Through these doors lie all the answers. (Kit Dillon)

For North American math museums, like so much, in the beginning there was nothing.  Then, for a moment, there was one. A good start, but it didn’t last long. Soon, there was nothing again. But on Saturday, The National Museum of Mathematics—or MoMath, as the founders like to call it—opened it’s doors to the public and the intangible becomes tangible once more. Zero becomes one, mathematicians rejoice.

MoMath, the mad dream of founder and executive director Glen Whitney, faces out onto the north side of Madison Square Park with 19,000-square-feet of exhibition space and 30 odd exhibits.  Exhibits like The Hyper Hyperboloid, a spinning swivel chair surrounded by a circle of floor-to-ceiling ropes, which, when turned, allows you to construct and surround yourself in the elegant contours of a quadratic equation. It's more fun than it may sound. Or, go to the Mathenaeum, the seven-sided, geometric sculpture studio, and transform basic shapes into—sometimes never-before-seen—original objects. It’s something that The Observer, to our surprise, found fun. (We promptly hid our lunch money for fear of the nerd vibes we might put out, though.)

While walking through the exhibits, it’s not hard to see their appeal for all children and not just the mathematically inclined ones either, things light up, lasers shoot out of walls, sometimes when you hit stuff it makes music. Oh, to be a kid again.

But that's exactly the point behind MoMath, Mr. Whitney explained. He spent more than $23 million on the project, raised from the likes of Google and Oppenheimer Funds, to create a place where geek meets sleek.

“I thought there should really be a national museum of mathematics, a museum that has a broad scope,” Mr. Whitney said. “When the Goudreau Museum in Long Island closed, there was nothing. I wanted something to give people a chance to see mathematics for what it really is. Here children can see why a parabola lets you multiply numbers, they can walk on an interactive program floor, they can turn themselves into a fractal."

"Somebody stop me!" he cried out, only half-joking.

The creators of MoMath are projecting that the enthusiasm translates into 60,000 visitors a year. “Six times 10 to the fourth,” Mr. Whitney pointed out. To that end the museum is open 364 days a year, closed only on Thanksgiving. It’s important to get people through the door, because a museum like this comes at a cost. Mo’Math, a 501c3 charity, and as it is now, represents, $6 million in renovations, $9 million so far in exhibits and a projected $3 to $4 million yearly operating budget.

But the numbers don’t seem to phase Mr. Whiney, who’s had experience with amounts much larger than this. “I worked for a mathematically based trading firm for over a decade,” he said, looking down rather sheepishly. “I had a great time. It was very interesting. Very intellectually demanding. Lots of interesting problems to solve. But for me, in the end, I didn’t feel like what I was doing on a day to day basis was making anybody’s life better or changing anybody’s life. Yes, our investments were profitable.  But that’s sort of a second order thing. I wanted to be involved with people and reach out to them.”

In Mo’Math he may have found his answer.

A city in chains. (CUF)

James Joyce once puzzled whether it would be possible to cross Dublin without passing a pub. As it turns out, despite having more than 22 pubs per square mile, with the help of a computer algorithm, it just barely is. Today, after The Center for an Urban Future released its fifth annual study ranking the national retailers popping up all over in New York City, it might have found a harder puzzle to solve. With a reported 24 locations per square mile, is it possible to cross New York without passing a chain store?

The report showed a 2.4 percent increase in the total number of chains over the past year, despite prominent retailers like Filene’s Basement and Betsey Johnson closing their doors. It is boom maintained by trusty stalwarts like Dunkin Donuts, which opened 18 stores in the last year for a total of 484 citywide, followed closely by Subways, with 454 locations, and despite seeming to be on every street corner, Starbucks, with a mere 272 locations.

The number of national retail store locations grew in every borough but Staten Island. The Bronx, at a pace of 4.3 percent growth, grew the fastest, going from 809 store locations in 2011 to 844 in 2012. It is the second consecutive year of rapid retail expansion in the Bronx. Both Manhattan and the ever-expanding Brooklyn registered a 2.6 percent increase this year. Queens, not to be left out, was up 2.1 percent. Staten Island had a 0.7 percent drop (not attributable to washouts from Sandy, it would appear).

Overall, the total number of 310 retailers included in the study accounted for a massive 7,190 stores in the city. That;s a whole lot of the generic branding for a city that prides itself on (or at least pretends to) being unique.

It’s a testament to the city, somehow, that while walking a mile past the brands, chains and logos, that it can still feel like anything but the strip mall it’s hoping not to be.

Piling up.

One mans trash is another mans treasure. A nice idiom, one my grandmother, a child of the Great Depression, liked to repeat.  She also liked, “waste not, want not.” Keeping both in mind, she strove to throw out nothing, expecting, that it would one day become treasure again. Thus the stack of Life magazines from 1957 to 1960 currently propping up our dining room table.

In the modern data driven world, the idiom has changed. Now, it seems, one mans trash is another mans consumer trend index. At least for the Independent Budget Office (IBO), who released a report yesterday, compiling numbers from the Mayors Management Report showing that the amount of waste produced by New Yorkers has dropped progressively from it’s high in 2004 of about 4 pounds a day per person to just under 3 pounds now.

But, why?

“We don’t know for sure why,” Doug Turetsky, told The Observer over the phone. “There are a number of different factors that people think. People are buying less, consuming less. Newspaper circulations are down. It wouldn’t account for all of it.  But some piece of it. Newspapers have cut their size both literally and figuratively. Some products have changed, lighter plastic bottles for instance. There’s just less trash in the waste stream.”

So blame it on a perfect trash reducing storm, of a downed economy, new greener manufacturing methods and the death of the daily broadsheet. (For once, the declining fortunes of the publication you are now reading is doing the world some good.)

Still, 24,734,730 pounds a day is some serious weight. A mountain of a problem without a real solution yet. You could see if Jeremy Irons and Candida Brady, have found an answer in the new upcoming documentary Trashed. There's also the city, which has budgeted a study for next year to explore the actual composition of our collective waste. Or maybe, better yet, I can interest you in a pile of Life magazines that have, nearly 50 years later, really become treasure again.

Skyrise. (Kit Dillon)

Round and round she goes. (Kit Dillon)

Crane-lifts up the side of any building are a delicate affair, let alone up the side of 104-story glassy tower with sloping sides at the center of the most-watched construction site in the world. That is why it seemed like the Port Authority was taking its time this morning as its construction workers carefully hoisted up the first crowning piece of 1 World Trade Center's spire. After all, the media, as always, were watching.

A small cohort of workers in high-vis jackets went about the work of checking the heavy lift sling and talking back and forth through the crackle of radio static. There was a quick speech for the cameras, and then without much more ceremony than that, honeycombed steel circle edged up into the air. Nothing more complicated than any of the tens of thousands of lifts the north crane has made in the construction of this building, if only important now in its symbolism: the final pieces.

Watching from the street, The Observer didn’t see anything particularly cutting-edge about this specific piece of steel. If anything, it almost looked like something carved by nature in its rigid perfection. But it wasn't the technical aspects of the installation that were stopping people in the street. The crowning of this building, despite controversy and for all the obvious reasons, is a moment for New Yorkers to celebrate.

Hey, hey, up she rises. (Kit Dillon)

Gospeed. (Kit Dillon)

A day after arriving in Manhattan from across the harbor, the first piece of the 1 World Trade Center spire has begun the trip to its final resting place atop the city's tallest tower. We'll have a full report of the ceremony later but wanted to share this dramatic shot now.

Brad Lander says, "Where's the bus?" (Kit Dillon)

On every straphanger's gift list this winter. (Kit Dillon)

The bus stop is a lonely place, made lonelier without the reassurances of time. Like Estragon said, “Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful.” Much better to wait underground for the subway where your time is allotted to you by little digital clocks hanging from the ceiling.  No more leaning out and staring into the endlessness of a dark tunnel looking for light. Your train is 4 minutes away, at least on those lines fortunate enough to have the timers.

New York City is not a place for waiting. We’re terrible at it, and the City Council knows it. Today, joined by transit advocates and riders, a group of council members introduced a resolution calling on city agencies to install “bus clocks” in all of the 3,300 shelters across the city. Clocks that would display real-time bus arrival information, not simply those flimsy timetables many bus poles now unreliably, even flagrantly, post. It’s a move that will finally see the city catching up with such other metropolitan innovators as Albany, Syracuse, and Champaign, Ill. They've even got an online version in Boston—Boston!

“Bus Time and subway countdown clocks have been tremendously helpful technologies for straphangers,” Bronx Councilman James Vacca, chair of the Transportation Committee, said. “Knowing when the next bus or train will arrive gives straphangers time to pick up coffee or the morning paper rather than standing around with no information.”

That’s the point, of course. A moment with no information, in a city like ours, in a time like this, is a matter of life and death! Or at least a blown meeting or missed first date. Of course, we know, waiting now, that a bus will come. It always does. But we don’t know when and that lets the mind wander into strange and uncharted territory. What if the bus never comes? What are we waiting here for? Is it all worth it? Why are we here? Tough questions for the 2.5 million average weekday bus riders. Tough questions for anybody.

The MTA has a new system, known as Bus Time, currently accessible from a smart phone app, that was first installed as pilot program on the B63 line in Brooklyn. It has since expanded to a few more lines in Staten Island and the Bronx, and by the end of 2013, it will be available for all bus routes in the city. But as the concerned City Council members point out, smart phones are not as ubiquitous among the city’s elderly and low income residents, which creates a very real accessibility issue.

“There are few things as frustrating as waiting for a bus without knowing when it will show up, especially if you’re already running late for work or the weather isn’t cooperating,” Councilman Steve Levin said. “Installing countdown clocks in bus shelters is an easy step that the MTA can and should take to ensure that all riders know when to expect the next bus.”

Currently the city bus shelters are built and maintained by CEMUSA, a world wide leader in, what it calls, "iconic street furniture," better known as bus-stop-meets-billboard.  According to the franchise agreement with the city, which includes a clause about installing and maintaining future systems as they are developed, CEMUSA is already in a position to install countdown clocks without serious contractual changes.  As for the costs of the initial installation, the council hopes that some of the financing can come from discretionary appropriations and toggling agreements with advertisers, in which time information is alternated regularly with advertisements.

"With Bus Time going citywide," declared Brad Lander, "it's time for the MTA, New York City, and CEMUSA to overcome bureaucratic and inter-agency hurdles and make bus clocks a reality in New York City."

Council to pedicabs: fall in line!

The city council is working to bring a shred of consistency to the wild west of pedicab taxis with new (likely-to-pass) legislation that would mandate fixed rates based on time.  The tricycled menace, whose customer hailing bike ring is a fixture in the city’s nightspots and tourist traps, has been known to sometimes push the limits of commercial decency.

One of the most famous incidents happened this August, when pedicab operator Savas Avci charged a Texas family $442.54 for a twelve minute ride from Times Square.  A ride that otherwise would have cost by usual yellow cab somewhere in the range of $8-$10. What he did at the time, by pointing out hidden fees and only explaining the per person charge after the ride was, incredible as it sounds, perfectly legal.

Currently, pedicab operators are allowed to calculate their rates however they want.  Common methods include a per block or avenue charge, though some have established zone pricing.  Though these zones are highly individualized, and one sometimes suspects, malleable mid-trip.  Operators are also allowed, as Mr. Avci did, to add sub charges at the end of a trip including the per passenger charges.

The Avci Incident has been referenced by council members supportive of the bill, among them councilman Dan Garodnick, who used the incident to spearhead the move towards tighter price controls within in the industry.  "This legislation,” said Mr. Garodnick, “will make sure there are no surprises when passengers get their bill at the end of a pedicab trip."

The legislation would require that the pedicab industry fix its rates based on time, regardless of the number of passengers. It also highlights accessibility issues for people with vision difficulties by mandating that all cabs also include some form of, what the press release calls, “audible payment technology.” A thing The Observer understands to mean a speaker.

“Today, we’re protecting consumers by giving deceptive pedicab practices the red light,” said  council speaker Christine Quinn. “Our legislation will bring increased legitimacy to the pedicab industry and will ensure customers know what they’re paying to go on a ride—without being taken for a ride.”

The One57 crane.

It’s a time-honored tradition for men doing ballsy, ridiculous and risky things to photograph their exploits.  Thankfully the steel workers over at One57 are no exception. They recently yielded to this impulse, taking a series of shots of their work  securing the now- famous crane destroyed during Hurricane Sandy.  The removal of which is, according to Curbed, slated to begin the week of December 3rd.  It’s a difficult job. A new crane has to be built to lower the old one down to the ground and there are legal actions to be settled, of course. But in the meantime we can all look at these pictures the workers took and feel relief that’s it’s not us out there.

Our palms are sweating.

Of course, if you want a closer glimpse of a collapsed crane, you could always mosey on over to 438 W. 38th St. in Hells Kitchen, where a mobile crane collapsed today while trying to lift industrial air conditioning units onto a buildings roof.  Nothing was hurt excepting, we assume, the crane operator's pride.

Making a killing on ticket sales.

While searching around the Municipal Bond Database (as is our wont)The Observer stumbled upon the quarterly cash receipts of ArenaCo, subsidiary of Forest City Ratner Corporation and the owner operator of Barclays Center.  The reports revealed a whopping $46,866,337.14 in sales from tickets, suites and sponsor installments between April 1st, 2012 and September 30th, 2012.

All of which amounts to just a drop in the bucket of the total $510,999,996.50 PILOT Revenue Bond issue currently being paid off by ArenaCo in payments in lieu of taxes to the city or state. This is good news for the bond holders, who presumably need all the help they can get. After all, their bond holdings are currently being given a BBB- rating, the lowest rating a bond issue can have while still being considered investment grade and one which ranks Arena Co and Barclays Center in the same investment strata as the Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority.

Bond details.

It must be difficult to hold onto that kind of debt, especially when your bond issuer is busy in court trying to devalue the very property you're investing in. An action which Forest City Ranter called a mistake on Friday, according to DNAinfo. It appears that the Atlantic Yards property was inadvertently clumped in with other Forest City Ratner properties. Ones that must still be overvalued by the city finance department but which don’t have any of those pesky bond payments tied to their tax valuations. It all goes to show just how aggressive FCR is when it comes to challenging tax assessments.

So the next time you’re lining up in the Geico Atrium to buy tickets to an event, think of the city, the IRS tax laws it skirted and the hundreds of millions in tax revenue it sacrificed to get you there. A sacrifice that helps all of us, or at least some of us, by buoying a series of barely investment grade bond holdings.  It’s a ticket worth the money when a game this great is being played.

That's one big loop hole. (Getty)

When Bruce Ratner said, in a press release issued by the arena, that Barclays Center made "the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues…one of the greatest crossroads in New York." He was speaking metaphorically, because great as it may be, it's not actually worth much at all. Not in cash money, anyway.

It turns out Brooklyn Events Center, a subsidiary of Forest City Ratner, filed a petition on October 22nd to challenge the arena's current $741 million valuation by the city's Department of Finance, according to DNAinfo. Instead, Fores City argues that, by its own estimates, the Barclays Center was worth a paltry $111 million—a $630 million difference in opinion, for those keeping score, with millions of dollars in tax revenue in the balance as a result.

"The city is still in the process of determining the assessment and until that is concluded we will not comment," Forest City spokesman Joe Deplasco told The Observer when asked about the discrepancy.

After a day of phone calls, we couldn't figure it out either. Forest City is not paying taxes on the property, but is instead engaged in a convoluted PILOT scheme, part of an effort used to skirt a 1986 IRS ruling that prohibits the use of tax-exempt bonds for sporting venue financing. But hey, anything to bring pro sports back to Brooklyn after half a century in the wilderness.

It does not appear the assessment hijinx has much of anything to do with the PILOT payments, though no one associated with the project or otherwise has much of an idea why Forest City would do this. It owes $55 million on the PILOTS, and by devaluing its property, would not be able to pay them.

Whatever the case, you would think Forest City had gotten enough favors from the public kitty. Apparently not. But rest assured, while we try and figure out what is actually going, one thing remains clear: Bruce Ratner is up to his old tricks as usual.