what about the plastic animals?

Flag Day

Seen in a field on Rt. 212 west of Saugerties, New York.  Panorama of all the flags on Flickr.

Bridge for Sale

The Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge was crowded yesterday afternoon.  I guess most tourists only go to the first tower then turn back. 

Some guy tried to sell me the bridge for a hundred dollars.  It's a nice bridge so I offered him two hundred.  He didn't have a credit card reader though.

In over four years I've kept politics almost entirely out of this blog.  Senator Clinton's stupid gas tax idea has so disgusted me that I need to vent. 

Working class people of Indiana and North Carolina, Senator Clinton's gas tax holiday proposal is a joke and you are the punchline.  She hints that Senator Obama is an elitist, but of the two who is taking you for a sucker and who is trusting you to make an intelligent choice? 

The gas tax holiday has no chance of passing the Senate and House in the next three weeks.  If a miracle occurred and it did pass, President Bush would never agree to a tax increase on oil companies.  If a second miracle occurred and Bush signed the legislation, prices would not come down at the pump.  There are no miracles in the law of supply and demand.  A lower price for gas will increase demand.  Oil companies can't meet an increased demand because their refineries run at full capacity during the summer.  When demand exceeds supply prices go up.  Poof, the gas tax holiday vanishes.  If you are lucky and put ten gallons of gas in your car on Memorial Day, you'll save $1.84!

Here's the thing:  Clinton knows the tax holiday has no chance of becoming law and knows that it wouldn't work even if it did become law.  She is so cynical, though, that she assumes the working class is not savvy enough to figure this out.  A Wellesley and Yale graduate, former WalMart corporate board member, a person who has not done her own shopping or cooking or housekeeping since moving into the Arkansas Governor's mansion thirty years ago, a millionaire many times over since leaving the White House, is not a member of the working class.  The working class is a demographic she is cynically befriending only as long as she needs their votes.  Once that vote is over the working class will be left at the side of the road (until she needs their vote again).

To me the choice is clear, a vote for Hillary is a vote for a third Bush term.  She may have different positions on the issues but she will bring four more years of lies, cynicism, polarization and a complete disregard for the American people.

Sort of related, John McCain also supports a gas tax holiday.  Unlike Hillary his support seems to be clueless rather than cynical.  But, that's just my awkward transition to thank Frank Rich for finally asking why Barack Obama has gotten heat even though he has renounced Jeremiah Wright while John McCain gets almost no criticism for seeking out the support of the absolutely despicable John Hagee.

Okay, that's enough politics for a while.  Tomorrow:  a very special, non-political abandoned bike.

Grrrr

What happened to last night's post?  I knew I should have given up.  There were connection problems, but I uploaded a picture along with accompanying text and thought it got published.  I guess we will try again tomorrow.

Offensive Orange Bikes

Orange bikes like this one in front of an Apple store began appearing in town a couple of days ago.  It is fashion week and DKNY is using the bikes to bring attention to themselves and their "Explore the City" campaign, which has something to do with bicycling.

While that is all well and good, chaining painted bikes to poles around town is misguided at best.   Since 2005, Visualize Resistance has installed Ghost Bikes, bicycles painted white, as memorials to bicyclists that have died in traffic accidents on the city's streets.  Since it's start the Ghost Bike Project has grown to a couple dozen locations in the United States and several other countries.

Regretfully, there are way too many Ghost Bikes in the city.  Forty-two are listed on the Ghost Bike website.  Some of the Ghost Bikes are in neighborhoods where designers from DKNY would frequent.  There are also two Ghost Bikes within a couple blocks of the DKNY offices.  Given this you have to assume they didn't come up with the orange bike idea in a vacuum.  Someone clearly saw the white bicycles and decided orange would make a great ad campaign. 

Adding to their cluelessness is the photo on their web page about riding in the city.  They mention safe bicycling and the city's free helmet program.  The accompanying photo shows a woman sitting on the handlebars while a guy in long pants rides a bike across a bumpy Belgian block street.  Neither rider is wearing a helmet.  What is the message we are supposed to take away?  Beautiful people do not need helmets?  Helmets are not necessary for models because they can't suffer brain injuries?

Although the NYPD usually turns a blind eye to it, it is illegal to chain bicycles to trees, and the police have been removing the DKNY bikes.

Chuck Rocks

Yesterday, for the first time in several years, Groundhog Day fell on a Saturday.  That meant I could see Staten Island Chuck make his annual prediction.  I wanted to take the ferry but the train-ferry-bus trip timing was not in my favor.  So, I brought my car home Friday night and very early the next morning I picked up Gothamist editor Jen Chung and we headed under the East River and over the Verrazano Narrows to the Staten Island Zoo.

The ceremony was a blast!  It was a good mix of silliness and pomposity.  The Tottenville High School chorus entertained with popular tunes re-worded to be more groundhog friendly.  A member of a local brownie troop had the honor of knocking on Chuck's door.  Chuck came out, ate a few peanuts, and told the City Council Speaker Christine Quinn his prediction.  He didn't see his shadow.  Spring is on the way!  Pay no attention to those Applebee coupons for free dessert if he didn't see his shadow.

More details and photos are on Gothamist.

Not Photographed

Variety is the spice of life.  Let's try one without pictures today.  I can't go cold turkey, so this is about three things seen but not photographed.

Whenever I see the turkey in Morningside Park I keep a respectful distance.  Wild turkeys are large and fast and they have been known to attack when they feel threatened.  There were two guys absorbed in a loud conversation yesterday as they approached Hedda.  That would be Hedda Gobbler, the turkey.  Hedda gobbled and ran the other way off the stairs and into flight.  I can't say she was graceful but it was a beautiful sight.  She flew about a block before alighting in a tree.

Much less beautiful this morning was a toilet in the trash on the curb.   The seat cover was down and featured a picture of Betty Boop.  I instantly regretted not having my camera with me as I would have posted it here under the title Betty Poop.

Also of interest this morning.  All the Obama posters that went up along 116th Street a few days ago were  ripped in half or torn down.   Vandals?  Misguided Clinton supporters?  Neighborhood anti-campaign poster vigilantes?  I don't know.  It should be noted that Obama posters way outnumber Clinton posters in the neighborhood.

Happy New Year!

Happy 2008 everybody.  Let's hope it is a good one.  I don't have a New Year's photo, so this mural will have to do.

Black Friday Update

A couple of years ago, Marie, of Disarranging Mine fame, asked when Black Friday became Black Friday.  I did a quick search and found that the popularity of calling the day of shopping after Thanksgiving Black Friday really started increasing around 2002.  I didn't pay much attention to Black Friday last year because I was too busy being a Thanksgiving host.  This past weekend, however, found me lazing about at my father's, watching too much television.  It was non-stop Black Friday coverage by Syracuse tv news so I re-did my search.

In the intervening two years Lexis-Nexis changed their search tool, so the absolute numbers are way different even if the patterns are the same.  What I did this year was search for the phrase "black friday" occurring in headlines and lead paragraphs of U.S. newspapers for each November since 1991 (Note:  In 2005 the search over November and December resulted in fewer hits).  I removed duplicates and articles that included the phrase but were talking about something completely unrelated.

The results are slightly different this year.  There was a slow, unsteady rise from no mentions of "black friday" in 1991 to 85 hits in 2003.  Hits jumped about 80% from 2003 to 2004 and doubled the year after that.  The numbers for this year are current through whatever Lexis-Nexis had indexed through yesterday afternoon and are bound to rise by the end of the month.

By skimming the headlines you do see an interesting pattern.  Through the 1990s almost every article is a business article about the importance of the day to retailers.  The increasing number of Black Friday stories beginning around 2000 is due mostly to more news reports about shoppers descending upon stores and malls.  The big jump in 2004 is mainly from newspapers grasping the zeitgeist and getting proactive.  Lifestyle sections start doling out consumer hints, shopping strategies, and the rare cautionary story about not spending beyond your means, before the big day.

Curiously, the first appearance of a news item about Black Friday being so over was in 1999.

Curmudgeonly articles about the evils of shopping as a means to emotional fulfillment have slowly increased in the past several years as well.  They probably number less than a dozen this year.  Maybe that'll be the trend next year after the economy tanks!

Shadow Boxers

Not much to write about today.  I finished the Sunday paper, read a small book, and listened to too much NPR.

Lying Around

This was my view for most of the day.  My back started bothering me over the weekend and was bothering me even more this morning.  Walking and lying down are much preferred to sitting or standing.  It's a little better this evening. 

Do you like my lovely Gap clearance pj's?  I don't know why my left leg appears to be six feet long in this photo.