Manhattan Hillbilly

No St. Patrick's Day? Fuhgettaboutit, Hoboken!

 

The city of Hoboken had a problem. Each year, a sizeable part of the crowds attending its annual Hoboken St. Patrick's Day parade was getting rowdier and rowdier. And with the holiday falling on a Saturday this year, the city fathers (of whom many are actually female) decided discretion was the better part of valor -- so they cancelled the entire event. 

Some suggested the death of the parade was an inevitable curse because an Italian-American TV baker was the grand marshall of last year's event, which skews heavily Irish. 

 

But if the city council thought just cancelling the event would end the celebrations, they might want to read up on this little thing called the internet. Because now, to protest the decision, online organizers have created "Lepri-con," a crowdsourced celebration at the city's bars March 17 destined to bring an even larger crowd than in past years.

The city council is still trying to grab the tiger by the tail, trying to change the city laws so bars can't open until at least 11 a.m. that Saturday. Right now, they can open at 6 a.m. in Hoboken, which seems a little late for a bit of the creature and some grits and toast.

Amen

My favorite store: Brookyln Superhero Supply Co.

 

We've got friends who live in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn and I always love walking by the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. storefront.

I haven't had a need to go in and buy any antimatter, but the Sidekick Placement Service always looks intriguing.

In fact, the storefront and the website are just promotional fronts for 826NYC, a worthwhile nonprofit organization that provides programs to encourage creative and expository writing among young children in New York.

That said, if you need to pick up some bulletproof tights or capes, this is the place for you. Just be aware: No X-Ray vision use inside, and they request you initiate your interdimentional travel outside the store.

 

Go Vols! (Empire State Building edition)

How nice of the Empire State Building to light itself orange and white on behalf of my University of Tennessee Volunteers last night!

(Actually, it was to recognize the Lupus Foundation, but I'll pretend).

Rat droppings aren't an automatic 'F'?

New York's restaurateurs have been in a tizzy for the past six months as the city's health department transitioned to a new grading system -- one apparently with some teeth.

Gone are the confusing numerical codes that listed "violations" but gave you little idea how to compare your corner pizza place with the Plaza as far as cleanliness was concerned. Now it's simple. You get a certain number of violations, you rate either an "A", "B" or "C" rating. Too many, they still shut you down.

The city has been more than fair during the transition. Restaurants that scored horribly -- and a lot of good, well-known ones did -- got two chances to fix things and eventually score an "A" score.

Well this month the fun begins. All the restaurants have pretty much exhausted their second and third chances, and are having to post their scores. Most of us know the "A" restaurants -- they're the ones who wasted no time putting their big blue "A" stickers on the front windows. The ones who didn't? Well, we kinda knew they were still having to get their acts together, and we started getting nervous about eating there.

This week, we noticed a new sticker in the window. "Restaurant Grade Pending." This was the slackers' attempt to avoid having to post that dreaded "C" in their restaurants. But, as the New York Post today noted, they don't have that option. They're supposed to put it up. And the Post has posted what they're calling the dreaded "Filthy Fifteen," the 15 restaurants with the worst scores. And -- surprise, surprise -- eight of the 15 didn't post their scores as required by law.

One nice resource that's always been useful is the city's online restaurant inspection guide. You can key in a restaurant name, type of food or location and get a rundown of scores and violations. It's like the Zagat Guide for people who don't want food poisoning. Not that at least one enterprising blogger hasn't already started to promote living on the edge by writing the "Guide to the Best C Restaurants" blog.

It's worth checking out the scores before you go eat in the city. Many of the places I thought were top-notch quite frankly aren't.

A battle you hope both sides lose

Whenever Florida plays Alabama, or the Yankees meet the Mets, I always wish there was a way for both sides to lose.

That’s how a lot of New Yorkers feel about the current tiff between one of the area’s two major cable TV companies, Cablevision, and Rupert Murdoch and his greedbags at NewsCorp, which runs Fox News, Fox Business, the NY Fox affiliate, etc.

Rupert’s people decided that Cablevision paying $70 million for the crap NewsCorp shovels wasn’t enough, so they’re trying to hold them up for a whopping $150 million. (Imagine if your cable bill shot up 214% from $80 a month to $172 a month!)

When Cablevision didn’t pay up, and neither side was willing to budge at the negotiating table, NewsCorp decided to pull the plug on its programming – coincidentally right before the NL playoff game and the Giants football game were played last weekend.

Those who hate Fox see this as a win-win, as the average IQ score for New Yorkers is suddenly rising now that they aren’t listening to Sean Hannity anymore. But just like the baseball strike was a battle between whiny millionaires (players) and whiny billionaires (owners), this battle really has no good guys.

So now the government’s getting involved. Because goodness forbid we can’t get our weekly Glee fix in New York. I mean if the government really wants to do some good, why doesn’t it investigate the lack of quality grits in the Northeast. Fixing that would be change we could believe in.