The calendar seems to be on everyone's mind right now. Perhaps it was inevitable, but someone created the "Goodbye Bill de Blasio" app, which has one purpose: to count down the days left in the current administration.
Check it out here, and click back every day until Dec. 31,2021.
Meanwhile, the governors of seven northeast states, including Big Dog Excelsior Car Guy, are also looking at the calendar, muttering that the "worst is over" and are already moving to open up the economy (NY Times). No one wants New York's social life to return more than our bar-crawling, bluegrass-hunting, foul-ball-stalking editor, but even he thinks we need to table that talk for a few more weeks.
So until mid-May at least, here's the news:
- Fifty Education Department employees have died of COVID-19, a figure that is already too much to bear, but will likely get higher (NYDN). Meanwhile, the NYPD toll rose to 23 (NYDN) and the MTA toll rose into the 50s, thanks to the death of the first Metro-North worker (NY Post).
- Gothamist did a deep dive on why your local Chinese restaurant — a staple of the take-out business for decades — is probably closed.
- Delivery companies are not seeing the expected uptick in business. (NY Post)
- The Post has shown a lot of interest in following our coverage of the speeding epidemic right now, but Monday's story clanged like a Kevin Knox jumpshot. Yes, crashes are down, but as Streetsblog reported, they're causing even more motorists' deaths — because drivers are speeding out of control. Melanie Gray's story didn't connect the dots.
- Reminder: We've been covering the speeding epidemic, but this is what happens when drivers think they can drive recklessly (reminder: this is not an "accident"). (NY Post)
- Curbed followed our story on how Mayor de Blasio is an impediment to pedestrianizing Broadway, which is the easiest thing he could do, yet won't. (Oddly, Curbed did not do its own song parody of de Blasio's failures, as Streetsblog did.)
- Terri Carta from the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative is demanding that the city create a temporary protected bike lane through Red Hook to help essential health workers. (amNY)
- Gothamist and the Post covered the weekend dirt bike terror attack on the Upper East Side.
- And, finally, it's time for the inevitable "rat army" story in the Post. Never change, Tabloid of Record. Never change.
