Latimer After Metro North; Metro North After Good Publicity
Local state pol George Latimer is pushing for a pushing for a public hearing on the abysmal state of the Metro North train service.
Meanwhile, Metro North is busy selling the future – their PR people managed to place a glowing story about the one or two new M-8 cars running on the New Haven line.
Bottom line: service will be bad (and smelly) until all the new cars are in service which will take until 2013. Bummer.
Here is the note Latimer sent neighbors recently:
"Dear Sound Shore Neighbor,
As promised, here is an update on our plans re: Metro North.
I met today with Assemblyman Jim Brennan, the new Chair of the Assembly Corporations & Authorities Committee, which will be sponsoring the Assembly public hearing on Metro North Operations. He provided with me a tentative date for the public hearing [not yet confirmed]. Once it is confirmed, I will let you know, along with the contact information to sign up for public testimony, as well as an e-mail/mailing address for written testimony if you can't attend the hearing. Jim and I spoke about the Connecticut-New York connection, and some of the prospective areas for inquiry, along the lines of my sample questions which I already shared with each of you. I am not a member of the Committee, and thereby will be unable to ask questions myself, but I will be in attendance, and I will be specifically interacting with two Westchester members of the Committee, Sandy Galef and Tom Abinanti, who will help question along the lines I am advocating, with inquiry based on our past communications.
I have been kept abreast of the daily stories of indignity suffered by commuters and am fully sympathetic to the fact that it doesn't take a snowstorm to trigger poor operations. I have also heard about (but not yet experienced) the few new M8s in service. I am striving to keep current on every twist and turn in the story — and will continue to keep you posted as things advance.
Regards,
George Latimer
Assemblyman, 91st A.D."
Good for George. They will probably murmur politically palatable acts of contrition and file for a fare increase in July.
And germane to nothing on the MTA – I was providing comments to trade press yesterday about some media figures I know and thought I’d repost them here of general fyi since I couldn’t find an “artistic” themed MyRye string they would match up with. Maybe if there was a series on business mentors?
Remembrances.
My prime competitor back when I was a young inexperienced publisher of mass market paperbacks. He was always innovative, never boring, beat me handily in revenues but I believe rarely in profits, a restless forward thinker and someone I learned a lot from. RIP.
“Walter Zacharius built one of the largest independent book publishers in the nation by exploiting niches the bigger houses ignored. Mr. Zacharius, who died Wednesday at age 87, founded Kensington Publishing Corp. and under its Zebra imprint created a top-selling line of mass-market romances…”He was an old-school guy who managed to step into the digital age,” said Richard Curtis, a New York-based literary agent and publishing consultant.”
https://on.wsj.com/dLKiG0
Hearty Congratulations!
Jac Holzman was my mentor in film technology, recorded music and, most importantly, the proper management of artistic creators. He’s being inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland next week. From the attached article, here’s some classic Jac –
“Did I care when Jim Morrison passed out in the office?” he said. “No. We would have put those orange cones around him if we’d had them. We’d just let him lie there, and eventually he’d get up and dust himself off and go home. These are great stories, and they’re true. But I’m not their monitors, I’m their record company. I’m there to tell them what I think they need, what I think will work for them. They make the decisions. I never got in their face.”
As his ex-wife testifies Jac’s “integrity and attention to detail made Elektra.” It also was key at Panavision and Cinema Products where I came to know and deeply respect his incredible talents.
https://nyti.ms/gCY92P