Rent’s Still Too High, So a Former Candidate Is Back

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It’s finally a mayoral race. Jimmy McMillan, bewhiskered avatar of the Rent Is Too Damn High party, entered the scrum on Wednesday with the “Rent Is Too Damn High” anthem, a song and video produced for him by the folks at the blog AnimalNewYork.

Musically speaking, the song, a martial fanfare that swings for the fences in a cheap-sounding sort of way, is a bit of a departure from the bouncy, synth-driven soul of Mr. McMillan’s “Rent Is Too Damn High” album, released at the height of his 2010 campaign for governor.

But the message Mr. McMillan has delivered to the electorate since at least 2006 remains reassuringly constant. “The rent,” he intones, “Is too damn high. / My mustache and haircut is too damn fly.”

With a few quick lines, Mr. McMillan sketches out an entire platform: “Rent and the deficit is too damn high / Poverty and unemployment both up in the sky / Wages and education is too damn low / Economic recovery is too damn slow.”

“Animal isn’t in the business of endorsing candidates,” the blog said, “but we did want to help him get that message out.”

The Ad Campaign: Quinn, Development Interests and the Closing of a Hospital

Critics of Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, on Wednesday released an attack ad asserting that Ms. Quinn allowed St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village to close three years ago. The critics’ political committee, called NYC Is Not For Sale 2013, says that its mission is to defeat Ms. Quinn’s mayoral bid and that it does not represent any particular candidate. Its leaders are from Local 1180, which represents communications workers; an animal rights group which opposes horse-drawn carriages; and Wendy Kelman Neu, chief executive of Hugo Neu Corporation, a recycling company. The ad is to air on television.

Click below to jump to a fact check:

• 0:08  Campaign Donations

  It is correct that Ms. Quinn’s potential mayoral campaign received donations from the Rudin company, from six Rudin executives who gave the maximum of $4,950 each, but the ad gets the total amount wrong. It was $29,700, not $59,400, according to the Campaign Finance Board. The ad’s sponsors conceded on Wednesday that they had double-counted the contributions, and said the mistake would be rectified. In 2007, the Rudins were selected to develop hospital property in a plan that the hospital hoped would bring in enough revenue to keep it solvent. But Ms. Quinn was not an unalloyed supporter, urging that the development be scaled down, as it ultimately was.

• 0:14  Rudin and Closing the Hospital

  A quotation flashed on the screen asserting that the Rudin plan led to the hospital closing is false. The hospital closed because it was $1 billion in debt and went bankrupt before any development could get off the ground. In the time of the budget crisis, neither the city nor the state offered St. Vincent’s enough money to bail it out. Ms. Quinn was part of a task force of public officials and labor leaders working with Gov. David Paterson that tried to save the hospital, and it would be difficult to apportion blame.

• 0:18  Effects of Closing

  The ad is replete with loaded language. It implies that people may have died because St. Vincent’s closed, but there is no evidence that this has happened, according to the Greater New York Hospital Association, a trade group. It does not mention that the hospital is to be replaced with a 24-hour emergency facility, scheduled to open in early 2014 and run by the North Shore-LIJ Health System. Ms. Quinn “played a major role” in establishing that facility, Kenneth Raske, president of the hospital association, said.

SCORECARD Ms. Quinn has depicted herself as a fighter for the people, including those in her Council district, where St. Vincent’s was located. But she has also taken tens of thousands of dollars from developers and other parties with interests near her Chelsea neighborhood, including Chelsea Market and Hudson Yards. The ad seeks to tie her to big money and development interests. In doing so, it packs an emotional punch, but under closer scrutiny, its assertions are not fully supported by evidence and documentation.

David W. Chen contributed reporting.

Some Love for 3 Achy Workhorses Linking Staten Island and New Jersey

Todd Heisler/The New York Times The Bayonne Bridge, shown here, is one of three bridges that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey plans to improve or replace at a cost of $2.8 billion.

As a child, Angela Goethals had a fantasy about the 7,100-foot-long structure between Staten Island and Elizabeth, N.J., that she still calls “my bridge,” even though it no more belonged to her than the George Washington Bridge belonged to Washington’s heirs or the Lincoln Tunnel belonged to Lincoln’s.

The fantasy was that she and her sister would set up their own tollbooth. “It was sort of like a lemonade stand on the side of the road,” said Ms. Goethals, 35, a great-great-granddaughter of George Washington Goethals, the Army general and civil engineer for whom the bridge is named. “We thought we’d just sit there and people would pay a toll that would go into our piggy banks.”

On Wednesday, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey approved a plan to spend considerably more money than she had dreamed of collecting for a purpose she never imagined: $1.5 billion, from a public-private partnership, to replace the Goethals Bridge.

The Port Authority’s Board of Commissioners also approved face-lifts on two other bridges that connect Staten Island and New Jersey: $1.29 billion to raise the deck on the Bayonne Bridge by 64 feet to accommodate larger cargo ships from the Panama Canal, and $15.3 million to resurface the Outerbridge Crossing.

Todd Heisler/The New York Times The Goethals Bridge, seen from New Jersey.

Together, the three are sturdy, workhorse bridges, not terribly charismatic â€" the Goethals and Outerbridge are cantilever bridges, which are boxier-looking than swooping, sweeping suspension bridges. They are rarely lionized: David McCullough’s best seller “The Great Bridge” is not about either of them; it is about the Brooklyn Bridge. And there is the obvious: The three bridges connect Staten Island to Bayonne, Elizabeth and Perth Amboy â€" all in a stretch of New Jersey that many who do not live there consider drive-through country. Madison County, it is not.

“I wouldn’t call them the Rodney Dangerfield of bridges,” said Steven M. Richman, the author of “The Bridges of New Jersey” (Rutgers University Press, 2005). “That might be the Pulaski Skyway.”

Mr. Richman said the three tend to be taken for granted, a point echoed on the Staten Island side of the water.

“They don’t have the same profile as bridges that are more representative of the region,” said Maxine Friedman, the chief curator of the Staten Island Historical Society. “People think of the Brooklyn Bridge or the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge or the George Washington Bridge as more emblematic, more striking examples. The other three just blend into the background.”

It was not always that way. The 1,675-foot-long Bayonne Bridge, the youngest of the three by three years, was described in a 1930s guidebook as “a great steel arch spanning Kill Van Kull without intermediate piers” and “the longest of its kind in the world” â€" a distinction it retained, by less than 25 feet, after the similarly designed Sydney Harbor Bridge opened in Australia in 1932.

The New York section of the American Society of Civil Engineers says no arch bridge surpassed the Bayonne until the 1,700-foot-long New River Gorge Bridge was built in West Virginia in 1977.

“It’s an iconic bridge, it’s a beautiful bridge, it’s important,” said Mark A. Smith, the mayor of Bayonne, said in an interview. “It’s important. It’s important to the citizens of Bayonne, the men and women who operate the ports in this area. To those folks, I would say, it would rival the Brooklyn Bridge or any other.”

The new roadway on the Bayonne will be 215 feet above the water. That will avoid real-life scrapes like one in 2012, when the metal mast of a cargo ship grazed the underside of the bridge, and Hollywood disasters, like the alien attack in the 2005 film “War of the Worlds,” when it was destroyed.

Unlike the Bayonne, the other two bridges were named for people. The Outerbridge Crossing honored the Port Authority’s first chairman, Eugenius H. Outerbridge. The entire bridge had cost about $5.3 million less than the Port Authority plans to spend on the resurfacing.

Todd Heisler/The New York Times The Outerbridge Crossing, seen from New Jersey.

And the Goethals? Ms. Goethals, an actress who appeared in both “Home Alone” and “Rocket Gibraltar” with Macaulay Culkin, said there was a right way to say its name. “It’s GO-thuls,” she said. “They often say ‘GETH-uls on the radio, or GOTH-uls.” (And for the record, a toll is collected on the bridge â€" for drivers entering New York. Going to New Jersey is free.)

“Not too long ago, my grandfather, who’s going to be 93 next month, heard a rumor that they were planning to rename the Goethals Bridge,” she recalled. “I said, ‘That’s an outrage.’ He said, ‘Actually, General Goethals was a modest sort of guy and more about the work than the celebration of the work. I don’t think he would mind terribly much.’ But I thought, ‘They can’t take away the name.’”

Will they?

“No,” said Chris Valens, a spokesman for the Port Authority. “It will be the Goethals Bridge.”

He pronounced it GOTH-uls.

Tribeca Video: Paul Verhoeven Discusses ‘Tricked’

With his latest film project “Tricked,” Paul Verhoeven worked with a list of screenwriters that rivaled the length of the script itself. In this video interview at the Tribeca Film Festival, the Dutch director, best known in America for Hollywood hits like “Robocop” and “Basic Instinct,” discusses how he and his team assembled the crowd-sourced work of multiple writers to create the screenplay for “Tricked.”

Follow-Up to ‘Gangnam Style’ Hits No. 5

Reuters Psy performing “Gentleman” in Seoul.

Two months ago, Billboard began incorporating YouTube views in the formula for computing its all-important Hot 100 singles chart, allowing viral-video smashes to reach No. 1 even if they trailed other songs in sales and airplay, two of the chart’s other criteria. Sure enough, Baauer’s “Harlem Shake,” a huge hit online, sailed to No. 1 in the first week of the new chart.

If one artist embodies viral video smashes, it is Psy, the South Korean singer and rapper of “Gangnam Style.” His new song, “Gentleman,” was released two weeks ago, and immediately racked up big numbers on YouTube. It hit 100 million views in four days, and is now at about 218 million. Sounds like a shoo-in for No. 1, right?

But this week “Gentleman” is only No. 5 on the Hot 100. One reason it didn’t reach higher is that YouTube’s publicly displayed tickers are for global views, but Billboard counts only those in the United States. According to Billboard, the song had 8.6 million streams here last week, which counts not only YouTube but also music services like Spotify.

“Gentleman” has also not caught on with pop radio (like “Gangnam Style,” it is sung mostly in Korean), and its sales are low for a song that is supposedly one of the most popular in the world. Last week it sold 72,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan, making it the 20th most downloaded track of the week â€" behind Tim McGraw’s “Highway Don’t Care,” which has been out for three months. The No. 1 song on the Hot 100 this week, Pink’s “Just Give Me a Reason,” had 262,000 downloads and 4.7 million streams.

Fall Out Boy tops Billboard’s album chart this week with “Save Rock and Roll” (Island), its first new release in five years, which sold 154,000 copies. The rapper Kid Cudi is No. 2 with this new “Indicud” (Republic), which sold 136,000, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ new “Mosquito” (Interscope) bowed at No. 5 with 38,000 sales.

Justin Timberlake’s “20/20 Experience” (RCA) remains at No. 3 with 76,000 sales, and Blake Shelton’s “Based on a True Story…” (Warner Brothers Nashville) likewise holds its spot at No. 4, with 42,000.

‘Nice Work’ to Close on Broadway

The Broadway musical “Nice Work if You Can Get It,” a venture involving the heirs of George and Ira Gershwin and several veteran theater producers to showcase famous songs by the brothers, will close on June 15 after 27 preview performances and 478 regular performances, the producers announced on Wednesday. The Jazz Age-style show, which originally paired Tony Award winner Matthew Broderick as a playboy with Tony nominee Kelli O’Hara as a bootlegger, opened last April to mixed reviews and never caught real fire at the box office. (Ms. O’Hara’s role is now played by Tony nominee Jessie Mueller.)

The musical, which cost approximately $10 million to mount on Broadway, will not recoup that original capitalization by its closing date; a spokesman for the producers said that “Nice Work” will earn back a majority of its investment, but he did not have precise figures. The show’s lead producers - Scott Landis, Roger Berlind, Sonia Friedman and Roy Furman - also announced that a national tour of the show will begin during the 2014-15 theater season.

The closing of “Nice Work” will free up the Imperial Theater, a house that many producers covet for its size and prime location near Times Square. No new shows have been announced for the Imperial, but several Broadway producers say that Cameron Mackintosh’s revival of “Les Miserables” - which is due to open in March 2014 - is a likely future tenant. The original “Les Misérables” ran at the Imperial for nearly 13 years before closing in 2003.

City Expands Recycling Program to Include Hard Plastics

Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press All this and more: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg presented an array of plastic objects that can now be recycled under the city’s newly expanded program at a news conference in City Hall Park Wednesday.

New Yorkers, your days of expending precious brain cells trying to determine whether that yogurt cup or plastic takeout container goes in the trash or the recycling bin have come to an end.

The city announced the biggest expansion of its recycling program in 25 years on Wednesday, saying all hard plastics would be accepted. This includes shampoo bottles and clothes hangers as well as countless toys and other common household objects.

“Starting today,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said at a news conference in City Hall Park, “if it’s a rigid plastic -- any rigid plastic -- recycle it.”

The city expects the move to divert 50,000 tons of waste a year from landfills â€" enough to fill a football field seven stories high, the mayor said.

The expansion coincides with the opening, scheduled to take place by year’s end, of what is described as the largest household recycling plant in North America, on the waterfront in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, operated by Sims Municipal Recycling.

When the plant is up and running, the city says, those 50,000 tons of waste a year will cost $12 a ton less to transport than moving trash out of state to landfills. It will save $600,000 a year and decrease the city’s carbon footprint.

The overall cost-benefit analysis of recycling versus throwing away waste is less clear. A 2008 study by the Natural Resources Defense Council found that overall, taking into account extra trucks, crews, fuel and other costs, recycling cost the city $17 a ton more than curbside trash disposal, but that the gap was narrowing.

The city did not immediately respond to a request to provide more current figures, but an official said that the expansion would be a money saver overall because recycling trucks already making their rounds would come closer to being used at full capacity. Whether that savings would be offset by garbage trucks being used less efficiently was not immediately clear.

(The official was also asked if the stated no-holds-barred policy on rigid plastics would even include bowling balls. He was not immediately able to supply a response.)

Mr. Bloomberg also announced that a composting program under way in some public schools would be expanded to the entire public school system over the next two years. Schools already participating in the program have cut the amount of garbage they sent to landfills by nearly 40 percent, the city said.

The city will be sending out mailers to New Yorkers describing what can now be recycled, and how. Those, too, can be recycled.

Stepping In for Mayoral Candidates, Surrogates Are Left Out of a Debate

As latecomers slipped into their seats on Wednesday for an early morning mayoral debate on housing development, they could have been forgiven for feeling a bit confused.

On display were photographs of the four advertised speakers, including Joseph J. Lhota, a 58-year-old Republican candidate with a graying sandy beard and what nobody could describe as a full head of hair.

But standing near his photo was a clean-shaven young man wearing a badge saying “Joe Lhota, New York City M.T.A. Chairman, Speaker” who was less than half Mr. Lhota’s age and sported thick, dark hair with spectacles and a pinstriped suit. Needless to say he was not Joe Lhota and he had not been the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

A few minutes earlier, in exactly the same spot, had been standing another man who wasn’t who his name tag said he was. This man wasn’t John A. Catsimatidis, the Greek-born billionaire who owns the Gristedes grocery chain and is also a Republican candidate for mayor.

Enter the “surrogates,” a new and perhaps short-lived feature of the increasingly frequent mayoral forums being held across New York, sometimes twice a day.

Such is the profusion of these debates that busy Democratic and Republican candidates find themselves racing from borough to borough, juggling time, priorities and campaign resources as they compete for votes ahead of the election in November.

Hence the appeal of seconding someone else if you can’t be in two places at once. However, that tactic backfired on Wednesday, when neither of the surrogates was permitted to address a forum organized by the Associated Builders and Owners of Greater New York, a trade association of the real estate industry.

“We had confirmations up until yesterday morning from four of the candidates who were going to be here,” said Dan Margulies, the association’s executive director and moderator of the forum that was held at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. “Last evening Mr. Lhota and Mr. Catsimatidis found a conflict and are not going to join us in person. However they did send, or are sending, surrogates. It was decided that it was not appropriate for the surrogates to speak on the platform with the candidates who had the courtesy to keep their commitments.”

Even after the audience began filing in, name cards for Mr. Lhota and Mr. Catsimatidis were still on display, but were soon removed. This left the stage free for the two candidates who had shown up: George T. McDonald, an advocate for the homeless who is seeking the Republican nomination, and Adolfo Carrión Jr., an Independence Party candidate and a former Bronx borough president.

Both said they had arrived at the Javits Convention Center that morning expecting to be part of a foursome. “I’ve not seen surrogates in any of the debates,” Mr. Carrión said after the debate. “The hosts made the decision; I think they made the right decision.”

Mr. McDonald said: “I thought that they were going to be here. It’s a little insulting to send surrogates at the last minute to say you can’t make it.”

Watching from the sidelines were Mr. Lhota’s replacement, Eric Ulrich, a member of the City Council and a Republican who sits on the Council’s housing and buildings committee. In his place, Mr. Catsimatidis had sent Daniel W. Isaacs, the chairman of the New York Republican County Committee. Some audience members said they were “disappointed” at the absences, but one said he understood that candidates had to “pick and choose”, and others seemed unclear anyway about who had and hadn’t been scheduled to appear.

A spokesman for the Catsimatidis campaign said that the candidate did not mean to offend an industry in which he invests heavily as a real estate developer and builder, but explained that the candidate had to be at another mayoral forum on Staten Island.

“The main reason he went to that as opposed to this is that’s where the Republicans are,” the spokesman, Robert H. Ryan, said. “They’re in Staten Island, and that’s what we have to focus on right now, getting as many Republican votes as possible. Look, there is only so much time in the day, and every group that you can imagine, and some that you can’t imagine, are having forums. And a lot of times one comes up after the other. It’s not an act of disrespect towards anybody; it’s just he can’t possibly make everything, so he has to pick and choose what is the best thing for the campaign.”

Jessica Proud, a spokeswoman for Mr. Lhota’s campaign, said that he had also attended the Staten Island forum, but that he later traveled to the Javits Center and “met and spoke directly with many of the business owners there.” She said that as the campaign intensified, “there are going to be a lot of conflicts with the volume of forums that the candidates are being asked to attend, so if we are able to use a surrogate in a case where we can’t be in two places at once, we are happy to do that.”

A Week to Celebrate Henry Miller’s Brooklyn Connections

Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times Henry Miller’s childhood home, at 662 Driggs Avenue in Brooklyn.

The Henry Miller Memorial Library, a nonprofit bookstore and arts center in Big Sur, Calif., where the novelist lived between 1940 and 1962, is sending envoys east to assert Miller’s presence - in spirit, anyway (he died in 1980) - in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, where he spent nearly a decade. The library’s Big Sur Brooklyn Bridge Festival, which opens on May 12 and runs for a week, will include an exhibition, readings, panel discussions, comedy and musical performances.

A likely highlight - a festival closing concert by Philip Glass and Van Dyke Parks and Friends at the Music Hall of Williamsburg on May 19 - may be only tenuously related to Miller and his work. But most of the events celebrate Miller’s blend of enterprising artistry and social engagement in one way or another.

The heart of the festival is a pop-up bookstore at the City Reliquary, a vest-pocket museum where some of Miller’s manuscripts, letters, watercolors and first editions will be on display (and where his books, as well as posters and relevant films, will be on sale) for the full run of the series.

At the Big Sur Brooklyn Bridge Staff Party, which is open to the public on Tuesday evening at the City Reliquary, Phillip de Gruy, a singer-songwriter, will perform, and Tim Youd, a visual artist who has based several works on Miller’s writings, will show a new piece based on “Tropic of Cancer.” On May 15, Peter Stampfel, Zach Brock, Al Rose and the Bushwick Gospel Singers will offer a concert of music inspired by Miller at  Spike Hill.

The program also includes a panel discussion, “Henry Miller: Libertine, Communard,” on May 16 at Spoonbill & Sugartown Booksellers; an evening of short films form the Big Sur International Short Film Screening Series and the Brooklyn Short Film Festival, at  Videology, on May 17 and “Tropic of Laughter,” an improvisatory performance by the  Upright Citizens Brigade Theater at the Knitting Factory on May 18.

Wilkommen, Again? Roundabout Planning Another ‘Cabaret’ Revival

How’s this for déjà vu on Broadway? Roundabout Theater Company is planning a revival of the famed musical “Cabaret” at Studio 54 in early 2014 with Alan Cumming starring as the Emcee - the role for which he won a Tony Award in 1998 for a “Cabaret” revival by Roundabout that ended up running at Studio 54 as well.

The composer of “Cabaret,” John Kander, confirmed on Wednesday that the production was in the works, although he said that the details had yet to be finalized.

As for who would play Sally Bowles in the revival, the Daily Mail of London reported on Wednesday that the Oscar-winning actress Anne Hathaway (“Les Miserables”) was set to take on the role, citing anonymous sources. But Ms. Hathaway’s publicist said on Wednesday that the Daily Mail report was “completely false.”

“There is no commitment whatsoever for her to do ‘Cabaret,’ ” wrote the publicist, Stephen Huvane, in an e-mail. “There are no discussions going on about this project for Anne.”

Mr. Kander said Roundabout’s plan was to begin rehearsals in January 2014 and begin performances in late winter with Mr. Cumming reprising his role. (Mr. Cumming is now appearing on Broadway in a production of “Macbeth,” playing most of the roles himself.) Mr. Kander said he had no information about the director or about the actress who would play Sally. Natasha Richardson won a Tony in the role opposite Mr. Cumming, while Liza Minnelli won an Academy Award in the 1972 movie.

A Roundabout spokesman declined to comment about the possible revival or casting.

If the revival comes together, it would be the latest well-known show to make a swift return to Broadway; the previous Roundabout revival of “Cabaret” ran for nearly six years before closing in January 2004.

Mr. Kander said he didn’t think it was too soon to bring “Cabaret” back to Broadway. “I think there will be an audience for the revival - many people who have never seen it on stage - this is a chance to develop the show with some new actors.”

Ms. Hathaway had signaled affection for “Cabaret” in a big way in October when she sang numbers from the musical and film at a concert performance at Joe’s Pub in Manhattan.

“Cabaret” originally opened on Broadway in 1966 and won the Tony for best musical and best score (for Mr. Kander and his longtime songwriting partner, Fred Ebb), among several other awards. The show has a book by Joe Masteroff, based on a novel by Christopher Isherwood.

Gary Shteyngart to Publish Memoir

Gary Shteyngart will follow up his three best-selling novels with a memoir, his publisher, Random House, announced on Wednesday. Mr. Shteyngart’s editor, David Ebershoff, described the book as the “candid and deeply poignant story of a Soviet family that comes to America in 1979 to find its future.”

The memoir, “Little Failure,” is scheduled for release in January 2014.

Mr. Shteyngart, the author of “The Debutante’s Handbook,” “Absurdistan” and “Super Sad True Story,” said in a statement: “I’ve finally written a book that isn’t a ribald satire and because it’s actually based on my life, contains almost no sex whatsoever. I’ve lived this troubled life so others don’t have to. Learn from my failure, please.”

Gary Shteyngart to Publish Memoir

Gary Shteyngart will follow up his three best-selling novels with a memoir, his publisher, Random House, announced on Wednesday. Mr. Shteyngart’s editor, David Ebershoff, described the book as the “candid and deeply poignant story of a Soviet family that comes to America in 1979 to find its future.”

The memoir, “Little Failure,” is scheduled for release in January 2014.

Mr. Shteyngart, the author of “The Debutante’s Handbook,” “Absurdistan” and “Super Sad True Story,” said in a statement: “I’ve finally written a book that isn’t a ribald satire and because it’s actually based on my life, contains almost no sex whatsoever. I’ve lived this troubled life so others don’t have to. Learn from my failure, please.”

For Sale at the Botanical Garden, an ‘Important Pair of Chairs’

New York Botanical Garden An important pair of patio chairs once owned by the horticultural philanthropist Enid A. Haupt are up for sale this weekend at the New York Botanical Garden, where there is a conservatory named for Ms. Haupt.

If you’ve been looking to score some important patio furniture, this weekend’s Garden Sculptures and Antiques Fair at the New York Botanical Garden might be the place to do it. The fair, which the garden calls “the country’s original, largest and most important venue for authentic garden antiques,” will feature garden-related artworks and furnishings from 1750 to the present.

William E. Sauro/The New York Times Enid A. Haupt, in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory of the New York Botanical Garden in 1992.

Among the items for sale will be what the garden calls “an important pair of chairs,” the peacock-patterned beauties pictured above, that were once owned by the garden’s marquee patron Enid A. Haupt, for whom the garden’s Enid A. Haupt Conservatory is named.

This year marks the first time in memory that garden antiques with a provenance related to Ms. Haupt, who died in 2005 at age 99, will be at the fair, the garden said.

The fair runs from Friday through Sunday.

An Unfortunate Meeting of Doppelgängers at the Airport

Dear Diary:

I was in the cramped Delta terminal waiting area at La Guardia Airport this month waiting to board my flight to West Palm Beach, Fla. Several seats away from me was a gentleman roughly my age who was engaged in a series of cellphone calls, which I could easily hear.

Concluding the first call, he said my first and last name as he left a message.

I was a bit startled. However, after several calls, it was confirmed: the man and I shared the exact same name! I walked up to him, excusing myself, with my wallet opened, displaying my driver’s license. I asked him to look at the license to confirm the coincidence.

He responded: “You’re the one. You caused me so much trouble! You got me thrown off this flight.” Apparently, when I made my reservation, the airline thought mine was a duplicate reservation and eliminated his.

He continued, “Yeah I know you; you’re the one with the middle name.”

I confessed that I did have a middle name and apologized for causing him so much “trouble.” I was quite disappointed, as my hope for knowing a bit more about him came to an abrupt halt.

It seemed that other than telling me off, he was uninterested in sharing any more, even as he was seated directly behind me for our almost three-hour flight.

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

An Unfortunate Meeting of Doppelgängers at the Airport

Dear Diary:

I was in the cramped Delta terminal waiting area at La Guardia Airport this month waiting to board my flight to West Palm Beach, Fla. Several seats away from me was a gentleman roughly my age who was engaged in a series of cellphone calls, which I could easily hear.

Concluding the first call, he said my first and last name as he left a message.

I was a bit startled. However, after several calls, it was confirmed: the man and I shared the exact same name! I walked up to him, excusing myself, with my wallet opened, displaying my driver’s license. I asked him to look at the license to confirm the coincidence.

He responded: “You’re the one. You caused me so much trouble! You got me thrown off this flight.” Apparently, when I made my reservation, the airline thought mine was a duplicate reservation and eliminated his.

He continued, “Yeah I know you; you’re the one with the middle name.”

I confessed that I did have a middle name and apologized for causing him so much “trouble.” I was quite disappointed, as my hope for knowing a bit more about him came to an abrupt halt.

It seemed that other than telling me off, he was uninterested in sharing any more, even as he was seated directly behind me for our almost three-hour flight.

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