New York: The City That Always Leaps

Even an image of a jaywalker pinned underneath a double-decker tourist bus won’t deter New Yorkers from their cultural right to cross against the light:

It happened again — this time, leaving horrific images of the consequences.

But despite the grim photos of a jaywalker pinned beneath a double-decker tour bus, New Yorkers’ death-defying habit of darting into traffic against the light is unlikely to ever be broken.

While technically against the law, law-enforcement officials determined long ago that writing tickets does little to stop such a widespread practice. Some veteran cops say they have never issued a single jaywalking ticket.

“Jaywalking is an urban cultural issue. There are certain cities where jaywalking has been accepted for 50 years or more, so to stop it is like trying to stop the tide from coming in,” said one ex-cop familiar with transportation issues. “You can’t address the whole culture through policing.”

In fact, one source conceded, “There’s no one person assigned to give jaywalking tickets in a precinct.” A recently retired cop with 25 years on the job said he “wouldn’t know how to write a jaywalking ticket.”

A Few Trees Go A Long Way

By shifting the narrative toward the ameliorative effect of trees on the cityscape, the mayor has opened up a new line of argument for people throughout the five boroughs:

A Bronx strip club owner is under fire from Long Island City community leaders for his plans to open a gentleman’s club that could feature all-nude girls near the Queensboro Bridge.

Gus Drakopoulos, who operates Sin City in the Bronx, plans to open a club featuring full nudity if the local community board tries to block his liquor license. By law, a club that serves liquor can have only topless women.

“He’s a thoroughly disingenuous guy with a total disrespect for this community,” said attorney Pat O’Brien, a member of Community Board 2. “It’s totally polarized the community. We’ve been trying for decades to make this a better place.”

Drakopoulos said his Bronx club, next to the Major Deegan Expressway, has made the community a better place by illuminating the block and planting trees on the desolate street.

“We took a concrete, deserted neighborhood and brought life to it,” he said. “There were weeds 5 feet high, car parts and tires everywhere.”

Did You Hear The One About Astoria?

“Another reason a particular fish will choose a particular cranny on a reef is not only the opportunities it offers for feeding, but the protection from predators”:

“My block is so quiet,” begins a joke that Moody McCarthy has added to his routine, “if there’s any yelling at night that means Ecuador scored a goal.”

. . .

In case you haven’t been to a comedy show in a while, comedians are still having little luck with the ladies. And living in Astoria isn’t necessarily helping.

Assuming We Can, We Ask Ourselves, “Are We Are the Ones We’ve Been Waiting For?” And We Sit Back And Think “Yes, Yes We Can, At Least I Think We Can”

If you parsed this any more it would mean nothing, but I think Robert Gibbs means something along the lines of “Bill Thompson is a real man for all men”*:

On Friday afternoon, when much of the political world was transfixed by President Obama’s surprise Nobel Peace Prize, the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, was asked a seemingly throwaway question about the New York City mayor’s race, the last inquiry of a busy news briefing.

“Can you say who, exactly, the president supports in the mayoral race up in the city?” asked a reporter from The Daily News.

Mr. Gibbs at first seemed to mock the question. “New York-centric over there,” he said. “There’s more than one city.”

After a few moments of playful banter, he offered this: “The president is the leader of the Democratic Party, and as that would support the Democratic nominee.”

Who would that be? Mr. Gibbs did not say. But he did manage to invoke another name — Mr. Bloomberg’s.

“The president,” Mr. Gibbs said, “obviously has had a chance to, throughout campaigning and in his time both as a candidate and as a president, to meet, know and work with Mayor Bloomberg, and obviously has a tremendous amount of respect for what he’s done as well.”

When asked later to confirm that the president had, in fact, endorsed Mr. Thompson, a White House spokesman said that he had.

As word of the quasi endorsement reached Mr. Thompson, his campaign scrambled to issue a statement.

It read, “Yes we can in New York City: President Barack Obama supports Bill Thompson for mayor.”

Mr. Thompson rushed to his campaign office in Midtown Manhattan to hold a press conference. He stood at a lectern in a cramped room, beaming. “Let me just say how proud and honored I am to have been endorsed by the president of the United States today,” he said. “Obviously, he thinks I’m going to be the next mayor of the city of New York.”

*As in.

I Love Football On TV, Shots Of Gena Lee, Hanging With My Friends . . .

. . . and twins:

Seventeen months out of Rutgers University, they live in an unwelcome continuum of mass rejection. Between them, Kristy and Katie Barry, identical twins who grew up in Ohio, have applied for some 150 jobs: a magazine for diabetics, a Web site about board games and a commercial for green tea-flavored gum; fact-checking at Scholastic Books, copy editing for the celebrity baby section of People.com, road-tripping for College Sports Television.

They did not get any of these. More than a year has lapsed without so much as an interview. Apparently, even a canned response was impossible in New York.