What, nobody owns a chain saw?

Joseph Berger has an article in The New York Times about a bad pole (and, no, not Władysław Gomułka):

When it showed up unannounced in April, the neighbors stared, goggle-eyed. Some compared the scene to one in a classic Stanley Kubrick film. “The neighbors started gathering around it like it was the monolith in 2001,” said the Reverend Jeanne Person, an Episcopal priest who has lived in a century-old pocket of Flatbush, Brooklyn, for eleven years.
The monolith this time was a twenty-foot-tall polygonal pole made of gray fiberglass. It was put up by Verizon as part of its effort to wire the area with ultra-high-speed fiber-optic cable for FiOS, its telephone, Internet, and high-definition television service.
The neighbors, in the Flatbush historic district of Victorian-style houses known as Fiske Terrace-Midwood Park, said the pole clashed with its unapologetically old-fashioned setting, where even the lampposts are quaint: the hooked cast-iron style known as bishop’s crook. What gives the complaining residents some clout is that Verizon may have planted the pole without following the rules on laying down new structures in a neighborhood that, in 2008, was designated as historic by the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission. According to the commission, any changes in the streetscape of historic neighborhoods, except for safety features like fire hydrants and stop signs, require its permission.
The commission and Verizon are “identifying possible alternatives that meet the commission’s regulations and are consistent with the character of New York City’s historic districts,” Elisabeth De Bourbon, a commission spokeswoman, said in an email, adding, “We expect a resolution soon.”
The dispute is another illustration of how protective, even possessive, some New Yorkers can be about their neighborhood’s landscape. The residents are happy that FiOS is coming, but they do not want poles that clash with the turn-of-the-twentieth-century ambience. So far, residents say, Verizon has planted only two poles they know about, and only one is in the historic district, on East Eighteenth Street near the corner of Glenwood Road. The other pole is in front of an apartment house just outside the district. Any further planting of the poles has been postponed until the landmarks issues are resolved.
But why would the addition of some utility poles rattle armadillo-skinned New Yorkers, who shrug off harsher insults? “They look nothing like anything around them,” said Fred Baer, 62, a retired Kennedy Airport manager and former president of the Fiske Terrace neighborhood association. “They are out of character with the neighborhood.”
John J. Bonomo, Verizon’s director of media relations, said the poles were necessary to allow for an “interface” between underground cables and above-ground wires that thread through backyards. The poles, he said, are less obtrusive than large cabinet-style boxes planted directly on sidewalks, which can invite graffiti and vandals. Verizon believed that it had acquired all the permits it needed from the Department of Transportation, and did not think it needed approval from other agencies, he said.
Nevertheless, the company confirmed that it was trying to resolve the matter with the Landmarks Commission. “Both parties are focused on ensuring that these facilities are placed in a manner that is appropriate for these historic districts,” a Verizon statement said. Bonomo declined to say how many poles had been put up around the city (there is at least one in Fort Greene in Brooklyn), describing the figure as information it wants to keep from competitors.
The Fiske Terrace-Midwood Park Historic District is one segment of Victorian Flatbush, a mile-long expanse of century-old homes that stretches from the south edge of Prospect Park to the Brooklyn College campus. Fiske Terrace was built from 1905 to 1907 as an early suburban development, aimed at people commuting to Manhattan on the old Brooklyn, Flatbush, & Coney Island Railroad, now the Q and B subway lines. The almost three hundred freestanding homes are generally three stories tall, with wood shingles and wide porches, and they are set back from the sidewalk behind generous front lawns, many graced with one-hundred-year-old oaks and London plane trees. Inside there are stained-glass windows, parquet floors, elegant cabinetry, and orange and green brick fireplaces.
Michael Rabinowitz, 33, a political consultant, said he had moved to the neighborhood because it reminded him of the upstate town where he grew up as the son of Hamilton College professors. Many residents are middle-class professionals, academics at nearby Brooklyn College, or business people.
Because the neighborhood has good public schools and two of the city’s best public high schools, Midwood and Edward R. Murrow, nearby, homes are valued at over eight hundred thousand dollars and, in many cases, over a million. It is a neighborhood that, unlike some others, sought landmark status as a way of protecting its distinctive look from developers and eccentric renovators.
Person said she first saw the pole when she came home from work at General Theological Seminary in Chelsea one afternoon. “First we wanted to know what it was,” she said. “Then when we figured out what it was, we wanted to get rid of it. What does landmarking mean if it doesn’t protect us?”

Rico says that Edward R. Murrow would be doing a documentary about all this, if he wasn't, unfortunately, dead...