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September 10, 2008
Global Warming
Last night was the annual meeting for our condominium, for which I have served as President for the past year. I did not seek re-election, for a number of reasons that I may go into in the coming weeks. One of the reasons is that you just cannot please everyone all the time, and New Yorkers are notoriously demanding, cranky, impatient and opinionated.
A few months ago, the board was approached by a production company to film a public service announcement from our roof. We had previously allowed ABC to do some stills of the exterior of the building for Lucy Liu's office in Cashmere Mafia, for which the condo association was paid handsomely.
When this new request came in, and they informed us that the public service announcement was for global warming, I recommended to the board that we allow the filming and not charge them for the use of our space. It would be our way of contributing to a very important cause on behalf of the residents.
The initiative was met with great criticism by the residents. How dare the board make such a unilateral decision without consulting the residents (which would obviously have been impractical)! I stood up to the criticism, and said that the board would not have supported a public service announcement regarding pro-life, the NRA, gay rights or whatever else, no matter how strongly we might have felt about it. Global warming is simply not one of those issues.
The filming went ahead, and the residents calmed down.
Here is the ad that was filmed from our roof
And I daresay that I am extremely proud that we stuck to our guns and contributed to the making of this ad. It is excellent.
Posted by dave at September 10, 2008 11:02 AM