"My Kinda Town"

What’s New in Old New York?

 

Mayor Bill de Blasio, an ultra liberal, has:

 A new hands off policy for cops and the people. No more stop and frisk of potential suspects. Deemed to be too racially profiling. This took effect in January. Crime In certain areas of the city has risen by 25% as has the number of arrested people carrying firearms.

A more laissez-faire attitude about things like cars honking their horns. Mayor Bloomberg told the cabs and cars to stop honking their horns all day long. It was the first thing I noticed when I moved here, how quiet the streets were.  The horn honking has begun again.

The New York Sports teams have really gone in the dumper. The Yankees had their worst season in 15 years.  The Mets, perennially middle of the pack or worse ended up a bit below the middle of the pack. I prayed the Knicks would not resign Carmelo Anthony, a prolific scorer but not a team player or leader but they brought him back. He gets his 30 plus points a game and the team loses. Par for the course. The Nets new splashy first season in Brooklyn last year (they still have the classiest unis) has given way to inertia and indifference this year. The Rangers (hockey that game played on ice) made it to the Lord Stanley Cup championships last year but this year they are off to a yawn of a season

and the Football Giants and Jets are the equivalent of really, really ugly twins. Thank God for my favorite team playing well the New York Islanders. They are in first place in the National Hockey League Capitol Division (they are a hockey team you know that game played on ice).

Philip Seymour Hoffman died in Greenwich Village of a drug overdose. The East Village and Greenwich Village (neighboring communities in Lower Manhattan) are the places of choice for celebrities that do themselves in.

Horse drawn carriages in Central Park are about to be a thing of the past. The Mayor pledged to get rid of them for the sake of the horses.  Where will “Mr. Big” and Carrie go for that rich person’s romantic interlude now? The horses (not breed horses, nor recreational animals) will go to the glue factory. Well, at least they won’t be exploited. By the way the horses were not consulted on their future.

Fares are soon going up on the subway (locals just refer to the subway as “trains”) and buses from 2.50 per ride to 2.75 per ride. That means my monthly ridership will jump from 65.00 per month to 70.00. I spent more on gas in San Diego in 2 weeks than that. The most used mode of transportation in Manhattan and some outer boroughs continues to be walking.

An elderly Chinese-American man was pushed in front of a train in the Bronx for no apparent reason.

The alleged perpetrator  (although the camera videotaping the assault made his positive identification easy and along with that a positive identification that the perpetrator is dumber than dirt); a black man was accidently shot in a stairwell in Brooklyn, a rookie cop’s gun went off when he had the adrenaline rush of busting down his first door. Also, the perfectly executed (in more ways than one) choke hold on a man on Staten Island that was selling cigarettes from his car, did the trick. They don’t call it a choke hold for nothing. He choked to death.

The rookie cop said he was sorry, he got so caught up in his first “Miami Vice” like take down he lost count on how long to keep choking the criminal. He begged forgiveness of the citizens. He promised to do better with his next choke hold. The Reverend Al “Sharpy”, Sharpton of course was on the scenes of the grieving families declaring everything an “outrage”. Everything that is except himself. Oh by the way he didn’t get to the grieving Chinese-American family because he said he has to confine his outrages to black American families that get on TV due to time constraints with his own outrageous TV appearance schedule. He also said he did feel sorry for those people in the Bronx for whatever it was that was upsetting them, but he hoped they would still be able to keep their laundry business going.

New York, my kinda town