fools of themselves "the PMS kids," for Pickering, Mississauga and Scarborough, the residences of such kids who on Friday and Saturday nights get arrested for public drunkeness and other behaviours.  In London, saying "Essex people" refers pretty much to the same type of suburban drunken yobs. 

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Posted by Overmod on Sunday, December 15, 2019 1:02 PM

charlie hebdo
Although you were lamely attempting sarcasm, paranoia is not a joke, nor is telling someone to take meds. 

That's right, of course.

The 'joke' was in all the people who seemed to be piling on to the subject of FIBs, referencing the older joke (using the popular idea of paranoia) about 'just because you're paranoid doesn't necessarily mean they're NOT all out to get you'.

It's not intended to make fun of clinical schizophrenia or paranoia, and the medicine claim was not meant seriously in any way, but I retract it anyway as needlessly insensitive (and other reasons not needing listing).

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Posted by charlie hebdo on Sunday, December 15, 2019 1:44 PM

Agreed!! 

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Posted by CMStPnP on Monday, December 16, 2019 4:08 AM

charlie hebdo
Since CUS is owned by Amtrak, it would be pretty hard for Metra to sell it.  

METRA has already launched the Chicago Machine and a heavy Federal based political campaign at the Congressional level to force Amtrak to sell or turn over CUS.    No secret why, even Amtrak knows the ulterior motive.   METRA is using the argument that it can better control the train dispatching but it's really after getting the money for the real estate as it does not want to pay increased fees for using the station to Amtrak or any other owner.   Amtrak even alluded to METRA being a deadbeat tenant and not paying it's share of the upkeep for CUS in the past.

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Posted by Overmod on Monday, December 16, 2019 9:22 AM

Flintlock76
Maybe it's one of those mysteries of the universe

Many things in Jersey are Things Mankind was Not Meant to Know...

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Posted by 54light15 on Monday, December 16, 2019 12:11 PM

That is so true- While driving on the Turnpike near Elizabeth, Isaac Asimov's wife called it "Mordor."  

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