The Briefly for April 29, 2020 – The "Cherry Blossom Drone Footage Will Relax You" Edition
Today - Low: 50˚ High: 56˚
Possible light rain overnight.
Unemployed, A Brooklyn Bartender’s Lament. (Hope Morawa for New York Cliché) The best bike rides in Brooklyn according to Jacqueline VanDusen, who has biked them all. (Nicole Davis for Brooklyn Based) If you were trying to successfully reopen the state, would you think to invite James Dolan or Jeff Wilpon to the panel, the geniuses who have given us the modern Knicks and the Mets? (Joe Pantorno for amNewYork Metro) Video: A drones eye view of the Brooklyn Botanical Garden's cherry blossoms. (Jake Dobkin for Gothamist) The MTA is changing its policies to be more strict when it comes to the homeless population. It will no longer allow shopping carts in stations and no one will be allowed to spend more than an hour on the platform before they are asked to leave. Clearly whoever wrote these guidelines has never tried to leave Greenpoint at 3 am on a Wednesday night. (Stephen Nessen for Gothamist) "The Mayor should get out of his car and into the subways so he can see what is really going on and solve the problem of his own making." -MTA spokesperson Abbey Collins. The mayor has failed to live up to his own standards and has blown his own self-imposed deadlines to place 2,500 of the city's homeless population into hotel rooms by April 20. He missed that deadline by 1,500. (Alejandra O'Connell-Domenech for amNewYork Metro) Add Nathan's to the list of companies who returned their federal small-business loans. Nathan's had received $1.2 million. (Luke Fortney for Eater) RIP Tina Girouard, a 1970s SoHo art scene pioneer. (Randy Kennedy for NY Times) New York's unemployment offices are backlogged and 400,000 New Yorkers are still waiting for their MArch unemployment checks. The state has a 3,000 person staff who have delivered $3.1 billion to about 1.5 million people so far. (Kathleen Culliton for Patch) It hasn't been an easy road, some errors from the unemployment office resulted in personal information, including social security numbers, being mailed to the wrong people. (Sydney Pereira for Gothamist) Rough Trade NYC shut down music sales when the store was shut down. A month later and they're back to selling music, online only. (Bill Pearis for BrooklynVegan) Worried that your fluffy buddy may have COVID-19? Here comes the NYC COVID-19 Pet Hotline. (Charles Woodman for Patch) What's open? Here are a few maps showing what's open in a few neighborhoods across the city. (6sqft) Veniero’s and Veselka in the East Village will be open for delivery starting Friday. (Dana Schulz for 6sqft) RIP Dr. Lorna Breen, medical director of the emergency department at New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital in Manhattan, who died by suicide. (Nina Golgowski for HuffPost) At the East end of Delancey St there's an N95 mask vending machine. (Elie Z. Perler for Bowery Boogie) Half of NYC knows someone who died from COVID-19, according to a new Siena Research Institute poll. (Charles Woodman for Patch) Nancy Blum, whose beautiful mosaic work adorns the 28th St station n the 6 line is releasing ornate coloring book pages for free. (Noah Sheidlower for Untapped New York) Mayor de Blasio's special councils to help reopen the city are small businesses; larger businesses; public health and healthcare; arts, culture and tourism; labor; nonprofits and social services; faith-based; and education and vocational training. (Michael Dorgan for Queens Post) Apartment Porn: Inside Sister Parish's $3.5 million Fifth Avenue Maisonette. (Michele Petry for StreetEasy) Every student in kindergarten lower and middle schools will either meet standards/need improvement system when it comes to grades this year, essentially a more polite pass/fail. If you "need improvement" you'll be receiving it in summer school. (Kathleen Culliton for Patch) The Squibb Bridge, which connects Brooklyn Bridge Park to the Brooklyn Promenade, will be op en on May 4, after replacing the previous incarnation, which was structurally flawed. (Caroline Spivack for Curbed) CityMD Urgent Care is now offering walk-in tests for COVID-19 at all of their locations across New York City. (Charles Woodman for Patch) Photos: The Blue Angels and Thunderbirds flyover. (Photos by Dean Moses) Not everyone was a fan. (Ben Yakas for Gothamist) Is New York City a city full of idiots? The flyover, which was supposed to be in tribute to the region's medical workers, must have been so spectacular that a whole lot of New Yorkers forgot social distancing guidelines. (Kathleen Culliton for Patch) Brooklyn parents say underground yeshiva classes are flourishing in Borough Park — but cops closed a 311 grievance about one in just 16 minutes in the middle of the night. (Reuven Blau and Yoav Gonen for The City) The NYPD had to disperse a crowd attending the funeral of Rabbi Chaim Mertz. The mayor appeared in person to oversee, as multiple funerals in Brooklyn's Jewish communities have required NYPD intervention in the last two months. I give the mayor a lot of shit on a regular occasion, but attempting to enforce social distancing without being called an anti-Semite in this situation was absolutely impossible. This kind of gathering and what happened with Tuesday's flyover are both completely preventable, but no one called the NYPD or mayor nazis or compared them to Wilhelm Frick for dispersing crowds after the flyover. (Liam Stack for NY Times) Photos of the funeral's crowd size and density are very different from the photos of the flyover crowds. (@ReuvenBlau) The signs are still pointing to an Andrew Yang mayoral bid in 2021. (Matt Stevens for NY Times) The beer delivery guide. (Nikko Duren for The Infatuation) Thank you to reader JoAnn for today's featured flyover photo!