A tale of two cities. NY under Michael Bloomberg.
We left Brooklyn for Vermont just ahead of the blizzard on Sunday.
We got back last night.
Brooklyn is snow bound. So is Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island.
The Q, which is the train that runs through the heart of Brooklyn, hasn’t run since Sunday night. For people who need to get to work, who don’t get paid if they don’t, this is the problem.
As we walked around Park Slope last night, only the main streets were plowed. Every residential block had two to three feet of snow from curb to curb.
Last night I watched one young guy shovel the snow out from around his car. He had no chance of moving it for days. I think he was just bored. It now sits in what looks like a moon crater.
These scenes are repeated in all part of this city. Except for the upper east side. The home of Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
By now, everyone has seen the NY Times photo of the way Mayor Bloomberg’s block looked the Monday morning after the storm.
“It looks like August,” one New Yorker told me.
One theory going around is that this is the city workers getting back at the Mayor for budget cuts and layoffs.
But for a mayor who has tried to create the image of the uber manager, this is a deep blow from which he may not recover.
True. He isn’t running for mayor again. But most agreed he had plans for 2012. Any opponent of his need just run the photo of his block from Monday morning.
The thing is that this whole post blizzard fiasco lays bare what parents, teachers and students have said for ten years. Only now the entire city must endure Bloomberg’s alleged managerial skills.
School critics of the Mayor would argue that you can’t treat schools like a business. But the fact is that treating anything like a business is tough luck for the working folks of Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island.
It’s fine for the folks on the upper east side. It always has been. It sucks for everyone else.
