Thursday’s Headlines: Other Ways to Give Edition

Michael King gave to the office. Photo: Gersh Kuntzman
Michael King gave to the office. Photo: Gersh Kuntzman
It's our December donation drive. Click this link to donate.
It’s our December donation drive. Click this link to donate.

We know — times are tough. So maybe you’ve been seeing our “donation” logo on all our stories and thought, “Oh, gee, I wish I could help Streetsblog — I really do. But I’m a bit short this month because ______________ (insert timely excuse here).”

Well, how about a material donation?

Earlier this year, Friend of Streetsblog Michael King — the urban planner behind the Traffic Calmer website — made our year by donating an old folding bike to us so we can always have an easy way to get around when news breaks.

We really appreciate it, so we’ll start today’s benefactor honor roll with our thanks to Michael. And here are the other people to whom we owe gratitude today: Thanks, Daniel! Thanks, Robert! Thanks, David! Thanks, Sarah (and thanks for recognizing us on the street yesterday)! Thanks, Rachel!

In other news:

  • Sorry, but this West Village pickleball ban is a big deal. We realize that park space is limited — but that’s the point. We simply need more space for recreation so that all people can do what they want to do, instead of fighting each other for scraps. (Gothamist)
  • Hat tip to Hell Gate for running John Surico’s deep dive on the MTA’s (and its riders’) woes.
  • Reminder: Cruise ships are an ecological nightmare, not that the Daily News covered that angle in its gushing coverage of Mayor Adams’s shipping news yesterday.
  • Council Member Lincoln Restler has a bill that would cap the number of days film crews could take over a neighborhood, but it’s weird that the Post’s coverage didn’t mention that the Council has long sought this very restriction (as our old man editor pointed out with this 2011 article from his old paper — man, old people are so annoying sometimes).
  • Here’s your daily “moron in a Tesla.” (Reddit)
  • City Planning Commissioner Leah Goodridge really kicked up a storm with her Twitter thread on the notion of a car-free city. It’s a bit of a straw man, because even we at Streetsblog are not seeking a 100-percent car-free city! We just want to reduce a lot of the driving that’s going on, dramatically reduce road deaths to zero, reclaim our neighborhoods from car sewers, help bus riders, and give kids back some of the independence we had when we were little. If that’s controversial, well, so be it.

  • Finally, a good use for a parking lot. (Upper East Site)
  • The New York Civil Liberties Union is on the right side of history in the ongoing fight to demolish I-81 through Syracuse.  (Syracuse.com)
  • Speaking of the right side of history, Council Member Joe Borelli is very much on the wrong side of it with his bill to demand that Albany put congestion pricing, which passed years ago, to a public statewide referendum. (Phil Miatkowski via Twitter). Borelli should probably read our article on why Gov. Hochul won re-election in the first place.

  • Revel, the rentable moped company, just cut Crown Heights out of its coverage area — and customers want it back. (Col Live)
  • In an attempt to make Saturday’s SantaCon less merry, the LIRR and Metro-North lines are banning drinking on board. (amNY)
  • The Times staff is poised for a walkout on Thursday (NYDN), but as much as we support organized labor, we didn’t love the framing in staffer Amanda Hess’s tweet (below). Sorry, but we read local news every day — not just when the local-news-free NY Times is on strike:

https://twitter.com/amandahess/status/1600547516059045890?s=20&t=SLnmmbwgUBsJ4Vh8-kjnHQ

  • And, finally, our editor is still on his one-man “criminal mischief” wave. Here are his two classics from yesterday:

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