If This Had Been 24, You Would Have Had To Wait Until Netflix Delivered The Second Disc Before The President Even Found Out About The Threat

As we suspected, the timeline for the Times Square Car Bomb was a little . . . extended, as the Daily News shows:

6:28 p.m.: Video surveillance camera records the Nissan Pathfinder driving west on 45th St.

6:34 p.m.: Times Square street vendor notices the suspicious vehicle and flags down Officer Wayne Rhatigan, who is patrolling on horse. Rhatigan calls in a report of a car fire, and flags down additional officers.

6:40 p.m.: Engine 54 and Ladder 4 is the first FDNY unit to respond.

Approximately 6:47: Bomb squad arrives, cops begin evacuating Times Square.

7 p.m.: Commissioner Raymond Kelly, attending White House correspondents’ dinner in Washington with Mayor Bloomberg, first learns of the incident.

8 p.m.: Kelly tells Bloomberg of the incident.

8:30 p.m.: Many Broadway shows, including hits “The Lion King,” “Next to Normal” and “Come Fly Away” start late.

9 p.m.: The Marriott Marquis, across the street from the car bomb, begins evacuating guests from its south tower.

10:40 p.m.: Kelly fully debriefs Bloomberg as the dinner ends. They decide to return to New York immediately.

10:45 p.m.: President Obama is notified of the situation.

11 p.m.: Bloomberg and girlfriend Diana Taylor leave correspondents dinner. They get in an SUV and head for the airport, where they board one of the mayor’s two private French-made tri-engine Dassault Falcon 900 jets. Kelly soon joins him.

11:30 p.m.: Bomb is considered dismantled by NYPD. Broadway shows begin letting out. Some shows direct theatergoers out back alley exits. Theatergoers at “God of Carnage” are held from leaving for 15 minutes.

So had this been a real terrorist attack, the timeline might go like this:

6:28 p.m.: Video surveillance camera records the Nissan Pathfinder driving west on 45th St.

6:29 p.m.: Since video surveillance does little to actually prevent crime versus merely helping investigators afterward understand what happened, a vendor and hundreds others on the street are killed by a massive car bomb.

6:34 p.m.: Shit goes bananas and people start really freaking out.

7 p.m.: Commissioner Raymond Kelly, attending White House correspondents’ dinner in Washington with Mayor Bloomberg, first learns of the incident, but neither can really do much since they’re stuck like three hours away in D.C.

8 p.m.: Hopefully Broadway theaters extend their customary five to ten minute delay to accommodate stragglers and latecomers.

Less Extension Than People Mover To Nowhere (Yet!)

The Daily News’ Adam Lisberg (who has taken an interest in this story) reminds us that while yes, the $2.1 billion one-stop 7 train extension will be “on budget,” it’s only because the project has been stripped down to its barest essentials:

Does Bloomberg want to land a $2.1 billion project on budget no matter what? Does he not want to get behind a crusade unlikely to succeed? Does he truly believe $500 million would be better spent elsewhere?

Don’t answer that last question . . .

The 7 train extension was always about making real estate more valuable, not about helping straphangers. That’s why the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is putting its scarce cash into the Second Ave. subway, not the 7 train.

Already, people are moving into new apartment buildings on 10th Ave. without a subway station. Related is building one directly above the phantom station, and leaving empty spaces for stairwells just in case.

The message is clear: The real estate industry will build on 10th Ave. without a subway, but not on 11th.

So that’s what the developers will get. Everyone else will have to live with it.

See Something, Say Something . . . Then Go “Observe It”

If this had been an actual Middle Eastern-style car bomb, then the timeline would seem a little slow, but thankfully no one was hurt:

At 6:28 p.m., Mr. Kelly said, a video surveillance camera recorded what was believed to be the dark green Nissan S.U.V. driving west on 45th Street.

Moments later, a T-shirt vendor on the sidewalk saw smoke coming out of vents near the back seat of the S.U.V., which was now parked awkwardly at the curb with its engine running and its hazard lights on. The vendor called to a mounted police officer, the mayor said, who smelled gunpowder when he approached the S.U.V. and called for assistance. The police began evacuating Times Square, starting with businesses along Seventh Avenue, including a Foot Locker store and a McDonald’s.

Police officers from the emergency service unit and firefighters flooded the area and were troubled by the hazard lights and running engine, and by the fact that the S.U.V. was oddly angled in the street. At this point, a firefighter from Ladder 4 reported hearing several “pops” from within the vehicle. The police also learned that the Pathfinder had the wrong license plates on it.

Members of the Police Department’s bomb squad donned protective gear, broke the Pathfinder’s back windows and sent in a “robotic device” to “observe” it, said Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne, the police department’s chief spokesman.

Inside, they discovered three canisters of propane like those used for barbecue grills, two five-gallon cans of gasoline, consumer-grade fireworks — the apparent source of the “pops” — and two clocks with batteries, the mayor said. He said the device “looked amateurish.”

Mr. Browne said: “It appeared it was in the process of detonating, but it malfunctioned.”

. . .

Some theaters were evacuated, but many were not, according to a spokeswoman for the Broadway League, the trade group of theater owners and producers. The spokeswoman, Elisa Shevitz, said she would not have all the details about how many theaters were affected until Sunday.

For some Broadway shows the curtains went up 15 to 30 minutes late. Shows that started late included “Red” and “God of Carnage” — which are both playing at houses on the block of 45th Street where the bomb was found — and “In the Heights.”

Onlookers crowded against the barricades, taking pictures with cellphones, although only a swarm of fire trucks and police cars was visible.

Also, it’s nice to see Governor Paterson raising the stakes by preemptively calling it an act of terrorism:

“The full attention of city, state and federal law enforcement will be turned to bringing the guilty party to justice in this act of terrorism,” Gov. Paterson said in a statement.

What, is he going to pull state troopers off of witness tampering duty and assign them to counterterrorism operations? (And since when is the governor able to focus the “full attention” of city and federal law enforcement anyway?)

(One more thing — feel free not to Richard Jewell this guy, because he seems like a decent enough hero.)

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.”

The New “Hyperlocal” News!

Suffice it to say, there are two reporters listed on this followup. What, there wasn’t another Gorilla Coffee angle to cover yesterday?

[Concur.]

But in this post-modern world, what if the story is actually something more clever than anyone realizes, even going beyond the mildly intriguing yet commonplace “story behind the story” speculation about crass viral marketing? What if, in the context of the Wall Street Journal’s recent moves into the New York media market, it’s actually an elaborate “rope-a-dope” scheme to make us all think that the Times is resting on its laurels when actually the metro reporters are busy preparing an explosive Bloomberg cheating scandal expose? Or some such. Or perhaps I’m overthinking this and just want Sewell Chan back on his old beat . . .