You Think It’s Funny But The Office Of The Borough President Is A Complete Fucking Waste Of Money

The decision to overturn term limits just looks better and better:

In a show of Brooklyn pride, GZA adopted Markowitz as the newest member of the Wu-Tang Clan and dubbed him “Marty Wu,” before hinting that the legendary rap group may make an endorsement in the 2013 mayoral race.

Markowitz welcomed the rapper and said musicians such as GZA are evidence of the creative energy nurtured by the borough.

Sorry, did I say “better and better?” I meant better and better and better and better and better:

Borough presidents Marty Markowitz and Scott Stringer put their long-standing rivalry to rhyme Monday, dueling it out in arguably the worst rap battle of the century.

The showdown began when Markowitz, representing Brooklyn, slapped down his “take” of a verse from GZA’s “Liquid Swords” at a press conference with the Wu-Tang Clan member announcing the lineup of the 2012 Northside music festival.

“Through cyclones or typhoons, I represent Brooklyn from midnight to high noon. I don’t waste ink, I think, I drop ‘fuggedaboutits’ faster than you blink,” declared the pol, according to video of the showdown.

. . .

Never one to be outdone by a Brooklynite, Stringer stepped up to the plate and took to Twitter to recapture Manhattan’s cool.

“They call me Big Beep, Scott Stringer, Report Flinger, Retort Zinger,” he mused, prompting one Queens reporter to cringe, “oooh noooo.”

Audrey Gelman, a spokesman for the borough president, said it was Stringer’s idea to flex his lyrical muscles after he heard about Markowitz’s ditty from amused staffers earlier in the day.

Now That’s How You Explore A Local Angle

“Titanic failed to claim any Queens residents in 1912.”

The Solution? Embrace The “Cheap Shit Chinese” Genre . . .

Otherwise you run the risk of sounding like pretentious asshole:

A sweet-and-sour Brooklyn scribe is so nauseated by his neighborhood’s lousy Chinese food that he’s cooked up an online petition to lure a better chef to the ‘hood.

[A] Former New Yorker magazine web editor [ . . . ] says he’ll collect a few hundred signatures and personally deliver them to Manhattan Szechuan joints — hoping it’ll coax them to move their woks to Prospect Heights.

“Everybody deserves better Chinese food,” said [the man], 41, “but neighborhood Chinese restaurants seem to have gotten worse.”

The Scourge Of Occupy Chestnut Street

Because ultimately they’re just rats with good P.R.:

They are marauding gangs of troublemakers who set fire to cars, cut electrical wires and cause power outages, evading capture by scaling walls and climbing trees.

. . .

“It’s like Occupy Wall Street here,” lamented [the] president of the under-siege co-op at Glen Oaks Village. “It’s gotten worse in the past six months. We’re getting calls that they are in people’s apartments.”

And then the kicker:

But while the Queens co-op residents being terrorized by the daredevil vandals say they know exactly who their tormentors are, they insist that they’re helpless in stopping the crime wave — because the suspects are sex-happy squirrels.

When Mayoral Candidates Deliver

Artful governing pays off in the end with tremendous results:

Early this year, Christine C. Quinn, the speaker of the New York City Council, held a news conference at City Hall to announce that she had resolved one of the most contentious issues to face the Council during her six-year tenure — a proposed law that would raise the wages of workers in developments subsidized by the city.

. . .

This week, three months after her initial announcement, Ms. Quinn, a likely candidate for mayor next year, said that she had at last completed revising the measure, and that it would be “the most impactful living-wage law in the United States.”

But it now exempts even more employers, and by her office’s estimate, just 400 to 500 low-wage workers a year will benefit.