Immediate priorities for the district include marketing, landscaping, security foot patrols and graffiti removal. "It takes a year to build a building, but it takes just a few minutes to paint over a sign," said Councilman Eric Gioia (D-Long Island City). "Quality of life ... is the most recognizable sign that a neighborhood is changing."

Far be it for me to want the introduction of streetsweeping or anything (we haven't moved the car in two weeks, which is nice, and allows the weeds to flourish underneath--we have a delicate ecosystem.) but I think that the neighborhood could be vastly improved by, oh, I dunno, the occasional removal of the rogue bags of the garbage, drums of industrial by-product, and air conditioner carcasses that pop up like Ice Pirates all over the goddamned neighborhood. Maybe we'll finally see the end of Pimp My Ride? Who knows. All I know is that it's surely the 14-page missives I send on a regular basis that got this accomplished. (I wish I had saved copies. In one of my finest moments, I described the 311 complaint line as "like the darkness knob on a toaster: essentially inoperative but there to leave the user feeling slightly less helpless.")