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.”

Did You Hear The One About Astoria?

“Another reason a particular fish will choose a particular cranny on a reef is not only the opportunities it offers for feeding, but the protection from predators”:

“My block is so quiet,” begins a joke that Moody McCarthy has added to his routine, “if there’s any yelling at night that means Ecuador scored a goal.”

. . .

In case you haven’t been to a comedy show in a while, comedians are still having little luck with the ladies. And living in Astoria isn’t necessarily helping.

Only In New York, Kids, Only In New York

The Queens Courier continues its series on gross shit:

When The Courier was at the store, one customer wanted four roosters from the same cage. So, when the man reached in to grab the four birds, one fell to the floor and started walking around the store.

“That happens sometimes,” Ustav said, and no one else in the store seemed to flinch. Then, the birds are tied up and dropped on a scale, which will determine how much it costs.

After that, the birds are brought back to the “slaughter room” — a room located in the back of the store on the first floor — where the killing and cleaning process begins.

First, the bird’s neck is cut and broken in order to drain the blood out of the animal. Then, the bird is thrown into a “plucking” machine that takes all of the feathers off the bird.

“Then we have to clean up the inside and take the guts out,” Ustav said. “Sometimes we cut off the head, but some people like it with the head.”

See also: Live Poultry Markets.

Has The Bloomberg Administration Exacerbated The Threat Of Citywide Arborcide?

Top down trees, killer trees — maybe it’s simply a case of vigilante justice:

Dozens have been destroyed in the past few months — their roots torn up, branches snapped and trunks hacked.

The Silent Majority Needs To Speak Up

First, set aside the inconvenient facts that owning a dog in a cramped city apartment is inherently cruel and that installing dog runs (i.e., red-light districts for dog defecation) constitutes a ludicrously generous surrender of precious public space. The big problem is that a vocal minority of dog owners are pushing public debate in favor of pets over humans, and we must give huge credit to the state parks department (and not the permissive city parks department, which was infiltrated by dog apologists when the agency’s animal policies were gutted) for putting an end to dog dominance; they are absolutely doing the right thing, and they absolutely deserve our support:

A grassy knoll is the latest territory causing friction between the state Parks Department and Long Island City dog owners after the agency barred canines from the area in Gantry Plaza State Park. Dogs were also banned from the old piers when the rest of the new, six-acre grass area opened up in July.

Rachel Gordon, a state Parks regional director, said the manager of Gantry Plaza saw the grass at the “knoll,” a small strip of grass with a picnic table next to an athletic field, had been turned brown by the effects of dogs relieving themselves there. The ban went into effect last week.

Dog owners can still walk their dogs on the cement areas or in the community garden.

But dog owners in the Queens West towers have not taken the situation lying down. After they said parks [employees] shooed them off the wooden piers in July, they formed DOG LIC to push for more pooch-friendly facilities in the rapidly evolving neighborhood.

. . .

There are three dog runs in the Hunters Point area of Long Island City: one near the now-defunct Tennisport on the site of what will become the Hunters Point South Development; one on Vernon Boulevard between 48th and 49th avenues; and one on 31st Street [actually, 21st Street].

The bottom line is that dog owners will let their animals shit on the grass you sit on, even if there is a dog run directly across the street — because dog owners don’t use the grass except to tear it up around a turd. Additionally, they think nothing of destroying trees, completely ignoring what “curbing your dog” actually means*. Instead of agitating for more permissive policies, they should really be teaching their fellow owners how to be less inconsiderate. As for the rest of us, we shouldn’t give up and we shouldn’t give in — these people’s animals are disgusting and we don’t deserve to have them in our faces . . .

*And even that is a generous allowance — walk through any dog-friendly neighborhood on a hot summer day and the tell-tale scent of dog urine wafts through the streets . . . the smell is horrible, like a pungent chicken broth, and it makes our streets way more pedestrian unfriendly than most other quality-of-life obstacles that the city spends time worrying about.

Location Scout: Gantry Plaza State Park.