In non-blizzard-related news, Mike Bloomberg might run for president (of the United States)

The New York Times has the story:

Mr. Bloomberg, 73, has already taken concrete steps toward a possible campaign, and has indicated to friends and allies that he would be willing to spend at least $1 billion of his fortune on it, according to people briefed on his deliberations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss his plans. He has set a deadline for making a final decision in early March, the latest point at which advisers believe Mr. Bloomberg could enter the race and still qualify to appear as an independent candidate on the ballot in all 50 states.

Noted

Spotted along Second Avenue...

Mayor Bloomberg gave his last State of the City address today

Fuck. And I missed his 73rd 12th and final speech.

Gothamist has the "Top 10 Quotes From Bloomberg's Final State Of The City" as well as copy of the whole shebang speech. Find that here.

Apparently he talked a lot about "development," per this Gothamist graphic.

What has been lost during Bloomy's reign (so far...)

Our friend Nathan Kensinger has an in-depth photo essay on how Bloomyberg's tenure has changed the skyline of NYC... here's an excerpt...:

With the loss of small businesses, the commercial landscape of New York re-oriented towards chain stores - with cookie-cutter exteriors - that could afford to pay exorbitant rents. By mid-decade, New York's commercial streetscape had become dominated by redundancy. A multitude of sterile bank branches opened, while chains like Duane Reade and Starbucks placed multiple store locations within a few blocks of each other, to monopolize neighborhoods. For the first time, big-box-stores were allowed to enter the city, like Home Depot in 2004 and Ikea in 2008, further endangering small businesses.

Read the whole thing here.

[Photo by Nathan Kensinger]

What will the city look like after another Bloomberg term?

Speaking of how much things change, Alex has an extensive here-and-now series over at Flaming Pablum. As an example, this is Bowery and East First Street from 2002, the year Bloomberg took office ... 2002 doesn't seem like that long ago...but just look...



You probably know what it looks like now...



Sure, the city landscape is getting sterilized... but I fear that we're losing our spirit and character as well... can we withstand another four years?

For further reading:
Cleaning up people (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

Photos via Flaming Pablum. Go there for a lot more.

Bloomy is now wealthiest resident of NYC

Last year, the media mogul's worth clocked in at $11.5 billion. But after he bought back 20 percent of his company Bloomberg LP from a foundering Merrill Lynch in July, his value skyrocketed and he is now worth a staggering $16 billion.

Related!
The number of American millionaires fell by more than a quarter last year, as the financial crisis decimated their investments across the board, a report said yesterday. (New York Post)

When an enormous town house just won't do

From the Times today:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s town house at 17 East 79th Street is the epitome of Upper East Side elegance: five stories of flawless Beaux-Arts limestone with 7,500 square feet of exquisite living space, all within steps of Central Park.

But for the mayor, it seems, the house has been a bit cramped.

Over the past two decades, in transactions that have gone all but unnoticed, Mr. Bloomberg has been buying up space in the building next door, knocking down walls and combining two entire floors along the way. He now owns four of the six apartments at 19 East 79th Street, a white 1880 neo-Grec co-op town house.

"The world of Mike Bloomberg is a charmed place"

From the Times today:

Campaigners for Bloomberg Taste High Life

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s operatives get to inhabit his very different world.
They stay at the Four Seasons in London (about $400 a night), the Intercontinental in Paris ($320) and the King David in Jerusalem ($345). Room service? The mayor pays for it all. Even the laundry.
And invitations to dinner parties at Mr. Bloomberg’s Upper East Side town house rarely disappoint: Kofi Annan and Nora Ephron are regulars.
The billionaire mayor is turning heads these days with the hiring of high-profile operatives for his re-election campaign, including several who had previously worked for his rivals in the race.
And as he seeks to entice talent to come aboard the campaign, and possibly to a third term in City Hall, Mr. Bloomberg wields a powerful tool: the perks of inhabiting his world.
Working in politics often means stingy pay and tedious log-rolling. But when the richest, most socially connected man in the city happens to be mayor, it can seem more like the life on (pre-recessionary) Wall Street, right down to the car service.
“The world of Mike Bloomberg is a charmed place,” said Jonathan Capehart, who worked as a policy adviser on Mr. Bloomberg’s first bid for mayor.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate in NYC is expected to hit 10.5%.

Wait till 2012!

Reliving the ugh.

C'MON PEOPLE! THERE'S STILL TIME TO KEEP THE DREAM ALIVE! WE CAN DO IT! NINE HOURS TILL THE POLLS CLOSE

Noted

Mayor Bloomberg is the 8th wealthiest person in America with a net worth of $20 billion. (Forbes)

Our billionaire mayor speaks out on the "I want it now" society

An "I want it now" society that refuses to live within its means is partly responsible for the subprime-mortgage crisis, Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday.

"I think you just can't blame the banks," he said, taking borrowers to task.

"They say, 'I want the great American dream. I want it now and I'm not going to wait until I put some money in the bank.' . . That's where we lost the moral compass of saying no to people who did not have the earning capacity to support a mortgage."

(New York Post)

The rich want Bloomberg for a third term

According to today's Post:

Big Apple business honchos want four more years of Mayor Bloomberg -- and are preparing to do whatever it takes to help him stay in City Hall for a third term.

Sources close to the mayor say his deep-pocketed pals are "aggressively pushing" him to run again - his term ends in December 2009 - and are strategizing on how to change term-limits law to make it happen.

"We believe it's very feasible," said one source. "If he decides to run again, there are people who want him, and those people are planning to do everything they can. It is a very, very strong movement."

[Image via New York Post]

Fun figures of the day!

From the Times today:

After more than two decades, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and one of his earliest business partners, Merrill Lynch, are parting company in a deal that places a public value on the mayor’s private company, Bloomberg L.P.

That figure: At least $22.5 billion.

Gothamist reported yesterday that Mayor Bloomberg had an approval rating of 71 percent. To which Gothamist commenter Bingosbackup responded, "I think that's supposed to be 7.1 %."

"The old Hollywood sense of lawless New York is rearing its ugly head"

Julia Vitullo-Martin, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, wrote an op-ed in today's New York Post titled "Revenge of the Bad Old Days."

She begins:

Does it feel some days as if New York-- wealthy, successful, seemingly at the top of the world -- is slipping back into the bad old days of crime, noise, dirt, rudeness? Like pentimento rising from an old canvas, the traces of New York's previous misery are appearing on the streets and in the subways -- graffiti, aggressive panhandling, open drug dealing, filthy public areas, ear--splitting noise, screeching sirens, a sense of disorder we thought was gone. It's not "Soylent Green" again, but the old Hollywood sense of lawless New York is rearing its ugly head.



And fast-forwarding past a lot of analysis and stats and what not:

Are we heading backwards? No, but we need to remember our own heritage.

New Yorkers haven't always understood that some ominous trend was beginning. For example, 1958 was the start of what the late Erik Monkkonen, a historian at UCLA, called New York's "rogue tidal wave of violence." Almost no one noticed at the time. It lasted until 1992, when the Dinkins administration, under Commissioner Ray Kelly, began its Safe Streets program. And while Monkkonen was optimistic about New York's future, he warned of the relentless cycle by which, once some "lower level of violence had been achieved, the mechanisms for control and the value of peace get forgotten, and a slow rebirth of violence begins." We can fool ourselves into thinking that the New York of the last few years is the New York that will always be. But our city is and always has been a tumultuous place, in which the miseries of the past don't seem so far away. We need to be vigilant, as we have been since 1992, against the small, unpleasant, menacing intrusions on New York's quality of life.

We know that New York's economic engine, the financial industry, is under immense strain, that the mayor's budget faces severe deficits, and that some businesses are starting layoffs.

Bloomberg has been the right mayor for good times. Now the truly difficult part starts: keeping New York great in hard times.

[Image of the East Village in the 1970s from Litter Bugged via Filthy Mess]