Posts Tagged → NYC
New York City is dangerous and dirty
In the past three years I have had the unhappy necessity of visiting Manhattan a number of times for business and family. Last June was the last time I went, and hopefully the last time I have to be there until the place is cleaned up from top to bottom.
Last June I took the pickup to move our daughter out. She lived in New York City for eight years, from undergrad through dental school, and until the last couple of years she enjoyed her experience tremendously. But when we had loaded the last of her things into the bed of the truck, she got into the cab and said “I can’t wait to leave Manhattan. It’s so sad, because I used to love this place. But now it is dangerous and dirty and I want out. Let’s go.”
Manhattan is now looking like its worst days back in the 1970s and 1980s before Rudy Giuliani was elected mayor. Trash is blowing around everywhere, thugs hang out and loiter and saunter along every street and park bench, homeless bums are living in the parks and on building steps. People are being attacked on the sidewalks by demented mental patients prematurely released before their treatments are completed. People exit a restaurant and are immediately punched, kicked, and robbed by young people who laugh about it.
The police do nothing about this dangerous chaos because the Manhattan district attorney believes that holding criminals accountable for their violence and destruction is somehow mean, or wrong. And so the criminals now rule the streets, as an official policy.
The old Diamond District on 47th Street is a shell of its former self. A thousand years of jewelry making and watch making and world class talent all concentrated into one city block is now gone, because some communist in power decided that all this material excess violated some notion of “equity,” and so the jewelers and watchmakers were driven out. It is a sad ghost town now.
An old friend of mine who lives in Manhattan complained about how her own restaurants, which her architect husband had designed, and into which she had invested great amounts of time and money, were torched and looted in the riots of 2020. When I asked her if this destruction was a result of political failure, she went straight to blaming the Bad Orange Man. Who does not live in NYC, was not on city council or mayor of said city, and who had no control over the policing of Manhattan’s streets. It is impossible for me to understand the mental state of a person who appears sane but who reflexively blames their own mistakes on someone hundreds of miles away with no involvement in the matters that have made said person so unhappy.
So long as the citizens of New York City continue to believe they can vote for self-destructive policies and for the political candidates who promote them, and yet expect a different outcome than the mess we see, then Manhattan will continue to descend into madness and filth.
Making matters worse, the prior administration of mayor “Bill DeBlasio” (this is his fictitious name), had embarked on one of those “It only makes sense on paper and in terms of vague feelings” massive landscape changes. Such as turning streetside parking all over the city into un-used bike-only lanes and on-street dining for restaurants. Even going so far as to fill in empty spaces where people used to park with gigantic flower pots and concrete containers. Anything to make NYC unfriendly to car drivers.
This makes no sense, because Americans in general and visitors to New York City in particular still drive cars. But such is the power of blind ideology: “Because all cars are bad, then places to park cars must also be bad.” This is crazy stuff, and it has resulted in a congested city being even more congested, even less user friendly and less accessible than it used to be. Which was difficult enough. If this gigantic failure is how you measure success, then further natural failures will continue to follow. As we see even right now today, failure is considered success in Manhattan.
I am glad I do not live there and don’t have to go there.
The concrete planters need a place to park where cars should be able to park. Because “cars are bad”
Median areas that used to offer car parking and delivery vehicle offloading are now clogged with concrete in order to stop “bad cars”
Rental bikes lined up in the most expensive and colorful virtue signal possible. No one uses these. But someone somewhere feels good about the symbolism
An empty and unused bike lane where cars used to park. Cars still need parking spaces, but don’t expect to find them in Manhattan, where virtue signaling is most important
Go ahead and make sense of NYC’s parking regulations. Try.
Restaurants have fully enclosed “outdoor” dining in the street, where cars used to drive and park. The cars still need to drive and park. Just more congestion and more exhaust fumes trying to navigate all the pointless virtue signaling
All lives matter, the law matters, civilization matters, running water matters
Watching so-called “peaceful protesters” burn down a bunch of American cities and demand to eliminate city police departments, in the name of God-knows-what anarchy, is no laughing matter. Because all lives matter, regardless of skin color, religion, political views, sex, etc. Everyone is created in the image of God and each American has the same rights as anyone else.
The scenes of anarchy and assaults on every aspect of American civilization are pretty confounding. After all, we Americans have the best quality of life in the world (Starbucks on every corner, a smart phone in every hand etc.). One of the cornerstones of our amazing quality of life is the law, the idea that there are parameters on personal behavior. Destruction, looting, thievery, violence, are all no-nos in every civilization; it is just that in America we have refined the art of enforcing the law down to a very fine science. Having that ability to solve most crimes really creates a high quality society.
That refinement is what American civilization runs on. That attention to detail is what gives our civilization such unfailing public services as clean running public water.
Now all of this approach to life, every bit of it and so much more, is up for grabs, as the Democrat Party seeks to create as much chaos, destruction, and unhappiness as they possibly can before the November election. What happens if the big cities do, in fact, disband their police forces? What if Joe Biden becomes president and says “You are right, no more applying the law, no more criminal prosecutions. Go ahead and do whatever you want to whomever you want, and there will be no consequences.”
We know what will happen, because we are already seeing it happen in places like Detroit and New York City – where the public drinking water supplies are polluted by a lack of government diligence in Detroit, and the wanton destruction of the world’s greatest city economy through simple public fear of being attacked and robbed in public in NYC. People can’t work, can’t live. So there are consequences for failure, it is just that failure is not a problem for liberals, because they keep re-electing the same failed liberal politicians. That is because liberals are now getting what they have been after, what they have said they were after, for fifty years: Revolution, and all of the destruction that comes with it. It really does not bother them.
Last week I communicated with a dear friend living in New York City. We have cared for one another as close friends for 30-some years. She owns restaurants; her husband is a successful architect. They have made good money from the American entrepreneurial system, and enjoyed all of the culture and opportunity NYC can offer. After expressing to me her shock and horror at how her neighborhood had been destroyed by wanton looting, she then said she would continue to support the politicians who allow this to happen, so long as it means opposing Donald Trump.
So there you have it, the befuddled mindset of a highly educated, highly successful business person on the Left: Winning at any cost, even if it means literally burning down America, including their own neighborhood. Including drinking polluted water. Heck, the cities with the biggest police problems are all liberal – ultra-liberal Minneapolis is where George Floyd died, at the hands of a liberal police officer. There was nothing new there. Liberals keep voting for failure; even when liberalism destroys everything they care about, liberals still keep voting for it.
It takes an all-America person to say All Lives Matter in this situation, because it is such an obviously needed reminder of how our American civilization really works, and what is needed to run it successfully at all levels. America is always all-hands-on-deck. It always has been a community-based nation. Everyone has to participate, at every level, for America to run right. We have to get personally involved, and we can’t let someone else vote for us, or make decisions for us. It is the little things that have always made America run well. Like the way in which a local school has classes that monitor public water quality, or how some segments of American society are having such difficulty succeeding that local clothing and food banks are set up to help them.
All of that is being tossed out right now, in favor of God knows what. When we see that God-knows-what destructive insanity, we have to remind ourselves that All Lives Matter. We have to take care of each other. Every one of us is important.
So toss out the anarchy and destruction, the artificial divisiveness. Embrace your community, and the law, and your neighbors. You will, we all will, be happier for it. America will be better for it.
p.s. originally I was inclined to write an essay entitled “Democrat Party: Make America into Mogadishu,” and I still might. But the crazy un-American violence happening around our great nation made me feel sad, and I wanted to say something that might remind someone, somewhere, of all the good this nation has achieved, so that they might aim for that, instead of supporting the violence that separates us from one another.
My 2019 resolution: Not going pee with the ladies
Last night we were celebrating the incoming New Year with friends at a hotel in New York City. Lot of fun, beautiful time of year and place, great, friendly people and beloved old friends.
…and then I had to pee…
Discharging excess fluid is how a healthy mammal’s body works any day, and especially after copious intake. So, I feel the urge, stand up from the table, ask a friendly staff person about the location of the toilet, and receive clear directions. So far so good.
One of Western Civilization’s chief accomplishments is ubiquitous flush toilets. They even come with sinks and hand towels. They are generally clean, tidy, and hygienic, certainly compared to a hole in the floor like you will find the world over. This particular hotel is quite nice, and had all kinds of nice little “extras” about for guests, and it stood to reason that my bathroom experience would be top quality.
Nope.
This is in NYC, a major locus of PC crazy, and it turns out that simply going pee in the homeland of PC crazy results in a crazy pee experience.
I approached the bathroom door and noticed beautiful and often scantily clad women coming and going through that door. Then a well dressed young man entered. The see-through door is labeled “EVERY BODY.”
My inner dinosaur screamed “No f*ing way!” as my feet reflexively stumbled backwards. I may have suffered a brief infarct. Maybe a meteor hit Earth or my head at that moment, too. Reality wheeled around me, and I had an out-of-body feeling.
The kindly young bathroom concierge standing nearby smiled knowingly and said, “there’s a men’s room downstairs, here let me show you,” and he accompanied me downstairs to a glittering bathroom that said “MEN” on the opaque glass and brass door.
This was what I had hoped for: Urinals for guys to stand over, breath mints and mouth wash on the spotless counter, stalls with doors giving enough privacy for guys going #2 or even amorous couples to do their business without interference or observation. A typical nice Men’s room. Natural boundaries. Privacy for men, to be men.
After emptying my body’s excess water tank, I washed up, went back upstairs, and walked past the Chaos & Bizarro anti-civilization bathroom, shown in these photos. Young men and women were still entering and exiting simultaneously, and as a result I made my first and likely only 2019 New Year’s resolution: I will not use a Chaos & Bizarro dual-sex bathroom.
Nope.
I like my high civilization and I intend to keep it. One pee at a time.
A plea for a small slice of reality
Marketing hype for any and all kinds of products has resulted in any and all kinds of hilarity, humor, bloopers, and ironies.
Hype, by its nature, kind of skirts facts and embellishes upon irrelevancies. Thus does hype almost inevitably lead to unintentional silliness.
For whatever reason, the outdoor sports are loaded with marketing hype.
Trail cameras are notoriously both marked by near-claims of X-Ray vision and simultaneous failures to perform their most basic functions.
Clothing that keeps your funky, unwashed armpits from making deer say “Uncle!” is another proven fraud.
The list goes on. I won’t belabor the list.
What really irks me are the male and female models used to promote outdoor gear, and specifically I mean hunting gear.
Cabelas, Bass Pro, Eddie Bauer, LL Bean, and many advertisers in Field & Stream magazine all use models for hunting gear who look nothing like hunters.
Probably universally, the guys are either effeminate, urban, slender professional model hipsters from NYC with a day-old facial hair growth, or they are occasionally hunting “stars” whose annoying braggadocio, bravado, machismo, and one-dimensional arrogance inspires mostly dismissiveness.
Neither of these model types fit the mold or image of real world hunters. Like me, probably you.
For example, I’m well overweight and struggle to make time to exercise, because being a husband, father, and small business owner all preclude time for developing hour-long fitness routines and pumped biceps.
And neither I nor any of my friends aspire to look effete, lanky, or effeminate. Our problem is probably that we don’t spend enough time cultivating our looks, complexions, or clothing fit, because these are unimportant sideshows in a life of meaning and real substance.
Hunting is, after all, about woodcraft, a conservation ethic, stealth, mastering one’s emotions, mastering firearms and bows, teaching our kids these skill sets with patience and love, and so on. Studly macho guys would be quickly drummed out of every group I hunt with. Hunting has zero to do with being macho.
So a simple plea here for reality: Use models who look like us Average Joes. We are much more likely to be interested in your products when you use people who actually look like us. Sinewy urban guys struggling to look male don’t interest us, and selfish guys who wear tinted contact lenses and who spend time on their biceps instead of their community don’t interest us, either.
Trading terrorists for a traitor
Accentuating a disastrous foreign policy that has damaged America’s standing more than any past efforts from outside the nation, traitor Bo Bergdahl is traded to America for five dangerous, proven Afghan terrorists kept at Camp Guantanamo.
That is, America took back a guy who abandoned his comrades and hates America, and in turn reduced the inmate population at Guantanamo. Those inmates will go directly back to Afghanistan, be welcomed as heroes, and they’ll promptly begin killing and maiming civilians and American soldiers.
American soldiers?! US Marines?! you ask.
Yes, Bush’s War became Obama’s War years ago. And it continues, without a shred of outrage from the artificial opposition that plagued America during the Bush administration. Obama maintains thousands of military personnel in Afghanistan, with restrictive rules of engagement, unable to defend themselves, sitting ducks for the five super bad guys Obama just released.
Obama is in good company in his hate for the US military. Dan Dromm, NYC council member, wants JROTC out of taxpayer – funded schools. Dromm calls JROTC “part of a war machine.”
Mmm hmmmm. The same ‘machine’ that has been protecting Dromm, Obama, and the rest of the unappreciative traitors running various parts of America.
Could we not have included Dromm in the Bergdahl trade, too? That way we could have leavened the bad foreign policy with good domestic policy. Deporting traitors like Dromm counts as awesome domestic policy.
You call that a scandal? I’ll show you a scandal
New Jersey governor Chris Christie is rightly under fire for shutting down eastbound traffic lanes across the George Washington Bridge into NYC.
Emails, texts, and other sources used by Christie’s senior staff paint an unflattering picture of a guy using every means possible to punish politicians, and citizens, who don’t do what he wants. Like endorse him for reelection. It’s criminal behavior on its face and also because at least one person died due to traffic backups and slow ambulance service.
Amazing now how the American media is buzzing with this scandal, but the deadly Benghazi scandal (abandonment of US personnel and subsequent coverup of their cruel deaths) and the criminal IRS political scandal (destruction of elementary Constitutional principles in government behavior) are nearly off the media’s radar. Where’s the buzz about these huge scandals? Where are the public demands for justice, the mocking, the sneers, the tongue-clucking among network news anchors that they now employ against Christie?
On one hand, we have a scandal about traffic. On the other hand, we have multiple scandals about earth-shaking abuse of power, criminal negligence, undermining of the Constitution that holds America together and guarantees citizen rights. It’s impossible to justify reporting on the bridge, but not on Benghazi, IRS, US Dept. of Justice malfeasance, etc.
I regularly listen to NPR radio, and this double standard was especially strong there, as would be expected.
This double standard, or political activism masquerading as journalism, is just one more example of how the national media have abandoned their watchdog role and are now partisan cheerleaders.
According to the establishment media, Obama can’t do anything wrong; Republicans can’t do anything right. It’s shameful and all the more reason for new, additional fair and balanced news outlets. It’s why citizen reporters are the real journalists.
Curious things afoot in our American republic
Some time ago, actually not too long by the measure of human history, Communists, Capitalists, and Fascists fought each other in the streets of Weimar Germany.
Each fought for what they believed in. What the Fascists and the Communists believed in was equal amounts of totalitarian evil, served up slightly differently. Only the capitalists had a track record, and it was a successful one that had led Germany to a place of such prominence and financial success that human nature and poor judgment had then sought to use those riches for imperial gain and human subjugation.
Weimar Germany was bad for every German. What naturally followed on its heels – Nazi Germany’s National Socialism – was bad for the entire world.
Capitalism creates such great wealth, across such a large number of people, that like bees to honey, the evil inclination of human nature is drawn to it with bad intentions.
Politicians of all stripes cannot keep their hands off of the private money created through capitalism. Whether it’s high taxes to fund government grants to preferred political allies, or outright confiscation/ theft and wealth redistribution, politicians always seek to appropriate capitalist success for their own careers and their own ends.
Yesterday I had the unfortunate experience of watching New York City’s new mayor, Bill deBlasio, get sworn in. De Blasio is a kook, a radical whose communist views are well known. No one can predict for certain what will befall the Big Apple after one term of his management, but it probably won’t be pleasant to watch from Pennsylvania (he is first-off aiming to end the handsome cab business, where tourists get pulled around in horse-drawn carriages in Central Park). And my New York friends will probably suffer significant losses to their home values, businesses, and other investments they have made in the area. Wealth would naturally flee de Blasio’s presence.
One cannot help but be intrigued by the similarity between Weimar Germany’s otherwise unremarkable circumstances, and those America is sliding into today: High unemployment, sliding currency value, inflation, and increasingly hot friction wherever mutually exclusive political interests collide.
Human history repeats itself so often that it’s both kind of silly to even suggest that America will become another Weimar Germany, and it is also silly to blow it off and pretend it isn’t happening.
De Blasio has his sights set on other people’s private wealth, and he is likely to lose a great number of wealthy people from NYC as a result. What is more worrisome is the friction that will arise and ripple out as he presses forward and is met with the natural resistance reasonable people expect to greet thievery.
“Income inequality” is his byword, and it’s just another way of saying he’s going to steal from the makers and give to lazy takers, using the coercive power of government force and threat of loss of liberty for dissenters. Other politicians are watching de Blasio, and they have already signaled their inclinations to follow his lead in their local venues.
It is difficult to imagine a more explosive arrangement or set of circumstances. Once again, one is reminded of either the 19-teens and 1920s, or even the 1850s in America. Such incompatible political philosophies are afoot, banging into one another, and one must win, and one must lose.
I hope de Blasio loses. I hope. To think otherwise is to be against the very American republic that first created the wealth he is now after.