THE WELCOME WAGON



Some materials to help new minister members of the
Presbytery of New York City

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This package of information was first provided by the Presbytery of New York City in 1984, and has been periodically updated, for the use of new minister members of Presbytery.

It is NOT intended to be a systematic or complete description of the City of New York; that would take many, many volumes. This material knowingly simplifies and omits detail.

It IS intended to serve as a starting-point, a place for those new to the City and the Presbytery to get their bearings; a place from which it is fully expected that they will find their own way and fill in details impossible to include in this package.

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CONTENTS:

A brief City chronology 1
The governance of the City 3
The shape of the City:
geographies, physical and personal 4
The City and the word 7
Tales, historic and otherwise 8
TOOLKIT: useful stuff 15
A Manhattan address finder 17
VITAL information for ministers 18

This package was written by Carl Bowers at the request of the Ministerial Relations Committee of the Presbytery of New York City, United Presbyterian Church in the USA [now the Presbyterian Church (USA)]. Anything not clearly either in the public domain or attributed to others is his responsibility, and is copyright ©John Carl Bowers, 1984, 2004.





THE CITY OF NEW YORK: chronology (a scant selection)

The history of the City can be found in hundreds of books; but those who know the City wonder if even hundreds provide an adequate chronicle. An excellent summary is in the Columbia Encyclopedia, and in available guidebooks (cf. p. 16). For those with real interest, the single most valuable resource is The Encyclopedia of New York City. Also check out two of the City's dozens of museums: the Museum of the City of New York, at 103rd Street and Fifth Avenue; and the New-York Historical Society, at 77th Street and Central Park West. The New York Public Library, Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, also knows a thing or two.

Following are some dates and events, of more or less significance.

c.1000 Manhattan, Canarsee, Hackensack, and Rockaway Indians inhabit what is now New York City; Lief Erickson sails through the coastal waters.

1524 The Italian Giovanni daVerrazano (for France) explores New York Bay.

1525 Estavan Gomez, a Portuguese (for Spain), discovers the Hudson River.

1609 Henry Hudson explores the harbor and the Hudson as far north as Albany.

1613 Adriaen Block and his men reside on Manhattan at what is now 41 Broadway to build a new ship after their original, the Tyger, is destroyed by fire. The next year they sail into and map Long Island Sound; theirs is the first map to show Manhattan as an island.

1625 The first permanent colonists (Dutch) settle on Manhattan.

1626 Peter Minuit buys Manhattan for 60 guilders (the legendary $24).

1628 The City's first church (Dutch Reformed) is founded with the arrival of its first minister. In 1633, this congregation erect the City's first church at what is now 39 Pearl Street.

1636 First land in Brooklyn, near Gowanus Creek, purchased from the Mohawk tribe.

1639 Staten Island first settled by Europeans under David deVries; Jonas Bronck purchases land in what is to become The Bronx.

1643 Fleeing theological disputes in New England, English Anabaptists arrive: John Throckmorton in what is now Throgg's Neck in The Bronx; Anne Hutchinson as his neighbor to the north; Lady Deborah Moody in Gravesend, Brooklyn.

1645 First permanent settlement in Queens, at Vlisingen (Flushing).

1646 Breuckelen (Brooklyn) [meaning "broken land"] established as a town; Adriaen Van der Donck's farm in the West Bronx, called "der Jonkheer's Landt," gives its name to the present city of Yonkers.

1652 The City's first Presbyterian church established at Newtown, now a part of Queens.

1653 Peter Stuyvesant erects the wooden palisade across Manhattan at Wall Street; the first City Hall occupies the site of the City's first tavern, an unsurprising if less-than-logical progression.

1654 The first Jews arrive: Jacob bar-Simon from Holland, Asser Levy and 22 others from Brazil.

1657 On December 27, in defense of their neighbors of other faiths (including "Jews, Turks, Quakers, and Presbyterians," the people of Flushing sign the "Flushing Remonstrance" in protest of Peter Stuyvesant's violation of their town Charter's guarantee of freedom of conscience; the Remonstrance is often called "America's first declaration of independence."

1658 The village of Nieuw Haarlem [present-day Harlem] is established.

1664 The British capture the City and rename it for the Duke of York.

1673 The Dutch recapture the City and again rename it Nieuw Orange, only to lose it permanently a year later by the Treaty of Westminster. They got something in exchange: Dutch Guiana, now called Surinam.

1713 First ferry service to Staten Island.

1733 John Peter Zenger establishes the New York Weekly Journal, the City's second-- opposition-- newspaper. In 1734 the British burn an edition critical of them, and jail Zenger for slander. In 1735, Zenger's acquittal (defended by Andrew Hamilton, a "Philadelphia lawyer") establishes the principle of freedom of the press.

1770 January 19: the Battle of Golden Hill (near today's John Street), the first armed conflict of the Revolution.

1774 "Tea Party" in New York Harbor.

1776 On August 27, the Battle of Brooklyn, the first, largest, and most pivotal full-scale battle of the entire Revolution, is fought where Prospect Park now stands [see p. 10] . Having escaped the British into Manhattan, General George Washington next wins a major battle on Harlem Heights, in a buckwheat field-- the present site of Barnard College.

1784 The City becomes the capital of the State and the nation.

1789 At Federal Hall, Broad and Wall Streets, Washington takes the oath of office as President.

1790 First Federal census; the City's population is 33,000.

1791 A yellow fever epidemic causes many residents to move out into the country and establish a new settlement in the countryside-- Greenwich Village.

1792 The New York Stock Exchange begins operations-- from hand to hand, under a buttonwood tree beside Broad Street.

1807 Robert Fulton tests the Clermont on the Hudson. By 1810, regular steamship service is established between New York and New Jersey.

1811 The Commissioners' Plan, establishing the City street grid, is adopted.

1820 New York becomes the nation's largest city; population 123,706.

1826 Lord and Taylor, retail merchants, open for business.

1827 The State Legislature abolishes slavery throughout the State.

1845 Theodore Roosevelt is born near Gramercy Square.

1851 The "New York Daily Times" begins publication; today, its name is The New York Times.

1858 Sea-captain R.H. Macy opens a department store.

1862 The Monitor, the Northern ironclad, is launched in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

1870 Work begins on the New-York and Brooklyn Bridge.

1870 The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens.

1882 Thomas Edison opens his first commercial generating plant at 257 Pearl Street. Four years later, he lights Liberty's torch.

1883 The Metropolitan Opera opens.

1898 Greater New York is established under a new City charter uniting the five boroughs. The population is 3,400,000, second only to London's. The Harlem River Speedway (now Drive) opens as the only City street with no speed limit.

1902 The Fuller Building opens at 5th Avenue and 23rd Street; at 20 stories it remains the world's tallest for several years. No one calls it "Fuller;" the owners capitulate to popular usage and officially rename it the Flatiron Building.

1904 The first subway begins operation between City Hall and West 145th Street; fare, five cents.

1905 The modern Staten Island Ferry begins operation; also five cents.

1913 At the 69th Regiment armory, the Armory Show introduces modern art to America, creating a sensation and spawning the Museum of Modern Art; at the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem, Darktown Follies earns critical praise, giving rise to the custom of outsiders coming into Harlem for entertainment.

1927 Charles Lindbergh rides up Broadway in a triumph; in The Bronx, George Herman Ruth hits 60 home runs.

1931 The Empire State Building and the George Washington Bridge open.

1933 State Governor Franklin Roosevelt is inaugurated as President; Fiorello LaGuardia (the Little Flower) takes office as Mayor.

1934 The New York City Housing Authority, the nation's first public housing agency, is established.

1946 New York is selected as the permanent home of the United Nations; in 1947, the Rockefeller family donates the (then) $5.8-million site.

1948 Subway fare rises to ten cents.

1956 The Brooklyn Dodgers move to Los Angeles.

1964 Race riots in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant.

1965 The Landmarks Preservation Commission is established.

1984 The Welcome Wagon is inflicted upon the Presbytery.

1990 David N. Dinkins, the City's first nonwhite Mayor, takes office.

2001 Using hijacked passenger jets as flying bombs, terrorists destroy the twin towers of the World Trade Center, destroy or damage other City buildings and infrastructure and the Pentagon, and take 2801 lives.

2001 The best newspaper in town, The New York Times, turns 150 on September 15.



THE GOVERNANCE OF THE CITY

The City is governed by the Mayor, the City Council, the Public Advocate, and the Comptroller. Each Borough also has a Borough President and Borough Board. These officers of the City are elected for four-year terms, with a two-term limit, in the year following the national Presidential election; thus, the terms of the incumbents expire on December 31, 2005.

The Mayor is the chief executive officer of the City. The City Council President and Borough Presidents are the presiding officers of their respective Council and Boards. The Comptroller is the City's chief fiduciary.

The City Council is the City's legislative body. It numbers 51, one member from each of the 51 Council districts; each district includes about 156,000 persons. The Council is presided over by the elected Public Advocate, who in his role as Council President votes only to break ties. The Mayor can veto the enactments of the Council; a Mayoral veto can be overridden by a two-thirds vote of the Council.

This is a "strong Council-strong Mayor" system. The Council's power is concentrated in the person of the Council majority leader, known as the Speaker; the Speaker's power parallels the Mayor's, with each dominating different spheres of influence and patronage. This opposition of strength to strength often creates entertaining legislative gridlock. While the Council President/Public Advocate presides over the Council, he/she has only advisory and watchdog powers in City government; however, the Public Advocate becomes Mayor in the event of the sitting Mayor's incapacity or removal, making him/her a force to be regarded.

Each Borough Board is composed of the Borough President, the borough's members of the City Council, and the chairperson of each community board in the borough. Borough Boards are largely powerless, having merely advisory rights regarding capital spending, fund allocation, and planning within their boroughs. Community boards, of which there are 51 Citywide, have little more official power than do Borough Boards; however, where they are effectively run, they exert much more actual influence on City affairs.

The intent of this plan of government-- which began with the Charter of 1898 which established the present City of five boroughs, was consolidated by Mayor LaGuardia's Charter of 1936, and was modified in 1991 under a Federal mandate to ensure "one person-one vote" representation-- is to provide both for central authority and for local and Borough-wide autonomy. Seldom does it fail entirely; seldom does it work impeccably. Such is democracy.

Things are not so simple as that; the State of New York has considerable power over the City. The State Constitution limits the size of the City expense budget; the Governor can remove any elected City official after a hearing, and can suspend any official for thirty days pending a hearing; and there are other ties: when Mayor John V. Lindsay sought to establish a "fourth platoon" in the Police Department during the high-crime hours, the State Legislature's approval was required. Further, tax monies go directly from the City to the Federal government, but return to the City mostly through the State. No wonder that since the19th century there have been New Yorkers calling for the City to become a State unto itself. (If we did, we would be the tenth largest state in the Union!)

The Board of Education of the City of New York, as monolithic as that mouth-filling title implies, has been abolished; it is now called the Department of Education, and the Chancellor (Superintendent) is appointed by the Mayor. But it still has a multi-billion-dollar budget, charge over the lives of more than a million City children, considerable independence from outside control, and a bureaucracy legendary for its immobility and impenetrability. Its activities and organization are freighted with political and personal agendas. Words fail and space is inadequate to describe it.

Besides this, there are hordes of para-Governmental "authorities" in the picture: the Transit Authority [TA], which is City-wide; above it, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority [MTA], which deals with the region; above it, the State Department of Transportation [DOT]; the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority [TBTA] operates bridges and tunnels wholly within the City; the Port Authority of NY and NJ [PA], a bi-state agency, operates the bridges and tunnels linking New York and New Jersey and the three regional airports (Kennedy, LaGuardia, and Newark), and formerly owned the World Trade Center; and so on, and on, and on. Only time will equip the newcomer to perceive the net in which the City thrashes.




THE SHAPE OF THE CITY

Having grown up as it did, the City is a considerable hodgepodge. The City contains five counties, which are geographic areas; each county is also a borough, which is an administrative unit. But they don't all have the same names:

The Borough of Manhattan is New York County

Brooklyn Kings

Queens Queens

Staten Island Richmond

The Bronx Bronx


--or as syntax may require, "the County of The Bronx." Never just "of Bronx." As a noun, whether subject or object, it's "the Bronx"-- only in adjective form ("Bronx County") does the borough drop its article.

Standard usage is to say "the outer boroughs," meaning everywhere else besides Manhattan. When people in the outer boroughs say that they are "going to the City," they mean they are going into Manhattan. Whether this is a sign of the outer boroughs' evident feeling that they are step-children to Manhattan, or whether it is an American cognate of London usage, is not known. When people for a long way outside the City limits, including nearby New Jersey and Connecticut, talk about "the City," they mean New York City, not Newark, NJ or Stamford, CT; and far, far away, when people say they are going to New York, they mean, for example, a 150-mile trip to the City, not a 10-mile trip across the Massachusetts-New York line. The City has been described as a melting-pot, a magnet, a sink, a whirlpool, a cesspool, an enticer, a great shore collecting all the world's flotsam and jetsam; it is all those things and more; and here we are.

The City was founded upon water; first upon the sea-trade of one of the world's great harbors, with one of the world's great rivers, the Hudson, and its tributaries, giving access northward; then as the eastern, seaward outlet of the Erie Canal, opening up the interior of the continent for exploitation and funneling immigrants westward. Only The Bronx is a part of the mainland; Brooklyn and Queens are on Long Island, and Manhattan and Staten Island are islands unto themselves; this is, indeed, the New York Archipelago. Therefore bridges and tunnels are a part of everyday life for New Yorkers; whether by foot, car, or subway, you must use a bridge or a tunnel to pass between every pair of boroughs except Brooklyn and Queens. Manhattan is connected to the rest of the world by 18 bridges and 4 tunnels, and there are plenty of bridges (although no tunnels) between other boroughs; the City boasts a total of 65 water-crossing bridges.

Again, the City having grown up as it did, there is no overall pattern to its streets. Manhattan above Houston Street [pronounced House-ton, not Hyoo-stun] is fairly logical, it having been intentionally laid out in a rectangular grid [by the Commissioners' Plan, 1811] before it was built up; the meandering diagonal of Broadway still recalls the cow-path and post-road it once was. [A Manhattan address locator is included in the Toolkit.] Elsewhere in the City, a kind of organized chaos rules. Limited areas, formerly independent communities, show some regularity; areas between major thoroughfares can make sense, as in the Bedford-Stuyvesant triangle in Brooklyn, bounded by Broadway (a different Broadway from the Manhattan one), Myrtle Avenue, and Fulton Street, or a similar triangle in Richmond Hill-Woodhaven, Queens; but cross the boundaries and all bets are off: streets change direction, numbering, even name; vanish, appear, divide, and merge, obeying the logic of history, not of city planning. Anyone wanting to navigate the City over any range must have a good atlas --not a mere map, an atlas, showing the City block by block. It needs to be said here, as well as later, that the subway "map" is NOT an accurate representation of the physical shape of the City; it's really a subway diagram, and no map at all.

Of the various forms of travel, walking is the way to get to know the City. A tour bus will give a fast and shallow overview, ignoring such "uninteresting" places as Harlem, and often authoritatively imparting "information" that is just plain wrong; the Circle Line is a good way to get an arms-length perspective on the canyons of Manhattan, and its relation to the surrounding boroughs; the City busses and especially the subway provide a good way to get to a starting-point, or to a spot you intend to remain in; but to get the flavor and feel of this complex place, walking is all. The keys to walking are at least three: a good, sturdy, comfortable pair of shoes; clothing adaptable to the vagaries of sun and wind, exercise and pauses; and a friendly and open attitude toward, and a genuine interest in, the people you will meet. A "tourist," who points a camera at everything and looks nervous and lost, is out of place anywhere; a person who looks with friendly interest at people and appears glad to be here, wherever "here" is, will fit in anywhere --and be safer, too, whether "here" is Midtown or the South Bronx.

And what will you find, when you get to "here?" Not a huge, amorphous, homogenous melting-pot of a City, but a patchwork, a mosaic, of small towns. The notion of "turf" is usually associated with street gangs, as in West Side Story (another City tale, cf. p. 7); but part of what makes our City habitable is our ability to move out into its diverse complexity, and then to return to our own turf: a neighborhood, a single block even, where you know others and others know you, by sight and even by name. Turf gives the citizens (a word which means literally "dwellers in the City") a home base and a human scale from which to relate to the City as a whole; and those who dwell here, and do so in comfortable adjustment if not unalloyed bliss, have found turf of their own. A person's turf may be widespread, or located in disjunct areas of the City; it may be a conceptual turf, not a geographic one at all; but even the homeless of the City have recognizable turf, which they identify and feel ownership with, and which they feel distinguishes them out of the great melting-pot.

The City is indeed more like a kiln than a melting-pot; what happens is not that every person and every neighborhood becomes homogenized into every other, but that they melt a little at the edges, and flow and fuse into a more-or-less-coherent mosaic, with each part retaining identity and distinction. Heating and cooling, expanding and contracting, adding new pieces and realigning the old, the mosaic develops cracks all the time; yet it still holds together, polychrome, refulgent, fecund-- alive.

Perhaps nowhere else is there to be found such a miraculous marriage of passion and indifference; passionately, our citizens enact their own identities and identifiers, their neighborhoods, their ways of life, while largely showing benign indifference to the lifestyles, however different, of others. Maintaining their right to live as they choose, they grant that same right to others; not as a conscious act --in fact, it can be a mistake to make them self-conscious about their differences --but as a matter of course, with a shrug, as a natural part of what it means to be a New Yorker. The City has more different kinds of everything than anywhere else; as one token of that diversity, try reading through the Manhattan Yellow Pages section, "Restaurants." But be warned-- although inclusive of only a minority of the restaurants in only the borough of Manhattan, it is [2001] 26 pages long!

The City also has just plain more of everything: instead of a jewelry store, a whole City block given over to only diamonds; instead of a Chinese restaurant, several Chinatowns (Manhattan and Queens have just the largest); instead of a theater or two, Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-off-Broadway; instead of a fur department, several cubic blocks of furriers; instead of a corner deli, the Lower East Side, Brooklyn's Borough Park, and other places; instead of a gallery, dozens of major museums; instead of a symphony, several world-class orchestras and opera and dance companies; instead of a college, a constellation of major universities, seminaries, and specialized schools; instead of a library, several of the world's greatest general, research, and theological libraries; and on and on.

The City also has a Presbytery all to itself.

Or perhaps the Presbytery has the City all to itself, to use and to improve, to till and to keep.

Enjoy.




THE CITY AND THE WORD

From the beginning, cities have been used in literature as both settings of and metaphors for human life and experience. Babel was a city, in which was the eponymous tower. The Iliad of Homer depicted a war between two city-states, Athens and Troy (Ilium), and both the Trojan horse and the University of Southern California's athletic teams-- the Trojans-- are named for Troy the city. The apostle Paul wrote of the kingdom of heaven both here and hereafter, in general terms, as "a city not made with hands," and John of Patmos, who wrote the Revelation of St. John the Divine, described heaven in great detail as a city. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, after whom St. Augustine, Florida, and St. Augustine Presbyterian Church in The Bronx are named, is best-known for his Confessions, but most importantly for The City of God, considered to be the foundation work of post-Pauline Christian theology. To be a Roman citizen was not to be a resident of the Roman Empire; it was to be a citizen [dweller in the city] of Rome itself; and to this day, the Pope's annual Christmas greeting is known as Urba et Orba-- "to the city and the world." Much more recently, Arthur Clarke, among many other works the creator of 2001, wrote in The City and the Stars about Diaspar, the future last city on Earth, which had existed for one billion years. --one could go on.

As cities are metaphors for human life, so the City of New York [intentionally capitalized, crowned, canonized as the City] is a super-metaphor; the City represents all cities, and has been used in many types of literature for many purposes. A sampling:

James Blish, author of the books which were made into the television series Star Trek, also wrote a 4-volume epic called Cities in Flight, a Spenglerian history of the future of the entire universe, in which the City of New York, in company with most of the other cities of the planet, indeed takes flight and goes starfaring throughout the galaxy.

"The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ Into the New World," by Galway Kinnell, is a Pulitzer-Prize poem about-- what else-- Avenue C in Manhattan.

Winter's Tale, by Mark Helpern, is an indescribably beautiful fantasy/history of the City covering more than a century.

The West End Bar on Broadway across from Columbia University was the setting for a forgotten but full-length novel, and it is known that in the West End, Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsberg, and Nobel physicist I.I. Rabi (among many others) incubated their ideas; it is only suspected by this writer that the West End also provided the setting for Billy Joel's "Piano Man."

Don't forget the White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street, in the West Village, where the poet Dylan Thomas would dance tabletop and recite his poems-- and where he drank himself to death at age 39.

--and Joe Willie Namath, who made good on his boast that the upstart New York Jets would win the 1969 Super Bowl, is remembered as-- what else?-- Broadway Joe.

-- Thousands more examples can be found.




TALES OF GOTHAM

[From the Oxford English Dictionary; GOTHAM: 1. The name of a village, proverbial for the folly of its inhabitants; also applied to (a) Newcastle, (b) New York. 2. A "man of Gotham," a simpleton. 3. Gotham College: an imaginary institution for the training of simpletons.]



The City has sponsored innumerable persons, groups, and endeavors; it has also spawned innumerable stories. Following are --whatever they are: tales, of fact or legend, from the memory of one member of the Presbytery. Most are indeed true; some are probably mythic; all, without distinction, are part of the mosaic of the City.



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It is not known whether the warm, moist, and food-laden sewers of the City do in fact house a population of alligators, said to have been flushed down toilets, by disenchanted would-be pet owners, when they began to grow too big; it is a matter of legend that a seven-foot specimen was brought to light on the upper West Side several decades ago, and a matter of record that a two-foot-long juvenile was fished from a Central Park lake in the summer of 2001. It is also a fact that in the tunnels under Grand Central Station lives a community of about 40 cats, fed by the trainmen, never known to emerge into the light of day.



Ten thousand New Yorkers are buried under Washington Square Park, in Greenwich Village; it was formerly a municipal potter's field. Moreover, some of those buried there were hanged from trees that still stand in the Square, as being convenient to the burial site. Madison Square [23rd Street] and Bryant Park [42nd] were also potter's fields before being made into parks. The unending construction which is the City's pulse continues to unearth burial grounds of native Americans, black slaves, and other "marginal" people; today, the City attempts to respect these clouds of witnesses and preserve their memory as best it can.



A few steps north of Washington Square, the last-surviving visible natural stream in lower Manhattan, Minetta Creek, can be seen-- pumped up to supply a fountain in the lobby of Number 2 Fifth Avenue. It flows underground just west of Fifth Avenue, beneath 45 West 12th Street. A few blocks south, inconspicuously appended to Sixth Avenue, is Minetta Lane, the birthplace of the Readers' Digest. [In passing, note that only outsiders and official maps use the name "Avenue of the Americas;" New Yorkers call it Sixth Avenue, as it was, is, and is to be.]



Why is The Bronx always The Bronx, never just "Bronx?" Because the Danish settler Jonas Bronck, who with Peter Stuyvesant was a direct ancestor of the Rev. Ida vanDyck Hordines, a former member of this Presbytery, had the land as his family farm. When you visit Jane and John Smith, where are you going? "To the Smiths'." When you visit Jonas and Greta Bronck, where are you going? "To the Broncks'." What could be simpler?



Talking of Peter Stuyvesant, once upon a time he went north, up Manhattan Island from the original City of Nieuw Amsterdam; got some land from the Indians, cleared it, and made a farm. Then he built a road to his farm; and, in the manner of any Dutch patroon, he built a church there, for his own and his neighbors' use&-- and the Dutch word for "farm" is "bouwerie." The present-day street, The Bowery, is the farm road; and it ends near the well-known Episcopal church, St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery: St. Mark's in the farm. Hizzoner (Peter Stuyvesant is called Mayor of Nieuw Amsterdam, though his real title was Governor-General) is buried there; you can find his crypt on the north-east exterior of the church, marked by a black slab-- recalling that he always wore all-black.



Adjacent to St. Mark's is a triangular block of row houses known as the Renwick Triangle, after their architect, James Renwick; the houses are official City and Federal landmarks and are highly regarded as outstanding examples of their style. Renwick is better known as the architect of St. Patrick's Cathedral, and is almost forgotten as the architect of Riverdale Presbyterian Church, designed for Stuyvesant Fish-- who, following the example of his namesake, wanted a personal house of worship for himself and his patrician neighbors.



Diversity is not new to the City; in 1642, when the first Stadhuis (government house) was established at what is now 72 Pearl Street, the citizens spoke 18 languages.



That original City had only about 120 houses; and at the northern end, a wooden palisade (like the walls of Wild-West-movie forts) was erected for defensive purposes. It is long gone; its memory remains: where it stood is now Wall Street. On one corner of Broad and Wall stands the New York Stock Exchange; on another corner is Federal Hall, on whose balcony George Washington took the oath of office as President, April 30, 1789. On a third (southeast) corner stands Morgan Guaranty Trust; the exterior walls on the Wall Street side still bear pockmarks, the result of the attentions of George Metesky, the "Mad Bomber."



At the head of Wall Street, on the corner of Broadway, stands Trinity Church (Episcopal), founded in 1697 with the help of several of the City's leading citizens&-- among them Captain Kidd, who lived nearby. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun. Trinity and its surrounding churchyard, whose occupants include Alexander Hamilton, are thought to be the most valuable land in the world: in 1983, a plot nearby, though not at nearly such a prestige location, sold for $2000. a square foot. As of last hearing, the church has indicated no interest in selling.



Behind the church, in 1754, stood a small schoolhouse, in which were held the first classes of King's College. Later, this institution moved farther up the island, and in time changed its name-- to Columbia University. A rumor has it that Columbia owns 4% of Manhattan; it is a fact that Columbia owns the land under Rockefeller Center, and when the lease expires will own the buildings too-- unless they can be moved. The famous Channel Gardens of Rockefeller Center run East-West, between the RCA Building (the Center's tallest) and Fifth Avenue; and everyone knows that just opposite is Saks Fifth Avenue. Not everyone knows, however, that perhaps the best available view of the Channel Gardens is from the window of the women's bathroom on Saks' fourth floor front-- available, that is, to 53.7% of the City population. --and not almost anyone knows that to the north of the Channel Gardens is the building originally called the British Empire Building, and to the south the one originally called the France Building; and what separates Britain and France? The Channel, of course!



A short way down Broadway from Trinity Church, Bowling Green remains pretty much as it was in Peter Stuyvesant's time, though there is no longer bowling on the green. The fence still standing around it was erected in 1771. Missing is the statue of George III that once stood there; it was melted down by American patriots and used to cast cannon-balls for use against the British, surely one of history's more delicious ironies.



Nearby, the Brooklyn Bridge spans the East River-- which is not really a river at all, but a tidal estuary connecting New York Bay with Long Island Sound. On Hallowe'en night, you can meet the ghost of Walt Whitman on the Bridge that connects his birthplace with the City he loved and celebrated in poetry (when the Bridge was built, it was to connect the City of Brooklyn and the City of New-York). Perhaps Whitman stands there and calls to Herman Melville, pacing Fulton Street just south of the Bridge, from which spot he shipped out to the South Seas-- to return with the plots of Omoo and Typee burning in his imagination.



Seaward from the Bridge, dominating the harbor, stands a world-famous statue; every New Yorker knows it is there, but hardly one in a hundred could tell you its real name: Liberty Enlightening the World. It was a gift from the people of France to the American people, commemorating their mutual assistance in their respective Revolutions and their continuing friendship. The French sculptor, Bartholdi, used his mother as the model; the supporting framework was designed by Gustave Eiffel, who later built a tower in Paris. Nearly a million people visit the statue each year-- but hardly any New Yorkers. Those who do come, find on a bronze tablet at the statue's base this sonnet (1883) by City native Emma Lazarus, the Jewish poet and passionate advocate of her own people and of all who are oppressed:



THE NEW COLOSSUS



Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"



November 2, 1883



And perhaps hardly one in a thousand New Yorkers could tell you that the City is home to two statues of Liberty. The unknown one once stood atop a building at 46 West 64th Street, which was the warehouse of a moving and storage company founded long ago by one of the millions of immigrants whom the larger Liberty has greeted. When he had prospered in his adoptive land, he sought to do something to express his pride and gratitude, and the statue on top of his warehouse was the result. In the unending change which is the pulse of the City, the warehouse has been replaced by a condominium, and the statue has been moved to the Brooklyn Museum, where it will be preserved and displayed. It has a stair inside, leading up to the head though not the torch, and it seems small, being brought down to ground level and having no pedestal; but it is actually 55 feet tall, or about one-third the size of the original. That more New Yorkers don't know about it may seem strange, since it was for many years plainly visible from the plaza of Lincoln Center; but newcomers soon learn that New Yorkers almost never look up.



Liberty in the harbor looks not seaward, greeting new arrivals; nor toward Manhattan, overseeing the fortunes of those who under her gaze are now making their way into their adoptive land; but toward Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Her gaze is fixed, by the design of her French donors, at the hilltop where a force of 400 from Maryland, the rearguard of Washington's desperate army of 6,000, created a diversion which held off the full might of 30,000 British troops, enabling Washington and his main force to retreat northward-- and by so doing, probably prevented the defeat of the Revolution. Although Americans focus on Bunker Hill and Valley Forge, our European cousins understand the importance of the Battle of Brooklyn; that is why Liberty looks there.



That Liberty does look there may be just as well; for over her shoulder, dominating the skyline of Lower Manhattan, formerly stood the twin towers of the World Trade Center, once (briefly) the tallest buildings in the world, then just the tallest in town; now they dominate the skyline by their absence, a hole in the sky mirroring the hole in the heart of the City and in the hearts of many of our citizens. And still, citizens and City, we survive, and we prevail.



One of the newer buildings in the City is a short way away, over on The Bowery; a housing development called Confucius Plaza, complete with an impressive statue of Confucius in front. Unlike others for whom City buildings have been named, he never had anything to do with the City, but may have had with the great majority of the building's residents; it is located in Chinatown. Only a block away, the corner of Pell and Doyers Streets is remembered as the "Bloody Corner," on account of the many murders done there in the tong [gang] wars around the turn of the 20th century; the twisting streets and intricate tenements nearby gave perfect escape to the assassins. Those assassins were armed with the wide, flat Chinese knives Westerners mistake for cleavers or hatchets, and they did their murders not on their own account but on orders from their tong leader; this gave the world the term for someone who does someone else's dirty work, "hatchetman."



A bit north of Confucius Plaza is Grand Street, one of the many City streets or districts dominated by a single theme or product. As 47th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues is the street of diamonds, as Sixth Avenue from 25th to 29th is almost all wholesale florists, so Grand Street and the streets that give onto it have almost nothing but shops selling every kind of merchandise for brides. If it can't be found there, it probably doesn't exist.



The West Side [30th to 59th Streets, west of Ninth Avenue] was settled around the turn of the 20th century by a diverse lot of immigrants; the area was as hot in summer then as it is now, and was the turf of gangs with such names as the Gophers, the Gorillas, and (really!) Battle Row Annie's Ladies' Social and Athletic Club. Watching a street fight one stifling summer night, two policemen named the area: "This neighborhood is hot as Hell," said one, to which the other answered, "Hell is cool; this here's Hell's kitchen." It was in the heat, crowding, and grinding poverty of Hell's Kitchen that a Baptist pastor named Walter Rauschenbusch formulated the Social Gospel. Today, residents prefer the name Clinton; but Hell's Kitchen survives, in memory and the American language.



South of Times Square, the area now known as the garment district (where a third of the clothing worn in America was formerly made-- until the work was exported to the third world for starvation wages-- and where its import and distribution is still centered) is still remembered by some people as "the Tenderloin." During the 1880s and 1890s, under the corrupt rule of Tammany Hall and its notorious Boss Tweed, the area was a supermarket of vice, a place where the police and public officials could collect handsome payoffs. A police captain was interviewed by a New York paper on the subject; he had just managed to be transferred from one of the outlying precincts, where graft was minor, to the area in question, and he was quoted (anonymously) as saying, "I've been living on chuck steak, but now I'm going to get some tenderloin." The phrase passed into the American language as meaning anyplace dominated by venality and corruption.



The northern boundary of the Tenderloin was 42nd Street; even after its heyday, it was an active place. In 1901, the saloon of the prizefighter John L. Sullivan was chastised by the temperance firebrand Carry Nation, who came from the Midwest in answer to a challenge from Sullivan; arriving, she wielded her hatchet and busted up the joint while Sullivan hid in the basement. Four years later, Sullivan gave up the business and himself became a fervent temperance advocate; there may be a moral here.



During the ten decades since Carry Nation's raid, 42nd Street has gotten cosmetically better; but seven decades before her raid, in 1836, the then Mayor officially opened 42nd Street with an invitation to the leading citizens of the City to "move uptown and enjoy the pure, clean air."



The corner of 23rd Street and Fifth Avenue has always been a windy one; Madison Square is a two-block-square open area, and the Flatiron Building, for years the world's tallest, deflects the wind like a sail. Young men used to stand there to watch the wind lift the skirts of the "flappers," without or (most likely) with their assent. From time to time, a cop would rectify public morals by chasing the young men off the corner --thence, "23-skiddoo." On the corner opposite, a group who couldn't afford to erect a statue to Secretary of State Seward, who made the Alaska Purchase, solved their problem by having Seward's head grafted onto an unfinished statue of Abraham Lincoln for which the money had run out; if you look closely, the lanky body is clearly Lincoln's, and he holds the Emancipation Proclamation in his left hand. The statue is by Gutzon Borglum, best known for Mt. Rushmore. Another of his subjects, Theodore Roosevelt, lived just south of Madison Square.



The intersection of 23rd Street and Fifth Avenue also includes Broadway; 23rd running roughly East-West, Fifth roughly North-South, and Broadway cutting across from lower-right to upper-left on a map (in fact, at this point Broadway runs more nearly North-South than Fifth Avenue does). This is no unique case; most of the well-known squares of Manhattan are formed by the triple intersection of a street, an avenue, and Broadway--



Union Square: is Broadway & 14th Street at Park Avenue



Madison " 23rd Fifth "



Herald " 34th Sixth "



Times " 42nd Seventh "



Columbus Circle 59th Eighth "



Lincoln Square 66th Ninth "



Sherman " 72nd Tenth "



This is oversimplified; for instance, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Avenues actually bear different names at the intersections in question; and many squares known by one name are actually two squares, the triangle south of the intersection being named differently from the one to the north. Herald Square's southern wedge is actually Greeley Square, after Horace Greeley of "Go West, young man, go West" fame; the northern (and larger) part of what is thought of as Times Square is actually Duffy Square, and contains a statue of Father Duffy, Colonel, U.S. Army, Commandant of the Chaplain Corps in W.W.I; and part of Lincoln Square is actually Verdi Square, complete with a statue of the composer-- look for it. The point is that Broadway runs through Manhattan like a thread, strung with squares like bright beads-- bright with commerce, bright with history, bright with the lives of those who concourse there and with the life of the City.



The forenamed Horace Greeley was publisher of the New York Tribune; it is remembered of him that he once sent a reporter to the town of Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey, with a very specific assignment: to get a story, any story at all, that could be run under the headline "Hocus Pocus in Ho-Ho-Kus." Herald Square and Times Square are named not for publishers but for the newspapers themselves, though the Herald is long gone; its ornate clock still occupies the square. Times Square, renamed from Longacre Square when the Times moved nearby in 1905, contains the familiar thin triangular building down whose flagpole the lighted ball descends to count out the last seconds of every old year; it was built as an annex to the Times building, and was the only bad decision Adolf Ochs ever made as owner and publisher of the Times, because it quickly proved utterly unworkable as a place to publish a newspaper; it was sold long ago, and reclad in its present white travertine.



Before the New York papers moved uptown, they were all located on Park Row, across the street from City Hall-- and abutting, on one end of the block, the selfsame Tammany Hall from which City politics were corrupted for a considerable time. The old Tribune building, built in 1874, was considered, at 250 feet, to be the world's first skyscraper. The newspapers' presence caused the intersection of Park Row and Nassau Street to be christened "Printing House Square," and a statue of Benjamin Franklin still stands there, recalling his association not with the City but with the history of newspaper publishing in America. Across the street, somewhere in the City Hall garden, Nathan Hale, Yale 1773, caught spying against the British on Long Island, was hanged in 1776, at the age of 21, leaving behind the words, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."



"This is Macy*s, the World's Largest Store," says (shouts, really) the sign on the corner of Broadway and 34th Street; and so it is. GUM, in Moscow, is a close second, but Macy*s (traditionally written by them with a five-pointed red star instead of an apostrophe-- the red star is a store logo, adapted from a tattoo on the arm of sea-captain R.H. Macy) has, in its Herald Square store, nine acres of selling floor. They also have New York State Retail Liquor License #00001. What they don't have is ownership of the small building around which that sign is wrapped; when Macy*s was buying up the block, a competitor outmaneuvered them for that small parcel. The competitor and his store are long gone, and his heirs rent the sign space to Macy*s for an undisclosed but surely immense sum; and a standing joke used to be that one year, they would instead rent it to Gimbel's. The competition between Macy*s and Gimbel's was genteel but legendary, and has passed into the language; to the question, "You won't tell anybody, will you?" the New York answer was "Does Macy*s tell Gimbel's?" [The demise of Gimbel's in 1986 has orphaned yet one more pithy Americanism with roots in the City.]



Over on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street stands the New York Public Library; its entrance is guarded by two lions, who have been imitated times without number-- in front of other libraries, as bookends, as paperweights, and on and on. That they have not gotten up and stalked away in regal indignation long ago is no doubt due to their names: Patience and Fortitude (the names were bestowed by Mayor LaGuardia; Patience is the one to the north). It is a fact that among the treasures they guard is a complete Gutenberg Bible, a manuscript letter of Christopher Columbus, the first draft of the Declaration of Independence in Jefferson's hand, T.S. Eliot's original typescript of The Waste Land, and a work by Miguel de Cervantes printed on cork. It is only a story that the stacks of the Library, housing a collection second only to the Library of Congress and stretching many stories down under the two blocks from 40th to 42nd Streets, are accessed by pages on roller skates.



What remains true of our Library is that their Telephone Reference Service tries (and almost always manages) to answer --believe it or not-- any question phoned in. Here is a sampling: How did the dandelion get its name? What's the largest bank robbery on record? How many City natives have won the Nobel Prize? Where is Dinosaur National Monument? Who built the first computer? How many copies of Gone With the Wind have been sold? What gave Times Square its name? When did Central Park open to the public? --call them and ask: (212) 340-0849.



Uptown, at 53rd and Park, is Lever House, the corporate headquarters of Lever Brothers; its silhouette appears on every box of Lever Brothers' products. Designed by the renowned firm of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, Lever House is known to historians of modern architecture as a major landmark, the first American example of the glass-walled, slab-sided International Style; it has inspired innumerable imitators, many of them bad; but Lever House remains as striking and important as it was when it opened in 1952. Lever House has not only survived bad imitators, it has survived excellent puns; on its Park Avenue sidewalk, someone once chalked: "In case of fire, break glass and pull Lever down."



Almost everyone has heard of Duke Ellington, who epitomizes a generation of musicians and the Age of Jazz; lots of people know what the Duke's theme song is– "Take the `A' Train"– and can even recognize it when they hear it played; but again, hardly anyone stops to realize what it means or appreciate what it represents. On the corner of Fifth Avenue and 59th Street stands the Plaza Hotel; Eighth Avenue and 59th Street is Columbus Circle, wherein stands the familiar monument to Christopher himself; and between the two, 59th Street is named Central Park South, among whose hotels and clubs and apartments the Plaza is only the best-known, not at all the most de luxe or expensive. Go to Columbus Circle, and take the "A" train, the IND Subway express, uptown just one stop; and come up to the other street, 125th Street in Central Harlem. The Duke's theme was first of all an advertisement, an invitation, to the well-to-do who lived south of the Park to come north of the Park for an evening's entertainment. Walk in any direction and meet the history of jazz, in places like the Cotton Club and Club Baby Grand; walk east a block and a half and salute the Apollo Theater, whose graduates read like the Hit Parade of the last 75 years, from whose Amateur Night hundreds took the first step toward stardom. In almost any direction also you will find a Presbyterian church. The Duke's theme might also be an expression of hope for the present; some people have indeed begun to take the "A" train --permanently-- in the other direction.



Manhattan's northern end is defined by the Harlem River (also really an estuary, connecting the Hudson River with Long Island Sound); the area just north across the river, in The Bronx, is known by the old Dutch name of Spuyten Duyvil; one explanation of this name, which means "spitting Devil," is that the original course of the Harlem River at this point, narrow and treacherous, resulted from the Devil spitting in anger at losing a race for someone's soul; the river marked the finish line. But the Harlem River no longer flows where the Devil spat it; its course was too torturous for navigation, and a narrow promontory to the north was cut across by a new and wider channel and the old one filled in. The effect of this was to cut off a piece of Manhattan and attach it to The Bronx-- physically, but not administratively. Spuyten Duyvil is attached to the mainland, The Bronx; but it is still a part of New York County, its residents vote for the Manhattan Borough President and other officials, and they are listed in both the Manhattan and Bronx telephone directories.



~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~



These are only a few of the stories of the City; there are thousands upon thousands. Newcomers who approach the City with zest and curiosity will discover others, including more of those that belong to the boroughs other than Manhattan, which are of less popular appeal but no less interest. And as you read these stories and discover those others, remember this; you are now a part of the City mosaic, and some of the stories the twenty-second century will tell of the City will include you.







T O O L K I T :



PRACTICAL INFORMATION AND RESOURCES



Useful things this package recommends you get:



From the New York City Police Department, some guides to personal and property safety; call your local precinct or the Headquarters Public Relations Division (BUT DO NOT USE 911). The City is really not like the television show "N.Y.P.D." --but it is a place, like any other, where appropriate care and precaution are required. New York's Finest offer you tips; listen to them.



From the New York City Transit Authority, a subway map. "Map" is what they call it; but whatever you do, don't use it as a guide to the real physical shape of the City. It is really a schematic diagram, showing the ordinal relationship of subway stations on a given line and only the most vague of physical relationships among stations and lines. Using it, you can find your way around the subways very well; but you cannot use it to find your way over the surface of the City. Unless there is a shortage, subway "maps" are available free at any subway change booth. Bus maps for each borough are available at change booths in the respective boroughs.



Besides subways, the City has lots of bus lines. There is a separate bus map for each borough-- also available free at subway change booths in the respective boroughs, or aboard busses-- and even if you plan only to drive or use the subways, get the bus map for your borough, because it will help you tell some lost soul how to reach your church by bus. Some busses, though, go from borough to borough; and there are other busses, some run by the City, some by private companies, that run on limited "express" routes for commuters. The best plan is to investigate public transportation in your neighborhood, before you need it. The Transit Authority offers phone information from their Jay Street headquarters in Brooklyn; the number is (718) 330-1234. Note that bus drivers do not make change; you need exact fare, or a Metrocard or token.



The new magnetic fare card, the Metrocard, has now replaced the subway token. Different versions of the Metrocard are available. The best deal for now-and-then users of subways and busses is a $10 card, because whenever you pay $10 or more at one time (either for a new card or to add value to one you already have) you are credited with an extra 20%. If you are going to hop all over the city in a single day, perhaps for a combination of shopping, sightseeing, and cultural enrichment, the $7.00 “fun pass” is the best deal– $7.00 buys you unlimited trips on subways and busses from the time of its first use until the following midnight. Other card options are available for every-day commuters, including linkages to commuter railroads too. A hint for those who want souvenirs to give friends: there is nothing more characteristic of the City than a subway token, they can't be bought anywhere else (unlike kitschy miniature Empire State Buildings), and they cost $2.00 each. Now that tokens are no loonger in use, they can only be bought at one of the Transit Museum locations; call the Transit Authority for information.



Taxicabs are a form of public transportation. They come in two varieties: first, the "medallion" taxicabs, so-called because they must bear a City medallion, which is riveted into the hood, whose numbers are limited by the City, and whose going, open-market price is currently about $250,000.00 [!] apiece. Medallion taxicabs, which are the only ones which can be colored yellow, operate mostly in Manhattan where the lucrative, high-volume business is, are mostly hair-raising to ride in, and are entirely overpriced; at this writing it costs $2.00 for the first 1/9 mile. The second variety, non-medallion taxicabs, is further divided into two kinds: "private cars," lately called "black cars," fleets of radio-dispatched vehicles which are only allowed to pick up passengers in response to being called to the passengers' location, and are prohibited from picking up passengers on the street in response to a hail; and "gypsy cabs," who fall under the same regulations as black cars, but who routinely ignore them and pick up passengers anywhere they find them. Medallion taxicabs are metered; black cars aren't, using instead a distance-and-zone formula to compute charges; gypsies may be found using either system. Neither a meter nor its absence is a certain guarantee of fairness-- or of a vehicle that will be either safely driven or mechanically sound.



As part of your equipment, you should have the Manhattan Yellow Pages, both consumer and business editions. They are the original "whole earth catalogue;" if you can't find it here, then where? They are free for the asking from whomever is currently impersonating Ma Bell.



Get The Green Book, now subtitled "Official Directory of the City of New York." The subtitle describes what the book officially still is; but for years, it was called by the color of its cover, and like the Flatiron Building (q.v., pp. 2 & 11), its popular name at last displaced its official one. It is a guide to the structure and functioning of City government and agencies; for any imaginable purpose, it will tell you where to go, who to write or call-- and give you the number, too. It can be obtained (call for current pricing) from:



(in person) Citybooks Store (by mail) Room 2223



61 Chambers Street Municipal Building



(212) 669-8245 New York, New York 10007



-- Many other interesting books can be found at Citybooks; call them!



There are guidebooks by the score written about the City; here are two the writer of this package has found excellent. For general purposes, the Michelin Guide to New York City-- yes, they do, and yes, they do it very, very well. A special-purpose guide is The A.I.A. [American Institute of Architects] Guide to New York City; although it focuses on architectural history, it includes of necessity a lot of general history as well. Both of these are available in paperback; and because "New York is never finished," make sure of getting the latest editions.



Finally, for the most current phone numbers, addresses, prices, hours, and much else about the City, visit the City's Website: home.nyc.gov. Links from that site will lead you to many of the City's educational, cultural, and practical resources. Or call the City information number-- 311.







VITAL



INFORMATION FOR THOSE INTENDING TO PERFORM MARRIAGES



The State of New York requires that anyone who solemnizes a marriage within the City must first register with the City Clerk [Domestic Relations Law, §11-b]. Repeat, ANYONE: ministers, judges, justices, clerks, even the Mayor. This requirement applies to any marriage performed within the City of New York, regardless of where the officiant lives; if you do it here, you must be registered! (This means that a visiting minister-- family friend, home-church pastor, whomever-- who has not had a chance to register, cannot sign a marriage license; a registered officiant must be present, take [even a very small] part, and sign.)



Registration is done in person only, at the central offices of the City Clerk in Manhattan; a sworn statement will be taken from you. Once you have registered, changes of address or ecclesiastical status may be done simply, but still in person.



You will initially be asked to provide this information, under oath or affirmation:



Name and address



Ecclesiastical title



Denomination



Seminary and date of graduation



Ordination date and Presbytery, or other ordaining body



Your present ecclesiastical status and charge





You will be asked to provide proof:



Ordination certificate, or other proof of ordination



Presbytery membership card or other certification of status



Listing in the G.A. Statistics (the City Clerk has a current copy)



If you are newly ordained, or need it for any other reason, the Stated Clerk of the Presbytery will provide you with a letter certifying your status.



The Stated Clerk can answer any questions you may have.



Registration is done in the Marriage License Bureau, Room 265, Municipal Building, Manhattan, which is at the corner of Chambers and Center Streets. Most Manhattan subway lines stop at Chambers Street or very close by; the Lexington Avenue IRT station, Worth Street-Brooklyn Bridge, has its southern [downtown] end under the Municipal Building. Go upstairs to the Marriage License Bureau in Room 265 and ask for Clergy Registration. Registration is conducted from 9 a.m. to noon and from 2 to 4 p.m., Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; but it may be well to call first.



Do not call the number for "Marriage Licence Bureau" in the 'phone book; that will only get you a recording telling you how to obtain a license for your own marriage. The number to use is (212) 669-8095. That number is a good one to hang onto, for when (not if) you have questions about the laws and rules.



Registration is necessary and important; do it now!