"I Hate You All," Admits Mayor

IT WAS A banner week for Mayor Bloomberg, who time and again was able to showcase his finest bitchy, contemptuous and vindictive qualities.

Things began at a press conference on Monday, when the mayor was asked about complaints that the ticket prices at the newly refurbished Museum of Modern Art were too expensive. Before explaining that MoMA was a private institution and that the city had nothing to do with setting ticket prices-or that museum admission was free on Friday evenings-the multibillionaire had this advice for those less than affluent New Yorkers who still might want to get some culture for themselves or their children:

"Some things people can afford, some things people can't."

He further advised those same art-starved but poor New Yorkers that if they can't afford the admission at one museum, they can just "go to another one."

Later that day, the subject was the recent explosion in sex shops throughout the West Village. To some, the porn emporiums are "exploiting" a loophole in the city's anti-sex laws. There's no denying, however, that they're still operating in accordance with the laws as they stand-and the fact that so many of them are popping up would seem to indicate that there is a demand for such operations within Manhattan.

The mayor made it clear, however, that he intends to put a stop to that, even if it means bending the law himself. He freely admitted that the city has been hitting these shops with petty fine after petty fine-for everything from (as reported on NY1) not having enough soap in the bathrooms to not having bright enough bulbs in their "exit" signs.

"What we can do," the mayor said, "is try to use whatever tools we have to make it as uncomfortable, expensive-whatever word you want to use-for these sex shops, and hopefully they'll go away."

(Whatever word we want to use? How about "harassment"?)

Several weeks ago, our charming leader even made sure that the number-one quality-of-life complaint among New Yorkers-car alarms-continued to hold that top spot by vetoing City Council's bill to ban them. When word came through that the Council had overwhelmingly overridden his veto, the mayor responded by throwing a rock at a delivery boy on Broadway, then kicking a dachshund.