Entries Tagged as 'Well, What Did You Expect?'

Friday, November 6th, 2009

Less Technocrat Than Technorat

Bloomberg’s grand campaign promise to install Coca-Cola in the city’s drinking fountains meets reality, and the newly minted third termer reverts to vague pledges to use “technology” in some shape or form to fix stuff:

A day after winning reelection, Mayor Bloomberg on Thursday seemed to step back from a campaign proposal to have free crosstown bus service.

The “real issue” at the core of the no-fare proposal was speeding bus travel by reducing time spent boarding passengers, Bloomberg noted.

That goal might be achieved through technology, Bloomberg said after touring the city’s 311 call center with MTA Chairman Jay Walder.

Sunday, October 25th, 2009

Look No Further Than Bloomberg . . .

. . . when it comes to the shocking rise in Santeria sacrifices in the city over the past year. It seems everyone is resorting to whatever means necessary to rid the city of this tremendous curse:

An emaciated goat wandering Pelham Bay Park. A pig’s head placed on a desolate street near the Green-Wood Cemetery. A dead rooster lying near a tree in Forest Park in Queens.

These bizarre discoveries have popped up with shocking frequency this year, making Big Apple parks look like makeshift sacrificial altars and grazing grounds for livestock left over from religious rituals.

In the last few months, four goats have been found in public places in The Bronx. And a total of six were found in the city in the last year, according to Animal Care and Control. That’s on top of 19 reported incidents of animal remains found in parkland, according to the Parks Department.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

A Few Trees Go A Long Way

By shifting the narrative toward the ameliorative effect of trees on the cityscape, the mayor has opened up a new line of argument for people throughout the five boroughs:

A Bronx strip club owner is under fire from Long Island City community leaders for his plans to open a gentleman’s club that could feature all-nude girls near the Queensboro Bridge.

Gus Drakopoulos, who operates Sin City in the Bronx, plans to open a club featuring full nudity if the local community board tries to block his liquor license. By law, a club that serves liquor can have only topless women.

“He’s a thoroughly disingenuous guy with a total disrespect for this community,” said attorney Pat O’Brien, a member of Community Board 2. “It’s totally polarized the community. We’ve been trying for decades to make this a better place.”

Drakopoulos said his Bronx club, next to the Major Deegan Expressway, has made the community a better place by illuminating the block and planting trees on the desolate street.

“We took a concrete, deserted neighborhood and brought life to it,” he said. “There were weeds 5 feet high, car parts and tires everywhere.”

Friday, August 14th, 2009

Time Was . . .

. . . you could be an “arrogant” mayor in New York. Maybe no longer. This criticism seems to be a trend, what with the congestion pricing debacle, that third term thingy, mayoral control of schools and now apparently the DC37 Thompson endorsement:

“He’s arrogant, too arrogant,” said Robert Ajaye, president of Local 2627, which represents data processors, some of whom are facing possible layoffs.

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

Less Pedestrian Mall Than State Fair Pavilion

Like a big outdoor state fair pavilion with pitchmen hawking all sorts of great stuff — paint, for example:

. . . [T]he plazas have also found a role that was never publicly trumpeted by the administration: They make money for the city.

All or any of them can be rented by private companies, which pay substantial fees to the city — the highest is $38,500. Commercial requests that have been approved have included a Glidden Paint promotion, as well as promotions for “Top Chef,” the cooking competition on the Bravo network, and “The Great Debate,” a series on VH1. The car-free streets have also been the scene of Hula-Hooping classes and a simulcast of the Tony Awards.

. . .

The fees go to the city’s general fund. Street permits, which are also charged for the use of sidewalks and open streets, bring in “a significant amount” of revenue, said Evelyn Erskine, a spokeswoman for Mayor Bloomberg.

City officials would not say whether they considered the plazas’ moneymaking potential while planning the changes to Broadway.

. . .

At 23rd and Broadway last weekend, one public space was focused on paint. Just behind the planters that separate the plaza from traffic stood four large purple cylinders, each stocked with brochures and color swatches from Glidden Paint. Three young men and women in bright T-shirts stopped passers-by to hand out paint chips and chat about colors.

“Paint usually gets a good response,” said Kristina Hurlburt, a Glidden representative who said she had sold all types of products. About one in every 15 pedestrians stopped to talk or glance through brochures filled with steel blue and deepest aqua.

The company paid about $2,600 per day for the right to erect its barrel-shaped displays.

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

Sarcasm And Bitterness Are Symptoms Of A Populace That Is Beaten Down

First Haberman, now Patrice O’Shaughnessy:

Yes, 10 years from now, we’ll be looking back at former Mayor Bloomberg’s absurd remaking of a city of unique character to one big homogenized mall, where the tourists feel right at home because it is exactly the same as their hometown.

Oh, wait. Bloomberg will probably still be in office, trying to close off E. Tremont Ave. to all but tourists in horse-drawn carriages.

Let’s get it all out now before it starts eating away at us later . . .

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

Smart Strategy!

Wow people with Frank Gehry designs, thus building support — either explicit or tacit (i.e., “looks nice . . . maybe that eminent domain battle is worth it”) — then pull out the rug from under everyone only after you start tearing stuff down, thus making Nicolai Ouroussoff cry:

The recent news that the developer Forest City Ratner had scrapped Frank Gehry’s design for a Nets arena in central Brooklyn is not just a blow to the art of architecture. It is a shameful betrayal of the public trust, one that should enrage all those who care about this city.

Location Scout: Atlantic Yards.

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

More Bloomberg Legacy

Push through a crazy new media-ready initiative and not anticipate what work would need to go into it:

The cheapo tables and chairs set up in the pedestrian-only sections of Times Square have become a magnet for nightcrawler slobs who carelessly toss hot-dog wrappers, empty soda bottles and McDonald’s bags on the street.

“Especially speaking of weekends, like Saturday and Sunday morning, it looks like a bomb hit,” said Tim Tompkins, the president of Times Square Alliance, the group responsible for keeping the plazas clean.

Officials said they were caught off-guard by the crowds drawn to the newly car-free section of Broadway, and that the trash is one of the growing pains of the setup.

On Saturday night, the Department of Sanitation was called in to do an additional garbage-truck run just to clean out overflowing trash cans, Tompkins said.

The alliance, which gets its funding from business owners to keep the area spruced up, is revamping its cleaning staff’s hours to fill a late-night gap in service from 10 p.m. to 5:30 a.m.

I’m sure the BID is excited about that . . .

Sunday, May 3rd, 2009

You Know You’ve Been Using The Politically Staged Photo-Op Too Much When . . .

. . . people just assume that you’re probably doing a politically staged photo-op:

For a vast majority of New Yorkers, a daily cab ride is simply too expensive. But beyond that, mass transit is so much a part of the fabric of city life that many subway and bus riders waxed defiant over Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s advice (quickly retracted) not to take the subway.

“See, I didn’t listen to Joe Biden,” City Councilman Eric N. Gioia said with a grin as he hopped on the No. 7 train to Queens at Grand Central — not in a politically staged photo op; he had just happened by.

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

Own The Greatness, Now 50 Percent Off!

Or perhaps it’s just 50 percent less greatness:

Twelve days after opening their new stadium, the Yankees on Tuesday bowed to the sour economy and the specter of empty seats by slashing in half some of their top-end, $2,500-a-game prices.

. . .

Over all, the new policy represents a dramatic retreat from the team’s initial luxury-sales strategy for the new stadium, which was underlined in advertisements that crowed “Own the Greatness” and “Select the Greatest Seats in the World.”

Last week, team officials said they would no longer discuss ticket prices or the many empty seats behind home plate and the two dugouts that were painfully visible at Yankee Stadium and on television during the team’s first homestand from April 16-22.

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium.

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

If Democracy Is Like The Environment, Bloomberg Just Threw A Plastic Six-Pack Ring Into The East River

If you’re going to control the schools, go whole-hog — control them! But don’t waste everyone’s time with neutered advisory boards that, little by little, chip away at democracy by poisoning minds with cynicism:

In designing the mayoral takeover, lawmakers viewed the panel as critical to maintaining a “balance of authority,” and promised it would have a “meaningful role” on citywide education policy and approve major contracts, according to the authorizing language that accompanied the bill.

But Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg — who controls 8 of the panel’s 13 seats — made plain during the negotiations that he preferred no panel at all, and over the past seven years, he and Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, who doubles as the panel’s chairman, have eased it into irrelevance.

The volunteer panelists — an investment banker, a lingerie store owner and an expert on electromagnetics among them — rarely engage in discussions with those who rise to address them. They do not debate the educational issues of the day, but spend most sessions applauding packaged presentations by staff. Some have barely uttered a public word during their tenures.

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

You Can Either Read Bad Science Fiction Or Write It Yourself!

Buried lede — the rush hour commute on the F train from Brooklyn is really fucking long:

[Peter] Brett, 36, tapped out most of “The Warded Man,” which hit U.S. bookshelves last month, on his smartphone on daily trips from the Fort Hamilton Parkway stop near his Kensington home to his job in Times Square.

“I started out just trying to take notes. I’d sit on the subway, I’d get a good idea and I’d jot something down,” said Brett, who works in medical publishing.

“I got very fast at writing with my thumbs. I found myself writing more and more.”

Soon, he was averaging 400 words each morning and evening.

“I trained myself that at 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. every day when I got on the train, that was my writing time,” he said.

“I had about 45 minutes each way, and everyone who takes the F knows that 45 minutes can turn into an hour and a half.”

Brett went armed with an iPod to block out distractions, and he was prepared to fight for a seat.

“There’s no way to write with your thumbs when you’re standing up,” he said.

“I was raised to give up my seat to just about everyone. [Now] unless you’re really old or pregnant, I’m getting that seat.”

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

New York Post Sez: New Yankee Stadium Still Sucks This Week!

And may the Post’s New-Yankee-Stadium-Sucks stories never end, for they are too much fun to read. First, either no one is buying, or at least sitting in, $2600 seats (”Maybe the reason the best tickets at the new Yankee Stadium are called ‘Legends’ seats is that fans willing to fork over $2,625 a game are mostly mythical. . . . At Sunday’s game, nearly 7,000 seats at the stadium were empty, the large majority of them at field level”) and then the 84-year-old longtime superfan is shut out of the place:

Freddy “Sez” Schuman, the one-eyed, cookware-clanking octogenarian who’s been an unofficial pinstripe mascot for 22 seasons, was forced to panhandle for tickets at the new Yankee Stadium over the weekend.

In years past, Schuman, who, like Yogi Berra, turns 84 next month, received free season tickets from sponsors such as Modell’s, or was simply let through the press gate with a wink from a Stadium official.

On Opening Day, he had no trouble getting into the new ballpark for free through the press gate, but on Friday, Saturday and Sunday he had to depend on the kindness of fellow Yankee fans for free seats.

On Sunday, he stood outside the Stadium holding his frying pan and a sign that read, “Freddy ‘Sez’ Yankees say, ‘I can’t go in; must buy ticket!!’”

. . .

He cannot afford the seats at the new Stadium, and doesn’t really need one, since he spends his time in the Stadium walking around and letting fans clank his pan with a spoon for good luck.

“Frankly, I don’t know how some fans are going to afford these new prices,” he said.

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium.

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

Maybe We Can Have Another Strike About It, Which Would Be A Kick, Lots Of Fun, A Hoot

When the head of the MTA overturns term limits and spends $100 million to run for mayor, then we can talk about “fairness”, but until then, it just doesn’t seem like the same situation:

The MTA cash crunch — already blasting straphangers with planned fare hikes and service cuts — may put the squeeze on transit workers next, experts said.

Bus and subway workers face three grim possibilities: no raise this year, a one-time payment that doesn’t carry over into next year or a pay hike of approximately 1.5% or less, experts said.

. . .

Union leader Roger Toussaint issued a terse statement last night through a spokesman: “There’s no getting around the fairness issue.”

Toussaint suggested it would be unfair if transit workers didn’t get raises similar to those doled out by the Bloomberg administration last year to various unions.

Police officers, firefighters, sanitation workers, correction officers and clerical workers got annual raises of about 4%.

Monday, April 13th, 2009

Phil Ochs Introduced “I Ain’t Marching Anymore” To A Crowd In 1968* By Explaining, “So What Can You Do? I Mean Here You Are, A Helpless Soul, A Helpless Piece Of Flesh Amid All This Cruel, Cruel Machinery And Terrible Heartless Men, So All You Can Do Is Turn Away From The Filth And Hopefully Start To Build Something New Someday . . . So Here Is A Turning Away Song”

Which is to say, just when you start to root for Charles Barron, he goes and ruins it:

City Councilman Charles Barron of Brooklyn, who opposed the extension of term limits, said he’ll formally announce on Sunday that he plans to run for a third term.

Referring to his colleagues who joined him in voting against the extension, Barron said, “We were not against 12 years, we were against the process.”

In a brief telephone interview, Barron said he thinks only the 22 City Council members who did not “suck up” to the mayor and Speaker Christine Quinn on term limits deserve to be re-elected.

“Personally,” Barron added, “I don’t even want to run again, but the people around me think it is the best thing for me to do.”

*Michael Ochs’ liner notes from “There And Now,” the live album recorded in late 1968 and released by Rhino Records in 1990, explain that “Phil had just returned from the Chicago Democratic convention, where he had witnessed the death of democracy as he had known it.”

Monday, April 6th, 2009

Footprints Like A Couple Of Yetis, You’d Think They’d Be Able To Mix In A Compact Fluorescent Or Two

It makes sense that the Mets and Yankees (especially the Yankees!) would have a bigger carbon footprint in their new stadia; no one would expect any less from two teams that are known for sucking up all available resources:

Yankee Stadium and Citi Field combined use enough electricity to power 20,000 homes, twice as much as the old ballparks, Con Ed says.

Citi Field, the smaller of the two, has the higher peak capacity — 11 megawatts, enough to power 11,000 homes. That’s 120 percent more than Shea’s maximum 5-megawatt draw.

The new Yankee Stadium has access to 9 megawatts, enough for 9,000 homes. That’s about twice the power draw of the old Stadium.

Blame the stadiums’ big potential power use on what makes them great — hi-def TV screens, huge scoreboards and extra elevators, escalators and lighting, said Con Ed spokesman Bob McGee.

The Yankees’ new main scoreboard, at nearly 6,000 square feet, is seven times bigger than the lower-tech scoreboard in the old Stadium.

And both new stadiums have plenty more elevators. Citi Field has 11; at Shea there were just four. The new Yankee Stadium has 16 elevators, compared to three in the old park.

. . .

The standard for green ballparks has been set by the Washington Nationals’ stadium, which opened last year and won a silver rating from the US Green Building Council — the first major pro stadium to earn such certification.

Nationals Park uses about 15 percent less power than the old RFK Stadium did, thanks in part to energy-saving lighting that reduced peak power usage from 1,293 kilowatts to just 1,011 — a savings worth about $440,000 over 25 years.

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium, Citi Field, Nationals Park.

Monday, March 30th, 2009

The Problem With Pedestrian Malls Is . . .

. . . they’re generally too small for 40-foot-tall Charlie Brown balloons:

From Felix the Cat in 1927 to Bolt the dog in 2008, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has adapted, over the years, to changing times and cartoon fashions.

But one thing has always been constant: the final stretch of the parade route, down Broadway from Columbus Circle to Herald Square, through crowds lining the Great White Way.

That tradition appears to be doomed. The main culprit is the plan, unveiled last month by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, to turn Broadway into a pedestrian-only zone around Times Square and Herald Square this spring. If you can’t drive a car down Broadway, you can’t drive a float down it either

And so the city has begun the process of figuring out where the cat might hang his hat in November. Crain’s New York Business, in its most recent issue, reported that the city was considering shifting the parade to Avenue of the Americas.

Scott Gastel, a spokesman for the Department of Transportation, confirmed on Sunday that “a working group has been assembled on this matter, and recommendations will be made.”

Earlier: “Traffic Calming . . .By Drowning Traffic In The Bathtub Or Shanking Traffic With A Rusty Shiv”.

See Also: Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Thursday, March 26th, 2009

Sounds Like Heaven To Me

So not only will we have pulled-pork on brioche and $19 cheap seats but fewer little leaguers as well, an obvious plot to gentrify baseball by slowly de-yobbing it. We snobs like that:

For the past four years, Little Leagues throughout the borough have participated in a special day at Shea Stadium where they purchased 1,200 discounted tickets from the Mets and got to lead a parade on the warning track of the field prior to the game.

This year, however, the Mets have told league officials including Bayside Little League President Bob Reid, that the teams may only be able purchase 500 (or less) tickets at full price, and they can’t guarantee they will be able to have the parade on the field prior to the game.

“The Mets organization is telling me that unfortunately we have 15,000 fewer seats, and we can’t do what we have done in the past,” said Reid, who is a longtime Mets fan that recently had the opportunity to tour Citi Field and thinks it’s great. “I think they are just forgetting the little guy.”

This is the first year the Mets will play in Citi Field, which will have a capacity of approximately 42,000 compared to Shea Stadium’s roughly 57,000, so it is more challenging to accommodate large groups for different games. In addition, the club is still working on logistics of the new stadium including field access points, which would factor into the parade that the Little League has each year.

Soon — soon! — Major League Baseball will resemble the opera! Bwahahaha!

Location Scout: Citi Field.

Friday, March 20th, 2009

On The Bright Side, Maybe This Means Reservations At Per Se Will Be Easier To Come By

Then again, most of Manhattan may shutter before that happens:

Congress’ planned 90 percent tax on bonuses paid by bailed-out companies will snatch $12 billion at the very least from employees of firms that are based in New York City or have big operations here, experts said.

And that would have a dire effect on the city’s economy, impacting everyone from top luxury retailers to taxi drivers to tax collectors.

The crushing tax passed in the House yesterday would affect workers who make over a quarter-million dollars a year at companies that took more than $5 billion in rescue funds from the taxpayers.

Several executive-compensation experts said that under those standards, at least half of all of the windfalls granted by bailed-out firms would be affected.

“And that’s a conservative estimate,” said Chuck Collins, a compensation expert at the Institute for Policy Studies.

For example, he said, at least 50 percent of the $2.6 billion that Goldman Sachs gave its employees in bonuses would likely be hit with the tax.

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

It’s Not All Jack McBrayer Farm Freshness After All

But Tina Fey can work with details like these:

The combination of factors took a toll on morale. Some pages bristled at a series of disciplinary crackdowns. According to one source, pages were regularly asked to keep an eye on their colleagues for possible infractions. “It’s a culture of fear,” said the former page.

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

There’s Something Inspiring About How A City Comes Together In An Emergency

And I’m sure those ferry captains and workers would agree that they really didn’t have a choice and that it was the right thing to do:

New York Waterway’s rescue of Flight 1549’s passengers could help rescue the foundering ferry firm.

Maritime lawyers say the company has a good chance of making US Airways pay for the costs it incurred plucking 142 people from the Hudson.

Waterway itself is taking on water and could be headed for bankruptcy. Its owner, Anthony Imperatore, is threatening to sue the airline.

Imperatore said he has sunk $20 million of his own money into the ferry operation, and has no more.

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

The Dirty Little Secret About Shuttle Train Service . . .

. . . is that it’s the most uninspiring form of subway transportation. So of course it only deserves a “C”:

Commuters on the three-stop Franklin Ave. Shuttle gave it a C grade for the second year in a row, according to the Transit Authority’s second annual Rider Report Card survey.

Riders’ biggest gripes: long delays and unreasonable waiting times.

“At night, the wait time is about 20 minutes at like 2 o’clock in the morning,” said Sara Shae, 22, of Prospect Heights, who relies on the shuttle to travel from the Park Place station to Manhattan.

“I don’t mind waiting, but I do mind feeling unsafe waiting by myself,” Shae said.

“After 20 minutes, I’ll get on, and [the train will] just sit there for another 10 minutes, waiting to fill up.”

See Also: “A Gentleman’s C”.

Location Scout: Franklin Avenue Shuttle.

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

Fans Of NL East Rivals Disappointed At Prospect Of Losing One More Thing To Rag On The Mets About

After all, even the Astros quickly abandoned “Enron Field” back in 2002:

Citigroup Inc. may be suffering buyer’s remorse over its pricey naming rights deal for the Mets’ brand new stadium in Queens.

It’s a $400 dollar, 20-year marketing deal between the Mets and Citigroup, and according to Tuesday morning’s Wall Street Journal, officials at the troubled banking institution are exploring the possibility of backing out of the agreement, which includes naming the new baseball stadium after the bank.

In a statement, Citigroup said “no TARP capital will be used for the stadium,” referring to government funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, but Citigroup, which has lost $28 billion since 2007, is now acknowledging that the so called volatile political climate may not make this the best time to name a stadium after the bank.

Citigroup has received $45 billion in bailout help from the feds and another $300 billion in loan guarantees.

Tuesday morning’s report comes days after two outraged congressman wrote the Treasury Secretary, asking him to push Citigroup to dissolve the Mets deal.

Location Scout: Citi Field.

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

Memo Fr. CEO Jamie Dimon To Marketing/Special Events: Set Up Mtg. With Professional Bowlers Association Abt. Sponsorship Opportunities

I don’t think it’s so much that they’re sponsoring an event — no one expects banks not to advertise, for example — as it is which event they decided to sponsor:

Despite receiving a whopping $28 billion in federal taxpayer funds, JPMorgan Chase and American Express spent $125,000 to sponsor a weeklong squash tournament at Grand Central Terminal.

The six-day event — known as the “Tournament of Champions” — ended Jan. 29 and drew about 200,000 fans to what was billed as one of the “world’s premier squash championships” at the same time as lawmakers on Capitol Hill were denouncing wasteful Wall Street spending.

Reps at JPMorgan Chase declined to specify how much it spent on the tournament, but a source close to the deal told Fox News Channel it was roughly $100,000.

American Express officials also declined to provide an amount, but the company is believed to have spent $25,000, a source told Fox News Channel.

Critics have said companies should not be sponsoring sporting events if they’re getting federal bailout money.

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

Scanners Are Relatively Inexpensive . . . External Hard Drives, Too

Amazon should send these people some hardware:

Like any doting father, Joshua Peltz captured every one of his firstborn’s “firsts” on film.

Adalind’s first steps. Adalind’s first New York City pizza. Adalind’s first kiss with Mom.

Now the 39-year-old Charlotte, NC, man fears the cherished footage – stored on his cellphone — is somewhere on the bottom of the Hudson River.

He had to leave the device behind during the scramble to escape miracle US Airways Flight 1549, which crash-landed in the icy Hudson River Jan. 15 after both engines lost power upon colliding with a flock of geese.

“I’m very upset, disappointed and frustrated,” said Peltz, who was never able to make backup copies of the 40 videos of his daughter, now 2.

“It was important to me. It was important to my entire family.”

Peltz is among a slew of passengers forced to leave behind keepsakes in the chaos, including love letters and lucky charms.

They are items the airline’s offer of $5,000 per passenger cannot replace, and many fear that when their luggage is returned the water damage will have already taken too big a toll on the treasures.

Vallie Collins, of Maryville, Tenn., another of the 150 passengers rescued, is missing a stack of love letters her husband wrote when he was courting her.

The 37-year-old mother of three would read the missives, which she had tucked in a binder, whenever she traveled to reminisce about the days a decade ago when her husband, Steve, wooed her.

“He wrote that he would look forward to our time together and our future and all that mushy kind of stuff,” Collins said.

Saturday, January 17th, 2009

Canada And Geese: Two Great Targets In One

And now that Canadian Geese have attracted the attention of the Post editorial board, it’s a bad time to be one:

It’s time to kill the geese.

It’s especially time to kill those geese most likely to wreck another jet airliner, much as a gaggle of Canada geese seems to have brought down US Airways Flight 1549 Thursday.

This time, all 155 passengers and crew were lifted from the icy Hudson River — an extraordinarily exceptional outcome.

Next time? Who knows.

Canada geese are a serious threat to human life and property — not to mention a major pain to pedestrians, motorists and folks who just like to spread a picnic blanket in a park.

Obviously, the official cause of the crash won’t be declared for a while. But nobody doubts that it was what pilots call a “bird strike” — just as nobody doubts that the guilty birds were Canada geese.

That’s because Canada geese are everywhere — and they’re out of control.

. . .

Beyond airport vicinities, it’s even harder to tamper with geese (let alone kill them) — even as they coat parks and playgrounds everywhere in layers of disgusting goose poop.

This is unsightly, unsanitary — and totally unacceptable.

Something needs to be done.

Saturday, January 17th, 2009

It’s Never Too Early To Say I Told You So

Especially when there is money to be made and special interests that can be goosed:

State-of-the-art bird radar that costs just $500,000 to install at airports could have prevented the US Airways crash, the system’s maker said Friday.

“For the cost of this one accident, I could put this system in every major U.S. airport,” said Gary Andrews of radarmaker De-Tect Inc.

The bird-detection radar system is in place at six U.S. Air Force bases and is being installed at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport.

It could have alerted Flight 1549 pilot Chesley Sullenberger that dangerous flocks of geese were in his flight path.

“Nothing is foolproof, but it would have likely spotted the geese,” Andrews said. “The pilot could have tried to avoid the flock, or they could have told him to hold on the ground.”

Radar or no, the tug-of-war between planes and birds is unlikely to end anytime soon.

Experts say they have tried everything from scarecrows to fireworks. They say there is no surefire way to eliminate the dangers posed by flocks of birds near airports.

. . .

Geese experts and animal advocates say the measures are wrongheaded, cruel and — most importantly — ineffective.

A group called Geese Peace says the Port Authority mostly ignored its 2004 plan that included destroying prime nesting grounds and eliminating goose-friendly grassy areas.

“If this plan had been implemented, today there would be thousands of less Canada geese in and around the port of New York,” said David Feld of Geese Peace.

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

They Keep Trying To Anthropomorphize The Subway And Riders Just Can’t “C” It

Probably as long as you keep asking, people will continue to have a difficult time seeing the subway as some sort of brownnosing “A” student:

Eight subway lines have gotten their report cards from riders — and they all scored in the C range.

The lines — the 2, 4, 5, 7, B, L, M and J/Z — were rated on a variety of criteria, including lack of graffiti and availability of seats. When all the categories were averaged out, the trains were rated “average.”

Monday, January 12th, 2009

You Don’t Say?

Cab drivers actually get higher tips with credit card transactions:

Cabbies are getting bigger tips thanks to their new credit-card machines, according to statistics obtained by The Post.

Both the Taxi and Limousine Commission and a drivers union said cash transactions on average result in a 10 to 15 percent tip for drivers.

But credit-card customers are bigger spenders. They gave an average 16 percent tip during three weeks in December.

Still, some drivers complain that their tips are getting wiped out because they are charged up to 5 percent for credit transactions.

“A beggar has no choice,” said cabby Gabriele Edet, 72, when asked what he thought about the credit-card fee.

OK, so what actually is the credit card transaction fee? They always say five percent, but apparently that’s the high end of the spectrum.

Saturday, January 10th, 2009

Some Things Just Probably Shouldn’t Be

$500,000-a-month rent? “Frivolous” seems like the wrong word here:

It could be the last call for anything at the storied Rainbow Room this weekend.

The ritzy watering hole, where generations of celebs from Frank Sinatra to Keith Richards have performed and partied, got an eviction notice Friday.

The Cipriani family announced last week that its restaurant operation at the Rainbow Grill would be suspended Monday due to the recession – but the bar would remain open and the dance floor would keep revolving.

But in canceling its lease with Cipriani, landlord Tishman Speyer Properties said there will be no more anything at the legendary nightspot as of Monday.

Tishman said it lowered the boom because the Rainbow Room was four months behind in $500,000-a-month rent.

Cipriani called the eviction notice a “frivolous” attempt by the owners to convert the Rainbow Room into more profitable office space and vowed to keep the iconic venue open until its lease expires in 2013.