You Know You’ve Been Using The Politically Staged Photo-Op Too Much When . . .

. . . people just assume that you’re probably doing a politically staged photo-op:

For a vast majority of New Yorkers, a daily cab ride is simply too expensive. But beyond that, mass transit is so much a part of the fabric of city life that many subway and bus riders waxed defiant over Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s advice (quickly retracted) not to take the subway.

“See, I didn’t listen to Joe Biden,” City Councilman Eric N. Gioia said with a grin as he hopped on the No. 7 train to Queens at Grand Central — not in a politically staged photo op; he had just happened by.

Own The Greatness, Now 50 Percent Off!

Or perhaps it’s just 50 percent less greatness:

Twelve days after opening their new stadium, the Yankees on Tuesday bowed to the sour economy and the specter of empty seats by slashing in half some of their top-end, $2,500-a-game prices.

. . .

Over all, the new policy represents a dramatic retreat from the team’s initial luxury-sales strategy for the new stadium, which was underlined in advertisements that crowed “Own the Greatness” and “Select the Greatest Seats in the World.”

Last week, team officials said they would no longer discuss ticket prices or the many empty seats behind home plate and the two dugouts that were painfully visible at Yankee Stadium and on television during the team’s first homestand from April 16-22.

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium.

If Democracy Is Like The Environment, Bloomberg Just Threw A Plastic Six-Pack Ring Into The East River

If you’re going to control the schools, go whole-hog — control them! But don’t waste everyone’s time with neutered advisory boards that, little by little, chip away at democracy by poisoning minds with cynicism:

In designing the mayoral takeover, lawmakers viewed the panel as critical to maintaining a “balance of authority,” and promised it would have a “meaningful role” on citywide education policy and approve major contracts, according to the authorizing language that accompanied the bill.

But Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg — who controls 8 of the panel’s 13 seats — made plain during the negotiations that he preferred no panel at all, and over the past seven years, he and Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, who doubles as the panel’s chairman, have eased it into irrelevance.

The volunteer panelists — an investment banker, a lingerie store owner and an expert on electromagnetics among them — rarely engage in discussions with those who rise to address them. They do not debate the educational issues of the day, but spend most sessions applauding packaged presentations by staff. Some have barely uttered a public word during their tenures.

You Can Either Read Bad Science Fiction Or Write It Yourself!

Buried lede — the rush hour commute on the F train from Brooklyn is really fucking long:

[Peter] Brett, 36, tapped out most of “The Warded Man,” which hit U.S. bookshelves last month, on his smartphone on daily trips from the Fort Hamilton Parkway stop near his Kensington home to his job in Times Square.

“I started out just trying to take notes. I’d sit on the subway, I’d get a good idea and I’d jot something down,” said Brett, who works in medical publishing.

“I got very fast at writing with my thumbs. I found myself writing more and more.”

Soon, he was averaging 400 words each morning and evening.

“I trained myself that at 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. every day when I got on the train, that was my writing time,” he said.

“I had about 45 minutes each way, and everyone who takes the F knows that 45 minutes can turn into an hour and a half.”

Brett went armed with an iPod to block out distractions, and he was prepared to fight for a seat.

“There’s no way to write with your thumbs when you’re standing up,” he said.

“I was raised to give up my seat to just about everyone. [Now] unless you’re really old or pregnant, I’m getting that seat.”

New York Post Sez: New Yankee Stadium Still Sucks This Week!

And may the Post’s New-Yankee-Stadium-Sucks stories never end, for they are too much fun to read. First, either no one is buying, or at least sitting in, $2600 seats (“Maybe the reason the best tickets at the new Yankee Stadium are called ‘Legends’ seats is that fans willing to fork over $2,625 a game are mostly mythical. . . . At Sunday’s game, nearly 7,000 seats at the stadium were empty, the large majority of them at field level”) and then the 84-year-old longtime superfan is shut out of the place:

Freddy “Sez” Schuman, the one-eyed, cookware-clanking octogenarian who’s been an unofficial pinstripe mascot for 22 seasons, was forced to panhandle for tickets at the new Yankee Stadium over the weekend.

In years past, Schuman, who, like Yogi Berra, turns 84 next month, received free season tickets from sponsors such as Modell’s, or was simply let through the press gate with a wink from a Stadium official.

On Opening Day, he had no trouble getting into the new ballpark for free through the press gate, but on Friday, Saturday and Sunday he had to depend on the kindness of fellow Yankee fans for free seats.

On Sunday, he stood outside the Stadium holding his frying pan and a sign that read, “Freddy ‘Sez’ Yankees say, ‘I can’t go in; must buy ticket!!'”

. . .

He cannot afford the seats at the new Stadium, and doesn’t really need one, since he spends his time in the Stadium walking around and letting fans clank his pan with a spoon for good luck.

“Frankly, I don’t know how some fans are going to afford these new prices,” he said.

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium.