Daily News Sends Reporter Down To Philadelphia To Root For Mets Team That No One In New York Cares About

Although the Mets are now in first place, attendance at Citi Field is down — the Mets averaging somewhere above Colorado but below Milwaukee for the season so far — so the Daily News, eschewing “objectivity,” takes the extraordinary step of having its own sports reporter go down to Philadelphia to stir up trouble. Predictably, he looks like an ass:

When I started a chant of “Phillies suck” just feet from the famous LOVE sculpture, I got anything but love from the Phillies faithful. The locals surrounding me looked like they might choke on their cheese steaks.

. . .

At the fountain in Logan Circle, another less-than-exciting Philly landmark, a few boisterous fans said they wouldn’t mind throwing me in the water.

“You’re going down, son,” said Troy Decker, 26, who took a long lunch break from his hotel desk job just to harass me. “You all will just collapse like you do every year.”

More Choices, Too

Wayne Barrett wades into the latest on the mayor’s charter commission, and finds that the mayor apparently isn’t as keen on a high-minded debate on the pros and cons of term limits as he once was. A principled man for these tough times. Meanwhile, salt shakers and 34th Street curse their bad luck.

Ah well, what do you do?

Trees: The Silent Killer

And like an invasion of B-movie zombies, they die, lay in wait, and strike when you least expect it:

A Queens tree branch that neighbors had complained was rotten came crashing down on power lines Thursday, sparking a stubborn blaze that destroyed a church, witnesses said.

The Deeper Life Christian Fellowship Church on 111th St. in Richmond Hill caught fire when the limb collapsed onto the wires and a car.

“It caused a chain reaction,” said a neighborhood resident who gave her name only as Adel. “It kept popping like a firecracker,” she said. “It was a crackling of electricity.”

Shady!

Well, we’ll always have those trees:

The city completed just 51 of the 127 milestones Bloomberg laid out in 2007 when he first announced a sweeping plan to plant a million trees, lay hundreds of miles of bike lanes, build housing near mass transit and take other steps to improve the city’s climate.

Rage Against The Eminent Domain Machine

Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me. And now you do what they told ya:

For the past six years, Daniel Goldstein has been at the center of just about every rally, house party, concert and lawsuit opposed to the $4.9 billion Atlantic Yards project near Downtown Brooklyn.

He wielded a bullhorn and had a lightning-fast e-mail response to every incursion by the developer Bruce C. Ratner on the 22-acre project site at Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues. As the project advanced, and every one his neighbors abandoned his building on Pacific Street, Mr. Goldstein remained with his wife and child, vowing never to be dislodged from their seventh-floor condominium.

But on Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Goldstein, the last residential holdout in Mr. Ratner’s way, agreed to walk away from his apartment by May 7 for $3 million. Mr. Goldstein, 40, also agreed to step down as spokesman for Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, the main group opposing Atlantic Yards. And he said he would withdraw from any litigation and not “actively oppose the project,” although he said he held on to his First Amendment rights.

Here’s Goldstein’s statement: “My home was seized by the government to give to a private developer.”

Location Scout: Atlantic Yards.