Most New Yorkers, according to one poll, didn’t much like it when, in 2011, the city renamed the Queensboro Bridge for former Mayor Ed Koch. The response may not have had much to do with their feelings for Koch. The bridge already had a perfectly good name, and a no-baloney alias as well: the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, perhaps best blurted in the voice of the late columnist Jimmy Breslin. (Breslin, for what it’s worth, didn’t like Koch. He was more of a Mario Cuomo guy. Cuomo doesn’t have a bridge, or a tunnel, yet.) The new name didn’t really stick.
But navigation systems are deferential to the authorities; algorithms are squares. The other day, a traffic-jam aficionado, curious to see how various nav apps would direct a driver who wanted to go from the East Side of Manhattan to Long Island City, Queens, in the shortest amount of time, punched a destination into a couple of iPhones and the dashboard system simultaneously, and let them compete for the driver’s attention. They piped up quick. Evidently, they disapproved of going down Lexington Avenue—“Turn left,” “Turn left,” “Turn left,” each device repeated—and all had the same route in mind, toward the You-Know-What Bridge. But only Apple Maps, as the ramp approached, dared say its name—and got it wrong. It pronounced Koch “coke,” as in the Koch brothers, Charles and David, the industrialists and underwriters of right-wing causes—rather than “kotch,” as in the Mayor. What a maroon.
Perhaps you could chalk up the app’s confusion to the fact that one of those brothers, David Koch, now has his name affixed to two other destinations on the map, an auditorium (formerly the New York State Theatre) at Lincoln Center and the plaza in front of the Metropolitan Museum. And there are so many pronunciations of Koch to choose from. Among the “cokes” are Kenneth, the poet, and Bill, the Nordic-skiing star from Vermont, whose father, Frederick, in 1985, amid his frustration over getting called “kotch” during Ed’s term, had his last name legally changed to Coke-Is-It. (When the Coca-Cola Company sued, he was listed in court documents as “It, Coke Is.”) Sam Koch, the Baltimore Ravens punter, is a “cook” (as any Sam should prefer). So was Tom, the Mad writer. Pietro Koch, a particularly brutal Italian Fascist feared even by Mussolini, was a “cock.” Ilse Koch, the notorious Bitch of Buchenwald, was a “cochhh.”
Could there be something political at work? These are volatile times. On Inauguration Day, a protest sign was hung from the bridge which read “Bridges Not Walls.” Ed Koch hated Donald Trump, and vice versa. Trump called Koch a “moron,” and Koch called Trump “greedy, greedy, greedy” and “piggy, piggy, piggy.” The Times recently reported on papers that had been dug up by Pat Thaler, Koch’s sister, which contained some previously unpublished remarks by Koch: “Donald Trump is one of the least likable people I have met during the twelve years that I served as mayor. It is incomprehensible to me that for some people he has become a folk hero.” The report also contained Koch’s reaction to Trump’s request to have his name put on Wollman Rink, after Trump had spent three million dollars to renovate it: “I’m surprised he doesn’t want Central Park renamed for him.”
Of course, many big structures in New York already bear Trump’s name, although the number is decreasing, as residents in Trump-branded buildings take actions to remove it. And, given his reputation in these parts, it’s hard to imagine any civic structures taking on his name anytime soon. (There seems to be more support, actually, for naming a bridge after Breslin. Eliot Spitzer, to whom posterity will likely grant not even a viaduct or an overpass, recently floated the idea of appending Breslin’s name to the Whitestone Bridge, or the Throgs Neck.)
You’d think that Trump would be more a “coke” guy than a “kotch,” in light of his income bracket and political leanings, but the Koch brothers have been no great allies of his, either. They donated money to his opponents in the primaries, and recently, by way of activist groups that they fund, pledged millions of dollars to support Republican congressmen who were voting against the health-care bill—the very ones whom Trump has vowed to challenge, because of their disloyalty. Coke, kotch, cook, cock: pick your poison.
In 1908, the bridge, during its construction, was actually called Blackwell’s Island Bridge, after the former name of Roosevelt Island. That year, an ironworker conspired to blow it up with dynamite, amid grievances from the workers’ union. He balked and removed the dynamite when he discovered that the explosion would likely kill twenty or more firemen. For this pang of conscience, union officials labelled him “chicken-hearted.” ♦
