More People, Less Cars

Last year the city made radical changes to Times Square, Herald Square, and Madison Square when parts of them were blocked off to traffic and were replaced by pedestrian plazas.

The results have been wonderful: people are free and safe to walk around these very hectic areas, they can sit in beach chairs or at tables and eat, read, or talk, and it has brought a new vitality and relaxed energy to these crazy parts of town. Less car + more people = good.

But wait -- there's more! Now the city wants to create a pedestrian plaza around Union Square, closing the blocks just north of it to traffic. I was actually in Union Square last night -- a gorgeous, beautiful, Spring evening -- and the area was blazing with people and fun. Most of Union Square is already blocked off from traffic and is basically a big plaza anyway so extending it will only make it better.

Perhaps the most ambitious plan, however, is the DOT's proposal to eliminate most traffic from 34th street. The plan is to have traffic only going one way and to install dedicated bus lanes. Getting across 34th street, either by car or foot, is a nightmare so this will make buses go much faster and hopefully alleviate these bursting streets of people and get traffic across much faster.

It's nice to know that after almost a century of genuflecting and deferring to the automobile, finally pedestrians and public transportation are taking priority, at least in our city government's mind.

President Obama Tells Wall Street to Back Reform

Bloomberg Bombshell!

Being a billionaire, our Mayor Mike constantly insists that we can't tax the rich more because "They'll leave! They can afford to leave! They create jobs!" Yada yada yada.

So basically, in Bloomberg's mind, we have to cater to the rich and not make them pay more taxes because, if we don't, they'll move their money out of NYC and the rest of us will be screwed even more. How convenient for these super-rich people ... like him.

But guess what?! They're already moving their money out of NYC! Ever heard of off-shore tax shelters? Creepy little countries in the Caribbean and Europe where people can hide their money and pay no taxes? Ever heard of laundering money through non-profits and so-called charities and foundations?

Nearly every rich person in this city and country has some of their money off-shore or in some questionable tax-free organization. Including Mike Bloomberg! The New York Observer has an amazing story today called Bloomberg's Offshore Millions. Yes, that's right, our dear, incorruptible mayor shifts hundreds of millions of dollars of his money to accounts in the Cayman Islands as well as his charitble foundation.

This is really outrageous. Bloomberg keeps insisting that the rich are good for NYC because they pour their money into the city's economy. But just how good are they when literally hundreds of millions of dollars -- from this one New Yorker along who also happens to be the richest and most powerful person in town -- aren't going into the city's coffers or economy but literally out of the country? Why do we keep pandering to these people to the point of exhortation? I guess it's Mike Bloomberg and the rich people's city, we just live (or barely survive) in it.

This article is a quintessential example of why it's so vital that we have a free, robust press. Thanks to The New York Observer for doing this really important investigation and shedding light on this truly scandalous situation. This is reporting at its very best: afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted.

New York's Princess

Last year I blogged about Amanda Burden, the city's planning commissioner. Well today Vanity Fair did the most-flattering of flattering profiles of her called Princess of the City. It's worth a read to find out more about the lady who's literrally re-shaping the face of our city.

Finally!

State Sues Espada Over Nonprofit Clinics

Well it's about time! New York AG Andrew Cuomo finally nailed the little bastard. Espada won't be going to jail -- at least not yet -- but this is a good step in the right direction of removing this cancer on the New York body politic.

Espada is claiming that this suit is politically motivated -- but he's going to have to explain why he got a severance package of $9 million which is more than the clinic he ran was worth.

I wrote about little Pedro's exploits last year when he participated in a coup that tied up the state senate. If you wish to relive those halcyon day, go here.

The Life and Times of Tim

Have you ever seen a movie or TV show -- or even read a book? -- where you think to yourself "This was created just for me!"

That's how I feel about the HBO animated series "The Life and Times of Tim." Steve Dildarian, the genius behind this hilarious show, must have said "I wonder what kinda show Mr NYC would like to see?" -- and then created it. Watching this show is like looking into a surreal, dark version of my life. I don't know how anyone else but me can really enjoy it. (Seriously.)

To whit: Tim (no last name) is a skinny, underemployed loser who lives in NYC with his ball-busting girlfriend and has dopey friends. (This is basically my life except that my wife is an angel and my friends are much smarter than me.) Anyway, each episode -- which consists of two fifteen-minute stories -- has the goodhearted, weak, go-along-to-get-along Tim falling into all sorts of bizarre entanglements that always end horribly. Tim is basically a guy who wants to earn his keep, hang with his girlfriend and his pals, and enjoy life. Unfortunately bad stuff keeps happening to him, and his attempts to deal with it are always well-meaning and disastrous.

What I love about this show is that, for all the craziness, the show's humor has a wry intelligence. And all of the characters -- his girlfriend Amy, his friends Rodney and Stu, his black hooker Debbie, his crazy boss -- are well developed and interesting. Whether its faking a seizure in a bar so that it will help a horny young doctor score chicks or baking a "condolence casserole" or going to Cincinnati on a business trip with an insane co-worker, the situations in this show are as bizarre and original as you're likely to see anywhere. You just have to watch it for yourself. Check out the clip below.

"The Life and Times of Tim" airs Fridays at 9:30 on HBO. The second season has two more episodes left and you can get season one on Netflix. If you want to see the funniest show in a long time, you should check it out.

Charles Addams's New York

Recently I went to the Museum of the City of New York's new exhibit on the work of cartoonist Charles Addams. It's there until June 8 and you should definitely go ASAP.

You probably know of Charles Addams's most famous creation "The Addams Family" which started life in the pages of The New Yorker and has since been brought to life in TV shows, movies, and now a Broadway musical. Gomez, Morticia, their kids Wednesday and Pugsley, their relatives Uncle Fester, Cousin It and others have become American icons -- a bunch of creepy, kooky, mysteriously ooky folks who think they're as normal and put-upon as everyone else.

But the Addams family was only part of Charles Addams's oeuvre. For almost fifty years he produced thousands of cartoons for The New Yorker and other publications that gave creative and hilarious view of NYC. This exhibit is called Charles Addams' New York and it displays a number of his cartoons, both published and unpublished, depicting the city through his wonderfully subversive mind.

Most of his cartoons present a city-scape -- usually a building or a street -- that looks 99% normal. The eye scans it, seeing nothing particularly unusual. But his cartoons reward the attentive eye because, just when you think you've literally seen the whole picture, you notice that one thing, usually a hilarious small object, that totally re-writes the reality of the picture. One of my favorites is a picture of a construction worker sitting on a steel beam, eating his lunch. The picture is simple, straightforward, but then you see what the worker is looking at: a billy goat -- a billy goat -- standing on a higher beam. It's a very simple but hilarious cartoon -- and there are many, many more like it in this exhibit.

Good Job Mets

Yesterday the New York Mets beat the St. Louis Cardinals with a score of 2 to 1 -- and it only took them seven hours!

Technically it took 6 hours and 53 minutes in a game that lasted twenty innings. You can read a full summary of this now-legendary game here.

This was the longest Mets game since a 24 innings game on Sept. 11, 1974. Ironically this was another Mets/Cardinals match which the Mets lost 4-3. Yesterday's game was the fourth-longest in Mets history and, according to the summary, measured by time it was the third-longest Mets game ever.

And we won. So congrats Mets, let's hope you wear all your opponents out going forward.

No More Rubber Rooms

It's hard to believe but for years New York City Public School teachers who were suspended from teaching and awaiting disciplinary hearings were sent to so-called "rubber rooms." These were places where they sat all day, did nothing -- and got paid for it. (As far as I know these rooms weren't literally padded like Supermax prison cells but the tedium of being in them every day was apparently the same).

The teachers exiled to them were often accused of incompetence, sometimes of gross misbehavior, but ,whatever their alleged infraction, union rules made it impossible to fire them. Instead, they had to wait ... and wait ... and wait ... and wait, sometimes for years in these rooms, until they finally got their hearings. Meanwhile they earned their salary and full benefits, costing the taxpayers around $30 million a year. Think of that? $30 million to pay people to do nada.

This is ending. Today the Bloomberg administration announced that the rubber rooms will be no more; instead these teachers will be assigned clerical or other non-classroom jobs. So finally we taxpayers will be paying these semi-laid off teachers to do something productive and stop wasting money. Sounds like a good idea.

These rubber rooms sound almost like these terrorist detention camps: the people in them are basically being warehoused. Some of them clearly should be there while others ... well ... it's not so clear if their imprisonment is really legally justified. They're in limbo.

Last year the veteran journalist Steven Brill did a long story for The New Yorker about the teachers who populate[d] these rubber rooms. It paints a fascinating picture of why unions are good things overall (protecting workers from exploitation, abuse, firing women for getting pregnant, etc.) but how certain union rules can lead to unproductive waste (like rubber rooms). And it's also clear from this article that some these teachers are either just lousy or unfit to educated students.

Sometimes I have to wonder, however, if these rubber rooms were being used for less than noble purposes. Clearly sending teachers there was a form of psychological gamesmanship: the Department of Ed. wanted to make them so unpleasant and boring that hopefully the teachers would just quit. (WNYC did a great story today about life in the rubber rooms.) But the thing that really disturbed me was how teachers who had been teaching for years and years were suddenly declared "incompetent" and banished into these gulags.

Really? A teacher is told that she's doing a fine job for years and then, all of a sudden, is told "Oh, you're no good. Get out." It's odd. Makes no sense. It seems to me that if someone is being told that they're doing a job well for years and then, all of a sudden, they're told that they're a failure and need to leave ... well, something else is going on. I think this is about forcing out older teachers who have accrued high salaries and pensions so that the city doesn't have to pay as much. It's also about, as these stories suggest, new principals who come in, decide they don't like certain teachers, and then suddenly say they're "incompetent" and force them out.

Oh, but that would be being cynical now wouldn't it? And of course the Bloomberg administration never does anything that would make a New Yorker think it would do something sleazy? But at least the rubber rooms are no more ... and that's probably a step in the right direction.