Home De Blasio New York It's De Blasio Time
Home De Blasio New York It's De Blasio Time

It's De Blasio Time

Do you miss the old New York City? Remember when subway trains were covered in graffiti, a news hour began with six shootings and everyone who lived in the city had been mugged at least once?

Remember when Times Square had more strip clubs than theaters and when you could afford an apartment in the village because it was a drug infested mess?

Remember when the city and everyone living in it were on the verge of bankruptcy and the only people who had money lived upstate or in a small cluster of Manhattan?

Remember when everything was grimy and had a layer of filth, when people moved to the city because they wanted to slum, when nothing worked and no one cared and the only difference between New York and Chicago was that it had taller buildings?

If you miss that classic New York, there's good news because Bill de Blasio is bringing it back.

The muggers are coming back. The squeegee men are coming back. The crazy people randomly stabbing you on the subway, the gangs shooting each other over turf, the race rioters marching through neighborhoods and shouting, "Whose streets, our streets"-- they're all coming back.

Because the polls have spoken. And it's De Blasio time now.

No more fascist cops hassling "innocent" people. Bill de Blasio won't put up with any of that. De Blasio will put the cops in their place, inside a Dunkin Donuts and away from people. They'll still get paid. They're in a union. They just won't lift a finger to help you because they'll have more special monitors and civilian complaint review boards on their necks than they can handle.

And next time one of the innocent victims of Stop and Frisk is pounding your face into the sidewalk with one hand while digging through your pockets with the other, wave to the pair of beat cops sitting in the window of the coffee shop. And they'll wave back without getting up. Because you voted for this. And you're getting what you deserve.

When you recover from your medically induced coma, you'll have a hell of a story to tell between reconstructive surgery visits. You might be tempted to complain about how the police don't do anything anymore and how we pay them a ton of money and they don't do anything except rope off a crime scene.

But don't. You don't want to sound like one of those crazy right winger types carrying guns on the 3 train waiting to go all Bernhard Goetz on some street kid. It's De Blasio time. It's what you voted for.

All those cops ruined the special spirit of the city. The one where you could see someone lying in a  pool of their own blood on the A train on the way to work and you shrugged and moved on. The one where every weekend began with more bodies than an entire season of Law and Order.

It'll be exciting. Remember when people thought you were risking your life by living in the city. Now they will again.

Relatives will look at the latest body count and gasp admiringly. "How can you live there?" And you'll stow your illegal can of mace in your pocket, your rape whistle on your key chain and all the apps on your phone that directly contact the FBI, the NYPD and Interpol and shrug manfully. "It's no big deal. I haven't even been mugged in six months."

Remember when all those gentrified neighborhoods full of artisanal bake shops were places that no taxi driver would take you?

Remember when the Mac repair shop, the experimental art gallery and the fusion Mexican-Thai place across the street were a dirty bodega with bulletproof windows, a street pentecostal church with steel bars and a healthy dose of voodoo and a burnt out abandoned building?

They will be again. The fusion place will move to Portland. The Mac guy will close up shop and go to work at a Best Buy in Westchester. He'll hate it, but after the third robbery, his insurance rates will be too high to stay on. But he'll have nothing to complain about. He voted for De Blasio too.

And that experimental art gallery, the one with collages of world leaders made out of broken glass as a statement against capitalism? It's a burnt out abandoned building again. The owner who used to want 10 million bucks for the building would give it to you in exchange for paying the tax bill. But you won't take it.

You voted for De Blasio, but you're not that stupid. No one buys real estate in De Blasio time.

A lot of the new amenities of the city that you love will still be around. Like bike lanes. There will be more of them than ever.

Muggers will love the bike lanes. They'll stand behind phone booths with a hockey stick. The stick will go out at the last minute, the bike rider will tumble off his 400 dollar toy and the stick will come down on his head.

You don't ride a bike anymore. No one really does except Chinese food deliverymen. You take the subway. It's dirty and grimy. It's covered in graffiti. And sometimes you remember when there were shiny new Japanese trains and you could ride them at 1 AM, without worrying about being attacked.

You remember riding your Citibike to a party past row after row of brand new restaurants and clubs. But that was a different city. That was Giuliani's New York and Bloomberg's New York. It's De Blasio's New York now. It's the old Dinkins New York. And no one does those things now.

Citibike will be gone. Of course. The whole thing was a program to advertise Citibank to the city's booming upscale white population. And on De Blasio time, a lot of that population is leaving. And New York City on De Blasio time is not a brand that any major corporation wants to be associated with.

Giuliani New York and Bloomberg New York were booming cities. De Blasio New York is a place where the mayor gives constant press conferences about gang violence and announces new rape prevention programs. Every news story about the city now begins with, "Four people were shot in New York over the weekend" and "A fire swept out of control through Brooklyn destroying four city blocks. Police suspect arson."

But that's cool. Who needs those stupid corporations anyway when Occupy Wall Street has a dozen encampments. A lot of those encampments are really homeless tent cities. But that's a good thing.

Central Park may now be scarier than ever and no one goes there after dark except muggers and cruisers. Columbus Circle is now a mess of shacks. But maybe the crazy guy who sleeps with a large butcher knife on the stairs in front of your building might decide to go there.

You nervously slip him a fiver every morning, but you hear him muttering every time he takes the money and you know he doesn't like you. One time he told the lady who lives next door to you that he's going to stab her. Everyone in the building has complained to the police.

But what can they do? It's De Blasio time.

There are good things about De Blasio's New York. Like all those troop carriers rattling the sidewalk as they go down Fifth Avenue.

Bill de Blasio promised that he would shut down surveillance of mosques. And he kept his word. And the terrorists kept theirs. They say ten thousand people died. But a hundred thousand were affected by the gas pouring through the subway tunnels all the way down to Times Square. Some of them may die. A lot of them have scarred lungs.

President Clinton has promised that she will get those responsible. Meanwhile there are jets overhead and soldiers in the streets. They help keep down crime a little. But it's been a year now and Mayor De Blasio wishes they would leave. They're upsetting everyone in the mosque that the terrorists visited before they loaded up their canisters into backpacks and took the A train.

The NYPD could have stopped them. It would have stopped them under Giuliani and Bloomberg. But the terrorists were smarter than you. They waited for De Blasio time.

You were downwind when the attack happened. But you still cough a lot. Sometimes blood comes out. You wonder if it's psychosomatic or the real thing. You wish you could see a doctor, but you lost your health insurance when the company you work for relocated and fired all its non-essential employees.

De Blasio has made sure there are plenty of neighborhood clinics around. But no one in them speaks English and there's a long waiting list. "Three week," they shout at you each time you come in while holding up three fingers. It's been three months.

But what can you do? It's De Blasio time.

It's not like Bill de Blasio has done a bad job. Sure things are terrible, but everyone still likes him. He looks a lot older and greyer. He doesn't tell jokes anymore. His voice is flat and like everyone else in the city, he sounds like he's just trying to get through the next day.

But that's De Blasio time for you.

You've thought a lot about what to do next. Your brother wants you to move to San Francisco. He says he can get you an interview there. Your parents think you should move back home. No one is hiring here anymore. Even the movie and television shoots that used to happen on every block are gone. They're working in Chicago now.

They say that New York City is going bankrupt. That it has no future. The latest bond sales are going badly because the city's credit rating is in the toilet. But that's all Wall Street's fault. Why should those bastards lower the city's credit rating to junk just because it has more debt than the rest of the Tri-State Area combined. The city is good for it? Or at least it used to be... before De Blasio time.

You're not ready to give up on New York yet. Sure times have been tough, but it's a tough city. And it's an incredible mosaic of diversity. Just last week you got held up by a guy from Swaziland and you never even heard of Swaziland before.

Your new roommate is from Brazil. He sells drugs. Your drug dealer is from Lebanon. He wants to be in fashion. It's still an exciting city with plenty of opportunities for those who know how to take them. But the takers seem to be taking them from you. And even though you're out of work, your tax bill is too high.

But what can you do? It's De Blasio time.

There's a new housing project going up next door. It's forty stories tall. There will be a hundred like it all across your neighborhood. Manhattan will never be the same. It's great that Bill de Blasio is doing this so that there will be more affordable housing. The projects already look scary. There are gangs haunting the scaffolding around it. Sometimes they throw rocks through your window. After the fourth time, you stopped paying to have it replaced. You just paste it over with tape and cardboard to keep the January wind out.

The good news is that your rent has gone down. It's a fraction of what it used to be. The bad news is that you still can't afford it.

Sometimes you think about applying to live in the projects, collecting benefits and food stamps, riding the elevators down to get some cigarettes and lottery tickets at the local bodega, and then back up to your apartment. And then you recoil in horror and begin thinking about taking up your brother on his offer.

Because this isn't the New York City you wanted, even though it's the one you voted for. Bill de Blasio is not the New York City you needed, it's the one you deserved. And it's the one you got.

And so you leave. The taxi ride to JFK airport takes forever. The airport is a dirty mess. But finally your plane takes off. There are two ex-cons with rocket launchers waiting in the marshes just outside the tarmac. You never see the rocket that hits you. Just the flash of heat that burns you and your girlfriend and your cat in his carrier in the plane's cargo section and the other hundred and twenty people getting the hell out of Bill de Blasio's New York City to ash.

The NYPD busted up a plot just like it a few years ago. But they did it with informants and mosque surveillance. Unfair tactics like that were banned by Bill de Blasio just as he promised his Muslim supporters he would.

As the last burning pieces of what used to be you fall into the water, your last thought is of how unfair all this is. But you shouldn't complain. This is what you voted for.

It's De Blasio time.

Comments

  1. ...Man, those "De Blasio time" posters would have been great in the hands of a GOP candidate who actually, you know, wanted to play to win.

    I'm not sure how many times the moderate, nice guy Republican who stands for nothing has to get his clock cleaned before they figure out that it doesn't work.

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  2. While it is truly unbelievable that he is going to be swept in at the same time it is 100% believable!

    It's the same low-IQ voters who know nothing about a candidate that swept Obama in for TWO terms!

    I had written something similar (although not Sultan Knish good) at The Political Commentator last week:

    Bill de Blasio: Caveat Emptor New York City!
    http://politicsandfinance.blogspot.com/2013/10/bill-de-blasio-caveat-emptor-new-york.html

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  3. If deBlasio is as bad as you say, what will keep the financial industry in NYC? If that industry hightails it, tax revenues dry up totally and it's game over. Will be fun to watch.

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  4. Anonymous3/11/13

    And when it all comes true the zombies will vote for him again. Such is the power of the mythology of the left. Like true marks they just keep on betting that this time it will be different.

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  5. I had a flashback to Escape From NY - Kirk Russell - made in ’81 set in ’97. Twenty years too early.

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  6. fizziks3/11/13

    I like it because this article contains a number of definite predictions. So, shall we revisit this in, say, 10 years? If at that point NYC is basically on the same trajectory that it is now, with booming real estate, gentrifying neighborhoods, largely graffiti-free subways, and a crime rate that ranks in the lower half of major American cities, will you admit to this article being ultimately incorrect and misleading hyperbole?

    Note: I disagree with DeBlasio and agree with you on both NYPD surveillance and stop-and-frisk. But I don't think that they are the major factors determining the future of NYC. NYC, along with every other major city, is essentially along for the ride of national social and economic trends.

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  7. If Di Blasio would indeed get elected, it's clear that the democratic voting system as already shown by the repeat Obama presidency, top heavy with uneducated entitlement bought voters, should be overhauled.
    I do indeed remember my first 1958 NY visit with all the accompanied warnings of do, don'ts and where yes, where not to go and at what time.
    You did paint a bleak self imposed by the voters mind you, xxx rated, future for the city.

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  8. Anonymous3/11/13

    New Yorkers richly deserve the Hell that is about to descend upon them. Twenty years ago New Yorkers recognized that Democratic policies result directly in crime, poverty and lawlessness. In what can only be described as a crass and shameless act of political NIMBYism, New York's loyal Democrats switched parties to vote for Republican candidates in their local elections, where the results make a direct impact in their lives. However, they continued to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats at the state and national level.

    Politically, this translates as: We in New York will take the law and order and the accompanying benefits provided by Republican policies, but we are happy to export from New York the crime and degeneracy imposed by Democratic policies. Crime, filth, and poverty are fine, just not in our back yard.

    I, for one, will relish New York's descent into the abyss. It couldn't happen to a more deserving group of people.

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  9. Just think of the money making opportunities in deBlasio land. You put up some HD webcams and fly a few video-drones - yes you will lose a few, but that is the price of business - and pay $100/month to outsource the capture and edit process to India then take the final all-sex-and-violence-all-the-time product to PPV. It will be like UFC without any rules or "Sex in the City" without consent. It's what people crave, just like brawndo. Look at the upside for Detroit, it will no longer be America's worst city. Two years from now there will be marches demanding that: "someone do something" about the crime and then two years after that de Blasio will be re-elected. There is no cure for stupid.

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  10. Anonymous3/11/13

    You can't be serious Fizziks. New York changed because it pushed itself out of the gutter because it had no choice. I bet you are one of the new transplants that sort of wish for the grittier city of times past. I hope you get it and I don't because it is soul crushing. No one with half a brain would think that an administration that gets it ideas from left wing trash lying in parks and crapping into buckets could build even a website. We weren't disappointed.

    Besides that is a disgusting bet you are making. What if it becomes a hellhole? You've gone back to your university town and the people who were unfortunate enough to be born here get to live the crummy life they had before. Will you pay? No I don't mean through government and taxes. Will you personally pay??? Your type never do

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  11. Anonymous3/11/13

    This is nuts. DeBlasio is a pinko douche, and no doubt he'll degrade New York the way every socialist utopian degrades whatever he touches. But it won't be because the cops can't harass people for getting out of their cars wrong, or for sitting suspiciously on a bench (actual reasons given by cops for stopping people). How is stop-and-frisk advocacy any different from the mentality of people who say they're willing to give up their freedom for an imagined increase in safety, or from those who say that if you have nothing to hide you shouldn't object to the NSA shoving into your phone and email records? How is anyone safer when we can be stopped and asked for our papers, comrade, on virtually any pretext?

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  12. Anonymous,

    This is the reality of life in an urban city where guns are illegal for law-abiding people and large neighborhoods are failed states with welfare.

    It may not be how things should be, but it's how they are.

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  13. "How is stop-and-frisk advocacy any different from the mentality of people who say they're willing to give up their freedom for an imagined increase in safety, or from those who say that if you have nothing to hide you shouldn't object to the NSA shoving into your phone and email records? How is anyone safer when we can be stopped and asked for our papers, comrade, on virtually any pretext? - See more at: http://sultanknish.blogspot.de/2013/11/its-de-blasio-time.html#sthash.nl4ea4i9.dpuf"

    SQF is actually effective and not simply a tool to control the citizens. It about cops being more proactive in the pursuit of crime fighting. The knee grows who hate being frisked unjustifiably should look forward to being much less likely to be killed by a fellow darkie.

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  14. Anonymous4/11/13

    New York even in the bad old days was not as bad as what you envision Di Blasio's New York to be like. One mayor could not turn New York into Detroit. It would take half a century of decline to turn New York into Detroit. There's more of a chance of Chicago or Los Angeles turning into Detroit than New York.

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  15. financially, New York is close to the tipping point once De Blasio begins cutting sweetheart deals with the unions

    crime-wise it will take longer to undo everything his predecessors did

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  16. Well it could certainly be a return to the days of Dave Dinkins. When the subways were so bad they would broadcast the train number to riders so they could give the # to their boss as an excuse for being an hour or two late to work. When they had to close most of the bridges because they were falling down and being condemned and it was projected that even just repainting the Manhattan bridge and the GW bridge would take a decade or more each whereas the entire GW bridge was built in less than a year and a half. When 30-40,000 financial jobs just up and left for NJ. When small business after small business died under the crushing weight of taxes and regulation. When the murder rate soared to over 2000 a year.

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  17. fizziks4/11/13

    To the anonymous who accuses NY Democrats of NIMBY-ism, voting for Republicans to run the city while voting for Democrats to run the country:

    I hope you will consider this. The Republicans that New Yorkers voted for (e.g. Giuliani, Pataki, Bloomberg) ran as moderate problem solvers, not the theocrats or extremist libertarians or transparent dupes of the extraction industries that their national counterparts insist on being. So it is entirely consistent and not mere NIMBYism for NY'ers to vote for those Republicans but not vote for the national Republicans. They are willing to vote for moderates and centrists, but not extremists. Perhaps this should be a lesson for national Republicans, especially in light of Christy's impending easy victory in blue NJ and Cuccinelli's impending landslide loss in swing VA.

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  18. I don't understand the support for "Stop and Frisk by NY cops. Or keeping surveillance cameras on Mosques?

    What's the point of booting out socialists/commies and replacing them with fascists who violate one's civil liberties using the same methods for a different ideology? The instruments of force and infringement at the same, regardless to whom they are handed off to with election time comes. Advocating more force and enforcement to deal with the bad apples in society only provides the ready made arsenal for the next idiots voted into office by a idiot majority to employ upon us. We need to de-power government and enpower the individual to take care of themselves, to exercise the right to bear personal arms so as to make stop and frisk unnecessary by a police state, as people will be able to care of themselves instead of relying on Big Brother.

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  19. That's maybe how things should work, but it's not how they work.

    In hard blue cities, there's no option for disempowering government. That's only a possibility on a national level. In NYC, there's only an option for making life livable or survivable.

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  20. Anonymous4/11/13

    As I was reading the description above, I couldn't help but think of Neal Stephonson's novel "Snow Crash". That takes place in a post-American world in LA, but the imagery is essentially the same. All of the crime, violence, and governmental apathy/control (with a few more high-tech gizmos as it takes place in the future [sort of]).

    Also, East Detroit.

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  21. Rollory5/11/13

    This is downright vindictive.

    It is perhaps a worst-case scenario, but not necessarily a high-probability one. But then, I am not a New Yorker, and have never really liked the city, so I have no real stake in it.

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  22. LFMayor5/11/13

    Good, GOOD! I have to be careful not to overdose on the schadenfreude lately, between this and California and ObamaCare. I love it. We'll all stew together now, until such unforseen time as it collapses under it's own weight. The productive will sift the ashes for the nails and useful metal and we can begin to rebuild again, our parasitic burden greatly reduced. Or maybe if we get an Agathocoles, extinct for a time? Let us hope.

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  23. If Giuliani had been mayor, the NYPD would never have let 9/11 happen. Also, I didn't realize people were being frisked for deadly weapons like sidewalks.

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  24. The September 11 planes flew out of Boston. The NYPD doesn't have its own fighter jets or jurisdiction in Boston.

    But it has stopped terror attacks that would have happened under De Blasio

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  25. Bookmark it libs!

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  26. Anonymous6/11/13

    Ahem. Why would "innocent victims of Stop and Frisk" choose to be "pounding your face into the sidewalk with one hand while digging through your pockets with the other"?

    Are you insinuating that there are no innocents who get subjected to Stop and Frisk?

    Or that their anger at being unjustly targeted has subsequently driven them to commit violent crimes?

    Or is it simply "Hey, they ain't white -- of COURSE they're gonna attack you, dumbass!"

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  27. This is your brain. This is your brain on liberalism.

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  28. Anonymous6/11/13

    Welcome to East Detroit!

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  29. Your side lost a goddamned election. Is it really necessary to construct these pathetic revenge fantasies, in which New Yorkers get their comeuppance Armageddon-style, to make yourself feel better?

    Anyone who claims that a human being who has been viciously assaulted is "getting what you deserve," because of HOW THEY VOTED, is in desperate need of therapy... or at least some very powerful meds.

    You come off like some guy, just dumped by his girlfriend, who dreams up a scenario where she gets gang-raped and her face slashed. "Heh heh heh... THEN she'll be sorry!" Grow the hell up.

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  30. If someone votes for a candidate who panders to muggers and gets mugged... he is literally getting what he deserves.

    If someone votes for a candidate who panders to terrorists... see above.

    And it's not New Yorkers getting their comeuppance, it's the liberal idiots who have come here, gentrified the city and now insist on wrecking it all over again.

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  31. Anonymous7/11/13

    I thought Bloomberg was an uber-liberal socialist dictator when he was banning large sodas, but now apparently he was the only thing holding back a tidal wave of chaos? I guess we'll be sorry!

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  32. I've been warning for a while that Bloomberg was the alternative to much worse

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  33. Opposing the police targeting of black and brown New Yorkers via Stop & Frisk = "pandering to muggers."

    Treating members of the Muslim faith with a modicum of basic human respect = "pandering to terrorists." Got it.

    Why don't you simply move out of New York City, Mr. Greenfield? There must be plenty of communities in this great nation of ours where you won't be harassed (read: forced to come into contact with) those dusky-hued types, both Muslim and otherwise, who make your life in NYC so damned scary and unpleasant. Plenty of open space in Idaho, so I hear...

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  34. Stop and Frisk reduces gang violence and makes places like Brownsville safer.

    The Muslim faith calls for a state of constant war and repression of non-Muslims and acts on it. The only way to prevent the death toll is by closely monitoring its bases of theocracy.

    Those are the facts. If you don't like them, feel free to go back to Chicago.

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  35. ... not to mention the increase in shootings

    and now the crackdown on the NYPD is beginning.

    It's all running on schedule.

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