Wednesday’s Headlines: Blocked Party Edition

We’ll have all day on Thursday to use our greatest public space — Broadway — to celebrate the New York Knickerbockers, but in between the buzzer that sounded the end of Game 5 and Thursday’s Key to the City ceremony, we’ve fallen in love with the World’s Game.

Messi had a hat trick yesterday. Mbappé had two. And the new guy from Norway netted a pair. And that came after days of action featuring the U.S. trouncing Paraguay, top-ranked Spain faltering against Cape Verde and Germany announcing that reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated.

Overall, it’s been fun. But fun is not something that the NYPD appears ready to allow people to have. I watched the France-Senegal game at the always-excellent Keur Coumba on W. 116th Street in Harlem, also known as Little Senegal for its population of West African residents and businesses.

I arrived a half-hour before kickoff to find that the NYPD had sealed off two blocks of W. 116th Street, with cops forcing residents through a checkpoint, questioning why anyone else would be there, and sending away those who didn’t have a good enough reason. (Photo at the top of this post.)

I asked a cop why the roadway was closed to people and he said, “Crowd control.”

There were about 100 people max on the sidewalks lining the two long avenue blocks. Some were watching the game on TVs or inside restaurants. This was hardly a “crowd” and certainly not one needing “control.” When the game ended, everyone more or less went home or back to work.

I don’t know if the NYPD is setting up these kinds of controls in other neighborhoods of color before soccer matches — let me know if you do — but I’ll be asking questions today about why the NYPD thought that Senegalese people needed the “control” of dozens of cops on overtime to simply watch a soccer game. I certainly didn’t see any NYPD reps at the German House of Soccer in Chelsea on Sunday or in Park Slope for the American opener last week. (You can see I’m kinda into this football thing.)

Barricades and checkpoints are not how our public space should be policed. As the Knicks’ epic run showed, public space can be glorious (mostly) when the public is allowed to use it without feeling like prisoners in their own communities.

In other World Cup travel, transit and public space news:

• Speaking of the World Cup, let the New York Times take you out to the ballgame. The Post’s version of the “how to get to the stadium” story was told from a car-driver’s perspective and was, therefore, flawed.
• Related: Your excitement over the World Cup is pissing off your neighbors. (X.com)
• And it’s definitely pissing off regular commuters. (Gothamist)

In other non-soccer news:

• Talk about lipstick on a pig — scaffolding is getting better looking. (NY Times)
• Stop leaving needles in your garbage. (Curbed)
• Sorry, but paying someone to “save” you a spot at the Knicks parade on Thursday is a waste of $750 (you still have to get to the spot being saved). (NYDN)
• Speaking of the parade, amNY had more details.
• A driver struck a girl on a bicycle in Boro Park, but she is expected to survive. (BoroPark24)