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

City funding likely not behind new public art

On Avenue B near Eighth Street.

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)

Today in TSP: Rev. Billy and BBQ

More info here.

And now, equal time for other mayoral candidates:

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.

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)

Bodies The Exhibition now featuring Mayor Bloomberg

Spotted on Avenue A near Third Street...




Hmmmm....



And on the other side of the phone booth...

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)

"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."

Mayoral campaign

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.

A 35-year-old former Ivy League fencer and “Star Wars” buff is pretty much running the city

Well, at least according to the Times. Meet Edward Skyler! (Kind of like Skywalker!)

(And that's NOT Mr. Skyler in the photo.)

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)

Muni Meters bring out the worst in people

Spotted on Avenue A near Sixth Street...




Meanwhile...Spotted on St. Mark's Place near First Avenue...

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.

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%.

On the bright side, Brandon Jacobs thinks the Giants will be in the Super Bowl next year

Ouch. From the Post:

"You can only get so much blood out of a stone" with budget cuts and other measures, the mayor said.

He proposed closing a $4 billion budget gap in 2010 with $955 million in cuts and savings that reached into every agency -- from the NYPD, which stood to lose another 1,000 cops through attrition, to the FDNY, which could see 12 companies vanish, to the child-welfare agency, which was asked to absorb 608 layoffs.

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...

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