What Was Once Just Really Annoying Will Now Rob You, Too

It’s like The Warriors meets West Side Story:

A subway dance troupe turned militant on May 25 when the dancers viciously mugged a 22-year-old straphanger on the J train.

The violent attack began when the victim started conversing with the dancers after they finished an acrobatic performance near the Lorimer Street stop at around 3:40 am.

That’s when one of the perps asked the victim if he would like to “see something mesmerizing.”

The victim said yes, so the perp pulled himself into the air on the train’s metal bars and unleashed a powerful kick to the victim’s chest. Two other dancers then joined in the attack and started punching and kicking the victim in the head and body.

The victim called out to the other two dancers for help, but his pleas only convinced the other performers to join in the walloping.

Eventually, one of the perps demanded that the victim hand over his belongings.

September 10th: 2009

When the next big terrorist attack happens we will be as unprepared as we were on 9/10/01, lulled into a dangerous complaisance by the Old West Main Street facade that New York has become:

Awakened residents thought it was a gas explosion, maybe a sonic boom. Others figured an espresso machine inside the Starbucks had blown up. One woman, walking by the dozens of official-looking law enforcement folks inside the crime-scene tape, explained to her young daughter how similar shows like “C.S.I.” are filmed before realizing the asphalt was no stage.

“This is the real deal?” she said with a gasp. “I’m explaining it like it was a movie.” She grabbed her daughter’s hand and hurried away.

The growing realization that the commotion at 92nd Street and Third Avenue on Monday morning derived from a small explosive device rather than a script left nearby residents stunned, curious and ultimately frightened.

. . .

Some noted how much it looked like television, while others experienced an odd collision between fiction and fact.

“It sounded like a bomb, to the extent that I know what a bomb sounds like,” said Casey Mallinckrodt, who was awakened with her family in their apartment one block north on 93rd Street. “It’s confusing. Obviously we don’t live in a bomb-riddled city most of the time. And bombing a Starbucks doesn’t seem like a terrifically pointed act of terrorism towards a community. It seems as though it might be a statement towards Starbucks.”

The Great Triumphs Of The Bloomberg Tenure: Flower Pots Full Of Cigarette Butts, Menus Littered With Odd Four-Digit Numbers And Lawn Furniture On Broadway

You can decide if that counts as a “sweeping vision” or just a series of small-bore Clinton-esque tweaks. As for the lawn furniture, the big so-called traffic-reducing Broadway pedestrian mall initiative apparently has met at least one of its goals:

While tourists and others enjoyed moseying around the traffic-free oasis on its first business day as a pedestrian mall, anyone making a delivery around Times Square fumed.

Drivers said streets surrounding the blocked-off areas were clogged with traffic — and pulling in front of a business to unload heavy boxes became a thing of the past.

“This is making my job more challenging,” said Steven McFadden, 48, a deliveryman for Citi Storage. “Longer walks to loading entrances, more competition for parking, more time for fewer deliveries and more parking tickets.”

John Gannon, 55, a mail carrier, predicted a long summer with traffic blocked off.

“For anybody who has to make a curbside delivery, it will be a problem. You’d have to park and walk a block or two,” he said. “If [Mayor] Bloomberg wants it to last, though, it’ll last.”

And you can amend the post title to include “Naked Cowboys” in the mayor’s sweeping vision:

Times Square and Herald Square vendors are cashing in on the car-free Broadway.

Everyone from food and souvenir hawkers to street performers said they were rolling in the dough yesterday thanks to the flood of pedestrians on the Great White Way.

“It is the coolest thing in the world. My business has quadrupled. It is like New Year’s Eve every day,” crowed the “Naked Cowboy,” Robert Burck.

It’s Like The Guy Who Insists That He’s Not So Much “Anti-Black” As He Is “Pro-White”

Because when you go down that debate-club road, you start wondering why we should bother with hate crime laws at all:

Police said that they are investigating the strange Nazi-runic graffiti in the hopes of tracking down who’s leaving the coded messages — most recently on the pedestrian foot bridge on East 14th Street and Shore Parkway back on May 13.

While many residents ignored the iron crosses, the number 88 — a code number among neo−Nazis for “Heil Hitler” — and the phrase “Triumph of Will” on the pedestrian bridge, a few concerned citizens in Sheepshead Bay called authorities — especially since the graffiti was found a short distance from Holocaust Memorial Park on Emmons and West End avenues, the only city park dedicated to victims of the Holocaust.

Members of the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force are on the case, although sources said that the graffiti could not be considered “bias” because it wasn’t solely directed to any ethnic group.

The graffiti was more pro-Nazi than anti-Jew, officials said.

First Riverdale, Then The World!

Now that the World Trade Center has already been hit, we need to go for the second-best thing:

The four men arrested Wednesday night in what the authorities said was a plot to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military planes at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, N.Y. were petty criminals who appeared to be acting alone, not in concert with any terrorist organization, the New York City police commissioner said Thursday.

The men were arrested in an elaborate sting operation at around 9 p.m. on Wednesday after planting what they believed to be bombs in cars outside the Riverdale Temple, a Reform synagogue, and the nearby Riverdale Jewish Center, an Orthodox synagogue.

. . .

[James] Cromitie, whose parents had lived in Afghanistan before his birth, had told the informant that he was upset about the war in Afghanistan and that that he wanted to do “something to America.” Mr. Cromitie stated “the best target” — the World Trade Center — “was hit already,” according to the complaint.