On Monday, all anyone wanted to talk about was Sunday's snowpocalypse.
I got the ball rolling with what turned out to be a controversial photo spread and id-forward rant at how the pedestrians and people in wheelchairs had been turned into third-class citizens by lazy property owners and an apparently ill-prepared city.
But despite all the attacks (I'm huge with r/CircleJerkNYC, apparently), maybe I was onto something because by the end of day, everyone was pretty much weighing in on how life on two feet or two wheels was miserable:
- The City focused on bus passengers forced to climb over molehills of snow.
- Andrew Siff of WNBC did a visual version of that.
- The Times and Gothamist wrote about the eight homeless people who died in the cold.
- And you know pedestrians are having a hard time when even car-loving reporter Myles Miller defends them (in this case, him):
- And Christine Berthet sent us this picture with the caption, "Essentially the whole bus system is unusable."
And most of the outrage didn't even focus on conditions for cyclists, but if needed, we can certainly furnish plenty. Here was the bike lane on Lafayette and Canal streets at around 5:30 p.m. — a full workday after the city declared the storm over:
We expect Mayor Mamdani will be asked about these things at his 11:10 a.m. presser in the Blue Room.
Of course, Streetsblog will be there — after all it was our Viral Social Media Desk that got the ball rolling early on Sunday when we posted the Emily Lipstein-Dave Colon collab video featuring the mayor admitting that he didn't know what a "sneckdown" is — and then, upon realizing that he did, say all the right things about urban planning.
The video asked readers to send us their best "sneckdowns," and, boy, did our inbox fill up with pictures of all the public space that could so easily be taken back from car drivers that the snow revealed they're not even using! Here are some of our favorites:
Here's Prospect Avenue at 10th Avenue in Brooklyn in a before-and-after sneckdown two-for:
Here's Columbus Avenue on the Upper West Side:
And here's one from the Bronx:
Don't expect any melting today — the temps are going to plunge to single- and low double-digits, the Post reported.
In other news:
- One of the world's greatest biking cities is going after the e-moto, which are the illegal motorcycles-that-look-like-e-bikes that are causing anxieties in New York. (Guardian)
- The self-anointed New York Editorial Board grilled Council Speaker Julie Menin — and even though she's a sponsor of the noisome Intro 606 to license all e-bikes, she gave a decent answer: "We’re still looking at what is the best approach [to regulation]. There also needs to be regulation of third-party apps, because these apps are doing business in our city, and I believe they’re creating a situation where the deliveristas have to do these rapid deliveries that are then endangering the deliverista and the public, and we really can’t have that."
- The MTA's East Side Access, a relic of decisions made long-ago, hasn't really helped commuters. (LIRR Today)
- Gross: A close aide to former NJ Gov. Phil Murphy helped get clemency for two killer drivers. (Politico)
- Gov. Hochul loves Waymo. (Politico)
- And, finally, man, the New Yorker cover was (for once?) timely:
