Pols side with Spectrum strikers and not their victims

From CBS 2:

Thousands of union workers rallied in both Downtown Brooklyn and Foley Square in Lower Manhattan in Monday, in support of the striking Spectrum cable workers.

Cuomo and de Blasio are offering fiery rhetoric.

“It’s about respect and fairness,” Cuomo said.

But the residents and businesses on Austin Street in Forest Hills, Queens want fairness and respect too. It is one of many neighborhoods hit by massive outages in their cable, internet and phone services when the workers walked off the job on March 28.

There have been about 100 attacks on the fiber optics system – acts of vandalism that have left thousands and thousands inconvenienced since the strike began.

“I assume there’s some kind of money involved,” said Bareburger manager Adam Bariando. “As a person who campaigned talking about the people; the working class, I would expect him to side with us.”

"Vandals" disrupt cable service for 60,000 households

From NBC:

About 60,000 Spectrum customers in Queens were without cable or internet on Monday after vandals cut a fiber optic cable serving four major hubs, according to the cable company and the borough's president.

Spectrum was working to restore cable, internet and phone services to thousands of customers more than 15 hours after vandals cut the fiber optic cable, Queens Borough President Melinda Katz said. It had been restored by late in the evening, the cable company said early Tuesday.

Police have not released information about their investigation into the destruction of the fiber optic cable.

The outage began around 2 a.m. Monday and spread across central Queens. No other borough appeared to be affected. By around 11 p.m. Monday, it still wasn't fully restored.

5 Pointz set ablaze on Rescue Me

Last week's episode of "Rescue Me" on the FX Network saw 5Pointz on fire.

Here are some stills featuring the building:





The cliffhanger ending had the place explode with the crew of firemen inside.

Win a home makeover

Cleaning out my mailbox, so here goes:

HGTV Homeowner Flyer
We are currently looking for homeowners in the NY metro area who want a living room or master bedroom makeover done by a popular HGTV show!

What we’re looking for:
-Couples or families in the NYC metro area whose living room or master bedroom is in desperate need of a makeover.
-The couple or family can live in a townhouse, brownstone, row home, traditional or modern home. However, all applicants must own their home. We cannot accept applicants who live in apartments or co-ops.

The show will be shooting in late April, so we encourage those who are interested to apply as soon as possible.
Anyone who’d like to apply should email CastingHomeMakeover@gmail.com with the following information:
· Name of each family member in your household and relationship to you (ex. mom, dad, daughter, son, grandma, etc.)
· Contact number
· Photo of you and your family
· Approx. area or neighborhood of your home (ex. Forest Hills, Queens)
· 3 photos of your living room and 1 photo of the front of your house
· A description of your favorite design style
· A brief description of who you are and why you feel you need a living room makeover

I’ve attached a flyer with all the details that you can feel free to post or send out. It would be wonderful if you could help us spread the word to homeowners in your area who could truly take advantage of a custom makeover by HGTV!

If you have any questions or need further information, don’t hesitate to contact me either via email lindsey@jenscasting.com or phone 212-359-9454.

City rents out condemned beach club to Hollywood

From NY1:

For nearly 100 years, a lucky few rented the 41 cottages that line the water. But last September, the Parks Department, which owns the land, forced the residents off the 45-acre site so it could make way for a public park.

There are few details about the upcoming park, except that it will be built in stages.

The agency has sealed the site to the public, and insists it is readying the space, though former residents are not so sure.

"I think it's a little hypocritical," said former Cedar Grove resident John Murphy. "They said they're going to open it up to the public, and obviously they're not doing that. But private concerns can actually use it, and I think that's very wrong."

The state is still considering whether to give the area historic designation, which would force the city to preserve some of it.

Bloomberg benefiting financially from being mayor

From the Village Voice:

You can be sure that Time Warner believes that its decision to bump the Yankees and move a minor news network all the way from channel 104 to a prime spot on the dial carries some weight with the city and the man who runs it.

And that's because Mike Bloomberg, besides running New York, also owns a company called Bloomberg LP, which happens to run a little business-news network called Bloomberg TV.

Which you can now find on your cable system at channel 30.

Because Bloomberg is not only the mayor but also the richest man in New York, he agreed to several conditions when he took office in 2002. In order to make sure that his decisions about the welfare of all New Yorkers would not be complicated by his personal business welfare, he was required by the city ethics board to sell his publicly traded stocks and his interest in a hedge fund. Much was made in the media of how well the billionaire, and the city he ran for a salary of a dollar a year, had been sealed off from his (potentially corrupting) billions.

After nearly two full terms, however, the walls between the mayor's money and his public office that once looked so strict have appeared more and more porous. In some cases, like with Time Warner, that may not have been Bloomberg's doing. And in others, it may not have even been what was on his mind. But as he nears a third term, there's little doubt that Bloomberg's business interests have become increasingly intertwined with his government, a conflicted marriage unprecedented in the life of the city and unchecked by an independent overseer.

One of the rules Bloomberg agreed to was that he would keep his hands off "all matters involving cable television."

While Bloomberg has backed wholesale deregulation and higher rates for cable, saying that carriers "don't make a lot of money," there is, in fact, no evidence that Bloomberg has ever personally intervened in the decisions about the three national companies that have contracts with the city. But it's clear that his network did benefit, mightily, from Time Warner's channel change.

It's also true that television is increasingly important to Bloomberg LP's long-term business plan. Until Bloomberg's most trusted aide, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, announced his departure from city employment, he had overseen the city's cable franchises (his designated successor, Ron Lieber, does that now). Doctoroff left the city to become president of Bloomberg LP, where he has made the revamping of the television operation a top priority, bringing in NBC's Andrew Lack and adding Charlie Rose.

Two months after Doctoroff was installed as Bloomberg LP's president in January 2008, the Time Warner channel switch happened.