The "N33D2POO" Edition
The "N33D2POO" Edition
The DOT does the Tim Robinson hot dog guy meme, the mayor starts a newsletter, the ugliest building in NYC, The City's subway quiz results, BYOB restaurants, and more
64% of you eat pizza more often than bagels.
• Mayor Adams is starting his own newsletter, "Hear From Eric." In the press conference where he announced this, which was supposed to be about a $75 million low-interest loan fund for small businesses, he said he would be surprised if the original topic received attention. I would be surprised if he made it through one public statement without making it about himself. He's already stolen the "Dear New Yorker" opening line from The City's Scoop newsletter. (Michael Gartland and Chris Sommerfeldt for Daily News)
• The next time you see someone bemoaning how New York City can't seem to hire enough police, but somehow the NYPD continues to balloon, remember that this isn't a problem unique to New York. Across the country, Americans are opting out of government jobs. Nearly 80% of cities saw a decrease in both the number of overall government workers and the number of sworn police officers. (Daphne Duret and Weihua Li for The Marshall Project)
• Curbed argues that while people leaving government jobs isn't a New York problem, the mayor is actively making things worse. While the mayor seems to be able to find $75,000 for an email newsletter (I would bet money that someone is hired to write this), he can't find the budget to pay Housing Preservation & Development case managers more than $38,000. (Ross Barkan for Curbed)
• Why did the NYPD clear vendors from the Brooklyn Bridge? "The mayor wants this." After Mayor de Blasio pledged to move enforcement to the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, Mayor Adams's NYPD doubled the ticketing of street vendors. (Kevin Duggan for Streetsblog)
• A look inside the city's libraries after Mayor Adams cut their budgets by $33 million. The cuts reduced budgets by $13 million this year and $20 million next year with guidance to not fill empty positions to make up the change. It's a truly depressing situation that the mayor has created that will negatively impact the city for decades. (Allison Chomet for Hell Gate)
• The National Restaurant Association uses mandatory $15 food-safety classes to lobby against raising the minimum wage. The minimum hourly wage for tipped workers has been $2.13 since 1991 (David A. Fahrenthold and Talmon Joseph Smith for NY Times)
• A portion of Mets owner Steve Cohen's plan to plop a casino in the Citi Field parking lot is leveraging Flushing's Chinese population as a gambling revenue source. Why does every project for a casino in the city bum me out? (Haidee Chu for The City)
• CityMD is issuing refunds after it charged for Covid-19 tests. (Caroline Lewis for Gothamist)
• The XBB.1.5. omicron subvariant is now the dominant form of COVID-19 in the city and accounts for 81 percent of cases in the week ending Jan. 8. The city Is still averaging over 100 deaths per week due to Covid-19 with a 13.5% average positivity rate. (Matt Troutman for Patch)
• Congrats to Verizon for having the ugliest building in NYC and number three in the country. (Shaye Weaver for Time Out)
• LIRR service in Grand Central will kick off on Wednesday. The ride to Jamaica is only 12 minutes, a little more than one minute for every billion dollars it took to build. (Catalina Gonella for Gothamist with contributing reporting by Stephen Nessen)
• "They have a terrible track record. They have given me no reason to have confidence." Things are going great at the Department of Transportation protecting the lives of pedestrians and cyclists against the city's car culture. (Nick Pinto for Hell Gate)
• Only after you see the before and after photos of the DOT's disastrous whitewashing of the 191st St pedestrian tunnel will you understand why everyone is pissed. Between this and the recent "mistaken" removal of the Ave of Puerto Rico sign, it seems the DOT is doing the hard work to gentrify the city as hard as possible. (Jake Offenhartz for Gothamist)
• Two of the country's top ten most expensive rental zip codes are in New York City. Battery Park and Tribeca land at $8,550 and $8,400 for median rent for a two-bedroom apartment. (Shane Lee for RentHop)
• N33D2POO: The top ten rejected license plates of 2022. (Shaye Weaver for Time Out)
• The results are in from The City's first-ever subway quiz. Do you know where you can find a Bitcoin ATM? (Zainab Shah for The City)
• A new report from NYU shows outer boroughs and communities of color benefit from outdoor dining. (Michelle Bocanegra for Gothamist)
• Apartment Porn: A $10 million penthouse in Morningside Heights on the 41st story with four beds, four and a half baths, views of the city, river, and park, private elevator entrance, outdoor terrace, and with access to the building's ridiculous saltwater pool, and more. (Aaron Ginsburg for 6sqft)
• New York's top ten bookstores. (RentHop)
Top Clicked Link in the Last Edition:
NYC’s Record-Approaching Snowless Winter Trudges On: Why Is This Happening?
These Are the 49 Brooklyn Restaurants Participating in Restaurant Week 2023
I need more pet pics!
I’ll always share photos of Scooter and Pepper, but please send in your pet photos to thebriefly@gmail.com!
