Friday’s Headlines: Sixth Avenue of the Americas Edition

The city will spruce up Sixth Avenue.
The city will spruce up Sixth Avenue.
All the nations on this side of the world. Graphic: DOT
All the nations on this side of the world. Click to enlarge. Graphic: DOT

We’re kinda of two minds when it comes to the big relaunch of the “Avenue of the Americas,” which then-Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia rebranded Sixth Avenue in 1945.

On the one hand, anything to spruce up Sixth Avenue — which is about as dour as all of St. Louis — is welcome, especially the color seals of all the countries with which we share this side of the world. There’s Belize! There’s Chile! There’s Cuba!

On the other hand, Sixth Avenue, like Fifth Avenue to the east and Seventh Avenue to the west has a perfectly good (and geographically helpful) name.

The Daily News covered the presser that revealed the new national emblems will be installed in January between W. 42nd and W. 59th streets, replacing those that have been lost and damaged. After all, the Times has been bemoaning this since 2008 at least!

In other news:

  • First, a programming note: The Department of Transportation will make a second attempt to fix the puddling on the Brooklyn Bridge bike path (aka Lake Gutman) from 10 p.m. tonight until 2 p.m. on Saturday, closing the bike path entirely. Plan (and grumble) accordingly. (DOT Via Twitter)

  • Like Streetsblog, Upper East Site looked at the DOT’s Third Avenue plan — and also considered the possibility that this circa-2010 design isn’t good enough for 2023. The Daily News also covered, albeit less critically.
  • Hell Gate did some digging into city government and confirmed a lot of what Jesse Coburn reported last month about the problems at the DOT.
  • The NYPD says it has arrested the driver of the stolen truck who killed a woman in Queens during a botched getaway captured on video. (NYDN, NY Post)
  • About those federal post-Sandy resiliency funds — well, we haven’t used practically any of them yet. (Gothamist)
  • The Post is jumping on the Times’s anti-congestion-pricing bandwagon.
  • For an anti-noise initiative, Council Member Keith Powers’s package of bills is sure generating a lot of buzz. (NY Post)
  • A bus driver killed a senior in Brooklyn. (NYDN)
  • Because business owners don’t already have the ear of everyone in power in this city … (Crain’s)
  • A hit-and-run driver killed a 13-year-old boy after he heroically saved his sister on L0ng Island. (NY Post)
  • The Council may legalize dollar van street hails. (amNY)
  • Let’s turn parts of New York into super sponges. (Gothamist)

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