Get Your History Straight!

Wow, people really have no idea where they are, what they’re seeing or who they’re urinating next to:

“Get away from me, f—. I don’t like gay people,” Matthew Francis, 21, of Holgate Street in Willowbrook, is accused of telling his alleged 34-year-old victim, just before he and Christopher Orlando, 17, of the 400-block of Doane Avenue in Great Kills, attacked the man.

The confrontation happened at about 1:55 a.m. in the Christopher Street bar.

Prosecutors allege that the victim was at a urinal, when one of the men asked if he was “gay.” He laughed and responded that they were in the Stonewall, a gay bar.

It’s unclear if either Francis or Orlando knew the history of the Stonewall, or if they were in a gay bar.

Francis responded with the “get away from me,” remark, prosecutors allege, adding, “I don’t want you (urinating) next to me…. Give me a dollar. Give me a 20.”

Not just idiocy — romantic comedy levels of idiocy.

One More New York City Quirk To Be Erased

They just want to get rid of everything that makes the city stupidly unique:

The city Health Department wants to end its age-old milk expiration date requirements, meaning cartons will have a later “sell by” stamp — and just one date.

. . .

New York City remains one of the few places in the country — and the only city in the state — that has its own dating system for milk. Neighboring counties and other states rely on the processor to set the expiration date, which is generally 14-15 days after pasteurization, according to the Health Department.

The city’s reasoning was that milk took a few days to get to city stores or sat on warm stoops after deliveries, officials said. But both factors are rare now, they said.

If the city erases its rule, only the manufacturer’s date would appear on the carton.

When Was The Last Time You Did Anything Really Really Useful?

Few people, especially ad people, get to use their skills this way:

“I was trying to think what I could do,” Kay recalled Monday. “One thing I know how to do is advertising.”

On 9/12, Kay was in his Manhattan office, asking himself the same question he and his colleagues did at the start of a big Honda campaign or when conceiving a Xerox commercial for the Super Bowl.

. . .

He recalled a famous phrase from World War II.

“‘Loose lips sink ships’ spread across the country,” he said. “If I could come up with a 21st century version of that …”

He again considered what would be the best message in this new war.

“What really do I want to say?” he asked himself. “I want to say, ‘People, be alert.'”

As always, the idea just popped into his head. He wrote it down on one of the 3X5 cards he keeps handy for when inspiration strikes.

“IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING.”

. . .

His agency had done business with the MTA, and he figured this would be a perfect way to spread the message. He picked up the phone.

“Very shortly thereafter it was in the subway and buses and trains,” he said.

The phrase kept spreading over the years, generating 159 million mentions on Google, imprinting itself on the psyches of even more individuals.

Those individuals included Orton, who was selling T-shirts on W. 45th St. Saturday evening when he saw something in the form of a suspiciously parked SUV emitting acrid smoke. He immediately said something to the mounted cop he saw nearby, Police Officer Wayne Rhatigan.

Rest In Piece; For A While There At Least, We Used To Scoop Shit In This Country . . . Now We Just Let Our Dogs Crap On The Piles Of Snow Left To Evaporate On The Sidewalk

As the snow piles from the recent storm melt away and the dog shit that inconsiderate canine owners allowed to drop on top of them remains, let’s pay homage to Fran Lee, who died last weekend at the age of 99:

At the behest of a New York doctor, Ms. Lee took up the cause of dog waste. In the early ’70s she founded Children Before Dogs, a group whose aim was the elimination of all such waste from city streets. As she explained often in interviews, Toxocara canis, a tiny roundworm found in dog feces, poses health risks, especially to children. At its most severe, it can cause blindness.

In staunch contrarian fashion, Ms. Lee initially fought the city’s plan to enact a pooper-scooper law. By her lights, such laws were far too lenient. In the world of which she dreamed, no dog would be allowed to besmirch the city’s streets for even a moment: instead, it would attend to its affairs at home, on newspaper, before padding outside. She envisioned, as she told The Times in 1972, a battalion of city “poodle maids,” who would prowl New York issuing summonses to the masters of dog offenders.

Ms. Lee’s stand put her at the forefront of the pitched battle over dog excrement that raged in the city for much of the ’70s. When she appeared in public, outraged dog owners hurled invective; occasionally they hurled the subject matter of the debate itself. Ms. Lee had no qualms about responding in kind.

First Thought Was, Wow, What’s A Washington Mutual Doing Here? Then He Proceeded To Set His Own Underpants On Fire

Just checking out the old ‘hood:

The escaped Wild Man of 96th St. has been caught — where else? — on 96th St.

Larry Hogue, a drug-addicted wacko who terrorized Upper West Siders in the 1990s, strolled away from the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens on Thursday.

The notorious hell-raiser was arrested “without incident” in his old stomping grounds Saturday morning after being spotted on 96th St. between Broadway and Amsterdam, cops said.

Before he was put away, Hogue, now 65, menaced the neighborhood around 96th St. He was big and he was bad, regularly mugging people to support his drug habit.

He set fires under cars, heaved rocks through stained glass church windows, masturbated in front of kids, stalked seniors and threatened children with nail-studded clubs.

Cops would arrest him and take him to the psychiatric ward, where he would be cut off from his crack supply.

After a few weeks his demons would disappear and he’d be back to his old tricks on W. 96th St.