Yankees Fans Have A T-Shirt In Mind For A-Rod*

A-Rod has always been the type of player who really comes through when it counts:

Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, who had one of the best statistical seasons in the storied history of the Yankees, opted out of the final three years on his 10-year, $252 million contract Sunday, according to his agent. The move makes him a free agent and potentially ends his career with the team.

“We have put it in writing and sent it to the Yankees,” Rodriguez’s agent, Scott Boras, said in a telephone interview.

The Yankees had said they would not negotiate with Rodriguez if he opted out, so he might have played his final game with them. There is a chance that the Yankees could change their minds and negotiate with Boras toward a contract, but Rodriguez will be a free agent and will be able to negotiate with all 30 teams.

On the night their archrival, the Boston Red Sox, won the World Series for the second time in four seasons, the Yankees may have lost the player widely considered the best in the game. Rodriguez led the major leagues this season with 54 home runs, including the 500th of his career, and 156 runs batted in. He is expected to win his third Most Valuable Player award.

*

But Without Residency Requirements What Would Become Of Staten Island?

When you get to park for free, it makes it easy to commute:

The city’s largest public employees union, District Council 37 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, is pressing the City Council to join Mayor Bloomberg in ending a residency rule that requires 45,000 of the union’s members to live in New York City.

But the proposal is facing fierce opposition from the usually labor-friendly City Council. Some council members say city jobs should be reserved for city residents.

Union leaders have argued it is unfair to force employees to stretch their salaries to pay for costly housing in the city when there are more affordable options available in the outlying areas. They propose that their members be allowed to leave the city and reside in the counties of Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland, Orange, and Putnam and aren’t taking the council’s resistance lightly.

“I’ll Never Have To Leave The Neighborhood”

Is can’t be a coincidence that Bloomberg’s Upper East Side residence on 79th Street is within New York’s proposed congestion pricing zone while his 3,600-square-foot, uh, pied-à-terre in the London neighborhood of Knightsbridge is situated in that city’s actual congestion charging zone (.pdf), can it? Nah:

The residence Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg keeps here is not in the grandest house on the block. Spread over three floors of an attached red brick Victorian, the apartment overlooks a quiet locked garden in one of the city’s most exclusive precincts, where Ferraris and Bentleys roll past the boutiques of Hermès and Chloé.

But the apartment is a place of welcoming elegance, with artfully planted window boxes, heavy tasseled drapery and the warm glow of a chandelier highlighting gilt details on the ceiling. And Mr. Bloomberg, who has hardly been here since taking office in 2002, says he plans to spend more of his time enjoying it when he is no longer mayor.

Indeed, earlier this year, property records show, the mayor spent more than $7 million (3.5 million pounds) to extend his hold on the Cadogan Square property through 2113. Apartments in London are generally not sold, but are leased for decades.

Mr. Bloomberg’s visit to London over the weekend was for official business; he was meeting with Mayor Ken Livingstone and learning more about security and traffic measures in London that might work in New York.

But it was also a homecoming of sorts for the mayor, a lover of parties and art. He was honored at a buffet reception given by 100 friends at the prestigious Serpentine Gallery, on whose board he once sat. And it allowed him a rare night in the 3,600-square-foot flat, which once served as his platform for conquering the London social scene.

“It brings back a lot of memories,” Mr. Bloomberg said on Monday at a City Hall news conference here with Mayor Livingstone. “I said to Ken on the way over, ‘You know, after I finish this job I’m sure I will spend a lot more time in London because it’s exciting and they have great museums and nice people.'”

And nice digs. The mayor’s office declined to confirm details. But the apartment, with a spiraling, filigreed central staircase, four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a drawing room, office and study, according to plans at Britain’s land registry, was decorated by Jamie Drake, who is known for exuberance and has festooned rooms for Madonna as well as for Mr. Bloomberg in his Upper East Side town house.

Those who have visited say the flat is filled with American art, including works by Andy Warhol and Henry Moore in addition to Jasper Johns. Mr. Bloomberg’s love of finery is also reflected in the mahogany doors and marble columns.

Like real estate on Mr. Bloomberg’s Manhattan block, East 79th Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues, property on Cadogan Square is not cheap. Records from the real estate agency Strutt & Parker Lane Fox indicate that in 1997, the apartment cost about $5 million (2.8 million pounds) for a lease of about 26 years.

. . .

Talking to reporters on Sunday in Blackpool, where he had addressed delegates at the Conservative Party convention, he said of his New York home: “I get a haircut two doors away from these buildings, I live a block and a half away, my favorite Greek diner’s across the street. I’ll never have to leave the neighborhood.”

And you’ll have to pay the greenback equivalent of 8 quid to get in . . .

So Will It Actually Make Us Safer Or Is It Just A Way For You To Tweak The PBA?

It’s just ridiculous — naive and ridiculous! — that you don’t want to reduce the police department payroll because you’re afraid of a few stupid cameras:

Saying that “we live in a dangerous world” and people “want to have security cameras,” Mayor Bloomberg is making the case that New Yorkers need to get used to being watched.

“I do think that in this day and age, if you think that cameras aren’t watching you, you are very naïve,” he said during an appearance at London’s riverfront City Hall with the city’s mayor, Ken Livingstone.

Mr. Bloomberg went on to say that “we are under surveillance all the time,” and noted that the first thing the police department does when trying to solve a crime is collect surveillance footage from nearby stores and buildings.

. . .

“It’s just ridiculous,” Mr. Bloomberg said as a London officer pulled up an image of the mayor’s car from when it pulled into the neighborhood less than an hour earlier. “People who object to using technology — we have to pay either police officers or technology, and using a combination really lets you be much more efficient.”

After all, Hizzoner is good at obfuscating the real reasons behind all this supercool technology (maybe it’s the same with GPS in taxis?).

With Glowing Hearts We See Thee Rise, The Loonie Hits Parity!

Is NYC & Company behind the weak dollar? They don’t seem to be doing much to discourage it:

New Yorkers, like most Americans, pay precious little attention to what happens in Canada, that large, sparsely populated region with the chronically inferior currency.

. . .

Check that last part. Now that the Canadian dollar, known as the loonie, has flapped its way to parity with the American dollar (formerly known as the almighty), Canada suddenly looks like a proud nation of 33 million people whose cross-border purchasing power has grown by more than half in five years.

Tourism officials in New York have taken notice. They acknowledge that they took Canadian visitors for granted in the past, but now they are drawing up plans to lure more of them to the state and New York City.

The state is running ads in Toronto newspapers and on Canadian Web sites, inviting Canadians to spend fall weekends in northern and western New York. The city’s tourism agency, NYC & Company, is rushing to open an office in Toronto, which would be its first in Canada. “This seems like sort of a psychological opportunity,” said George A. Fertitta, the chief executive of NYC & Company, referring to the parity of the two currencies.

The Canadian dollar, nicknamed for the image of a loon that it bears, passed its American counterpart on Friday, when it hit a new 31-year high of almost $1.01. In early 2002, it was worth about 62 cents.

Back then, the flow of visitors from Canada to New York City was in a post-9/11 swoon. The number of visitors dropped to 693,000 in 2003, from 920,000 in 2000, a decline of almost 25 percent. By last year, it had rebounded to 840,000, making Canada the No. 2 foreign source of visitors, behind Britain, according to NYC & Company.

Now, with Canadians brandishing their reinvigorated loonies, tourism officials have stopped ignoring them and started encouraging them to join the parade of bargain-hunting foreigners flooding into New York. When it comes to shopping, little prodding seems to be required.

“Friends will be coming to town and they’ll say, ‘We need one day to shop,'” said Jeff Breithaupt, an Ontario native who coordinates cultural activities for the Canadian Consulate in Manhattan and is an editor of a newsletter titled The Upper North Side. For Canadians, said Mr. Breithaupt, the advent of parity between the currencies has become both a point of pride and a spur to travel. His own parents had been “on the fence” about a trip to the city later this year, he said, but they told him last week that they would come, citing the exchange rate as a deciding factor.

Thankfully, America can still invoke its hegemony in certain ways:

For Canadian visitors, the cold shower on their newfound pride comes on the way out. At the border bridges operated by the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission, the fare can be paid with $3 American or $3.50 Canadian — a far cry from parity.

Drivers are complaining to toll takers, “Gee, our dollars are about at par, why is the toll so different?” said Tom Garlock, the commission’s general manager.

Lately, he said, more of them have been holding on to their loonies and paying in United States currency. The commission, which raised the toll last spring from $2.50 American (the Canadian rate did not change), is considering another adjustment to account for the exchange-rate shift, Mr. Garlock said, but first it wants more evidence that parity is here to stay.