Say goo’bye to my leetle friend

October 13, 2009

Wasting no time, the DOT began construction on the new “Tire Swing Park” preventing any further delays from opposition groups. The current estimated budget is approximately $9 Million for the project. Despite opposition from residents, the project is proceeding with “Plan A” which cuts down all of the trees and has the maximal loss of grass field space to make way for the “Pataki Promenade” granite walkway parallel to the West Side Highway Route 9A.

The project is scheduled to be completed by Memorial Day, 2010. Near-term upside to the plan is that it will greatly expand the space allotted to the community gardens and level the grass playing field. The major downside to the plan, and reason for opposition from parents, is the loss of the large pear trees that provide great shade, and the down time from construction, of course.

Misguided Gothamist article critical of the NYPD dealing with skateboarders

December 26, 2010

The Gothamist is an online blog about New York City news and events. They quite often have good posts. However, we noted one recent post that was misguided, and unfortunately represents the views of many.

The Gothamist posted a picture of several NYPD officers scolding teenage skateboarders, and suggested that the police were being overbearing with the title, “How many cops need to talk to skateboarding kids?”. The assumption was that skateboarders are harmless nuisances. Per our previous reporting, this is not the case.

These gangs of underage skateboarders have started to maraud the city and cause physical violence. They taunt adults and exploit the fact that adults are limited legally in their ability to lay hands on underage kids (see video).

BatteryPark.TV caught one gang beating up a hot dog vendor. Earlier, a teenage victim on South End Avenue was beaten with a pipe by a group identified as teens from Brooklyn (not confirmed). More recently, a large adult male Parks Conservancy officer was struck over the head with a skateboard has he tried to address a small gang on the esplanade by the Hudson River.

The NYPD officers in this Gothamist photo were properly lecturing the group and attempting to dissuade them from further menacing behavior. Arrest, summons, and shows of force like this are effective means of deterring teenage criminal behavior and should be appreciated by the citizens of NYC.

Denis Leary in BPC

April 23, 2010

The FX show “Rescue Me”, starring Denis Leary, was filming on South End Avenue by the WFC 1 entrance. The Director was nice enough to allow us to film them as they shot a scene.

Time for Time to go away

December 15th, 2010

It’s that time of the year again; when the old print media issues bogus awards. It starts with the People Magazine “Sexiest Man Alive” award, which rarely coincides with actual public opinion. Then, Time Magazine inundates the web with “Best of” lists, culminating in the Time “Person of the Year” award. Whoopee!

With the demise of Newsweek, US News and World Report, and many other print magazines, Time remains one of the few standing in print form. If it were not for the backing of its large parent company, Time too would have bitten the dust.

In order to garner attention, Time has been selecting increasingly controversial people to be “Person of the Year”. The tabloid used to go for the politically esoteric oddball choice like “The Whistleblowers” of 2002, “Vladimir Putin” of 2007, or who can forget, the “You” of 2006. Now, as the revenue of Time Magazine dries up, desperate times mean the outlet is reaching for the masses; no more highbrow tooting falootin’ stuff.

This year, Time went for maximum mass appeal and picked the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, as “Person of the Year”. Mr. Zuckerberg has been on a whirlwind public relations character-repair blitz this year. It started ahead of the film “Social Network” that portrayed him as an unlikable thief of intellectual property. He then adorned the stage of Oprah, with a bogus donation of $100 Million to Newark, New Jersey schools, contingent upon many things, including the broke city matching the funds. Then, and only then, would the opaque donation be delivered years later.

More recently, Mr. Zuckerberg and his PR firm tried to gain similar press by claiming that he was giving away the majority of his wealth to philanthropy, along with true billionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. This imaginary wealth that Mr. Zuckerberg is giving away is based on his private equity shares in Facebook, which are worthless until there is an IPO. The IPO has not happened. Moreover, the entire business plan of Facebook will go down the drain if the FCC and congress institute laws prohibiting the gathering of personal information of online users and selling it to marketers.

Yet Time Magazine chose Mr. Zuckerberg to be Person of the Year. To be sure, 2010 was the year that Facebook gained critical mass, at least in the press. If one believes the Facebook-supplied data, “500 Million users” are on Facebook, and an Academy Award film is based on his life. However, who are just some of the people that were far more popular and/or important this year?

A creepy skinny guy named Julian Assange succeeded in taking on the most powerful country the world has ever seen, rightly or wrongly, and has made possible for other internet hackers to do the same thing. Foreign policy will never be the same. If information is power, then the small individual gained leverage against the countries that own the militaries.

The Tea Party, or better yet, the pissed-off-struggling-regular-dudes, who were responsible for the landslide midterm elections were also a wee bit more important than Mark Zuckerberg.

How about the leaders of Greece, Ireland, or the UK trying to implement austerity and salvage the Euro? Those men and women were covered more in the press and were more relevant than Mr. Zuckerberg.

Public relations firms have a strong influence in who is named “Sexiest” or “Person of the Year”. Mark Zuckerberg likely transferred some of his wealth through middlemen PR firms to garner this award. Anyone who does not believe that assertion can contact us for some hot CDO’s packaged in a financial instrument called Abacus to purchase. We also have a bridge from London in our inventory.

Time Magazine has become a tabloid now, struggling for readership and advertising revenue. The lists that it spews out with ever increasing volume are irrelevant. It is time for Time to go away.

BPTV discusses Goldman Sachs on Fox Business

Unemployment and job creation via small business assistance is now the Obama administration’s top priority in the public arena and has been a concern for more than a year. Realizing this last November, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, chose small business support as the topic for a public relations move to counter the populace outrage over bankers being focused mostly on Goldman Sachs and AIG. He issued a statement that some in the press called a mea culpa, and paired it with a $500 Million gesture to the community called the “10,000 Small Business Initiative”. The plan was to give $300 Million in aid to small business as loans or grants, and $200 Million was to go to educational centers to help teach about “Business and Management Education”.

Whatever became of the “10,000 small business initiative”? Being located near both the old and new Goldman Sachs headquarters, BatteryPark.TV (BPTV) decided to investigate. Were the funds distributed properly, or at all? Have any small businesses received loans to date? BPTV spoke to Fox Business about this story.