Developers sometimes buy the
air rights of neighboring properties to increase the bulk or height of their new buildings, but this is the first time I have ever seen a development literally occupying the air over another building. It is on West 78th Street near Broadway. From a five story base, they have cantilevered a steel truss out over the building next door that houses Stand UP NY , a comedy club. Looks a little shaky to me.
I don't know how many more floors of this they are going to construct. The contractor,
Marson, whose website shows a number of other interesting projects around the city, has nothing posted on this site. Nor could I find the architect's name at the building site. I am not sure I would want my name on it, either.
This is an example of the craziness that happens in an irrationally priced property market in a city controlled by developers. The rush to cash in leads to extraordinary engineering projects like adding multiple floors to occupied buildings or putting whole neighborhoods on platforms over rail yards, while reserving little space for public needs and leaving institutions like St Vincent's Hospital fighting to develop a new building on a little postage stamp in the Village.
Pedicabs first started showing up in Midtown in 2002. Recalling Mao's ban on rickshaws as undignified, they made me uneasy at first, but they were being driven by wholesome looking young guys who had found a way of avoiding the onset of the great Manhattan career track. In the beginning, they pretty much kept to the flatter streets around Times Square and Sixth Avenue. These days you see them 
more in Central Park. Dozens of them. They seem to be competing successfully with the horse drawn carriages of Central Park South both for tourist fares and space on the crowded road. Their ranks have changed, too. Now, some are pedaled by women and there are a lot of new drivers from eastern Europe and Africa. They stop often to point out landmarks, but more probably it's to rest after pulling a couple of heavy Midwesterners up a hill. You'll just as often overhear them misidentifying landmarks around the park like calling the Beresford the Dakota. I did a double take one day when I thought I heard a driver telling his bored looking fares about a former ships' grave in the middle of the park before I realized he was pointing at the Sheep's Meadow where once sheep grazed.
