Friday’s Headlines: Polly Backs Biden Edition

It was an incredibly slow news day (for the mainstream media, that is), so let’s look forward.

On Oct. 7, Department of Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg — who didn’t have the opportunity to back her boss’s presidential bid, alas — will bolster the campaign of Joe Biden by headlining the ultimate $500-a-plate Zoom call, “Climate Change & the Future of Urban Transportation,” hosted by the League of Conservation Voters and featuring Trottenberg’s San Francisco counterpart Jeffrey Tumlin.

The pitch? “How are two of the country’s largest and most innovative cities — New York and San Francisco — rising to meet their current challenges while leveraging innovation and policy to improve safety, performance, and reduce carbon emissions?”

Sounds like fun. We can’t wait hearing about all of New York’s supposed innovations and safety policies!

In other news:

• Council Speaker Corey Johnson — a two-time Streetsblog Vision Zero Hero of the Year award recipient — has dropped out of the mayoral race (which he hadn’t technically jumped into yet) (NY Post, NY Times, WSJ, Gothamist). Hat-tip to amNY for doing an LGBTQ reaction story.
• The MTA discovered that some employees had a secret “man cave” under Grand Central. The Post’s David Meyer broke it, but Gothamist followed.
• Like we said, Streetsblog was very busy yesterday:
  • Cops write a ticket to a cycling victim, not the car driver who hit him.
  • A hugely historic preview of Sunday’s 1 p.m. “More Space QBB” rally at the Queensboro Bridge.
  • Scott Stringer and Jessica Ramos want open streets for restaurants.
  • So does Streetsblog Publisher Mark Gorton.
  • The MTA rolls out more anti-homeless rules.
• And finally, we were pleased that amNY wrote about drag racing in Upper Manhattan, but we can assure you from the pictures we took in Queens on Thursday (below) that this is a problem everywhere: