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Former Deputy Mayor Files for Divorce

Stephen Goldsmith and his wife, Margaret, in 1996. Stephen Goldsmith and his wife, Margaret, in 1996.

Stephen Goldsmith, a former deputy mayor who resigned in 2011 after being arrested on a domestic violence complaint, has filed for divorce from his wife of 24 years, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

Mr. Goldsmith, 66, filed the paperwork on Wednesday in Marion County, Ind., where he was the elected prosecutor for 12 years before becoming a nationally prominent mayor of Indianapolis from 1992 to 2000.

Mr. Goldsmith, who was divorced once before, did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment. G. Allen Dale, a lawyer for Mr. Goldsmith’s wife, Margaret, said he had not heard about the divorce until contacted by a reporter.

In a statement, M.. Goldsmith’s spokeswoman, Kate Snedeker, confirmed the divorce, while declining to elaborate: “As you can imagine, this is a difficult time for the entire Goldsmith family. Your support and respect for the family’s privacy are much appreciated.”

In 2010, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg chose Mr. Goldsmith, a Republican, as deputy mayor for operations. But almost immediately, Mr. Goldsmith, a newcomer to the city, was viewed as too aloof for a job whose main charge is to run basic services like sanitation and the Police and Fire Departments. His low point was the city’s much-criticized response to the December 2010 snowstorm.

So it was not entirely surprising when he resigned in August 2011 after 14 tumultuous months. But what was surprising was when The New York Post revealed that he had been arrested at the Georgetown townhouse that he and his wife shared in Washington, and that! Mr. Bloomberg had not disclosed the arrest when Mr. Goldsmith stepped aside.

Ultimately, Mr. Goldsmith was found innocent of assault, and his arrest record was sealed. He had most recently been juggling several jobs, including teaching at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and serving as a strategic adviser to a Washington law firm.



Bellevue Hospital Fully Returns 99 Days After Evacuation

Bellevue Hospital Center being evacuated on Oct. 31.Mark Lennihan/Associated Press Bellevue Hospital Center being evacuated on Oct. 31.

Ninety-nine days after it was evacuated in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Bellevue Hospital Center fully reopened on Thursday.

Bellevue, New York City’s flagship public hospital, had been reopening piecemeal, but it has now resumed its status as a Level 1 trauma center and opened all 828 inpatient beds. Bellevue was evacuated for the first time in its history Oct. 31, two days after the storm first hit the city. The hospital’s basement flooded wit millions of gallons of water and fuel pumps for its backup power generators failed. Three hundred patients were evacuated in the darkness that night.

Part of the work of getting the hospital back on line involved moving major equipment like electrical switching gear from the basement up to the first floor.

“It has been a labor of almost unimaginable scope, but Bellevue is back,” said Alan D. Aviles, president of the city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation.

Another city hospital that was forced to evacuate by the storm, Coney Island Hospital, is also making progress. Its Tower Building has reopened along with most of its inpatient beds, and the hospital is admitting walk-in patients from its emergency department and patients from other city facilities, the city said.



Queens Loses a Street and Gains a Slice of Hollywood

Paris in the foreground; Astoria, Queens, in the background. This was the scene along 36th Street in the summer of 1929 as Courtesy of Kaufman Astoria Studios Paris in the foreground; Astoria, Queens, in the background. This was the scene along 36th Street in the summer of 1929 as “The Gay Lady” (retitled “The Battle of Paris”) was being filmed.

Dust off the Duesenberg. New York is getting two new studio gates.

A detail of the original 1920 Astoria studio building.David W. unlap/The New York Times A detail of the original 1920 Astoria studio building.

The gates will close off a one-block stretch of 36th Street in Astoria, Queens, allowing Kaufman Astoria Studios to consolidate its complex on either side of the street. This will allow the studio to create â€" in the former roadway itself â€" a 34,800-square-foot back lot, almost exactly where many outdoor scenes were filmed in the 1920s and ’30s for movies that are themselves long forgotten.

“When you think of going to a studio, you expect to pull up to a gate,” said Hal G. Rosenbluth, the president of Kaufman Astoria. “This will become an iconic symbol for the area.”

The historical heart of Kaufman Astoria complex is an enormous studio building on 35th Avenue that was opened in 1920 by the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, the predecessor to Paramount Pictures. Directly behind this building was a b! ack lot, now occupied by soundstages and offices, that was used for dozens of movies produced or distributed by Paramount until 1939.

The last great exterior set built at Astoria was for “One Third of a Nation,” an adaptation of a rabble-rousing Federal Theater Project play, said Richard Koszarski, author of “Hollywood on the Hudson: Film and Television in New York From Griffith to Sarnoff” (2008). The director, Dudley Murphy, originally planned to shoot on location on the Lower East Side, Mr. Koszarski said, “but because the script called for the character played by young Sidney Lumet to burn down one of these tenements, Murphy decided to construct his own slum on the Astoria back lot.”

Another memorableset was a Parisian streetscape, complete with kiosks, for “The Battle of Paris” (1929), about an English singer in Paris during World War I. Originally titled “The Gay Lady,” it starred Gertrude Lawrence and featured original music by Cole Porter. Filming began on the outdoor set every evening at 8 o’clock, The New York Times reported.

“Night work was imperative in such a scene because of the available silence that reigns in Astoria between dusk and dawn,” The Times said. “Sometimes the company remained at the studio until 7 in the morning, continually working, with but a few moments’ rest for a sandwich.”

The original st!   udio buil!   ding, at 35th Avenue, is on the National Register of Historic Places. A gate will be built on 36th Street, at the right of the photo. The original back lot was directly behind this structure, on 34th Avenue.David W. Dunlap/The New York Times The original studio building, at 35th Avenue, is on the National Register of Historic Places. A gate will be built on 36th Street, at the right of the photo. The original back lot was directly behind this structure, on 34th Avenue.

The new back lot will be 60 feet wide and 580 feet long, running from 35th Avenue to 34th Avenue. Studio executives and city officials envision it as an alternative to some of the location filming that snarls neighborhoods and tests New Yorkers’ patience. It would offer filmmakers a controlled outdoor environment on which temporary sets could be constructed, stunts and car chases could be staged and large-scale equipment could be used.

“The working back lot will crate a totally unique production opportunity in New York City that will allow Kaufman to continue to attract world-class films and television series,” said Julie Wood, a spokeswoman for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

Kaufman Astoria rents its studios to producers. (All Saints Hospital from “Nurse Jackie” occupies Stage G, for example, while “Sesame Street” can be found on Stage J.) It has not been affiliated with Paramount Pictures for many decades. It will lease this one block of 36th Street from New York City and effectively control it until 2049.

As a technical matter, the 36th Street segment has been closed â€" or “de-mapped” â€" since June 2012. In 2015, Kaufman Astoria will begin paying rent; it will start at $140,000 annually and escalate every five years. It has already begun making payments to the city in lieu of real estate taxes. These began at $33,137 annually and will increase every year.

A rendering of the planned main gate to Kaufman Astoria Studios. It will close 36th Street to the public from 35th Avenue to 34th Avenue. The building at right is the Museum of the Moving Image.Rockwell Group/Archtagon A rendering of the planned main gate to Kaufman Astoria Studios. It will close 36th Street to the public from 35th Avenue to 34th Avenue. The building at right is the Museum of the Moving Image.

Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, whose district includes the studio, asked Kaufman Astoria not to shut off the street to traffic until it was ready to start construction. The studio agreed.

“Obviously, we’d never take lightly the closing of a public street,” Mr. Van Bramer said. However, he added, it was important to accommodate the studio because Kaufman Astoria “really began the rnaissance of 35th Avenue,” an area he said he remembered from his childhood as all but abandoned.

The look of the new gates, by David Rockwell of the Rockwell Group, was approved last month by the mayoral Design Commission. Tracy Capune, the vice president of Kaufman Astoria, said the main gate, on 35th Avenue, would include a steel truss 40 feet above the street that can double as a working catwalk for outdoor productions.

Mr. Rosenbluth, the studio president, said the gates should be completed this summer. He estimated the total cost at $2 million to $3 million, following a protracted government review that included an initial rejection by the Design Commission.

Mr. Rosenbluth and the studio’s developer, George S. Kaufman, have dreamed of a gated studio complex since the 1980s. They once produced a rendering of an arched entryway that closely resembled the celebrated Bronson Gate at the Paramount studios in Hollywood.

“We got a cease-and-desist order from Paramount,” Mr. Rosenbluth said, now able to laugh at the memory.

The portion of 36th Street that will be closed to the public and turned into a back lot includes the main entrance to the Kaufman Astoria Studios headquarters, at right.David W. Dunlap/The New York Times The portion of 36th Street that will be closed to the public and turned into a back lot includes the main entrance to the Kaufman Astoria Studios headquarters, at right.


Collector Says He\'s Found Upper Half of Courbet\'s \'Origin of the World\'

As lower halves of human torsos go, it is one of the most famous in art history, recycled in too many naughty cartoons to count: the plump belly and splayed thighs intersecting in the unmistakably feminine crotch that make up “The Origin of the World,” Gustave Courbet’s 1866 barnburner of a nude.

The painting, once owned by the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and displayed in a kind of secluded passageway in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2008 Courbet retrospective, shows a woman’s naked body only as far up as her breasts, partially covered with a sheet. But Paris Match reported on Wednesday that an unnamed collector believes that he has discovered the top half of Courbe’s portrait, which apparently lay unrecognized for years in an antique shop.

The collector, whose name was not disclosed, found the canvas of a reclining woman in 2010, and Paris Match reported that it has now been authenticated after a series of tests by Jean-Jacques Fernier, one of the world’s leading Courbet experts. Courbet is known to have painted “Origin of the World,” which now hangs in the Musee d’Orsay, almost full-length and then cut it down, removing the top part possibly to protect the identity of the sitter, who is thought by some to have been Joanna Hiffernan, a model and a muse not only to Courbet, but also Whistler, who painted her in “Symphony in White, No. 1” in 1861-62.

Frederique Thomas-Martin, the chief curator of the Courbet museum in Ornans, the artist’s birthplace, told the newspaper Libération that she was not convinced the discovery was by Courbet, and the official organization of the museums of France has ma! de no statement about the news. But Mr. Fernier said he was convinced and added that the only question remaining for him was whether the discovery would end up diminishing “the marvelous mystery and symbolism” of the painting as it is now known, in its much earthier, topless, state.



Beaver Gets Busy at Botanical Garden

New York Botanical Garden via Tumblr

The folks at the New York Botanical Garden had been wondering what was up with José and Justin, the beavers who first made headlines in 2007 when they turned up in the Bronx River - the first exemplars of New York’s state animal to be spotted alive in New York City in 200 years.

“We knew they were here, but they hadn’t been spotted for a while,” said Ann Rafalko, the garden’s director of online content.

The garden’s Critter Cam, a motion-sensitive robot camera mounted in an undisclosed location in the garden’s 50-acre forestthat flanks the river, has provided an answer.

Last Friday around 8 p.m. the camera clicked off 31 stills of a beaver engaging in beaverish behavior at the foot of a tree - rooting around a bit, nibbling on something. The garden assembled the stills into the gif animation above. It and two more gifs on the same theme can be found on the garden’s Tumblr blog.

Though there is no way to tell whether the beaver is Justin or José, Ms. Rafalko said garden officials feel sure that it is one of the two.

“It was a really big coup to get him on the Critter Cam,” Ms. Rafalko said Thursday. “Everyone’s really excited.”

As are we.



Guns N\' Roses to Fill Out Governors Ball Lineup

When the Governors Ball Music Festival announced the lineup for its third annual installment, in January, Kanye West and Kings of Leon were listed as two of the top three headliners, with the third kept tantalizingly secret: the festival’s poster showed only a black bar where the third name should have been. Now the festival has announced that Guns N’ Roses will fill out an already varied lineup that also includes some 60 bands and performers, among them Nas, the Avett Brothers, Animal Collective, the Lumineers, Beirut, Grizzly Bear and Young the Giant.

The festival, which started as a one-day event on Governors Island in 2011, moved to Randalls Island Park and expanded to two days last summer, will run three days this time - June 7 to 9. And it appeas to be strengthening its presence on Randalls Island. This year’s events will be held on what the organizers describe as a more spacious  site that offers extra space for art installations and an expanded list of food vendors.



Theater Company Takes Richard III Back to the Parking Lot

Richard III has only just extricated himself from ignominious burial under an English parking lot. But if a Manhattan theater troupe has its way, to the parking lot he will return, at least temporarily.

The Drilling Company has announced that Shakespeare’s play about the misshapen monarch will be featured in its Shakespeare in the Park(ing) Lot season, held each summer on the Lower East Side.

“We have known for a long time that parking lots and Shakespeare were connected,” Hamilton Clancy, the company’s artistic director, who will also direct the production, said in a statement. “Our intention is to bring Richard III back to life in a parking lot.”

The production, which will run from Aug. 1 to Aug. 17, is only the latest Drilling Company offering to spin off the news. Lastyear’s parking lot season included “Coriolanus,” set during an election season pitting plutocrats against the 99 percent, and a version of “The Merry Wives of Windsor” unfolding in a controversial Lower East Side condominium.



Growing Workforce Accounts for High Jobless Rate, Study Says

It has been one of the economic mysteries of post-recession New York: If the city is creating so many jobs, why has the unemployment rate stayed so high

That question has confounded city officials and economists alike for the last two years. While Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has been taking credit for healthy gains in employment, the city’s official unemployment rate has remained higher than the nation’s.

At the end of 2012, the city’s unemployment rate was 8.8 percent, a full percentage point higher than the national rate, according to the federal Labor Department. City officials have dismissed the unemployment figures as flawed and emphasized a different survey by the department that has found the number of private-sector jobs to be growing significantly faster in the city than across the rest of the country.

In a study released on Thursday (see also below), the Independent Budget Office tested a few explanations for the divergent data and concluded that the job gains have indeed been robust, but the unemployment rate is not exaggerated.

How can that be After analyzing census data, the budget office found that the unemployment rate was rising because the city’s labor force was growing just as fast as jobs were being added. That finding supports Mr. Bloomberg’s oft-stated claim that the city’s relatively strong recovery has attracted new residents seeking work.

In 2011, census data showed, the number of city residents with jobs rose by 57,000, or more than 10 times as many as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. During that year, the number of unemployed city residents declined slightly to 368,200 from 371,400, the study found. That decline would have reduced the city’s unemployment rate very little over the year,! to 8.9 percent from 9.1 percent.

The study, which was prepared by Julie Anna M. Golebiewski, also gave little credence to some theories that economists had offered for the discrepancies in the jobs and unemployment statistics. One of those explanations was that most of new jobs in the city were taken by commuters who lived in the surrounding suburbs. Others included a shift from self-employment to working for bigger companies and an increase in the number of New Yorkers holding more than one job.

But the study concluded that “none of the three explanations explain more than a small share of the discrepancy” between the two sets of data. Its conclusion that employment was growing fast but barely fast enough to absorb all the new job seekers is good news for city officials because a growing work force is usually a harbinger of a recovery in employment.




IBO Job Data Analysis (PDF)

IBO Job Data Analysis (Text)



It\'s a Bird, It\'s a Plane, It\'s a Dirty Blond: Musical Revival Casts Its \'Superman\'

The actor Edward Watts.City Center The actor Edward Watts.

Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive and with somewhat fairer coloring than we’ve come to expect from the Man of Steel, the Encores! revival of “It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane…It’s Superman” has found the actor to play the costumed DC Comics champion of its title.

Edward Watts, who played the dual roles of Robert Semple and David Hutton in the recent Broadway musical “Scandalous,” will don the cape and tights of the Kryptonian emigre Kal-El â€"better known to us earthlings as Superman â€" as well as the garb of his meek alter-ego, Clark Kent, press representatives for the Encores! series said on Thursday. The production, directed by John Rando with choreography by Joshua Bergasse and music direction by Rob Berman, will run at New York City Center for seven performances from March 20 through 24.

Mr. Watts, who has also performed on Broadway in “Finian’s Rainbow,” Off-Broadway in “The Fantasticks” and in New York City Opera’s production of “The Most Happy Fella,” may not possess the natural jet-black hair traditionally associated with Superman. But other productions of the musical (which features a book by David Newman and Robert Benton, music by Charles Strouse and lyrics by Lee Adams) have not rigidly adhered to canon. When it was revived in 2010 at Dallas Theater Center (where Superman was played by Matt Cavenaugh), black actors were cast in ! two key roles: Zakiya Young played Lois Lane, while Hassan El-Amin portrayed Superman’s father, Jor-El, and Perry White, editor in chief of The Daily Planet. (Meanwhile, in Zack Snyder’s coming movie “Man of Steel,” Superman is played by Henry Cavill, who is â€" gasp! â€" British.)

Additional casting for the Encores! production, including the roles of Lois Lane and the villainous Dr. Sedgwick, were still to be announced. A press representative for Encores! said on Thursday that pre-production meetings for “It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane…It’s Superman” had not yet been held, so details like hair coloring could still change faster than…well, you know.



Rap Duo Wins the Week With \'Thrift Shop\'

Ben Haggerty, known by his stage name, Macklemore, left, and Ryan Lewis.Carlo Allegri/Invision, via Associated Press Ben Haggerty, known by his stage name, Macklemore, left, and Ryan Lewis.

Beyoncé sang for an estimated 104 million people at the Super Bowl on Sunday, and Justin Bieber has scored his fifth No. 1 album. But the biggest victory in the music industry is an independent rap duo from Seattle and its hit song about the pleasures of smelly secondhand clothes.

The duo, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, is No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart for the third time in a row wth its song “Thrift Shop,” featuring Wanz, which had 381,000 downloads last week â€" far more than any other song â€" and continues to gain radio play on multiple formats, including pop. The track has had 2.7 million downloads, according to Nielsen SoundScan, and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’s self-released album, “The Heist,” is No. 16 this week with 21,000 sales. “The Heist,” which opened at No. 2 in October, has sold a total of 313,000 copies.

Sales of some of Beyoncé’s songs doubled and even tripled last week. But that did not translate to blockbuster numbers, given the sales levels of her tracks the week before â€" they were low, yet perfectly normal for catalog hits in an average week. “Halo,” for example, sold 19,000 copies last week, a weekly gain of more than 300 percent, but the song still landed at No. 105 on SoundScan’s ranking of digital track sales. (“Halo” ! and other Beyoncé songs might well see another gain next week, since SoundScan’s reporting week ended Sunday evening, the night of the Super Bowl.)

The top four titles on Billboard’s album chart this week are all new. Mr. Bieber’s “Believe Acoustic” (Schoolboy/RBMG/Island), featuring acoustic and live versions of songs from his most recent studio release, “Believe,” is on top with 211,000 sales. Behind it are Andrea Bocelli’s “Passione” (Sugar/Verve), at No. 2 with 94,000; the indie duo Tegan & Sara, who reached No. 3 with 49,000 sales of “Heartthrob” (Warner Brothers); and the R&B singer Charlie Wilson’s “Love, Charlie” (RCA), at No. 4 with 44,000 sales.

The “Pitch Perfect” soundtrack is No. 5 with 37,000 sales, and last week’s No. 1, “Set You Free” (MCA Nashville) by the country singer Gary Allan, fell to No. 8 with 34,000.



Theater Talkback: Stepping Into the Spotlight

Critics tend to shun the spotlight.Hendrik†Schmidt/European Pressphoto Agency Critics tend to shun the spotlight.

Limelight is to theater critics as sunlight is to vampires. We reviewers feel safest crouched in the shadows while we feast on the lifeblood and talent (or lack thereof) of the performers on the bright stage before us. Legend has it that if you drag a critic into the glare of the other side of the proscenium, he will hiss, shrivel and disintegrate like Dracula at dawn.

As a member of this tribe of darkness, I have often watched with pity and terror as other innocent audience members have been recruited to become the playthings of actors. Like those unsuspecting guys who were assigned the task of carrying trunk a bearing the not inconsidrable weight of James Corden in “One Man Two Guvnors” on Broadway last year. Or just last month, the ashen fellow who was asked to kneel down and tie Tim Crouch’s shoelaces in “I, Malvolio” at the New Victory Theater.

New York critics are usually exempt from such participation. We attend late previews on designated press nights, and our seats are mostly (and deliberately) beyond range of any possible selection process for cameo roles.(Otherwise, a critic might be put in the unseemly position of reviewing his own performance.) But that has never stopped me from thinking with a shiver, when some poor civilian sap becomes the focus of an actor’s jibes and sallies, “There but for the grace of God…”

And then the grace of God was s! uspended..

This occurred a few weeks ago at the Harvey Theater of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where a sad, lovely fable of a play called “The Suit,” from the Theatre des Bouffes du Nord, was in residence. I had seen the show - a creation of the august director Peter Brook with Marie-Helene Estienne and Frank Krawczyk - in London the previous summer, and I vaguely remembered that, toward the end, three audience members were brought on stage for a climactic party sequence.

From left, Rikki Henry, Nonhlanhla Kheswa and William Nadylam in “The Suit.”Sara Krulwich/The New York Times From left, Rikki Henry, Nonhlanhla Kheswa and William Nadylam in “The Suit”

Let me provide a little context: At this point in “The Suit,” which portrays a South African husband’s whimsical and cruel revenge on his adulterous wife, that couple has invited friends to their home for food and song. The wife, who has a heavenly voice, performs, and a mood of celebration reigns. Then the husband performs a simple, startling act that turns joy into chilling embarrassment, and the party is over.

In other words, anyone who enters into this this scene must become a visible witness to an act of public humiliation. And if you’re one of the audience members who have been brought into the story, the responses you’ve been having throughout to a deeply emotional tale are no longer private.

Perhaps I should say at this point that I am not a stoical theatergoer, though I try to be a quiet one. If a production is at all effective, I become as involved in its plot as a child listening to a suspenseful bedtime story. And when the big party moment came aro! und in “! The Suit,” I still had tear tracks on my face from earlier scenes. I was hardly ready for any kind of close-up.

Imagine my dismay, then, when I was confronted with the beckoning hand and smile of one of the actors - a hand and a smile that brooked no refusal. What could I do Say “I’m a theater critic, I don’t do theater”

Robotically, I put down my pen and notepad and followed the actor down the aisle and onto the back rim of the stage. Curtains suspended from a clothes rack - signifying the entrance to the couple’s house - were drawn for me, and I stepped through them onto center-stage and into a hot circumference of light, as my cheeks burned. I was the first of the chosen few at this performance, and my entrance was greeted with laughter.

It had been a long time since I had appeared on a stage, except as a speaker, which is not the same as being an actor. Throughout grade school and college, I had done a fair amount of theater (not well, mind you), but I had put away this avoation with other childish things once I entered the working world.

So I had forgotten how very different the view is from the other side of the stage. It’s so strangely isolating. You feel cocooned, and believe it or not, protected by the haze of lights that separate you from the people in the dark. I felt self-conscious, yes, but more because I was a stranger at a party (being asked what I wanted to eat and drink), than because I was appearing before an audience.

And something quite wonderful happened. You might assume that once a theatergoer crosses the divide between his seat and the stage that the illusion so carefully fostered by the actors would dissolve. On the contrary, I felt like Mia Farrow in Woody Allen’s “Purple Rose of Cairo,” as if I had believed strongly enough in a fictional world for it to become a physical reality.

Details I hadn’t noticed from the audience - like the sweat beading the performers’! faces an! d the rhythms of their breathing - only seemed to enhance their existence as fragile, truly human characters. And the sense of complicity that every audience member feels in reacting to a play, if it’s any good, was only strengthened. When the party scene turned sorrowful, I had to forcibly keep myself from crying or crying out. I felt implicated, which I usually do by any powerful work of art, but even more intensely than usual.

So that was my baptism into audience participation. (I don’t count environmental theater, where boundaries are in flux from the beginning.) And it turned out to be mercifully benign. Of course I didn’t have to trade jokes or be insulted or perform stunts. My hosts were gracious, and I left the realm of stage lights feeling, in a word, illuminated.

For those of you have made similarly unexpected stage appearances, what were your experiences like Be they traumatic, exhilarating or enlightenin - I’m eager to hear about them.



A New York Cyclist Goes West

Dear Diary:

I have spent all but the last two months of my life in Manhattan, and my preferred mode of travel around the city is my bike. Biking in the city is much like city life: fast, furious and cutthroat.

When most drivers see me, a blonde teenage girl riding a feminine sea-green bike, they usually try to bully me into letting them cut me off or push me off the street (especially when there is no formal bike lane). I’ve become accustomed to middle fingers, loud car horns, curses, insults and kamikaze cabs.

Now, however, my bike and I are freshmen in college in Michigan. Recently, a minivan unexpectedly shot out of a side street and nearly took me down. Immediately jumping on the defensive, I instinctively yelled, “Watch it, Jersey!” as I fought to stay upright.

The driver, a middle-aged suburban woman, looked at me with confusion and bewilderment before rolling down her window and asking if I was O.K. before saying, “Did you say jersey Like the fabric”

Oh Toto,we’re not in Midtown anymore.

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via e-mail: diary@nytimes.com. Follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.



Straight Outta Congress: A Hip-Hop Tribute to \'House of Cards\'

One week into its release, “House of Cards” continues to knock down boundaries: this political thriller is the first original series to be commissioned by Netflix, the streaming video service; the first to make all 13 episodes of its debut season available at once; the first whose finale could be spoiled online almost as soon as you could watch the pilot. And now it appears to have set a record for the speed at which it has inspired a hip-hop tribute: “I Can’t Stop Watching House of Cards” is the creation of Adam WarRock (the nom de rap of Eugene Ahn) and it has already earned an endorsement of sorts from the “House of Cards” show runner, Beau Willimon. For the uninitiated, the video won’t spoil any crucial “House of Cards” plot points, though it will give you a thorough introduction to series star Kevin Spacey’s fluctuating Southern accent.