Who doesn’t love streetcars? Gersh Kuntzman, that’s who.
On Brooklyn Paper Radio this week, Kuntzman and cohort Vince DiMiceli took BQX planner Harris Schechtman to task, asking the tough question about Mayor DeBlasio’s controversial plan to build a $2.5-billion trolley on the waterfront between Sunset Park and Greenpoint — plus parts of far-off Queens.
The principal and transit director for Sam Schwartz Transportation Consultants — Gridlock’s Sam’s top guy — rolled with the punches, telling the boys that MetroCards will be accepted and allow for free transfers to subways and buses; the streetcar will be faster than the city’s heralded — and reviled — Select Bus Service; and that it would pay for itself through increase in property values along the route.
Kuntzman, of course, pointed out that the whole system falls apart with one ill-placed double-parked car, but who’s counting?
Before that, the boys literally broke bread with Chef Adam Leonti and his sous chef Jeff Kozlowski of the Brooklyn Bread Lab — where grains are milled to order in-house and is available for purchase. As the guys plowed through a delicious, day-old loaf of rye, they chewed the fat over how much they all loathe supermarket loaves, and Gersh learned, much to his chagrin, that fat is not a form of protein
The hardscrabble, old-time editors also asked the chewy questions:
• Sliced bread: What really makes it the “best thing?” And if it is the “best thing,” before sliced bread was invented, what was the “best thing” before sliced bread? Answer: Girls.
• The gluten menace: What should every American know — and then ignore! Answer: Eat it!
• Banana bread: Is it a bread, a cake, or simply a muffin in a loaf pan? Answer: A muffin in a loaf pan.
• Matt Damon: Should he have grown teff instead of potatoes while on Mars? Answer: What’s “teff?”
Brooklyn Paper radio is podcast every Monday at 4:30 pm on Brook