Wednesday: NY Marriage Equality Vote: Down To The Wire

The New York state Senate must be pissed: They're actually having to work for a living. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has refused to let politicos go home for their long, leisurely summer break until they vote on the impending marriage equality bill, which is more of a tangled web with each passing day.



Monday was technically the last day of the legislative session, but votes are still pending as most Republicans try to deny same-sex marriage as a civil right and insist on placating the religious right.



Cuomo states the bill would grant same-sex couples rights to marry "as well as hundreds of rights, benefits and protections currently limited to married couples of the opposite sex."



Five states—Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont and New Hampshire—and D.C., grant same-sex marriage licenses. My god, if New York cannot lead the way, what hope is there for this nation to ever catch up with Europe and Scandinavia, where same-sex marriage has been legal for years?

Abby & Spencer With Papayhan

NYC Image Of The Day: Proposed Subway To Staten Island, 1912

If only... In 1912, New York's MTA proposed a subway tunnel connecting Brooklyn's Fourth Avenue toStaten Island, which would have allowed "the other borough" to truly feel like part of New York City (map on right).



It wasn't for lack of trying. In 1923, the Brooklyn Transit Co. began digging a tunnel under Owl’s Head Park in Bay Ridge BK to connect the Fourth Avenue line to Staten Island off St. George. But 150 feet in, a lack of funds called off the project.



Again in 1929, a Staten Island-Bay Ridge subway link was considered (map above). The Depression neatly ended that attempt.



Once more, in the early 1960s, community leaders proposed adding subway tracks to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, then under construction. But anti-mass transit city leader Robert Moses, who was paid a hefty sum to maintain automobile traffic throughout New York (the same dude that wanted to cut a highway through both Greenwich Village and Brooklyn Heights), refused to hear of it. And so today, Staten Island is accessible only by car or the Staten Island Ferry. I've lived here 15 years; never been to SI.