Photo by Karen Keating.
Come with us, and let’s peruse some of the stories written about the neighborhood in other media outlets in the past week. Let’s just say there has been quite a bit of “news of the weird.”
Local politicians are trying some new tactics to get control of our rat problem. One trick that seems to have begun to work: moving the garbage cans from the middle of Broadway to the street corners on either side, thereby denying sustenance to the hungry vermin that live in the median. The city is also starting a pilot program to fill tree pits with special construction material to keep rats out. (Fox NY and DNAinfo)
An Upper West Sider has amassed quite a collection of phallic artwork, with more than 1,000 pieces. The collector, who isn’t named in the story, now spends most of his money on statues of penises, penis clocks, crocheted penises and coyote penis bones, among other penises. “All of my money used to go to booze and drugs,” he says. “Now I spend all my money on phallic artworks. The difference between the two addictions is that I don’t wake up with a hangover and all the penises are still there in the morning.” (Narratively Warning: several photos of penis artwork)
A first person story by a young man who was stopped and frisked on the Upper West Side. (New York Natives)
Borough President and Comptroller candidate Scott Stringer tried to open a restaurant on 97th and Broadway in the 1990’s. It closed after a year. “A two-story dive on a not-quite-gentrified patch of the Upper West Side, Uptown Local was an amiable but chaotic operation, with a dimly lighted barroom and a glowing neon sign in the window. The kitchen served up rib-eye steaks and chicken Marsala beneath black-and-white photographs of Tammany Hall.” (NY Times)
The PS 166 playground will stay open for the next school year even though the city has deemed it dangerous. A panel delayed a ruling that would have allowed construction to begin. (Daily News and DNAinfo)
A man cleared in a rape at the Douglass Houses after being imprisoned for 14 years plans to sue the city. (Daily News)
Restaurants have gotten about 3,000 tickets since the city started cracking down on bicycling violations by deliverymen this year. “The inspectors have issued 2,965 tickets to more than 700 restaurants since April 24, according to city records. The blitz — an average of 27 tickets a day — is part of the city’s effort to ramp-up enforcement of commercial cycling rules following more than six months of education outreach. Manhattan received the most violations, with its restaurants getting hit with 1,821. The majority of those penalties went to the Upper West Side, the Upper East Side and the East Village.” (DNAinfo)
A woman claiming to be an Upper West Sider went on a wacky rant about stop-and frisk and housing on a NY1 show: “Just because people like me are against stop-and-frisk in places like Brooklyn and Queens and Staten Island doesn’t mean we don’t want it to continue in Manhattan! I mean, Manhattan is special…Affordable housing — I mean, New Yorkers accept that kind of thing in the boroughs, but you don’t want those people living around you!” Let’s hope it was a prank. (NY Magazine)
For last week’s bulletin, click here.
Now why would both the NY Post and the NYTimes endorse stringer? That’s too strange and very ominous.
Well, maybe because former Borough President Stringer:
1)is an ethical man with personal integrity who DOES NOT BELIEVE that just saying “I am sorry” excuses all one’s past shabby behavior, as does his opponent.
2) is a veteran civil servant who has dedicated his life to serving New York City, RATHER than being a wealthy opportunist seeking to re-start his ego-driven rise to power by finding an elected office as launching pad
3) Does NOT have to pretend to be ‘on the side of the working/middle class’ because he DOES have an authentic working/middle class background and is NOT being supported by real estate money, as is his opponent.
AND, besides the NYPost and NYTimes, Stringer also received endorsemennt of the NYDaily News!
About “new tactics to get control of our rat problem.”
Ummm…WHAT “rat problem”??!! Maybe there’s a People Problem, but ain’t no rat problem that I can see…except for me cuzn Bernie … but that’s a whole other story.
And about: “moving the garbage cans from the middle of Broadway to the street corners on either side, thereby denying sustenance to the hungry vermin that live in the median.”
What, we don’t know how to cross a street? We even wait for that red thingy to turn green!
And who ya calling a Vermin, ya fur-less tail-less biped!