Maybe We Can Have Another Strike About It, Which Would Be A Kick, Lots Of Fun, A Hoot

When the head of the MTA overturns term limits and spends $100 million to run for mayor, then we can talk about “fairness”, but until then, it just doesn’t seem like the same situation:

The MTA cash crunch — already blasting straphangers with planned fare hikes and service cuts — may put the squeeze on transit workers next, experts said.

Bus and subway workers face three grim possibilities: no raise this year, a one-time payment that doesn’t carry over into next year or a pay hike of approximately 1.5% or less, experts said.

. . .

Union leader Roger Toussaint issued a terse statement last night through a spokesman: “There’s no getting around the fairness issue.”

Toussaint suggested it would be unfair if transit workers didn’t get raises similar to those doled out by the Bloomberg administration last year to various unions.

Police officers, firefighters, sanitation workers, correction officers and clerical workers got annual raises of about 4%.

Phil Ochs Introduced “I Ain’t Marching Anymore” To A Crowd In 1968* By Explaining, “So What Can You Do? I Mean Here You Are, A Helpless Soul, A Helpless Piece Of Flesh Amid All This Cruel, Cruel Machinery And Terrible Heartless Men, So All You Can Do Is Turn Away From The Filth And Hopefully Start To Build Something New Someday . . . So Here Is A Turning Away Song”

Which is to say, just when you start to root for Charles Barron, he goes and ruins it:

City Councilman Charles Barron of Brooklyn, who opposed the extension of term limits, said he’ll formally announce on Sunday that he plans to run for a third term.

Referring to his colleagues who joined him in voting against the extension, Barron said, “We were not against 12 years, we were against the process.”

In a brief telephone interview, Barron said he thinks only the 22 City Council members who did not “suck up” to the mayor and Speaker Christine Quinn on term limits deserve to be re-elected.

“Personally,” Barron added, “I don’t even want to run again, but the people around me think it is the best thing for me to do.”

*Michael Ochs’ liner notes from “There And Now,” the live album recorded in late 1968 and released by Rhino Records in 1990, explain that “Phil had just returned from the Chicago Democratic convention, where he had witnessed the death of democracy as he had known it.”

Footprints Like A Couple Of Yetis, You’d Think They’d Be Able To Mix In A Compact Fluorescent Or Two

It makes sense that the Mets and Yankees (especially the Yankees!) would have a bigger carbon footprint in their new stadia; no one would expect any less from two teams that are known for sucking up all available resources:

Yankee Stadium and Citi Field combined use enough electricity to power 20,000 homes, twice as much as the old ballparks, Con Ed says.

Citi Field, the smaller of the two, has the higher peak capacity — 11 megawatts, enough to power 11,000 homes. That’s 120 percent more than Shea’s maximum 5-megawatt draw.

The new Yankee Stadium has access to 9 megawatts, enough for 9,000 homes. That’s about twice the power draw of the old Stadium.

Blame the stadiums’ big potential power use on what makes them great — hi-def TV screens, huge scoreboards and extra elevators, escalators and lighting, said Con Ed spokesman Bob McGee.

The Yankees’ new main scoreboard, at nearly 6,000 square feet, is seven times bigger than the lower-tech scoreboard in the old Stadium.

And both new stadiums have plenty more elevators. Citi Field has 11; at Shea there were just four. The new Yankee Stadium has 16 elevators, compared to three in the old park.

. . .

The standard for green ballparks has been set by the Washington Nationals’ stadium, which opened last year and won a silver rating from the US Green Building Council — the first major pro stadium to earn such certification.

Nationals Park uses about 15 percent less power than the old RFK Stadium did, thanks in part to energy-saving lighting that reduced peak power usage from 1,293 kilowatts to just 1,011 — a savings worth about $440,000 over 25 years.

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium, Citi Field, Nationals Park.

The Problem With Pedestrian Malls Is . . .

. . . they’re generally too small for 40-foot-tall Charlie Brown balloons:

From Felix the Cat in 1927 to Bolt the dog in 2008, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has adapted, over the years, to changing times and cartoon fashions.

But one thing has always been constant: the final stretch of the parade route, down Broadway from Columbus Circle to Herald Square, through crowds lining the Great White Way.

That tradition appears to be doomed. The main culprit is the plan, unveiled last month by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, to turn Broadway into a pedestrian-only zone around Times Square and Herald Square this spring. If you can’t drive a car down Broadway, you can’t drive a float down it either

And so the city has begun the process of figuring out where the cat might hang his hat in November. Crain’s New York Business, in its most recent issue, reported that the city was considering shifting the parade to Avenue of the Americas.

Scott Gastel, a spokesman for the Department of Transportation, confirmed on Sunday that “a working group has been assembled on this matter, and recommendations will be made.”

Earlier: “Traffic Calming . . .By Drowning Traffic In The Bathtub Or Shanking Traffic With A Rusty Shiv”.

See Also: Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Sounds Like Heaven To Me

So not only will we have pulled-pork on brioche and $19 cheap seats but fewer little leaguers as well, an obvious plot to gentrify baseball by slowly de-yobbing it. We snobs like that:

For the past four years, Little Leagues throughout the borough have participated in a special day at Shea Stadium where they purchased 1,200 discounted tickets from the Mets and got to lead a parade on the warning track of the field prior to the game.

This year, however, the Mets have told league officials including Bayside Little League President Bob Reid, that the teams may only be able purchase 500 (or less) tickets at full price, and they can’t guarantee they will be able to have the parade on the field prior to the game.

“The Mets organization is telling me that unfortunately we have 15,000 fewer seats, and we can’t do what we have done in the past,” said Reid, who is a longtime Mets fan that recently had the opportunity to tour Citi Field and thinks it’s great. “I think they are just forgetting the little guy.”

This is the first year the Mets will play in Citi Field, which will have a capacity of approximately 42,000 compared to Shea Stadium’s roughly 57,000, so it is more challenging to accommodate large groups for different games. In addition, the club is still working on logistics of the new stadium including field access points, which would factor into the parade that the Little League has each year.

Soon — soon! — Major League Baseball will resemble the opera! Bwahahaha!

Location Scout: Citi Field.