Screenshot of part of an email sent from NYC Mayor Eric Adams. There is a blue, thought bubble at the top with the text "HEAR FROM ERIC". Below that is the text from the begining of the email: "Good morning New Yorkers, As you may have heard, the U.S. Department of Justice directed that the case against me be dismissed. I addressed New Yorkers on Tuesday about our path forward and the future New Yorkers are relying on us to deliver that will make New York City the best place to raise a family."

This is the email many New Yorkers received from Mayor Eric Adams this morning. The subject was the same as this post: “Time to move forward”. The email, by the way, goes on to list some of the ways he’s continue to make the city safer and more affordable.

I agree, it’s time to move forward: Adams should resign immediately.

At the time of writing this post, every person the Department of Justice has ordered to dismiss the charges has responded by submitting their resignation. So, he still has charges pending. Although, that will change very soon. It’s only a matter of time before the DOJ finds some toady to do the their dirty work so Trump can have someone who owes him in City Hall.

KEXP consistently rocks. Two items of note this week: Black History is Now on Monday 3FEB. I wasn’t able to listen to all of it, but I caught DJ Reverend Dollars set–epic. What a great musical history lesson in black dance music. Then, Friday was International Clash Day. I planned to listen, but totally forgot about it on Friday. Thankfully, they have a streaming archive, so I was able to listen to it on Saturday. You can do the same; hurry up, they only archive for two weeks!

We had a remarkably good jam on Friday, especially since none of us have been picking up our instruments during the week. I need to change that, my meager bass skills are starting atrophy.

Supreme Bowl III was on Saturday, and delicious as always. We had way too much food though, so we’ll be working through the leftovers for a bit.

Links

There are a few links mixed in this week. I said I was going to lay off the political links after the election, but I just can’t help myself.

Photo of a plaque on a blue wall with square, gray paving stones below. The text engraved on the plaque is: "City of New York Department of Plant and Structures, Transmitter House for Radio Station WNYC, F.H. La Guardia - Mayor, F.J.H. Kracke - Commissioner, 1936, Constructed by Works Progress Administration.
Plaque at the old WNYC Transmitter House – Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

NYC Congestion Pricing Data is being published by the MTA. Sadly, there have been many reports of government data becoming unacceptable over the last couple weeks. So, it’s nice to see a new dataset available. Go forth and visualize!

We took a trip to Greenpoint on Saturday. I say “a trip” because it involved a ride on the G train (running in two parts this weekend, even more exciting!), which makes it feel farther away than it really is. We took a walk around WNYC Transmitter Park. The old, WPA-constructed transmitter house is still there, but there are no vestiges of the old towers.

It was a successful trip, we returned with a very affordable ($6!) Bob James/David Sanborn record I’d been looking for (courtesy of Captured Record Shop), a Bodega Kitties mystery box (from myplasticheart), and an apple fritter the size of my head (from Moe’s Doughs).

After a couple weeks off, our regular jam session was back on. None of us have been practicing, but despite the rust, we didn’t sound too bad. It did serve as a reminder to try to pick up that bass a few times during the week though.

Links

Time series line graph. The y-axis is the number of entries into Manhattan's Congestion Relief Zone (CRZ), labels have a minimum of 0 and maximum of 5,000. The x-axis represents the Time of Day, the labels start with 0 and increase to the right, with a maximum of 21. There are two shaded areas in the morning and evening time. There are also two dotted, vertical lines at 5AM and 9PM. A single blue line plots the number of vehicles per 10 minute increment. Two red arrows point out distinct changes in the number of vehicles just before 5AM and at 9PM.
Congestion Relief Zone Entries by Time of Day (emphasis mine). Credit: MTA

Details about the the number of vehicles entering the Congestion Relief Zone (CRZ) are available on the MTA’s Metrics Page and New York State’s Open Data site. I can’t wait to see the sorts of interesting data visualizations people will create with this data.

In The most detailed view of NYC traffic (so far), the MTA Data Analytics team describes how this data is collected, and points out some of the emerging patterns. One of those patterns is very clear in the chart above with notable spikes before and after peak pricing time.

I can understand that some people will enter the CRZ a little earlier or later to reduce their toll. However, it’s interesting how steep the spikes are, especially in the evening. Are there people lined up just before 9PM, waiting to cross into the zone? I also wonder if people are speeding to get in under that wire at 4:59AM.