Adding yummy ingredients you normally wouldn’t associate with alcohol is a great way of jazzing up your drinking experience at minimal cost. Honey is one such ingredient and I like to believe including it in a cocktail makes consuming one before noon socially acceptable.
Ingredients
The surprisingly close race between incumbent Michael Bloomberg and City who-cares Bill Thompson sent the media and blogosphere into a firestorm. “New Yorker’s Rebuke of Bloomberg Sends a Message,” was Mara Gay’s headline at the Atlantic Wire. Even the Times said Bloomberg “No Longer Seems Invincible”. Have any of these groups even looked at the results for more than a second? The numbers should not have been a surprise to anyone, and certainly don’t show the public turning on Bloomberg in droves.
At first glance, of course, it looks like Bloomberg just squeaked through, and he did. He took home 50.6% of the vote, to Thompson’s 46.0%, much less than polls had predicted. The mayor was expected to crush Thompson, but won by just over 4 points. Thompson must have done something right … right?
Actually Thompson took home 506,717 votes, almost exactly the same amount as Fernando Ferrer did in his disastrous run against Bloomberg in 2005. In fact, the difference between the two is less than a percentage point. This year however, turnout was lower overall; 1,100,640 people voted this year, compared with 1,289,935 in 2005. The difference was 189,286. What is striking is how similar that number is to the drop in votes for Bloomberg.
Continue…
Ghost Bikes in NYC from Kaela Rae Jensen on Vimeo.
Thursday, November 5, 2009 11:14 - by Kaela Rae Jensen
If you want to be a part of something publicized and demeaning, and reality shows just aren’t your bag, perhaps a pageant is perfect for you. Anyone who lives in Brooklyn or has ever even heard of it knows of the G train, and there’s a new title to win–”Miss G Train.”
The G train is a disgrace. It runs erratically, it runs only in Brooklyn and part of Queens, it only has four cars. But it’s the only way to get from Williamsburg to Park Slope or from Red Hook to Greenpoint, so like the town bicycle, Brooklynites are required to ride it at least once in their lives. If you would like to be the beauty who represents this miracle of public transportation, you can send a sexylicious photograph and a 200-word essay to missgtrain@cityreliquary.org. Oh, and this isn’t your promiscuous grandmother’s pageant, it’s open to all ages–and all genders. Get in touch with your ambiguous side–and do the G train proud.
Don’t forget, FreeWilliamsburg is looking for a contestant on the inside if you’re into that sort of thing. So kinky.
Thursday, November 5, 2009 11:12 - by Kaela Rae Jensen
We all get confused with technology sometimes. For some of us, this means trying to upload photos to Facebook and not understanding the “server error” that pops up every third album or so. For others, it’s starting their own blog, switching to iPhones, or cross-dressing in front of poorly-rendered iChat backdrops. But the New York Times knows that one group of people just, heh, doesn’t understand!
See, we all think that old people only care about technology if it involves “medical monitoring and protection against falls.” I assume this is what the Times means. But old people actually share technological motivation with another often overlooked by Silicon Valley: babies. The Times recommends downloading software to simplify desktops, since “Changes like fewer buttons, color-coded commands and larger type ease the Windows experience.” Also, if you cut their American-cheese-and-ketchup sandwiches into funny shapes, they’ll gobble them up! Oh, you olds. What else can you surprise me with?
Thursday, November 5, 2009 10:00 - by Josh Becker
Disclaimer: we admit that this week’s City Calendar post is lacking in actually worthwhile events. Don’t blame us, blame New York or your own high expectations.
THURSDAY
FRIDAY
We all know the iconic scene from the 1989 classic teen-romance film, Say Anything, where Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) holds his boom box stalwartly above his head as those romantic lyrics of devotion play in the background, “Your Eyes, something something something, Your Eyes.” So, on Tuesday, a bunch of Lloyd Doblers got together, became the Lloyd Dobler Mobler (seriously?), and formed a recreation of this scene all day, in at least five different locations. In fact you may have passed by them if you were in Washington Square around 10:30-11:00 a.m. yesterday morning.
Or perhaps you saw them when they were covered as a fluff piece for “Fox and Friends.” Just kidding, no one watches “Fox and Friends.” When they performed in Times Square, the Mobler consisted of almost twenty guys with trench coats and boomboxes, and one random chubby dude with a bongo. It turns out he was part of the band that got to play, whose singer looked like Mark Wahlberg, and incidentally was not the band Say Anything, which might have actually drawn a crowd larger than the number of Lloyd Doblers present. However, it’s refreshing to see, in such a consumerist society, that people are willing to take a moment out of the day to pay homage to a moment in romance wherein a man refuses to give up on a girl, even after she refuses to answer nine phone calls in a row. In fact, when I asked Max Hambleton why he gave up his Tuesday to imitate such a romantic gesture, he quickly responded, “I was paid to be here.” Video after the jump.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009 11:47 - by Dan Rickmers
Gothamist reported that advance tickets are on sale today for the discussion between Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton during the Radio City Music Hall “Minds That Move The World” speaker series in February. No, you’re not hallucinating — Dubya vs. Bill is really happening. This is every politics major’s wet dream.
The advance tickets are only available to American Express members until Nov. 15, when tickets are released to the general public through Ticketmaster. Even if you’re an AmEx user, expect to empty the wallet a bit: face value of the tickets range from $60 – $1250.
Gothamist notes that the most expensive tickets are “if you want to join both presidents at a pre-debate reception for cocktails and picture-taking and awkwardness.” Okay, now that’s actually every politics major’s wet dream.
The MSG website is currently fielding suggestions for what each president should ask his counterpart, which is essentially a perfect prompt for an SNL skit. Give them your best shot, you hippie liberal!
Update: According to the NY Post, the debate “has been nixed because the promoter overhyped it as a death-match faceoff between the men.” However, promotions for the event still remain on the MSG website.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009 9:45 - by Kenneth Hsu
My friend Alex and I have said that we like autumn because you can, quote, “throw a sweater on it.” We came to this conclusion before the release of “Single Ladies” and the subsequent association of “putting things on it” with vague notions of marriage set to an R&B beat.
The comparison, however, works; autumn is the season for independence. If love blossoms in spring and sucks your dick in a kayak during summer, then you shed it in fall like a soggy bathing suit. You have school to worry about, and maybe a new job, and negotiating bribes for spending the night at your grandparents’ house in Long Island for Thanksgiving.
How do you project this sienna confidence to your classmates? Here’s one version of “The Autumn Look.” I encourage either a girl or someone gayer than me to make a ladies’ guide. This also assumes you’re on something of a budget.
Like most of the New York media, we expected yesterday’s mayoral election to be a quick, uneventful affirmation of incumbent mayor Michael Bloomberg’s popularity, which is probably why NYU Local was one of the only blogs covering the election live. And except for a nude attacker outside a polling station, most of the day was generally pretty boring. For the first few minutes after polls had closed, the slaughtering of Bloomberg’s Democratic opponent Bill Thompson seemed imminent — the gap had widened to over 30 percentage points at one point. As we noted in our post last night, the New York Times (and apparently NBC) both declared Bloomberg victorious early, even with more than 80% of precincts yet to report their votes.
However, as votes from the outer boroughs were counted, Bloomberg’s commanding lead rapidly became slimmer and slimmer until Hizzoner was only one percentage point ahead of Thompson. Reporters on NY1, which refrained from declaring a victor early, were visibly stunned. NBC officially retracted their endorsement and the Times changed their headline from “Bloomberg wins” to “Bloomberg projected to win.” Not only had the tables turned in a matter of minutes, but the city’s richest and most powerful man was also close to losing his job. For about a moment here, the biggest upset in recent New York history was in reach.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009 8:30 - by Kenneth Hsu
