I’m Sure Everyone Feels Much, Much Better Knowing That Howard Wolfson Is Back On The Scene

And just so everyone is clear, it wasn’t so much that we needed, say, the Mayor’s press secretary around back in December more than it was that we just needed the snow plows out. I hate to say it, but he should have gone to Vegas this weekend:

In nearly every sense, it has been the antiblizzard response. Advisers studied how New Orleans had evacuated residents for Hurricane Katrina, to avoid making any of the same mistakes. They coordinated their planning with lawmakers in all five boroughs, Albany and Washington.

During the blizzard, top aides had left town. This time, they took no chances. The mayor’s press secretary, Stu Loeser, canceled a weekend trip to Las Vegas for the wedding of a childhood friend; Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson cut short a family vacation in Massachusetts.

Oh please — Katrina? Reminding people of Kanye’s worst nightmare may work to justify mass evacuations but it does little to reduce the stress levels of whoever those are who might be complying with the edict.

Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em

You can never be too casual with mandatory evacuations of large sections of the city when you have an entire Office of Emergency Management ready to roll:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg ordered a mandatory evacuation — something he said the city had never done before — of coastal areas in Brooklyn; Queens, including all of the Rockaways; and Staten Island, along with Battery Park City and the financial district in Lower Manhattan and Governor’s Island. The evacuation covered 250,000 people who, he said, should get out before the storm swept in.

Seems like an odd thing upon which to stake your mayoral legacy. Mandatory evacuations? What is this, the Outer Banks? I know there’s that whole snow storm they need to atone for, but is this really necessary?

It’s A Bad Winter To Do Sketchy Shit

It’s important to always drive carefully on snow-covered streets, especially when transporting stuff you don’t want authorities to discover:

A New Jersey man who was severely beaten — and part of whose ear was hacked off — was found tied up inside the trunk of a BMW that crashed in upper Manhattan early Wednesday, police said.

. . .

The driver, who goes by the name of Blake, slammed the luxury sedan into a livery cab after running a red light on snow-covered Dyckman St., near an exit for the Harlem River Drive, the sources said.

The [livery cab driver] said the suspect tried to flee the crash by making a U-turn, but got stuck in the snow.

. . .

When police arrived, they spotted what looked like a bullet hole in the blue BMW’s trunk, which also had blood spots on it, the sources said.

They popped the trunk open and found the victim, bound and barefoot, with the bloody remains of one of his ears dangling from his head, the sources said.

And then there’s something called “thundersnow” . . .

To Paraphrase Chris Rock: What Do You Want, A Cookie? You’re Supposed To Clear The Snow!

Perhaps yesterday you noticed all the plow-fitted garbage trucks moping around your neighborhood sullenly scraping at the pavement every half hour or so — this long after the snow stopped and the skies turned bright blue. That harsh plastic-on-frozen-asphalt sound you heard from blocks away was actually a sneer: “You want this plowed? I’ll plow until you can feel it in your teeth!”

Let’s try another tortured baseball analogy:

City crews “did what they were supposed to do,” Mayor Bloomberg declared Wednesday as he briefed reporters on snow cleanup at the city’s emergency management headquarters in Brooklyn.

“They learned each time from what they did the previous time. And sometimes you get a curve ball that you weren’t ready for and next time, you try to get ready for . . . that kind of pitch as well.”

And I hope this was a joke, though it was hard to tell by the tone of the evening news anchors when they first reported it:

Mayor Bloomberg was so pleased [by the Sanitation Department’s concerted snow removal efforts], he opened a snow briefing by commenting that the city had volunteered to help dig out Long Island.

If they need something to do maybe they might want to consider returning to regular tasks like clearing all the garbage piled on the sidewalks . . . I’m sure the folks who put on those expensive management seminars at Harvard each summer would agree.

Never Pass Up An Opportunity To Make A Pointed Political Statement

I’m surprised he’s here at all — I would have assumed he was in Bermuda. Speaking of which, maybe there’s a reason your street isn’t plowed yet — no money:

Mayor Bloomberg vowed to dig New York out from under the snowy mess no matter what it costs the cash-strapped city.

“We’re going to plow the snow, clean the streets and then worry about how to pay for it,” he told reporters at a emergency news conference in a Manhattan sanitation garage.

But before that happens, let’s make sure CityTime is back on track.

See also: December 2010 Blizzard.