We recently pointed out a major mistake made on NBC national news. This time, ABC news made a gaffe in the form of a typo.
Everyone makes mistakes. The more important observation is that the large reduction in staff that ABC and others have made may very well have reduced the levels of redundancy and protection that would have caught such a mistakes. The traditional forms of news are changing rapidly.
In an alarming anecdote supporting the notion that Americans have no concept how much the government is spending, NBC news mistakenly confused $900 Billion with $900 Trillion when describing the healthcare reform cost.
Construction on Route 9A, also known as The West Side Highway, and closure of the pedestrian bridge south of Albany Street have created a very dangerous situation. The ground-level crossing of The West Side Highway at Albany Street can be a death trap.
In February of 2009, Battery Park City resident Marilyn Feng was killed and her boyfriend seriously injured when a drunk driver struck the couple. Ms. Feng was an intern in Manhattan Borough president Scott Stringer’s office. In late September of 2009, another pedestrian was struck by a motorist, but he survived.
Funding for the permanent pedestrian overpass has been cancelled. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer discusses the problem.
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.
In what could be the print newspaper mistake of the decade so far, on February 18th, the Wall Street Journal posted a photo of Tiger Woods jogging. However, they cropped the wrong person and posted a white person in the print edition. The online version had the correct entire photo with Tiger and this anonymous jogging companion.
Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer discusses his “Kill the Drill” campaign to not allow near New York City’s source of water in Upstate NY a water-polluting method of drilling natural gas called hydro-fracture drilling.
This weekend, on a survey of more than five hotel bars, regular bars, and restaurant bars in Bowery, SOHO and Tribeca, all of the establishments shut down no later than 2:00 AM despite having plenty of customers. What is the explanation for this seemingly voluntary forfeiting of lucrative revenue?
The answer lies in a citywide effort to limit hours of operation of liquor-licensed establishments using Community Boards as the tool. This article written in 2008 explains it well.
2 a.m. Closing Time Becoming Norm for Manhattan Bars
When Hog Pit co-owner Felisa Dell sent an email to Eater on April 7th confirming the closure of her Meatpacking District BBQ joint, she insinuated that “the mayor and the State Liquor Authority are now only issuing Liquor Licenses until 2 a.m. It’s very sneaky, but in 5 years the 4 a.m. liquor license will be a thing of the past, without any community input.” Today the NY Sun backs Dell up, reporting that many Manhattan bar owners are finding it “nearly impossible to open new nightlife establishments that are permitted to serve alcohol until 4 a.m.”
While the New York State Liquor Authority can’t arbitrarily impose a specific closing time before 4 a.m., Community Boards have been demanding bar owners agree to curfews before they recommend approval to the SLA. The Sun looked at the most recent records available from Community Board 3, which covers the East Village and the Lower East Side, and found that not a single liquor license recommendation was granted to a bar that would close after 3 a.m. on weekends and 2 a.m. on weekdays.
And in Tribeca, Community Board 1 killed Matthew Piacentini’s plans to open a lounge in a commercial building on Hudson Street by telling him he’d have to close at midnight on weekdays and 1 a.m. on weekends. The early closing times are a big problem for bar owners; a recent survey found that 58% of their revenues are earned between those magical hours of 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. These are also the hours when some of us lose 58% of our dignity, so maybe it’s all for the best?
On the evening of November 9th, at the corner of Battery Place and West Thames, construction crew began to jackhammer up a ditch in the road related to Con Edison gas lines. The work was non-emergent. The crew foreman claimed that they had a permit to jackhammer until 10:00 PM. He refused to give the name of his construction company.
To say the least, the South half of Battery Park City was outraged by the noise. This is in addition to the daily earthquake-inducing noise from the pile driving machines over at the Route 9A “Tire Swing Park” construction.
A new report out indicates that the real number of people living in poverty is far great than the government estimates. Covering the story, ABC Nightly News featured a Los Angeles shelter becoming overwhelmed with homeless.
It is being reported that Wall Street is expected to pay out the largest total in salaries ever: more than $140 Billion. This will, of course, directly impact the struggling NYC economy.
Matt Fenton has an interesting article in the Broadsheet about how State and City employees are parking their cars in no-parking zones on West Thames. The cars post government affiliations on their dashboard to avoid getting ticketed. Some use handicap passes.
The controversy is whether these car operators are really on government jobs and really handicapped or are just abusing the system while regular Joe’s like us get expensive tickets on the other side of the street.
As an update, we did notice this handicapped car was ticketed.
The other shoe to drop for New York City will be the massive rate of defaults on commercial real estate loans. Up to a trillion dollars in loans could go unpaid within the next year or two. Will lenders renegotiate or will they evict all of the businesses in those buildings causing an even great unemployment problem and tax revenue shortage?
The WSJ has an interesting article about how hotels were caught at the worst time taking out large loans to renovate right before the economic collapse of lat 2007 through 2009. They focus on the Hawaiian hotel market as an example, but the data are relevant to New York City.
The Tribeca Trib is reporting that famed chef David Bouley has not paid rent on one of his buildings that was supposed to be a restaurant but was cancelled due to the NYC depression. In addition, one his other restaurants around the corner, Secession, has been gone out of business.
The NY Times has a story about how so many ground level retail stores are empty in NYC that the landlords have turned to painting art on the walls to downplay the depressing sights.
In the News | admin | 
March 10, 2010 1:00 am | 
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