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Getting a grip on city gripes
New York, New York. The BS is up and the FU is down. Traffic up/cleanliness down. Thieves are up/work is down. Cannabis up/groceries down. Prices up, but inventory down. Schooling up/books down. Pupils are up/teachings down. Fake diamonds are up/real diamonds are down. Rents are up/apartments are down. Citizens are up/the mayoralty DOWN.
Cars up. Bicycles way the hell up. Inhabitants up/laws down. Big stores closed. Trash is way up. Trash stays up. Movies open, nobody cares. Broadway open, so who cares. Hospitals crowded/nobody working. Walking streets late at night? NOBODY. Taking subway late at night? Nearly nobody.
But hey, enough knocking New York. You out-of-towners prefer Kansas? Wherever’s Arkansas? Or what’s called Wyoming? So go. Enjoy. Mazel tov.
Minute we discover where those places are, we’ll help get you there. Nobody’s standing in your way.
Manhattan, the busiest place in the world. Where something is always happening. Even though most of it gets unsolved.
Our once free and easy God-Bless-Us-America? Founded on nationalism, allegiance, flag-waving, loyalty and public fervor — even though our teeny Hizzoner might try to shrivel it down to teensy tiny.
He hates rich, hates big apartments, slow bicycles, other religions and mutters our city isn’t always friendly. Wrong. Where else can a mugger knock you down, heist your wallet then tell you, “Have a nice day!”?
Dining with a verse-atile killer
I’ve seen other countries — other circumstances. Maybe not great guys — but I’ve seen it. Years back I interviewed Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic. Later sentenced to life in prison. Guilty of ethnic cleansing and war crimes in Srebrenica. A $10 million contract on his head.
He arrived here 5 a.m. with two dozen guys brandishing Uzis. His hotel refused him. He then took an entire floor at another unthrilled hotel. Our State Department allowed him only a 10-block radius. Lunch was a nearby Chinese restaurant. And I was with him.
He said: “I lived in this wonderful city ’74 to ’75 studying poetry at Columbia. I had no money. I lived in a dirty West Side hotel with roaches. Now I want to revisit Central Park, Riverside Drive . . . and have a hamburger.”
His wife then hit the pharmacy, filling huge shopping bags with aspirin, Band-Aids, Advil, Sudafed, salves for cuts, stuff for stopped-up noses — and then boarded their own plane for home.
Toeing the line
Things happen in NYC that don’t elsewhere. Before Camilla became Britain’s queen-lite she visited here. We talked. She told me: “People don’t really think about it but it’s difficult standing on lines and shaking hands. Your feet hurt. Your toes get cramped. First thing I do when His Majesty and I finally get home? I immediately throw my shoes off and go barefoot.”
I mean, an aging senior semi-royal schlepping up and down the British throne barefoot? Somehow you never think of Her aging Majesty Queen Victoria hopping around Buckingham in slip-ons.
Listen, the CIA is confident that those who don’t like us will never ever never bomb Washington — or New York. Why? They wouldn’t want to end our confusion.