The Mail
1.5% For MayorBrodeur.org
After being screened by the five-county panel, Michael Bloomberg received over 94% of the vote; Chris Brodeur received 1.5%.
Cathy L. Stewart, Chair, New York County Independence Party
Auto Asphyxiation
Re: "More Boots on the Ground" (The News Hole, 6/8): It is true that sidewalk congestion is our organization's number one issue, and we welcome your drawing attention to that fact. But you are wrong that we are "lacking any leadership from City Hall" on this issue. From day one DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall has not only been actively exploring solutions, but has put her money (and effort) where her mouth is.
Four years ago DOT, as part of a Times Square traffic-calming initiative, banned a number of vehicular turns and widened a number of sidewalks using temporary materials. In the last year alone, the administration allocated $10 million to permanently widen the sidewalks and put $2.5 million toward the renovation and expansion of our signature public space-Duffy Square. Do we always agree with the City when it comes to every traffic measure or proposal? Of course not. But the truth is that Commissioner Weinshall and others in the administration are not just talking the talk, they're walking the walk.
P.S. Please do something about those plastic news boxes that are multiplying like rabbits, ok?
Tim Tompkins, President Times Square Alliance
The editors reply: We'll get rid of the boxes when you bring back the Selwyn Theater and burn down the ESPN restaurant.
Dear Aaron Naparstek: As one of those car service fucks trying to make a living, I want to apologize for my colleague who so disturbed your morning ride. I have a question for you: What legislative, police or vigilante action would it take to get bicycle-riding fucks like you to obey traffic laws? You're lucky it wasn't me in that car. After beating you within a 1/4 inch of your life and making you eat your bicycle, I would have had you locked up for assault. Enjoy your morning rides, asshole.
NAME WITHHELD, Brooklyn
Many thanks to Aaron Naparstek for his forceful response to the ill effects of the automobile, in this case incessant and needless horn honking ("Locked Horns," 6/1). For too long, we have considered the car's everyday nuisances and very real physical threats to simply be part of the price of admission for living in modern industrialized society. Since we experience these threats individually and are physically separated from the perpetrators, we generally suffer in silence or agree to ignore them. Like spousal abuse 50 years ago, that silence precludes any kind of collective response.
Every time we hear a blaring horn, see a car turning toward us in an intersection, or breathe polluted air, the quality of our lives is diminished. Like Mr. Naparstek, maybe it's time for all of us to get a little madder.
Jeff Prant, Brooklyn
There's Something Above Harlem?
The chart on page 13 accompanying the Jim Knipfel's article "Alas, Babylon" (6/8) incorrectly states that Malcolm X was assassinated in Harlem. In fact, Malcolm X was killed in the Audubon Ballroom on the corner of 165th Street and Broadway, diagonally across the street from the apartment I was living in at the time.
That neighborhood was then, and is still, Washington Heights. Ever since the assassination, numerous news outlets, including the networks, have reported that Malcolm X was killed in Harlem.
A black leader is murdered while speaking in uptown Manhattan, it must have been Harlem, 'cause after all, isn't that all there is above Columbia?
Ernie Hinrichsen II, Manhattan
Jim Returns-On A Chariot Of Evil!
Jim Knipfel correctly identifies and justifiably mourns the "blandification" of New York over the years, as observed by many long-time residents ("Alas, Babylon," 6/8).
However, in asking if the cleaner New York is no longer evil enough for Satan, he misses one perspective: The new, sleek, "corporatized" city represents evil on a grander, more ominous scale than any tired-old strip joint in Times Square ever could.
Karen Rizvi, Brooklyn
Bravo on Jim Knipfel's interview with Peter Gilmore ("Alas, Babylon," 6/8)! I've had the opportunity to chat with this fellow a number of times and each time seems to unveil new layers of wit. I believe he's dead-on about the cyclical nature of New York. It's sincere, oddball characters like him that have made this city so great.
Christopher Mealie, Manhattan
Thank Christ! Knipfel is back! It's about time. How long did you bastards let him wander around the office searching for his cubicle? Hope you all had a good laugh. At least with him back there's a reason to actually read your rag again.
J. Bray, Hoboken, New Jersey
Outstanding story-let's hope Times Square Babylon is on its way back ("Alas Babylon," 6/8). I don't know why, but I always considered the city immune to the kind of corporate ravages one finds in Southern California, say, or in what used to be verdant Midwestern wetlands now consigned to putty-colored subdivisions.
Here's to the realm of the senses!
Max Alberts, Manhattan
Not Really
Is anyone else weirded out by the letter from reader Danny Haszard ("The Mail," 6/8)? He extrapolates Mark Ames' ironic article on over-forgiving Mormons into a bizarre non-sequitorial diatribe on Jehovah's Witnesses. But instead of being clever or insightful, his maniacal letter conjures the image of a sweaty, unemployed recluse surrounded by comic books and old National Geographics in his parents' basement. The one girl he can talk to at CompUSA tells him she only dates other Witnesses, so he has gone certifiably berserk because it will take him another 18 months to get up the cajones to talk with another female.
Peter Miller, Manhattan
Palast? Aren't You That Guy With The Hat?
Bravo to Matt Taibbi's for his bullet-through-the-eye hit on Thomas Friedman's middlebrow muddle of a book ("Flathead," 4/20). His cheerleading for globalizers is little more than a series of cheery can-do messages lifted from discarded get-rich-quick pamphlets turned into hifalutin pseudo-economics salted with self-promoting chitchat cribbed from his business-cabin seatmates.
Greg Palast, Manhattan