What makes a great New Yorker Talk of the Town piece?

Small surprises.

Quirks.

Unexpected perspective.

At the outset in this case our hearts are immediately with the folks daring the harbor on kayaks, but our brains are (gulp) subsequently with the residents against the kayakers.  All within a few hundred words:

…Last year, in her capacity as a co-chair of the New York City Water Trail Association, Brous began collating the complaints of other paddlers that the myriad ferryboats using the river routinely failed to toot their horns before pulling away from the dock, in defiance of maritime law, specifically Inland Navigation Rule 34. The kayakers feared that a ferry might run one of them down. Brous wrote to various entities with some waterfront sway and eventually found herself sending periodic e-mails to the Coast Guard, detailing instances of law-flouting ferries. Nothing changed. The ferries ferried hornlessly…