The I-Told-You-So Moment

Burglars agree with the neighborhood association in Harlem:

After residents of the Mount Morris Park Historic District complained they gave the store a “ghetto” look that did not fit into a neighborhood with celebrity residents such as Maya Angelou and $2 million brownstones, he removed the glass and installed see-through gates to comply with city building codes.

Business was good until the early morning hours of March 17. That’s when burglars snipped the gates, drilled a hole in the lock and made off with $4,000 in cash and 180 bottles of Ciroc, Hennessy, Patron and Remy Martin.

Five nights later, the same men broke in again, according to police.

“If I had the other gate [in], this wouldn’t have happened,” said [the owner], referring to the riot gates that angered local residents

. . .

[The] vice president of the Mount Morris Park Community Improvement Association, which objected to the original design of the store, said his group is upset about what happened to [the owner].

“This is embarrassing,” he said.

“It puts a bad taste in our mouths. We know some people are going to say: ‘I told you so.'”

You Can’t Make An Omelet Without Cracking Some Eggs

“The mayor said he’d never eat at a ‘C’ rated restaurant and generally wouldn’t patronize a ‘B’ establishment, either”. Emphasis on “generally”:

The upper East Side’s Nectar Coffee Shop has served the mayor his morning joe for the past decade, but city Health Department inspectors gave it a B grade two months ago.

Nectar’s manager [. . .] said the store received the demotion from an A grade because of a bad egg.

“When the inspector comes, it was during breakfast,” [the manager], 36, told the Daily News on Sunday. “Everyone is running around, back and forth. I got a ticket for having a cracked egg in the refrigerator.”

Have We Really Gotten To The Point Where A Second-Tier Mayoral Candidate Can’t Make An Inappropriate Tiananmen Square Comparison Without Folks Getting All Worked Up About It?

I can’t believe I’m writing this, but I’m kind of enjoying Howard Wolfson taking mayoral hopefuls to task on their OWS grandstanding:

Stringer said “any time a police force comes into a park in the middle of the night and arrests 200 civilians is definitely a cause of concern,” adding that he was troubled by allegations of violence against protesters and the treatment of reporters, who were forcibly penned blocks from the park and subject to arrest.

“Zuccotti Park is not Tiananmen Square,” had said.

But Wolfson said that comparisons to Tiananmen and Iraq were uncalled for.

“That is an insult to the men and women of the NYPD who carried this out professionally,” he said.

“That kind of rhetoric is so overblown and so outrageous and so indicative of people who are not squaring up with the facts,” said Wolfson, claiming that these officials had failed to address the central question — whether tents at tarps should be allowed.

“The central issue before this mayor, at this time, was whether or not tenting and tarping and camping can continue at Zuccotti Park.

“And not a single statement by any of the mayoral aspirants addressed that issue,” he said. “They all ducked the central issue before this mayor and this city yesterday.”

Wolfson called on all of the mayoral candidates to come forward with their positions on whether the Occupy Wall Street encampment should have been allowed to remain.

“Anyone running for mayor ought to have a position on this issue,” he said, adding that those who supported the tents, “should have been willing to say that. That’s what it means to step up and run for mayor.”

Stringer shot back on Twitter Wednesday evening, tweeting Wolfson, “kudos on ur #OWS work, but ur not in a position 2 tell reporters what 2 ask after keeping them away from Zuccotti & arresting them.”

My hope is that in some magical alternate reality, all borough presidents will be forced to communicate only in short bursts of no more than 140 characters. And it will feel so good to finally unfollow.

Still A Laughingstock, In Just Three Short Years

Widely heralded DOT pedestrian plaza in Meatpacking District continues to impress:

Street plazas with stone barriers that distinctly resemble breasts have become the laughingstock of the trendy Meatpacking District, and businesses are poised to give them the heave-ho, The Post has learned.

. . .

The city Department of Transportation installed the odd open areas between Gansevoort and West 14th streets in one of its first experiments with public plazas. The promenades have since become a DOT obsession, spreading all over the city.

“The plazas look neglected, dirty and unkempt. No one is taking care of them,” said [the] executive director of the Meatpacking District Improvement Association, a nonprofit spearheading the $500,000 overhaul. The tab is being split between the city and the business group.

The Meatpacking District Initiative, another local group that pledged to maintain the areas when they were first built, claimed the city stiffed them out of $40,000 and their funds dried up in 2009.

Clubgoers have taken to loitering in the plazas in between bar-hopping, and filling them with trash.

Coulrophobics Beware

Good thing it’s a city that never sleeps, or clowns might eat you:

More than 200 international clowns will take the city by storm — whoopee cushions optional — for this week’s World Clown Association’s annual convention.

The five-day clown throwdown kicks off today in Queens with face-painting competitions, balloon-sculpture workshops and a session on how to make your own honker at the LaGuardia Plaza Hotel in East Elmhurst.