NYC

Geeky gay boys, sitting alone at tables with their burritos, cruising the other geeky gay boys. Teenage girls from the Fashion Industries High School, sketching new fashions. Skinny straight boys with Central Park Conservancy t-shirts.

Bloomberg is turning into the new Giuliani. Not only is he talking about a West Side stadium, the Police are starting to treat homeless people as a “quality of life issue”:

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said yesterday that the homeless have been targeted since February in Operation Clean Sweep, a crackdown that focuses on quality-of-life crimes using the same computer-assisted strategy that the NYPD uses to drive down major crimes.

Kelly said that while “being homeless is not a violation of the law,” trespassing and sleeping in city parks are against the law.

“Basically, what our outreach program does is contact homeless people and offer them assistance, shelter and hospitalization,” he said.

That was certainly not the policy on E. Fourth St. yesterday, where several witnesses watched officers from the Ninth Precinct verbally abuse a pair of homeless men and throw their Styrofoam shelter into a city garbage truck.

“Don’t talk to me like I have a heart, because I don’t!” one beefy cop told the pair, according to Joseph Esposito, 37, who witnessed the exchange on his way to work.

At no time were any services offered to the men, said Esposito, an assertion later backed up by the pair in an interview with the Daily News.

“Instead of just saying, ‘Hey, listen, you have to leave,’ it was, ‘I don’t ever want to see you in my precinct again,’” said one of the men, who refused to give his name out of fear of reprisal. “They gave us nothing.”

Good for the Daily News! These two articles were on the same page today.

I just got back from standing in the rain, watching the firefighters march up Eighth Avenue from 14th Street to Madison Square Garden for the memorial service there. When I awoke this morning, the first thing I heard through my apartment windows was the sound of bagpipes.

There were only a few people standing on the sidewalks watching. The barricades that had been up since 5 last night seemed overkill.

They all seemed fascinated by the NYSC on the corner of 23rd and Eighth. Maybe there was a class with pretty women happening — all of the ones I saw do that were men. The departments from Florida and Texas were notable for the amount of Latinos/Latinas in their groups — a lot more than we have.

I saw men in kilts, bagpipe players having finished their march, carrying five cameras at once to take pictures for their friends that were still marching.

Most of them were Americans, but there were a lot of Canadians, and we saw one small group of Italians and one that was French. I’m sure there were more countries, but I didn’t see the whole procession. A policeman standing near us was telling a neighbor from my building about going to Ground Zero to try to help — “they were turning people away, there were so many.”

I could hear the ceremony starting a little after ten on the loudspeakers that were set up along the avenue. I think Giuliani’s living with a gay friend in his apartment for a while has been good for him. The first thing he said was that he wished that Father Mychal Judge were there to speak first. He also said that the people who died were trying to rescue people regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation.

There are police barricades everywhere along Eighth Avenue and Ninth Avenue in Chelsea. Those were the only avenues I saw tonight. I don’t know if they’re on Seventh too.

The waiter at dinner — a new idiosyncratic Italian place called Morelli’s at 21st Street and Ninth Avenue — said it was because of a firemen’s march.

What, are they planning a riot in my neighborhood tomorrow?

I was waiting for the subway at 23rd/7th tonight, when the resident entertainer, a blind singer named Bobby Blow, started talking about how “all singers have big mouths”. I learned a new fact from Mr. Blow. “Satchmo” is short for “Satchellmouth”.

Having endured Krispy Kreme, Boston Market, and Trailer Park, finally something interesting has opened. We have a new Ricky’s.

Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick!

It’s bad enough that they have to close the middle of Manhattan for half a day, but do I have to be bombarded with the sound of police helicopters too for the damned NFL party? Is this what NYC is going to become? We’ll be a whore of city like Venice, but not as pretty?