Joseph Tiraco

Who would willingly live next door to Green Acres? Have you any idea what the crime rate is over there? They steel a car a minute; mugging, car-jacking, rape and murder are common place. After Home Depot arrives, streets will be ripped up, widened and traffic tied in knots. Then, for the rest of our lives, we are expected to cope with bumper to bumper traffic jams, multitudes on foot wandering our streets day and night, litter, pollution and noise. Falling property values around the mall site might bring real estate speculators, replacing home ownership with rental housing and an inevitable decline in standards; turning trim little blocks of private homes into poorly kept eyesores. As deleterious conditions slowly spread throughout the community, Forest Hills could ultimately succumb from cancer.

The old stock of Forest Hills loved this gently rolling hill country as much as we do. In 1909, the place was mostly farmland. Cord Meyer (the builder) and Margaret Olivia Slone Sage, richest lady in the world (an angel come to Earth to alleviate the suffering of mankind. Margaret regularly descended on the Bowery to feed the hungry and homeless with her own hands. She was founding mother of both Forest Hills and the Russell Sage Foundation) commissioned Frederick Law Olmsted to design a unique community. An elegant vitality flowed from Olmsted's pen, but this was a byproduct, a consequence of his art; art for art's sake was not the designer's intentions. Forest Hills was to be a planned community and not an ad hoc adjunct of dissimilar structures. Other towns and villages evolve into being, Forest Hills sprang, like Athena, fully formed from the mind of Olmsted - a product of man, crafted as a single unit, like a machine, or a ship, or an airplane - born the child of genius, rather then an accretion gathered together by random forces. Forest Hills was an unbounded idea sculpted to fit in a physical space; it was a social experiment in community building, an intellectual attempt to integrate a diverse population into a centrally planned city - as fair a place as could be conceived by the world's greatest practitioner of the art - and the aim was a higher lifestyle for all who chose to live within its confines. The result was a triumph for Olmsted and showed that planned communities were viable concepts for the future. Our founders were far sighted social engineers. They gave us utilitarian virtues along with beauty, charm, and a mark of distinction that has withstood the passing generations. In the span of a single term in office, a pack of inept politicians would reduce the place to ruin.

Forest Hills is worth fighting for, worth the time, worth the effort, worth the expense. The politicians have declared the property south of Metropolitan, abutting Forest Park, to be an open city, up for grabs. So be it! Then we want that property, all of it, every square foot as tribute to soothe the injustice of an uncivilized attack on our society. Reparations due the victor. That makes this vast property not only the battle zone, but the spoils of war. When the dust settles, we will have either lost our homes, our community and expended a treasure for nil or be in possession of a huge track of land on which to forge a project worthy of the founders and the memory of Frederick Law Olmsted - a gift from us to future generations of Forest Hills. What a prize!

Of local politicians, not one will lift a finger to rescue Forest Hills from the clutches of Home Depot - not one! We're locked in a life & death struggle to save our community, risking a loss of millions in property values, about to have our rights and civic pride stripped away and they don't want to waste their time. The mayor, the stern ex prosecutor, for some reason, sees Forest Hills as a community of lawbreakers, lower then drug dealers; he would sentence us to dismemberment and eternal torture. Perhaps it is because two of his chief rivals live here in the Hills. Whatever the reason, he has a penchant for adding insult to injury. In Brooklyn, the community of Mill Basin found itself in a position similar to our own. Home Depot had acquired commercial property and proposed to build a mall "as of right". The community screamed bloody murder and the mayor, in an uncharacteristically magnanimous gesture, changed the zoning for them and presto! Home Depot vanished. Some trick! Mill Basin gets stroked and Forest Hills gets the back of his hand. Our recourse seems self evident. Raise hell. We're just not angry enough - yet. We're not tough enough - yet. When we reach the point of outrage, when we're seen as the city's obstreperous malcontents (sort of an insurrection of the over-privileged), then we'll have our way and our precious Hills will be saved.

There's nothing wrong with having a little temper tantrum every now and then. David Belasco, the famous theatrical producer, made it a point when addressing a new cast to show them his most valued possession, a pocket watch his dying grandfather had given him. For the first few days of rehearsals, David would frequently draw the watch, check the time, gently wind the watch, hold it to his ear and smile, then return it to his vest pocket and pat it lovingly. As the first week of rehearsals came to a close, he would seem agitated, finding fault with everyone and everything. There was no pleasing him. Suddenly, he called the cast and crew together and began to admonish them. Hurling invectives, he moaned about the unfortunate circumstances he found himself in due to their ineptness. His anger steadily mounted until finally, he flew into a rage, drew the watch from his pocket and dashed it to the ground shattering it into a thousand pieces. He stormed out of the theater. The horrified cast now worked themselves to the point of exhaustion to redeem themselves in his eyes. Naturally, his "most valued" possession had come from a neighborhood pawn shop. Presumably, David called the proprietor, grandpa. It was the secret of Belasco's greatness that he found a way to get extraordinary performances out of ordinary people. He beat the actors at their own game.

Going out and purchasing ten thousand pocket watches that we all cast to the ground in front of the mayor seems a bit impractical. Angry letters and demonstrations are the customary methods to vent one's anger with elected officials. Your kitchen table is the perfect spot to break a few watches in print. Write letters, the age old method to convey your thoughts to others from the comfort of your home. First, line up all the politicians in your mind. Now imagine that you are the great Belasco striding before them. (True, theatrical producers are the last vestige of legalized tyranny in our society, but, as a voter, you too are all powerful. Think of yourself as Lord High Everything. So feel free to practice a little tyranny of your own.) Try to get the following points across - a few invectives wont hurt -that you are dissatisfied with the performance of your elected officials, that their ineptness is causing you indigestion, that you expect them to get up an hour earlier and work an hour later in order to redeem themselves in your eyes, and that you are absolutely certain they will fully rectify the unfortunate circumstances their gawkish bumbling has occasioned. Explain that you are not amused by the sorry state Austin Street has fallen into, that once we enjoyed unique family run shops like the Peter Pan Bakery, and the Happy Cooker, and a top notch Jewish deli on Continental. We used to greet the proprietors by their first names. Tell them to take a good look at what zoning changes have let to. Austin Street has become a trash bin and no longer an asset to this community. Now they plan to do a hundred times worse to Metropolitan Avenue. Explain how Forest Hills will become a ripe tomato being pressed in all directions for it's juice. No, no. We are not amused. Explain, they should brush up on their magic act because if Home Depot does not vanish soon, then you plan to pull a little hocus pocus of your own as you enter the voting booth, and poof...

Tell them the story of our good neighbors to the east in Roslyn, Long Island. That community, too, was vexed by builders (Forest City Ratner, to be exact) who bought commercial property and was going to construct a mall, "as of right". The community screamed, but the hard hearted politicians stuck their fingers in their ears and did nothing. The community sued, and lost. Ratner took this as his cue to start construction. (FX, lightning and thunder.) At this point, the fickled finger of fate made itself felt. The township held local elections. The people of Roslyn brushed up on the fine art of presto digitation, and went to the poles. The next morning, as the sun rose over Roslyn, lo and behold, all the old politicians had vanished. A new crop of officials, individuals who had seen the light and were much more amenable to the people, sent the township lawyers into court and won an injunction against Ratner. Like a morbid apparition haunting Northern Boulevard, the half built mall can be seen crumbling to dust.

Bravo! Roslyn. Bravo! And Brava! You are an inspiration to us all.

And so, my good neighbors, sitting with pens crooked at the ready, there is one more point you must get across to your elected officials. Remember, this is war. "Failure is not an option". Excuses, hot air and finger pointing wont work this time. Tell them to save their money if they plan on using slick Madison Avenue ads trying to erase Home Depot from our minds. For it is we who will have our fingers in our ears. Fail us and it's....

...well, you know... with one hand firmly gripping the voting lever, wave the other hand in the air and repeat these words: Ab-ra-ca-dab-ra!

February 15, 1996