This scene takes place on Hillside Ave. in Richmond Hill.
When you just want to think you have the richest house in Queens but aren’t the richest person in Queens.
If Moses saw this after he came down the mountain with God’s to do and not to do list, he would plotz.
Might have an idea who the man of the house could be…
Not just gold, 14 KARAT GOLD!
Richmond Hill, Queens, New York
On the day after the six-alarm fire that destroyed the homes above storefronts in Richmond Hill and taking pics of the charred windows on the buildings, strolling about 8 blocks east by Lefferts Blvd. there exists this unsightly gated wall protruding on the sidewalk next to a barber shop and a ministry. I call it a gated wall because it’s secured with a lock and chain.
Unfortunately the wall itself wasn’t as resilient. As evident by this unsightly and hazardous profusion. Which is easily accessible to passerby, especially children.
It wasn’t hard to deduce what happened here. Apparently a bunch of graffiti artists were looking for a convenient venue to bomb and also are coming strapped with axes along with their aerosol paint cans.
Just some standard tagging, no offense to the artists oevure. Also standard but more varietal was the detritus strewn on the platform of the spacious lot, with a piece of the breached wall lying askew on a shoddily structured fence.
I wish I can recall what used to be here, most likely a mixed use building probably with a restaurant. It also looks like it was recently razed because there are no indicators of new development being done here going by the absence of NYC Department of Building placards. It also looks like this wall has been in this condition for a few weeks now, including that gaping jaggered maw.
The only indication that this pit belongs to anyone is the one sign affixed to the wall on it’s east side. A company named Signature Premier Properties is advertising their company and website on this open and blighted space.
With some sleuthing on the duckduckgo and that monopoly search engine, this premier property with quite the sordid history was put up for sale about 3 weeks ago a few days before Thanksgiving. And Signature PP is asking $999,000 for it.
I cannot fathom why they decided to cut a grand off the price more than how they came to this ostentatious value. Maybe it’s because of it’s current status as an “unimproved land” that didn’t qualify for the rounded out million. But advertising the property as “convenient to all!” certainly exacerbated it’s unimproved condition of the lot with all that vandalism and pollution.
Apparently as the recent picture shows, they had to improve and fortify the property post haste and it shows with this incredibly cheap upgrade. Which includes a new “gate”. This looks like the handiwork of dustheads squatting in an foreclosed home and is not up to the standards of anthropomorphic cartoon animals.
Conspicuously absent from the repurposed wall is Signature’s ad sign…
And if Signature PP or whoever owns this pit think this is going to stop rival taggers from getting in they are sadly mistaken. A crowbar or even a $1.99 Trisonic flathead screwdriver that you can get from the nearest 99 cent stores can easily pry those planks down or even a good rain to loosen them up for a tae kwon do superkick.
Usually the default reaction/response to scenes like this is to refer it as another definitive sign to what a shitty year 2020 is (and it is the worst year in this young century); but this is Queens and scenes like this have been always been manifest. And none more than on the southern and eastern sides of the borough far from tony Brooklyn and Manhattan and the interests of elected officials, which includes even the ones who represent the districts here.
It’s only amplified even more because of the pandemic and people either have no time to care or using as an excuse not to be concerned. But the thing that makes this blighted eyesore worse is that it actually has a value on it. Urban decay is being marketed and sold as a luxury product.
There will be a buyer for this shithole just like there are buyers for a wall with a banana being held by duct tape and Mark David Chapman’s autographed copy of Double Fantasy he got signed after he killed the artist who created it. But for now, this unimproved land belongs to the taggers, hooligans, homeless and anyone else who dares to enter. Or break and enter into there. But at least the residents of Richmond Hill and the borough of Queens can take a scintilla of pride knowing that they are walking in the presence of opulence.
Even though it’s speculated and fabricated…
A massive fire tore through six Queens homes early Thursday, displacing 36 residents and injuring three firefighters battling the blaze, officials said.
The flames erupted inside a closed beauty salon on Jamaica Ave. near 110th St. in Richmond Hill around 1 a.m., the FDNY said.
The fire quickly climbed up the two-story building into an attic space, then spread to adjoining buildings
This has been quite a turbulent year for the NYPD. Despite the monthly reports of crime stats trickling down (also up), shooting incidents involving cops and suspects (notably people with mental health conditions) have seen a significant rise. Also seeing a rise is a disturbing trend of the excessive amount of shots being fired by cops, even when they are facing only one perpetrator.
On February 11th, 2019 in the early evening at about 6 p.m., an emergency call was placed about an armed robbery at a cellphone store in Richmond Hill. Christopher Ransom was hauling merchandise while holding up workers at gunpoint, Detective Brian Simonson and his partner Sgt. Matthew Gorman along with six other cops arrived immediately to the crime scene. The cops went into the store and Ransom came out and pointed his gun at them, giving Simonson, Gorman and the cops no other recourse but to shoot in self-defense. In a span of 11 seconds, 42 shots were fired by the cops to take the crook down when he came running outside with intent to shoot. During the fusillade of bullets fired by 7 of the cops (one cop abstained from shooting), the suspect got hit with 8 bullets and survived. Simonsen got off two but was shot in the chest by his fellow cops and later died. Another stray bullet hit Sgt. Gorman in Detective Simonsen wasn’t wearing a bullet-proof vest at the time because it was his day off and he was at a delegate meeting shortly before the robbery happened, but dutifully responded because there had been a spree of other cellphone store robberies around South Queens, especially that very store on 120 st and Atlantic Ave according to residents there. Incidentally, Ransom was involved in a cellphone store robbery in St. Albans four days earlier.
Simonson and Gorman’s backup shot a total of 29 bullets compared to their 13. Simonson only got 2 bullets off before he went down. The cops shot 42 times to take down one criminal that wound up taking the life of a fellow cop. To make this horrendous death worse, it turned out that the Ransom’s gun was a prop.
But the actual issue about this tragedy was not only the excessive discharge of gunfire but the over-deployment of police backup to the robbery. Made apparent by the diagram below by the NY Daily News:
Going by the incident, the situation by the detective and his partner along with two other uniformed cops was under control. But from the vantage point of the backup outside and where they were positioned, it sounds like they panicked and emptied their clips, even after Ransom didn’t shoot when he drew his weapon as they presumed it was jammed. Given the amount of rounds they shot and how lousy the aim was of those four cops outside, it’s a wonder where the other bullets went and given the time of day when it occurred, it’s amazing no innocent bystanders around there or in the vicinity were hit with a stray bullet. (Good thing it was raining out that night).
In their overzealous and stupid effort to take down a criminal stupidly looking to duel with a phalanx of cops with a fake gun, they took the life of Detective Simonson instead. They shot down one of their own in a totally preventable death that could have been avoided if they showed proper restraint or even good judgement. But for some incomprehensible reason this shooting incident and the death of a decorated and beloved police detective did not get the national attention that is usually warranted of other excessive force shootings by police that have made repeated headline news and viral attention especially when the victims are Black or Hispanic.
So what made the mass shooting death of Simonson different? Maybe it’s because of how it was described by the NYPD and the stenographers of the corporate local news media from the newspapers to television to radio and on the social network platforms by their blue check accounts; as a case of “friendly fire”.
Now this may be the first time that a local police force has used that term to determine a cop being shot down. Because the origin of “friendly fire” was used by the U.S. Defense Department to describe soldiers being shot by their fellow troops during the two invasions of Iraq in 1990 and in the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan in the 2000’s (most notoriously in the cause of death of Pat Tillman and repeated constantly by the likes of then Secretary Donald Rumsfeld) . For the NYPD to utilize that term to deflect responsibility and accountability for the amount of gunfire dispensed and local news stenographing of the narrative put forth by them suggests that Simonson, Gorman and their trigger finger itchy backup were entering a warzone like some jungle in Vietnam or a dirty bomb planted street in Fallujah instead of a sleepy commercial district in Richmond Hill as they were heading to a corner cellphone store.
This is what the warzone they entered looks like, hardly an area where you need tanks or other military grade vehicles:
Besides the NYPD public relations dispensing and local news parroting of “friendly fire” (though there is nothing friendly about being shot to death and a fusillade is definitely unfriendly with any projectiles dispensed), the NYPD clearly spent more effort justifying this narrative in addition to deferring all blame to irrational suspect who was charged with murder despite not being capable of firing a bullet. Multiple conflicting articles came out about Ransom. The NYPD brought up that he tried to commit suicide by cop while Ransom admitted the same but also claimed that he was only doing that as some sort of improv comedic stunt. Like an even more deranged version of the public nuisance comedy of Eric Andre and millions of pranksters on social media app platforms.
No, the only way to describe this preventable tragedy is that Detective Simonson was shot to death and Sgt. Gorman was wounded by his fellow cops from “incompetence fire”. Because incompetence is a causation of what happens when workers screw up on the job despite thorough orientation and training. And it applies when you are hired with the responsibility of protecting the public and your fellow employees. With an automatic gun. This is no different than preventable fatalities in other jobs in warehouses or in construction sites. If your handling equipment and vehicles that require skill and caution, like forklifts and cranes handling tons of materials or working with tools like jackhammers and nailguns, you would best make sure you don’t injure or kill your fellow workers near you.
Because only an incompetent person, in this case incompetent people, would do something carelessly negligent like this. And it damn well shouldn’t be normalized as an unfortunate cost of enforcing laws or depicted as a sacrifice to them like the NYPD and the media irresponsibly did with this tragedy.
But what is also being overlooked in this incident and many others across the nation in the past few years is that Simonson’s back up cops incompetence shows that there is a proclivity among police to empty their whole cartridges even if the situation doesn’t require it. Because the diagram pics above shows that Simonsen and Gorman and two other cops had the suspect cornered.
Although audio is available of the tragic shooting, body cam footage is still being repressed. And because of the 50a law, the identities of the back up uniformed officers are still not known to the public. But everything is known about the suspect and his history and present, as well as it should be. Of what was released by the NYPD and reported by the local papers, Ransom suffered from mental illness and had over 25 prior arrests. He adopted heroic personas while being a public nuisance like dressing in long underwear and a cape as he entered a police station and also walking into a precinct in Crown Heights impersonating an FBI agent. Even his accomplice and lookout, Jagger Freeman, who fled from the crime scene the second the cops came out was also discovered to have prior arrests too.
The NYPD narrative control of the incompetence fire incident has made those two perpetrators guilty before there is even a trial, which has still not materialized. Ransom’s lawyer even exclaimed that his client is being made the scapegoat for the seven cops excessive use of force. In fact, the NYPD’s narrative control of the cause of Simonsen’s death has overreached so much that they actually also blamed the tragedy on cellphone companies, saying they don’t secure or encrypt their products well enough to prevent them from being sold on the black market, which has existed since the advent of them. It’s a good and salient point but how is it relevant to cops unleashing over 40 bullets to take down one man and killing one of their own? It seems the NYPD finds it convenient to defer blame and responsibility on others the way they at times accuse suspects of feigning innocence for their charged crimes.
But what about these heavy finger trigger holding cops and why are their identities still hidden from the public and how can the NYPD justify that they need protection? Which really makes no sense considering that 50a had been reinstated for the reason that cops needed to be protected from criminals will search for them. But how does it apply to these unnamed cops when they killed a cop and not the criminal? Are they using it to protect them from the families of Simonsen and Gorman? It’s a ludicrous question yet the usage and exploitation of 50a for this is just as absurd.
The most pressing questions that should be addressed is are these incompetent unidentified cops are still out there patrolling the streets and if any proper re-training was done to prevent another tragedy from happening again.
A little more than 7 months later, it horribly did and so did the narrative that followed
In the Bronx, three plain clothes cops patrolling the Edenwald Houses following a shootout there between gangs confronted Antonio Williams on a corner to stop and question him. Then Williams makes a run for it. Officer Brian Mulkeen, who ran track and field in high school and college, chased him down and tackled him. While he was grappling with him, Williams continued to resist and while trying to grab Mulkeen’s gun, who kept yelling “he’s reaching for it” Reportedly, was able to grab his gun and shoot five times but missed. Another cop then shoots at their direction then the three other cops arrived and fired 10 rounds, which kills Williams but also hitting their fellow officer who was still on top of him. Mulkeen died later from his wounds.
The backup cops defense for shooting and killing their fellow officer was that they thought they were being shot at.
Then the press conferences and the headlines came in, describing it as another case of “friendly fire”
And again, the usage of an old military media spin was used to ameliorate incompetence that caused another preventable death of a police officer. Maybe the continuing militarization of the police in this city as brought about a culture that are making high brass police officials think they are generals and the local cops think of themselves as soldiers fighting in a war zone dealing with gang members and citizens as they are enemies or insurgents (considering other local precincts around the country like in Ferguson, Missouri).
And again the Mulkeen’s backup that killed him identities were kept hidden from the public and news media. Yet everything came out about the murdered suspect, his history of arrests and gang ties and that a warrant was out on him for a drug charge at the time, as it should be. (It also turned out that he was in possession of a gun, so the cops had justification to stop and question him, but it’s odd that he never used it when he was brought down by Mulkeen and instead went for the cops gun instead).
Though he NYPD and the news media’s effort to lessen the severity of incompetence fire that killed Mulkeen was sloppier this time. A few days later, they announced that they did a training video following the incompetence fire death of Officer Simonson, although cops said it wasn’t really effective. And the link to the NY Post doesn’t go to the video but to the timeline article of Simonson’s death (a Google search doesn’t even have links to it).
The “friendly fire” narrative failed to convince Leann Simonson, the widow of Officer Simonsen, who was aghast that it happened again and implored that cops need to less trigger happy and the urgent need for more firearms training (even that asshole Christopher Ransom chimed in about the incompetence fire death of Officer Mulkeen). But Mayor de Blasio immediately and arrogantly dismissed her to keep the narrative going. Which shouldn’t be a surprise since he’s a full blown advocate to keep 50a in place.
As for the cops who incompetently took out Mulkeen, their names were revealed during the weekend as the NYPD released the body cam footage of the tragic incident. Although it didn’t reveal much at all. Besides showing that there was reasonable suspicion for the stop, there is no audio from the footage of the cops cameras despite the audio from the tussle between Mulkeen and Williams that led to the friendly fusillade.
This video the NYPD released looks more opaque than transparent. It not only attempts to absolve the other cops excessive firing but also makes the rationale behind the stop open for more speculation, even though Williams ran. Yet more narrative control to whitewash a fellow cop’s killing.
When Simonson got killed, it was horribly the 20th anniversary of the killing of Amadou Diallo, shot to death by four cops who fired 41 bullets at him on the steps of his apartment building after he took out his wallet to show them his identification. The four cops thought it was a gun and got acquitted with that defense. Bruce Springsteen wrote a song about that incompetence fire mass shooting called American Skin and got defensively excoriated by the NYPD as well as other police precincts around the nation as an anti-cop anthem instead of constructive criticism about inherent racism that goes unaddressed on the force. But what was overlooked in the song was the second verse that advises a boy to respect the police (as if he has no other choice):
Lena gets her son ready for school
She says, “On these streets, Charles
You’ve got to understand the rules
If an officer stops you
Promise me you’ll always be polite
And that you’ll never ever run away
Promise Mama, you’ll keep your hands in sight”
The thing about the mass shooting incompetence fire of Amadou Diallo, an innocent man, is that all four cops names who slaughtered him were revealed to the public. At least the city run by Rudy Giuliani and enforced by Bernie Kerik were accountable to their citizens.
But under Mayor de Blasio and William Bratton and John O’Neill, the usage of 50a has become a cudgel of convenience to not only protect poorly trained police officers but also to reinforce this illusion that the NYPD is immune to error and these are just accidents that come with a risky job. As for Simonson’s fellow cops on that rainy night in Richmond Hill back in February, they all have been reassigned. Where? Who knows?
With the deaths of Simonsen and now Mulkeen, what are the lessons the NYPD themselves are going to learn if they continue to defer blame on the suspects for their own incompetence? Apparently, Mayor de Blasio and the top echelons of the NYPD are going to continue and seem to rather prefer to manufacture consent to avoid responsibility and accountability to cover their collective asses at the expense of the public’s safety…
and the safety of police officers as well.
The star of the show.New York is not only famous for being the biggest city in the world (by default, reputation and hype) but it’s also infamous for it’s potholes which manifest from time to time and also notorious for the tardiness to repair them. But decades riding (and at few occasions driving) in this big city of dreams, I don’t think I have ever seen the creative and quarter-assed way Mayor de Blasio’s Department of Transportation has displayed to remediate or even fix these blights on the roads and pavement. Especially with the usage of traffic cones.
Take the header photo of the subway grating. Clearly the hatch door is missing. Either it fell off or some enterprising derelict managed to rip it off and sold it for scrap. Or maybe by a MTA low paid contractor worker.
Despite how hideous and hazardous that looks, it doesn’t remotely compare to what the DOT is enabling or even ordering to temporarily remedy new road hazards on the streets this summer. Like this patch job on Central Park West.
Looks like something went wrong on this road here, which looks like it was milled and repaved not long ago.
Looking at this, I had thoughts of what else could be down there. Although I am partially glad that it the city affixed this hole, even if a rabbit won’t be able to make it to brunch with the Mad Hatter. Anyone could have rode over it and got a nasty flat or even ruined their wheel. Or maybe fall into another dimension or time. Other concerns I had was some sort of entity (or entities) that would rise from the depths of the netherworld like those shadows in “Ghost” or even worse a hipster version of Chutulu.
Take a look at that depth, that’s about the size of the standard foot and a half high cone that are frequently used. Usually the safety standard would entail that inverted cone and a few others to surround that hole and obviously for a work order to close the street to repair it. But now the D.O.T., which is ever so busy with other things like shutting down streets for film shoots and helping arrange fun festival weekends barring driving on weekends, is now just looking at these spooky craters and putting a big orange cork in it.
After placing a message on the city’s social media account, the void did get remedied as it got tagged for eventual repair.
They also stuffed it with what what looks like powdered sugar covered wet paper towels.
After this I thought for sure the city won’t be stupid enough to be this lazy and careless when the next hole appears. But I stood corrected and beside myself when I saw this asphalt buttplug again in Hell’s Kitchen.
This one was even worse. Fortunately this hole was actually not much of a danger to cars being that it was pass the crosswalk and away from the lane, but one could easily fall into the abyss walking, skating or riding on it. Especially when your staring at your phone screen like a stupid junkie.
To be fair, the DOT are still applying these orange cones properly for the majority of unsightly road hazards, when the holes are too big to use them as buttplugs.
Well, sometimes.
But the de Blasio’s D.O.T.’s shiftlessness is not limited to the lame efforts and solutions to warn citizens of road hazards, it also applies his Department of Environmental Protection for our dilapidated water catch basins. Especially the ones in the perpetually ignored neighborhoods in Southeast Queens.
Like this one here. This fucking wreck in South Richmond Hill has been like this for about a year. There’s suppose to be a big metal thing there on top. It’s a wonder how the city is able to lose parts like that and how mindblowing it is that they don’t immediately replace it. Supposedly some homeless people or junkies find it (or pry it out themselves) and sell it for scrap too.
This gives the impression that the city contracted Fred Flintstone’s employer Slate Quarry to renovate it.
Then there’s this abomination:
I want to mock this with another cartoon analogy but it’s just too repulsive. Fortunately, it probably will get repaired since it’s on a corner and it’s part of the citywide renovation to make them better for the handicapped.
And isn’t it nice of the de Blasio’s D.E.P. to provide a one legged girder along with a taped orange cone? It’s the equivalent of tying a string on your pinky to remember something.
It’s not the case for this cavernous basin though:
It looks like the D.E.P. noticed this too while they were still around town. So they had a spare leg, girder and orange cone to remedy any resident’s worries.
Surely, this was encouraging that remediation was on the way. But as Staten Island rock heroes Anthrax used to say…NOT!
Unfuckingbeilievable and rigoddamndiculous. The D.E.P.’s saw fit to blacktop patch the hole and reinforce it with some discarded wood and just removed the leg from the fucking girder and left it there. Yeah, that looks durable, schmucks.
Who knows what 99 cent store inspired dinky fixes this city will to do our slowly crippling infrastructure. Because potholes don’t discriminate.
From Richmond Hill in Queens
To NoMad in Manhattan
Rest assured that these holes will get the standard safety cone buttplug treatment, as it’s now being applied to broken off parking sign poles like this one:
And citizens, if you see these holes, say something about them. The city’s social media accounts do respond fast. But if results aren’t manifesting fast enough, don’t be shy to be proactive and do it yourself. How hard can it be to shove something in a disturbing looking hole.
The de Blasio D.O.T. standard street apparatuses won’t be hard to find.
Richmond Hill, Queens, N.Y.
What the hell is up with this bank? For some peculiar reason, NYCB decided to end human interaction customer and teller service at this Liberty Ave. branch back in April and has only made this bank available for ATM service. But only for withdrawals and not deposits. It’s like one of those crappy looking machines you see by bodegas or barstaurants except it’s an entire commercial storefront version of it.
And it looks super shady too, right to the blackened doors and window. With all the small businesses closing shop in the five boroughs because of exorbitant rents and taxes, this is a colossal waste of space. What was once a bank now looks like a place to score weed or a hastily improvised mafia social club. (Actually, this would have been a weed shop financed with a loan by NYCB if Cuomo and those wimps in Albany would have shown some goddamn sense and full on legalized it.)
And to top off this bizarro sight, it was just recently visited by National Grid and they left a door handle card stating that they missed their scheduled appointment! I wonder why they had to leave? Maybe it’s because there’s not a physical person working there?
I don’t know who owns this building or this commercial space, which I presume is the bank itself, but this gives off as much suspicion of malfeasance and plain bad vibes as those mailbox stores in Williamsburg, Brooklyn containing boxes rented by LLC owners of apartment buildings. And despite the little mirror and camera there, this machine will make any customer taking cash out an easy victim of a knifepoint holdup or even by some skell zipping on a scooter or bike snatching your cash out of your hands.
NYCB should close this down now or at least rent out the space for some enterprising folks, which is what I thought that they were in business for, like making loans for new businesses. Because this just looks really bad and cheap for this mostly local quasi-national bank, especially after they just lent Steve Croman millions of dollars to buy a landmark bar after he robbed them.
Hell, even another 99 cent store or barstaurant on Liberty would be a better than this money spewing hovel. As long as there are few extra people who can get jobs.
But please, not another hookah joint.
Liberty Ave. And 123rd street. Where the gilded asphalt path abruptly stops.Richmond Hill, Queens, N.Y.
A week before Halloween, an encouraging sight sprung forth to auto owners and cyclists. The decade long dilapidation of Liberty Avenue beginning at Lefferts Boulevard was about to get repaved with fresh tar and asphalt. Being a cyclist myself, it was elating to finally look forward to a smooth path and finally see the cracks and crevices produced by many winters, persistent double and triple parking and K and illegal U-turns by overtly aggressive drivers remediated.
What’s frustrating about this is that a while back the D.O.T. milled and repaved the entirety of Liberty under the elevated train from Rockaway Blvd to the last stop at Lefferts Blvd but they decided for some damn reason not to stretch out the repaving 15 blocks east to the Van Wyck Expressway to at least make it look compatible as well as prevent the road from suffering from further degradation.
But in yet another case of diminishing returns of half-ass efforts from your city, it turned out that they only repaved 2 fucking blocks.
Even more frustrating and fucking maddening is that the long overdue road repair was permitted and possibly inspired and demanded to make way for a film shoot.
A day after the repaving, film permits appeared taped on lamp posts and this parking meter here for something mysteriously titled V3. It must be some sequel of some cruddy film franchise or maybe it could be a historic film chronicling the nascent stages of the invention of V8 juice when the beverage contained only 3 vegetables.The freshly paved scenery was supervised by someone only named Rocco.
The trucks and trailers with the Jersey or Penn plates and catering truck were supposed to arrive to assemble the proverbial fourth wall for the shoot on Liberty on Monday but a strange development happened on the day that footage above was shot the day before though, all the permits were removed from said posts and meters and the producers decided to move all their rigs on 103rd avenue instead and 120 street.
The next day the catering truck moved to Liberty and two charter buses appeared buttressed by orange safety cones. The charter bus facing east and the catering truck in front of that charter bus facing west were parked on city bus stops for the Q110.
And another charter bus was parked by 103rd avenue around the corner. I assume these vehicles were the mode of transportation for all the creative forces and talent involved with this project.
And the action took place at Leo F. Kearns funeral home halfway down the block.
Spoiler alert! Someone in this movie dies!It’s been a week since this production, and being that it took two days it will probably result in a 2 minute scene. I came to this synopsis because the last few times that major shows were filmed in this enclave of Southeast Queens were HBO’s Bored to Death where they took a day to film Rushmore star Jason Schwartzman ask a cashier a question in a scene that was 10 seconds and the other was also by HBO called …the Night Of where the trailers took over 2 blocks for a good week to film some catalyst scenes for the first episode (sadly, the shows executive producer, James Gandolfini died a week after that shoot in Italy, man it would have been actually cool to bump into him).
Wait, I forgot the odious and easily hacked social media platform corporation that sold out their customers for billions of ad dollars and now government contractor Facebook filmed a show here in the springtime. At least they split so fast it was barely noticeable. Probably because they realized it wasn’t Brooklyn.
Too bad Broad City is ending, it actually would have been nice if those funny ladies stopped by and did some jokes about roti shops.
But I’m digressing, because this road upgrade was obviously done for aesthetic reasons for this V3 movie. Which gives the impression that some special tweeding went down to benefit the film industry over the needs of the driving and riding constituents and also essential bus transit service that continues to get neglected again and again. This can be verified by the I.M. exchange between Cynthia Nixon and Mayor Bill de Blasio when the failed gubernatorial candidate wanted to get her pal in City Hall to halt chopper flights over Central Park that were bothering her director pal’s Shakespeare performances there as she forwarded his complaints to him and your mayor happily and hurriedly obliged and got it done for her. It also helped that TV’s Miranda’s wife was working for Mayor Big Slow at the time as one of his advisors.
So the rest of Liberty will probably remain a broken ass mess in this broke ass city. As well the majority of streets that intersect with it and the avenues south and east of the busy avenue are in equally shitty and even worse. It doesn’t look like there is going to be any upgrade in the near future or even beyond as the new pretty, vibrant and hip burgs get nice things and the dirty southeast of Queens gets dirtier and rockier. And not to mention the massive renovation of the BQE.
And even with this sudden attention from Hollywood, which from the way this city favors this industry, has become an official citizen person of New York. At the expense of safe streets, commuting and the dwindling patience and sanity of it’s residents.
Impunity City 