Friday’s Headlines: Adams Sheds No Tears Edition
Gotta hand it to Mayor Adams: Whatever the contest may be, he is crushing it. Literally.
The Mr. Clean look-alike, who has sent cops to tear down homeless encampments and recently bulldozed hundreds of illegal dirt bikes, yesterday took a sledgehammer to a derelict dining structure in Koreatown, the better to illustrate the wages of defying the rules of the Open Restaurants program (or of mucking up the Augean stables).
Everyone covered what was essentially a big photo op. How could they not? The guy revels in spectacle.
The Daily News worked the “restaurants not restrooms” angle: “I have a New York nose and, listen, someone has used this as a urinal, I can clearly smell it,” it quoted the mayor as saying. The Post, meanwhile, went with “Dirty Dining“: “One Greenwich Village dining shed was even used by a couple for alfresco sex, with a horrified resident catching the encounter on video,” it wrote (a fine irony for former Posties who remember how much sex used to happen at the newspaper’s Sixth Avenue digs).
Hell Gate led with the idea that Adams, a la Tom Petty, won’t back down on wildly popular outdoor dining because of a noisy minority of naysayers. amNY outlined the rules that will govern the takedowns. Streetsblog emphasized that the space vacated from any derelict streetery should revert to people, not cars.
In the end, however, it was all about the mayoral M.O.: Strut loudly and swing a big truncheon.
In other news:
- An anonymous artist who hates mopeds in bike lanes is taking things into his own hands — tactical-urbanism style. (Village Sun)
- David Zipper explains why the city fleet’s speed-governor pilot is so important. (Bloomberg)
- The Upper East Side’s parking-ticket-prone drivers are the city’s cash machine. (Upper East Site)
- The New York Times waddles in with an explainer on congestion pricing.
- Alden Global Capital, the owner of the New York Daily News, is such an awful employer that staffers are “quitting in droves.” (NY Post)
- Sen. Andrew Gounardes lists five ways to save the MTA in a Daily News op-ed.
- Speaking of dirty, the Adams administration is piling up 311 trash complaints. (Politico)
- The Tri-State Transportation Campaign created a nifty electronic map of the MTA’s long-term transportation projects and their needs.
- Finally, we like this charming John Surico suggestion. (Via Twitter)
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