Thursday’s Headlines: Vendors Vamoose Edition

Is it us or is Mayor Adams taking way too exuberant a victory dance over the mostly poor or veteran vendors he kicked off the Brooklyn Bridge on Wednesday?

Look, no one loves giving space back to pedestrians more than us, but the Adams administration’s full court press spin on the vendor eviction was a pretty clear case of punching down. Yes, pedestrian space is sacred, but are vendors akin to home invaders, criminals or drug addicts? We think not.

In any event, the vendor story was front and center all day, partly because the administration kept begging for credit for doing one pretty easy thing fairly well:

Most outlets covered, including the Daily News (which included Adams’s call for “order”), the Post (which continued to praise the mayor for booting the “hawkers”) and amNY.

But whatever side you’re on, I think we can all agree that people driving cars should not be also taking pictures at the same time, right?

In other news from a crazily slow day:

• Dirty, stinkin’ town: Mayor Adams has cut 40 percent of the trash bin collection budget! (Curbed)
• The Times joined the excitement over a possible inch of snow on Sunday.
• Planetizen followed our big scoop on Mayor Adams’s terrible execution of the Streets Master Plan. So did News 12 Brooklyn.
• The MTA likes its new fare gates. (NBC4)
• I was sorry to see Matthew Flamm, an award-winning veteran New York City reporter, most recently of Crain’s, had died. He was 70. (Crain’s)
• Want to help stop an auto repair shop from being converted into a dealership for big, hulking and deadly SUVs? Some activist friends in Queens are asking people to submit testimony against a Board of Standards and Appeals application by the owner of the shop on Northern Boulevard. The request for a variance will be heard on either Jan. 8 or 9, but written testimony can be submitted submit@bsa.nyc.gov. All the details are on the  BSA agenda (item 16). “This dealership is an illogical and ludicrous use of transit-accessible land amidst a housing crisis and given the lack of greenspace and other public services in Western Queens,” Queens activist Laura Shepard told us. “The business the applicant wishes to conduct and the products he wishes to sell are inappropriate for the community context, where the majority of households living within one mile of the site are car-free.”
• Finally, important breaking news from Clarence Eckerson: