Nobody Fucks With The Jesus

High-profile actors turn out in support of rent-controlled 34-foot ceilings at a rally down at City Hall:

A group of actors including Robert De Niro, John Turturro, and Susan Sarandon is asking Mayor Bloomberg to help save the Carnegie Hall studios that are home to artists who taught generations of greats.

“There’s enough room in the building for them to do what they want to do and still keep the people who live there and work there,” the Emmy award-winning Mr. Turturro told the Associated Press as he prepared to lead a rally in front of City Hall on Friday. “They’re going to help finish off these people.”

The 33 remaining residential and commercial tenants of two towers that rise above the midtown Manhattan hall — including half a dozen elderly, rent-control artists and musicians — are fighting eviction. Hall administrators say the space is needed for a renovation to create room for education programs.

The Best Way To Deal With A Wasteful Gimmick? Pile On!

There’s something ironically mirror-like about City Council hearings about this stuff:

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s “rider report cards” are the subject of a City Council oversight hearing tomorrow, after the agency’s pet project failed to produce any constructive criticism. Of the 700,000 cards distributed, less than 7% had been returned as of last month. The complaints were nothing new to riders used to crowded commutes and long delays. The chairman of the Transportation Committee, John Liu, who is holding the hearings, called the report cards a “wasteful gimmick.”

Earlier: A Gentleman’s C.

Hot Dog Vendor Not Kosher

War veteran undercuts Big Hot Dog. In other news, Tony Avella threatens to unseat John Liu and Eric Gioia as biggest grandstander on the City Council*:

Out in front of the crowded entrance to the Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the more lucrative spots in Manhattan to sell hot dogs. It is so good, in fact, that one of the largest pushcart vending companies in New York City pays $574,000 a year to the city for the right to place two hot dog carts there.

And since mid-July, Dan Rossi has also had a hot dog cart there, on Fifth Avenue near 82nd Street, and has been paying absolutely nothing for the spot. The carts belonging to the big company, New York One, formerly named M & T Pretzel, are off to each side of the museum steps, but Mr. Rossi’s cart is smack in front, and because he charges less for some items, he often has a line of customers when the other carts do not.

“I’m not really doing it for the money, I’m doing it for the veterans,” Mr. Rossi said while selling hot dogs briskly one recent Sunday afternoon. Mr. Rossi said he is a Vietnam veteran and claims that the city, about a decade ago, wrongly began limiting the number of pushcart permits given to war veterans.

“I’ve been summonsed, fined, threatened with arrest and shut down by the police, but I keep coming back,” said Mr. Rossi, 58, of the Bronx.

City Councilman Tony Avella of Queens, who also criticizes the city over permits for veterans, held a news conference on Tuesday morning at City Hall to call attention to what he said was a “disgrace by the city, to forget its veterans.”

“The right of veterans to get permits has a long history in this city, and for the past few years, when veterans try to apply for one, they can’t get one,” he said. New York State has allowed veterans free vending permits since the Civil War, he said.

*Avella vs. John Liu vs. Queens Councilmember Eric Gioia.

Location Scout: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Avella Yourself Of Archaic Laws To Make A Point

Tony, there are kids to teach — screw the stupid monkeys:

Under section 809 of New York’s Education Law, passed in 1947, state schools are required to educate children in “the humane treatment and protection of animals and of the importance of the part they play in the economy of nature.”

Council Member Tony Avella says the requirement has largely been ignored or forgotten.

“It’s hardly followed — there’s just a couple of schools in the city doing it, and on a voluntary basis it seems,” Mr. Avella said yesterday. “But state law requires it.”

The council will debate a resolution by Mr. Avella today calling on the Department of Education to inform all New York City public schools of the humane education requirements and require principals to make sure their teachers comply with section 809.

. . .

“The way we treat animals, our fellow neighbors, this is all part of being a member of today’s modern society,” Mr. Avella added. “It’s a benefit to the community and to the city to understand each other’s needs and, in this case, those of animals.”

. . .

When asked about his recent focus on nonhuman issues, Mr. Avella said his agenda reflected constituents’ strong interest in the city’s animals.

“There’s a lot of people in the city who consider them to be very important,” Mr. Avella said. “If the issue’s important to them and I think it’s the right thing to do, I’m going to help.”

Captain Comptroller

Not to downplay the role of the New York City comptroller, but, you know, what does he really know about scheduling airplanes? No matter:

Flight delays at the region’s three major airports outpaced those in the rest of the nation, hurting the city’s economic competitiveness, said a report released yesterday by Comptroller William Thompson.

If the trend is not reversed, Thompson warned, the airports might be forced to impose flight caps or implement a congestion-pricing charge, with landing fees based on the time of day.

“The situation is urgent,” he said. “The much larger declines in on-time performance could discourage employers from locating new jobs and facilities in New York and lead some firms to relocate jobs elsewhere.”

In 2003, area airports had on-time arrival rates 5 percentage points below the national average. But in the first three quarters of 2007, those rates were 13 points off. Now just 60 percent of scheduled flights arrive here on time, the report said.

At 36 minutes, Kennedy is leading the nation this year in “taxi outs,” the period between gate departure and when a plane’s wheels leave the ground. The average taxi-out was 16 minutes nationally, but 29 minutes at Newark and 28 minutes at LaGuardia. The three airports were in the top six for cancellations.

The main reason is an “enormous” increase in flights, Thompson said. The number of planes at Kennedy climbed 14 percent from 2000 to ’06, and then soared another 23.5 percent in 2007.