At Least They Didn’t Call Them “Non-Essential”

One thing you can’t do is tell city workers there’s a snow day — because of course they’ll take it:

City workers accused the mayor of unfairly trying to dock them a day’s pay after he backtracked on declaring an official snow day last week. On Jan. 27, after a storm blanketed the city in 19 inches of snow, the mayor’s press office issued a statement from Bloomberg announcing that most government offices were closed for the day.

“Because heavy snow fell in the city overnight, all non-emergency city government offices are closed for today, in addition to all public schools,” the statement said. “New York City almost never takes a snow day, but today is one of those rare days. People should stay at home and off the roads.”

. . .

This week employees began receiving emails explaining they could be held responsible for failing to show up last Thursday.

According to guidelines provided by the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, any employee who arrived late will not be charged. But “employees absent due to the storm must charge annual leave or compensatory time balances,” a city email instructed. “Annual leave will be advanced to employees who have no annual leave or compensatory time to cover this absence.”

People may remember that the exact same message went out at the end of the week of the September 11 attacks, this after Mayor Giuliani told employees (and basically everyone) to stay out of Manhattan. Now that was shocking . . .

It seems like a game of sorts — a message along the lines of “Don’t get too used to this, my friend.” Which is to say, they’ll eventually backtrack on the backtrack. But what if they did something altogether different? Say, reconceptualizing the snow day by replacing it with something like a voluntary furlough? It might save money in these tight budget years! Not being facetious, either — just the sort of back-of-napkin idea that might work.

Maybe The Thought That You Just Blew Almost $200 At An Applebee’s Makes You Do Rash Things

Less dine and dash than binge and dash:

They feasted on shrimp and ribs, washing it down with booze and coffee.

And when it came time to pay their $170 tab Saturday afternoon at Applebee’s restaurant in New Dorp, [a Staten Island woman] and her friend handed over a Visa card.

When told the card was no good, the duo didn’t search their wallets for cash or another credit card, prosecutors contend. They didn’t even offer to wash the dishes.

Instead, they bolted without paying, cursing and yelling at a restaurant employee, said court papers.

Looking at the menu for the New Dorp Applebee’s, I’m confused. Double-Glazed Baby Back Ribs are $22.99. Double Crunch Shrimp is $13.99. That’s still under $40. How much booze and coffee can one possibly consume at an Applebee’s?

The Weather In Arizona Is Beautiful This Time Of Year

And it’s a perfect time to visit Phoenix:

Weeks after a shooting left six dead and 13 injured in Tucson, New York City sent undercover investigators to an Arizona gun show and found instances in which private sellers sold semiautomatic pistols even after buyers said they probably could not pass background checks, city officials said.

We already know that NYPD officers like to go to Europe — now they’re snowbirds as well. Can’t they just outsource this to 20/20 or something? At least while the budget is what it is?

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” . . .

It’s 2007 Again!

Not only is congestion pricing apparently back — and after the CityTime fiasco, everyone should remain extremely skeptical about the City’s or even the State’s ability to install fancy technological doodads, especially if some sort of economic payoff is expected — but so is Carl Kruger’s bizarre anti-Walkman legislation, itself proof that the only thing stupider than stupid legislation is stupid legislation repeated:

In New York, a bill is pending in the legislature’s transportation committee that would ban the use of mobile phones, iPods or other electronic devices while crossing streets . . .

. . .

The New York bill was proposed by State Senator Carl Kruger, a Brooklyn Democrat who has grown alarmed by the amount of distraction he sees on the streets in his neighborhood and across New York City. Since September, Mr. Kruger wrote in the bill, three pedestrians have been killed and one was critically injured while crossing streets and listening to music through headphones.

“We’re taught from knee-high to look in both directions, wait, listen and then cross,” he said. “You can perform none of those functions if you are engaged in some kind of wired activity.”

. . .

As it is written, Mr. Kruger’s proposal, which was first introduced in 2007, would apply only to cities with populations of one million or more. But Mr. Kruger would like to expand the bill to cover even smaller cities. Violators would face a civil summons and a $100 fine.

“This is not government interference,” he said. “This is more like saying, ‘You’re doing something that could be detrimental to yourself and others around you.'”

Besides portending a return to the bad old days when youths put their backs out of alignment from hoisting oversized boom boxes powered by bulky D batteries numbering in the double digits, how exactly would this work? Would pedestrians have to remove earbuds before crossing a street? There are a lot of streets in Manhattan!

Of the four major casualties since September — and four in four months is clearly an epidemic — was the iPod really a significant factor or just a coincidence? You can’t ask a dead person whether the headphones made him or her not hear a vehicle.

Fortunately for us, Kruger’s bill is unlikely to see any action — the enactment rate for legislation in New York State is among the worst in the nation — hovering in the low single digits (if this Brennan Center report (.pdf) still holds. So say what you want about “Albany” — at least most of the bad ideas never even get a committee hearing . . .

I would be surprised if Carl Kruger even knew where to buy an iPod, much less know how to use one, but I’m guessing his car includes a radio — maybe we can address that danger as well?

Here’s Kruger’s press release about the proposed legislation — and I hesitate to use that phrase because like I mentioned above, since so little “proposed legislation” actually gets anywhere it makes it sound more important than it is:

In December 2010, a 21-year-old man listening to music blaring through his headphones on a Manhattan street corner was crushed by a Mack truck after he failed to hear the vehicle’s backup signal. A popular video circulating on Youtube this week showed a woman engrossed in conversation on her cell phone walking straight into a park fountain.

About that horrifying Mack truck story . . . here it is:

The truck driver, Anthony Regisford, 51, of Pennsylvania, was going north on Madison Ave. and had just passed through the intersection of E. 81st St. when he pulled into the right lane and began to move in reverse, cop said.

The truck, owned by a Brooklyn carting company, ran over King as he walked in the crosswalk, heading toward the west side of Madison Ave., where the bakery is located.

He was dragged under the truck for about 30 feet before the massive vehicle came to a stop.

Police sources said [the victim] was listening to music that likely prevented him from hearing the truck as it backed up. A mangled iPod Nano and headphones remained on the pavement, near the crosswalk, after the crash.

Yes, a man was killed after a truck drove in reverse through a crosswalk where he was walking. And yes, there was an iPod Nano at the scene. And yes, “police sources” said that the man was listening to music that “likely prevented him from hearing the truck as it backed up.” But overall aren’t you really, really skeptical that a person could be listening to anything — at any volume — that would prevent him or her from seeing or hearing a Mack truck? Did the iPod make the driver drag the young man 30 feet? And how would the police know? Again, the young man isn’t around to say.

Yet Kruger uses this as proof that we need to do something about it. Is the young man’s family on board? Can we name the bill in honor of him? Can we call a press conference about it? I’m guessing the family is not in the mood to blame their son for a truck running him over — especially when the truck that hit him was moving through a crosswalk — in reverse.

As for the fountain lady — I think they’re talking about this, right? So she was texting and she fell into a fountain — in a mall and not a park, by the way — because she wasn’t looking where she was going. Why does that mean I can’t listen to my iPod on Broadway?

Stuff like this just makes you want to slip on your Walkman and drown out the world . . .