Showing posts with label Generation Bloomberg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Generation Bloomberg. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Election Day special

This mural was created during Art Around the Park in September. This past weekend, it appeared on the gate of a community garden on Eighth Street.



For further reading:
Just Say No (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

Friday, October 30, 2009

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Life's a beach: Former Jersey Shore Store now Bloomberg for Mayor campaign office

Remember that Jersey Shore Store on Broadway between 11th Street and 12th Street (the one in which the empty kegs were left behind...)...?

This summer!



Now!




Many thanks to EV Grieve reader Eric for the tip and photos....

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Looking at The New Yorker's Bloomy extravaganza


Ben McGrath profiles King Bloomberg in this week's New Yorker.

It's epic. Here's how it starts:

Michael Bloomberg has never been the sort of public speaker who makes people faint in his presence. He talks too quickly, mispronounces words, and has a weakness for self-referential jokes, at which he smirks readily, like a boy who knows that his mother approves.


McGrath's piece is roughly 10,000 words, so.... here are just a few interesting passages.

Bloomberg took office during a recession, and quickly established himself as a bold and decisive fiscal manager, ultimately demonstrating, as his friend Mitchell Moss, an urban-planning professor at N.Y.U., says, that New York was “open for business after 9/11.” As the economy recovered, Bloomberg set about trying to transform the city, on a scale not seen since the days of Robert Moses. “I think if you look, we’ve done more in the last seven years than — I don’t know if it’s fair to say more than Moses did, but I hope history will show the things we did made a lot more sense,” Bloomberg told me. “You know, Moses did some things that turned out not to be great: cutting us off from the waterfront, putting roads all along the water.” The Bloomberg model, under the direction of Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff and Amanda Burden, the City Planning Commissioner, was based to a large extent on undoing the Moses legacy: rezoning for commercial and residential use large tracts of waterfront property that had once been the province of industry.


Later on, a City Hall reporter offers:

If he weren’t sometimes such a dick, it would be an unbearable beat.”




Illustration: Gerald Scarfe

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Noted

"Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has pushed an ambitious green agenda and cast himself as a national environmental leader, routinely runs afoul of his own anti-pollution policy by letting his official SUVs idle, sometimes for more than an hour." (AP)

Friday, June 19, 2009

Dumping Bloomberg

Last week, Bloomsy graced the cover of El Especialito...earlier this week, someone dumped the issues on the sidewalk on Avenue B near Fifth Street.



Monday, June 8, 2009

Noted

Mayor Bloomberg's youngest daughter, Georgina, provides show-riding outfits to needy people through her program, The Rider's Closet. 'People say I should be changing the world instead of doing this,' Georgina said. 'But I get letters from people all the time saying I've changed their lives by providing them riding clothes they couldn't afford.'" (New York Post)

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Noted

"Despite a commanding lead in the polls, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has already spent $18.7 million on his re-election campaign, nearly twice as much as he had spent at this point in the 2005 race." (The New York Times)

Friday, May 8, 2009

"Start spreading the wealth".... and Bloomy gives thumbs up to an awkward performance on the congas

Thanks to Slum Goddess for reporting on Rev. Billy's new singing endorsement.

And here it is... You may recognize a few folks (aside from Rev. Billy, of course...)



Meanwhile, to be fair and balanced, here is Mayor Bloomberg playing the congas. What a natural!

Anyway, as NBC noted: "Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to watch all 70 seconds of this awkward, spine-curling video of Mayor Bloomberg playing the congas at an event in Spanish Harlem Tuesday."

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Noted


From the Times today:

Much Vilified, Financial Titans Find a Friend in Bloomberg

By DAVID W. CHEN

The mayor’s refusal to echo the chorus of anti-business criticism is refreshing to the financial community, but critics say he is too cozy with his business-class brethren.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Noted


Engineers have discovered dangerous cracks in 200-year-old wooden beams right above Mayor Bloomberg's desk in City Hall, leading to an emergency $5.5 million contract to stop the roof from falling in. (New York Post)

Thursday, March 12, 2009

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)

Friday, February 6, 2009

Bloomy's "assemblage of private enclaves"


Over at the Daily Gotham, Bouldin discusses Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and his relationship with FDR. La Guardia was a constant guest at the White House, and was able to secure Federal funds to help bring NYC out of the Depression, Bouldin writes. Meanwhile, Bloomberg's public schedule doesn't indicate any White House visits. "In short, his administration is wasting potentially billions of dollars that could be spent on needful things."

Later:

[T]he big difference between LaGuardia and Bloomberg is one of vision. LaGuardia loved the City as public space, with great, sprawling vistas built for the public. Mayor Bloomberg's vision is profoundly distinct from that: he sees the City as an assemblage of private enclaves that, without ready cash, are closed to you.

That's the problem. We could have a re-birth of the City, with a grand plan for the future. But we do not have that, that great living adventure, nor will we get it.

"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%.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Noted


MAYOR Bloomberg, after presenting his State of the City address at Brooklyn College, crossing the street to Applebee's, where his party of six had burgers and he tipped $20 on a $73 check. (Page Six)

I just hope those burgers didn't have any trans fat...