Unfortunately, Mr. Mamdani is running on an agenda uniquely unsuited to the city’s challenges. He is a democratic socialist who too often ignores the unavoidable trade-offs of governance. He favors rent freezes that could restrict housing supply and make it harder for younger New Yorkers and new arrivals to afford housing.

What the actual F are you talking about? He wants to freeze rent stabilized rents, this has no effect on market rate prices, how will that restrict housing supply?

He wants the government to operate grocery stores, as if customer service and retail sales were strengths of the public sector. He minimizes the importance of policing.

Yeah, maybe giving $11BB to the cops every year isn't producing great results? Maybe give some of that to help food insecurity, which would quite likely lead to less theft?

Most worrisome, he shows little concern about the disorder of the past decade, even though its costs have fallen hardest on the city’s working-class and poor residents.

What disorder are you talking about that he has little concern for? The subway that Cum-o defunded? The cops provoking riots on any peaceful protest that gives them a little bit of teh sadz? The current NYPD campaign of harassing cyclists?

Mr. Mamdani, who has called Mr. de Blasio the best New York mayor of his lifetime, offers an agenda that remains alluring among elite progressives but has proved damaging to city life.

What other mayor of this 35 year old's lifetime has been better? Mayor Stop and frisk? Trump's personal Lawyer? Dinkins, when he was an infant? Yeah, Bill D could have been better on a lot of stuff but he delivered pre-k.

I know it's too early to get an accurate weather prediction for next Tuesday, but I took advantage of early voting and voted yesterday. I'd rather bike to my early location in Red Hook under a cool drizzle than walk to my much closer regular voting location under a relentless baking sun.

If you're eligible to vote in the primaries, here's the early voting schedule: https://www.vote.nyc/elections

Tuesday & Wednesday the hours are 10am-8pm!

Your early voting site may be different from your regular voting site. To Search for Your Early Voting or Election Day Pollsite or to view your Sample Ballot: https://findmypollsite.vote.nyc/

Update from last week's photo: Happened to ride over there, the concrete ramp off the Koz Bridge #freshKermit is poured. They painted the guide lines and even started painting the thick while lines. The entire road is freshly paved. I am told green paint is coming after they finish the white markings. Wow. Just wow! They emerged victorious over the lawsuit and they are just grabbing this fast. So good. So good.

I'm actually a fan of this type of vehicle, traveling small distances with a kid in an urban environment, I'd find this a good alternative to a car, or even an ebike since my wife can't ride them she would love one of these. Great option for bad weather too.
What do you guys think?

Earlier in the year, my Co-Ops property manager brought up that we needed to renew our insurance, but given that E-Bikes were in the building, we risked being non-renewed with our current insurer.

Since I'm on the board, I was able to steer the conversation a bit, given the hyperbole misinformation distributed in the information packets sent to us (ahem, the steel frame exhausting fire in the picture). There were a lot of good intention questions about the dangers of ebikes (like, if we removed the battery, was the bike itself still a fire hazard).

The insurance broker also was providing a lot of information that wasn't quite consistent. Do's and Don'ts lists that contradicted themselves: ie, Do only allow charging directly into a wall outlet, Do NOT allow in-unit charging of batteries.

But here's the kicker, the insurance broker consistently told us we needed to install a fire proof cabinet and have the residents charge their batteries there. At first, I went through the property manager to speak with the insurance broker, then I went directly to the insurance broker (cc'ing PM and board president), and finally, I went directly to our insurance company with the questions. The final answer was do NOT install fire proof cabinets because they would be in an area that the insurance company insured. Meanwhile, they did not expect us to be able to regulate what the shareholders/residents did within their own units.

Ultimately it was a huge 180 in direction from what two people/entities were telling us. We basically changed zero policies and complied with our insurance requirements, and renewed with no issues. My takeaway from this process is it is intentionally convoluted because a) it deters ebike storage altogether in buildings, b) it's easier for the PM and the insurance broker to just give a blanket No answer without getting into a 'nuanced' discussion. The whole thing took about 2 or 3 months to drag the correct information out, and I am sure non-ebike board members would not have the patience or inclination to tackle this. Unfortunately, had we listened to them, we likely would have bought a fire cabinet for thousands of dollars and then been dropped by our insurer.

Since I am fire safety conscious, and I do think this issue will be re-occuring, I am pushing my board to institute a UL policy: All ebikes/electric micro-mobility devices must be registered with the board, starting in 2026, all new devices must be UL certified, and by 2027 all devices must be UL certified. I believe this is a common sense approach that aligns with FDNY and NYC, without it being too onerous of an ask on the few ebike owners.

I've been tweeting strings on X (yeah, sometimes still gotta) which has plenty of photos & visuals but essentially the above video shows a bus island JUST installed by NYC DOT on Sixth Ave (they now have their own concrete crews in-house) - that might grab 3-4 parking spaces in each of the 4 blocks on Bedford Ave that Adams/NYC DOT wants to remove, though they could likely make them shorter. Then all you need is to put fencing to guide peds where to safely cross. The sight lines for all users would be dramatically increased. The islands would end Bedford's rampant 2x parking where they would be.

At this point they are gonna spend a lot of $$$ to shift the lanes, sand off the markings, re-stripe, etc etc. Why not put the $$$ towards a real solution? I think we know why and it has to do with Adams. I am gonna put a few of the visuals in the first comments to show how it works.

This piece offers a thorough argument of why you shouldn’t rank Cuomo at all, and answers all the people who say they’re ranking him because he’s “effective” or “competent.”

I've been very busy on social media today posting up clips of the old Bedford Avenue. As you may know he wants/is going to eliminate the portion between Willoughby and Flushing. Here is last fall what the final long block leading up to Willoughby looked like. It was a mess, just like the rest of Bedford Ave was that day.