To RIOC President Herb Berman:

I recently gave birth to a baby girl, and one of the rewards of motherhood seems to be the constant struggle to comply with mass-transportation requirements.  More specifically, folding strollers on buses, riding taxis with a car seat, and carrying strollers upstairs and down in the subway.  I understand that some of these rules are made for the greater benefit, especially in a city like Manhattan, where millions ride daily.  But folding the stroller in the Red Buses on Roosevelt Island?  Please give me a break.

You wouldn’t expect a wheelchair to be folded inside the bus, would you?  Same happens with infants.  They can’t walk, and for the most part their mothers, I among them, can’t fold and carry both the stroller and the infant and get in and out of buses.  I have even seen the bus driver ask a mother of twins to fold the stroller.  Can you imagine what it would be like to fold a twin stroller and carry two babies for a ridiculous seven-minute ride at the most?  It can’t be done.

Maybe a good compromise for the Red Bus stroller policy would be that if the child can walk, the stroller has to be folded, but if a non-walking baby has to ride the bus, then I’d expect the same consideration as to any other citizen with special needs, that is, stroller remains unfolded.
When it comes to quality of life, let’s be leaders of common sense instead of followers of nonsense.

 
 
To the Editor:

Hailing as I do as a hillbilly from Kentucky, I must say that I was most intrigued and excited to see a major motion picture being filmed on our quaint Island.  However, my excitement quickly turned to frustration, inconvenience, and even verbal assault.  My Constitutional rights were trampled by the higher power of Hollywood.  I guess this paramount source of power does not require due process to abridge my right to freely walk down the streets of my home community.  Instead, young men and women with headsets dictate when and at what length I may travel down the street.

Roosevelt Island has been whoring herself to the Hollywood community for too long.  It is the residents that have to pay with their inconveniences and abridged freedoms.  I understand that RIOC receives a substantial sum to permit filming, but this benefit does not trickle down to the residents.  My rent isn’t discounted.  Heck, RIOC cannot even parlay those substantial fees into some much-needed community capital improvement and repairs.

I propose to RIRA the general idea for a bill to enable the people of Roosevelt Island to garner control through RIRA as to who films on our Island, when and how the residents may be inconvenienced, and how these large shooting fees will be distributed to benefit the residents.

I am especially concerned with denial of transportation access of the Tram for large blocks of hours and sometimes days.  For some elderly and handicapped, this is their only manner of transportation on and off the Island.  Furthermore, I intend to file a lawsuit against RIOC, the RIOC President, the operator of the Tram, and any production company that denies access to the Tram for the benefit of all the elderly and handicapped that are marooned on our Island on the civil grounds of false imprisonment, which is defined as a willful detention of another without their consent, the next time the Tram is closed off to the public due to filming.

Hampered individuals have been unwillingly landlocked on this Island and denied vital access to the City transportation system for too long.

 

I would like to thank the following sponsors who helped make the Roosevelt Island Film Festival such a success: Manhattan Park, Jack Resnick, M.D., Becker and Becker, Roosevelt Island Housing Corporation, Hudson Companies and The Related Companies, Gristede’s, Page Ayres Cowley Architects, James Flannigan, D.C., Roosevelt Island Tramway, Rivercross Tenants Corporation, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Lawrence Itskowitch, D.D.S., New York National Bank, The Child School/Legacy High School, Roosevelt Island Disabled Association, Roosevelt Island Seniors Association.

Also, a special thanks to the members and friends of the Roosevelt Island Historical Society, who were great volunteers and made the event a fun-filled weekend.  We also appreciate The Main Street WIRE’s coverage.

Our thanks to Mark and his staff at Rooftop Films for enhancing the films and making them come to life.