Tuesday’s Headlines: Power Brokers Edition
There are two mammoth events this week and, of course, they both involve me.
The first one is this Thursday in Fort Greene. Apparently, my corporate overlords at Open Plans misread our recent story about my impending demotion and decided to throw a party in tribute to my stewardship of Streetsblog over these past eight years. As the person being feted, who am I to complain? Tickets to the Gersh Kuntzman “celebration” are available here.
Then, on Friday, I’ll participate in the well-underway marathon reading of “The Power Broker,” Robert Caro’s brilliant biography of Robert Moses that everyone claims to have read, but hasn’t (looking at you, me). The reading actually starts on Thursday, but free tickets to those slots are long gone. Fortunately, I’ve been giving a primo 10-minute monologue — 6:10-6:20 p.m. — so I urge everyone to grab their free ticket here. There are also seats for the rest of the readings, all the way through to Sunday when we get to Caro’s famed last line: “Why weren’t they grateful?”
In other news:
- Some bad police apples are going to spoil a valuable policing tool — at least that’s what our takeaway was from yesterday’s state legislative hearing on license-plate-reading cameras. Fortunately, Gothamist had our take, too.
- It’s always fun to see the Post twist itself into a pretzel. The New York chauvinistic tabloid usually hates Los Angeles and its sterile, car-dominated lifestyle — except when the new socialist mayor vows to reclaim her city from the automobiles that destroyed it. Rupert, you’re giving us whiplash!
- The Odd Lots podcast takes a look at New York City’s trash revolution.
- Another outlet — this time The City Reporter — has taken a seat at the master class of Sophia Lebowitz’s coverage of the city’s fits-and-starts approach to lithium-ion battery fires. At least Hell Gate had the decency to link to our comprehensive coverage.
- LIRR President Rob Free retired. (NYDN, amNY)
- Waymo problems with those school bus “Stop” arms. (TechCrunch)
- Save the Greenpoint water tower? A group in Brooklyn says we’re in a defunct water tower crisis, not a housing crisis. (Greenpointers)
- Gothamist reported that the NYPD is writing very few tickets for spitting and idling, but you already knew about the idling issue from Streetsblog.
- Lots of outlets covered Mayor Mamdani’s new winter preparedness plan — NY Post, Gothamist — but only Streetsblog focused on the transportation angle.
- Mayor Mamdani should take notice of the early numbers from London’s Oxford Street, the recently pedestrianized shopping strip that is already booming. After all, Hizzoner promised a lot more pedestrianize areas in New York when he was campaigning (The Standard). Doug Gordon from the War on Cars podcast also weighed in (Bluesky):
- Finally, the city will fix the bridle path in Central Park — but, tellingly, not the portion near the Central Park Precinct, where cops and park workers deposit their cars in what is supposed to be a space for horses and pedestrians only (New York YIMBY). Our own Sammy Sussman did a video about it recently:
