New York: Canap

Of all the hostile environments that have challenged the fortitude of man, few have proved so obdurately unconquerable as one that he created for himself — the 23 sq. mi. of Manhattan. In the past two years alone, the metropolis has undergone ordeal by blackout, smog, race riot, drought, blizzard, transit strike and about every other affliction that can visit a city. Last week 250,-000 long-suffering Manhattanites were subjected to a new kind of hazard: trial by garbage and stairway. As usual, they responded with inventiveness, insouciance and ire.

The latest crisis was triggered by a strike of 7,000 apartment-house service employees—doormen, elevator operators, handymen— against the landlords of 1,500 rent-controlled dwellings. The workers, whose average weekly pay is $85, sought an $18 raise. The owners responded by demanding repeal of the city's rent-control law, an anachronistic World War II anti-inflationary measure that makes no economic sense but is beloved by voters— and politicians— because it keeps many rents below market levels. Caught in the bind, a quarter of a million tenants found themselves without hot water, heat, elevator service, garbage disposal or doormen.

Back-seat Psychiatry. New Yorkers, however, are born survivors. The immediate challenge was to operate the elevators—if possible. Steve Frenkel, a 19-year-old Hunter College engineering student living in a West Side building, pried open a stricken lift with a bent coat hanger, taught himself how to operate the machine, then enlisted other tenants on a rotation watch schedule. In many another highrise, kids gleefully took over the elevator controls. One East Side boy, pressed into service to spare his parents' dinner guests the rigors of the stairway, demanded—and got — $1 for his stint behind the lever.

Many elevators, however, remained inoperative. Rather than hike up a dozen or more stories by the stairways, many lazy, elderly or angina-prone tenants stayed home or moved to hotels—and resolutely refused dinner invitations.

Even pets were affected. Said a dachshund-laden woman on one stairway: "I don't dare let him climb. They got discs, you know." In some buildings, striking service employees—among the few New York workers who actually have a sense of service—winked at the labor laws and carried their favorite tenants up in the elevators anyway. Many apartment-based professional men, forced to close their offices, threatened to sue striking Local 32B and/or the landlords for their losses. On the other hand, a psychiatrist on Central Park West kept up his thriving practice by couching his patients in his car.