They Said “No More Inflatable Rats,” Not “No More Inflatable Cockroaches”

Although it’s unclear whether it’s happening because of legal troubles or just a large rebranding effort, it appears the giant inflatable cockroach is here to stay:

No doubt, you’ve seen those giant inflatable rats around town, which union representatives sometimes station in front of work sites to protest the hiring of non-union labor. Perhaps you’ve stopped even noticing them. Their bared fangs and claws and red eyes no longer startle, as they did when they began turning up, fifteen or so years ago. They have become as unremarkable as sneakers hanging from street lamps.

And so the cockroach cometh. The cycle of indifference requires intermittent escalation, ever more lurid sequels. Roaches may be preferable to rats, if you’re talking apartment infestation, but, when it comes to street-corner-protest infestation, they may be worse.

. . .

Since December 14th, Local 78’s organizers had been setting it up on weekday mornings outside the apartment building (some days they brought a rat or a gorilla instead) to call attention to a tenant there who had apparently hired non-union workers on an asbestos-removal job at a building downtown. They handed out flyers (“Shame!”) with the tenant’s name, photograph, and home-phone number, and with a photograph of a young woman who died of cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. The neighbors seemed to be siding with the tenant. (According to a doorman, an elderly man in the building had found the cockroach so repellent that he tried, without success, to wrestle it to the sidewalk.) And it was scaring some of the kids. Still, the roach has its admirers. One organizer said that workingmen had been coming down from the Bronx to get a look at it.

“Unions are diversifying,” [Local 78 organizer Eli] Kent said. “It’s not your grampa’s union. People are too used to the rat. It’s just like clichés, right? An analogy can be good, but, once people use it all the time, it ceases to have any meaning.” Kent also pointed out that lawyers at the National Labor Relations Board had recently made the argument that erecting an inflatable rat was an unlawful picketing act. This designation does not affect inflatable skunks or cockroaches.

Silver: That’s Oversight For MSG, Not For Kings

Sheldon Silver is eager to show that he doesn’t just block any major project:

A state oversight board voted yesterday to approve the Atlantic Yards project near Downtown Brooklyn, removing the last regulatory hurdle for one of the biggest real estate projects in the city’s history.

The vote by the Public Authorities Control Board capped three years of battles between opponents and supporters of the $4 billion project. The version approved yesterday — eight million square feet over 22 acres along Atlantic Avenue — includes a huge residential housing complex with about 6,400 market-rate and subsidized apartments, a basketball arena for the Nets, and a smattering of office space, with a design punctuated by elaborate towers that dwarf nearby residential neighborhoods.

The approval of Atlantic Yards, which would be built by Forest City Ratner Companies, came after several other ambitious development projects in New York City — like a West Side football stadium and the Moynihan Station, both in Manhattan — were rejected or stalled by community opposition and political rivalry. Atlantic Yards still faces two lawsuits, with more probably on the way, but Forest City officials say they are confident that they will prevail in court.

. . .

A once-sizable chunk of office space was given over to yet more apartments, to woo Brooklynites eager for housing, and to allay potential concerns by Mr. Silver that the project would compete with commercial properties in the speaker’s Lower Manhattan district.

On paper, the project grew to a peak of more than nine million square feet, before shrinking back to the roughly eight million square feet originally planned — a decrease that did little to mollify those residents and officials who said that the project had been far too big and dense from the beginning.

. . .

Opponents of the project strongly criticized yesterday’s decision.

“From the beginning, the project has been a public-private partnership in which the public has not been represented,” said Kent Barwick, president of the Municipal Art Society, part of a coalition of civic groups known as Brooklyn Speaks that had urged Mr. Silver to delay the project. “The vote today reflected a process that simply did not allow New Yorkers to shape the project, and the result is a plan that will not work for Brooklyn.”

Location Scout: Atlantic Yards.

Drink Your Whiskey, Drink Your Grain, Bottoms Up And You Don’t Feel Pain

Is bottle service a concrete example of economic sclerosis, symptom of cultural decay or simple douchebaggery? Probably all of the above:

The scene on Chrystie couldn’t be more different than the one that happens every weekend on the stretch of West 27th Street between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues. Club Row, as it’s called, resembles a better-dressed version of Mardi Gras. Girls with flat-ironed flaxen hair, wearing glittery tops and tight jeans, totter on their high heels from one velvet rope to another. The clubs all have exotic, glamorous names — Cain, Marquee, Bungalow 8, Pink Elephant — and offer the promise of opulence and intrigue once inside. The reality is far less interesting. Inside, the clone-like crowds come to party the only way they know how — the way they learned from watching hip-hop videos. They stand on the little booths and shake and shimmy, hoisting bottles of vodka — priced 1,000 percent over what you’d pay in a store — over their heads. As some Jay-Z song plays over the speakers, for a minute, they are Bling. They feel fabulous. And then they order another $300 round.

Bottle service gained popularity in the early ’90s as a complimentary service offered to VIPs and moneyed clientele. Sevigny remembers when the O Bar, a long-closed club, started offering the service in a way that seemed more quaint than snobbish: A patron could buy a bottle, and if he or she didn’t finish it, they’d hold it behind the bar. Bottle service today, though, entails a customer buying a normal bottle of liquor — vodka or champagne, usually — for $150 to $500 (if not more), served with a mélange of mixers and a booth to sit in for the duration of the night. Once this was a rare luxury, even somewhat practical. When a club was too crowded, or a patron too famous, it was a way to keep the star relatively secluded and sated. In the ’90s, at the Tunnel’s Green Room, “once in a while a European would come in and buy a bottle,” says longtime nightlife veteran Steven Lewis. “It was done, but very rarely. There wasn’t really a program of bottle service.” But as the ’90s wore on, the quirky club-kid world faded and the real estate market exploded, making bottle service not just trendy, but almost necessary to stay in business. Lewis, with his partners Mark Baker and Jeffrey Jah, brought bottle service over to the now defunct Life, on Sullivan Street. “Rents are 300 percent more expensive” Jah, a co-owner of Lotus, says. “Insurance can be up to half a million a year.” Meanwhile, drink prices and cover charges stayed mostly the same. Something had to give.

As club owners quickly figured out, everyone wanted to be a VIP, or at least feel like one. Bottle service was an easy and very financially sound means of achieving mutual happiness for both the club and the clientele. A 38-table club like Marquee, selling bottles at $350 a pop, can rake in $20,000 a night minimum, and that’s not counting bar sales or cover charges.

But while clubs were flush and clients were drunk, the results of the bottle service boom were showing on nightlife, which now had all the excitement and pizzazz of a corporate party thrown in a hotel conference room. “Bottle service only makes sense for six to eight people in a crowded room and you don’t want to wait,” says Jah, who estimates that 30 percent of his profits are due to the trend. Nonetheless, he says the current all-bottle model has “gone too far.”

(Feel free to add to the wiki.)

As Any Artist Knows, Once An Idea Takes Hold It Just Consumes You

Al Sharpton liked the way “shopping for justice” sounded on Black Friday, and he is unwilling to let go of the idea just yet:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said yesterday there are better ways to protest the shooting death of Sean Bell than to march down Fifth Avenue, as Bell’s family and police critics plan to do on Saturday.

. . .

The Rev. Al Sharpton is to lead the demonstration from 59th Street and Fifth Avenue to Macy’s. He has said those who participate will be shopping for justice on a day when midtown is likely to be teeming with Christmas shoppers. Saturday was reportedly chosen because it is the 4th birthday of Bell’s older daughter, Jada.

That Sheaf Of Crinkled One Dollar Bills Probably Put Them Off From The Outset

Scores dancers learn that their money’s not good here:

More than 200 employees of the mammary mecca — including about 50 strippers — wanted to donate money and gifts to a worthy cause this holiday season, but every single group except the Marine Corps League’s Toys for Tots program bounced the idea. “I’ve never been so embarrassed in my entire life,” said Elda Auerbach, a promotions employee at the East Side and West Side clubs.

“We just wanted to do something nice. Our girls work hard and make enough of a living to give back — all our employees and patrons do. I didn’t know it would be this hard to give to charity!” Scores has regularly donated to good causes such as the Police Widows and Orphans 911 Fund. But when they wanted to do something special this holiday season they got the cold shoulder.

Auerbach said the Coalition for the Homeless first indicated that they’d be happy to work with the club and gave them a list of shelters to contact. But none of the more than 20 shelters returned her call. A church-run women’s center in Jamaica, Queens, also gave then a thumbs-down, saying the organization stood “for the empowerment of women.”

But the Marine Corps League didn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Scores will participate in the league’s Toys for Tots program at both Manhattan clubs through Dec. 21, with patrons paying no cover charge if they bring a donation. So far the clubs have raised a few thousand dollars in toys and cash.