The Meridian Archive
MER
March 1994
The Man Who Would Count Windows

The Man Who Would Count Windows

Closed mid-February 1994 · On stands late February 1994

The Front

The Meridian Index

February's small numbers — regional airline fare wars, the going rate for a scalped ticket to a Springsteen arena date, the price of home heating oil against last February

On the City

A short column on the new administration's first press conferences and what they promise to change about how the city talks about itself

The Essay

The Precinct and the Person

What a change in police leadership asks a city to believe about itself before the numbers exist to prove or disprove it

The Foreign File

The New Year Nobody Called a War

A dispatch on the Zapatista uprising's first weeks, timed to NAFTA's opening day, and the cease-fire brokered before the month was out

The Feature Well

The Commissioner's Method

A profile built around Bratton's installation as police commissioner, read for management style rather than for crime statistics not yet in

The City

The Handoff

Giuliani takes office as mayor; Bratton is installed as police commissioner

The Dial That Wouldn't Page

NYNEX converts roughly 250 outdoor payphones to rotary dial, defeating the tone-dialing pagers had used to reach them for free

The Back

Books: A review of the season's crop of political-consultant memoirs, none of them necessary · Art: A notice on a regional museum's group show of documentary photography · Film: A dispatch on the winter's repertory schedule of American crime pictures, filed independent of the news cycle