Women's Plaza needs a shave

 NY Post

You’re sneezing for a good cause.

Outrage over a “sexist” statue in Queens prompted its removal and a nearly $1 million project that transformed its base into a planter — but neglect has led to a bumper crop of allergy-causing ragweed right outside Borough Hall.

The centerpiece of the 1922 monument “Triumph of Civic Virtue” — a nude man with a sword standing over two female figures representing vice and corruption — was exiled to Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery nearly a decade ago.

The move came in response to complaints of sexism from activists and pols, including since-disgraced, then-US Rep. Anthony Weiner, who proposed selling the 17-foot, white marble statue on Craigslist.

But following the statue’s removal, the fountain on which it stood fell into disrepair until the city spent $960,000 to restore its stonework and add lighting and benches to create the “Women’s Plaza in Queens” in 2017.

The fountain was also turned into a planter.

At the time, former Queens Borough President Claire Shulman — who had called for the statue’s removal while in office — said the renovation work created “a beautiful space at Borough Hall where people can relax and women will now be celebrated rather than denigrated.”

But since then, it’s again suffered from a lack of upkeep that includes ragweed growing in the former fountain.

Borough President Donovan Richards on Monday called the conditions “shameful” and said he wanted to finally replace the original statue with a new one.

 

City Council candidate curses out women and calls them nazis

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NY Daily News

 A potty-mouthed City Council wannabe in Queens has gone after a number of women on social media — along with joking about rape and apparently challenging a man to a fight after getting into an argument on Facebook.

Steve Behar, a Democrat running to represent eastern Queens, recently came under fire for a sexist tweet targeting opponent Linda Lee. He suggested her message boiled down to saying, “Vote for Me I’m a Mommy!”

Since then, more outrageous social media posts by Behar have surfaced.

“F--k you ... You’re a stupid racist c--t!” he wrote a Long Island woman on Facebook.

“You’re a Nazi c--t!” he raged in a follow-up post.

Outgoing Councilman Barry Grodenchik is backing Behar, his staff attorney, to take over his seat.

Among Behar’s ravings about Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Behar wrote on Facebook over two years ago, “This woman is not credible and I refuse to destroy someone’s career without any due process.”

Around the same time, he made another inflammatory post.

“Come on now! Who didn’t grope and rape girls in high school? Democrats are such snowflakes!” Behar wrote. He told The News he was being sarcastic.

In separate posts, he called former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos a “dumb b---h” and former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen “Nazi Barbie.”

While debating policy with a Long Island man, Behar raged on Facebook, “You prove you’re more stupid and more of a p---y with each post!”

Update: Where Behar gets fed his lunch and resorts to unjustifiable race baiting and shaming

Update: Steve rages full on at a BLM protest last year.

NY Daily News

A Queens City Council wannabe’s profanity and rage aren’t just confined to the online world.

Steve Behar went off on an expletive-filled tirade against Black Lives Matter demonstrators gathered at a Jamaica, Queens, park last summer.

“You have no f--king business being here!” he yelled at activists gathered in Major Mark Park in June 2020, according to video posted to Twitter.

When a demonstrator interjects, “We all have business being here,” Behar snaps back: “F--k you! You’re pathetic!”

Video shows him ranting — with his face mask on his forehead — in spite of protests from a man who noted there were children present.

“You co-opted a Black Lives Matter protest for your own agenda!” Behar fumed while pumping his fist. “You should be ashamed!”

Asked by a demonstrator why Behar was there, he yelled: “I’m here to show my little niece and nephew that Black Lives Matter!”

The demonstration was one of many across the city after Black Minnesota man George Floyd was killed by a white police officer in May 2020.

Out of about 100 demonstrators at the park that day, some were protesting local electeds for taking campaign cash from police unions, according to attendee Ramy Noaman, who shot the video.

 

Kathryn Garcia is not the one to be number two

  

NY Post

Kathryn Garcia isn’t flattered by Andrew Yang’s repeated insistence he’d make her his deputy if he wins this year’s New York City mayoral election.

The former sanitation commission and mayoral hopeful said it was “sexist” for Yang and other male opponents in the race to suggest she’d accept a role as their behind-the-scene side-kick.

“I would like Andrew Yang to stop saying that. I’m not running for No. 2,” Garcia said in an interview with The New Yorker published Saturday. “It’s totally sexist. Totally sexist.”

Yang, a newcomer to city politics, has said he would appoint Garcia deputy mayor to handle the nuts and bolts of City Hall.

“I’m already thinking about how to staff the administration and make sure we can actually move the bureaucracy,” he told The Post’s Editorial Board on Thursday. “I have my eyes very wide open for people like Kathryn.”

“It makes it sound like they’re giving me a compliment, but they’re not,” Garcia told the New Yorker, referring to Yang and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, another polling frontrunner, who she said has “has straight up told other people, particularly when going for endorsements, ‘Well, I’d make her deputy mayor.'”

 "Are you not strong enough to actually do this job, without me helping you? You should be strong enough. You shouldn’t need me,” she told the magazine.

“To be quite clear: I don’t need you guys, to run this government.”

 For her next campaign ad, Garcia should let the city know that the two leading contenders for the Mayor's office can only lead this city behind a skirt. These hacks are very lucky I'm not on Twitter.

 

Shafran campaign headscratchers

When you take a look at Austin Shafran's website, the top of the page under the banner contains tabs highlighting the candidate's endorsements. Here's the one for the Teamsters.  (His mom works for their president, you see.)



But when you get to the tab for Governor Cuomo, it's not an endorsement, just a screenshot of an old announcement from when Austin was appointed as a spokesperson for the Empire State Development Corporation, one of those useless money pits of a state agency (think Atlantic Yards and Columbia University eminent domain projects and Moynihan Station).  Also of interest is the following press release that contains some grammatical/spelling issues. And this guy was once a state spokesman...



Team Shafran likes to post photos of themselves hard at work.  At this strategy meeting was Manhattan Young Democrat Sarah Dinhofer, who was apparently the target of this Facebook page and, as evidenced by the comment on the bottom right corner of the page, thinks it's hilarious.  She's also apparently a fan of very politically incorrect language, and either likes or dislikes it "when Tanvir scoops her chesticles." This is going to be one interesting campaign!



Now here comes the one part of this post that I made up for April Fool's Day:

Austin Shafran:  District 19's man of mystery.

Mayor an asshole in private life, too

From the NY Post:

It looks like Mayor Bloomberg isn't exactly a "leg man" judging by an off-color remark he made at a party.

"Look at the a-- on her," Bloomberg reportedly commented when he spotted a woman in a form-fitting dress at a Christmas party off Park Avenue.

New York Magazine reporter Jonathan Van Meter said he overheard the comment when he attended the party in a townhouse in the East 60s and his host introduced him to the mayor.

Quinn told the reporter that the mayor once joked about her hair coloring to the point where she told him off.

When he last teased her about adding a third color -- gray -- to her trademark do, she said she responded: "Did you wake up being this big an a--hole? Or did it take, like, all day to ramp up to it and insult me like that?"

It's happening because of us

Editorial from the Queens Chronicle:

It’s a shame that “The Triumph of Civic Virtue,” the 1920 statue by famed sculptor Frederick MacMonnies, which has been stationed outside Borough Hall since the 1940s, is being moved out of Queens.

But the fact is we don’t deserve to keep it.

The statue, commonly just called “Civic Virtue,” has not been well maintained. It’s not respected by many residents here; most probably don’t even know what it is. It was controversial even before it arrived at the corner of Queens Boulevard and Union Turnpike. And its pending move to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, while unfortunate, may provide the impetus for the residents of this borough to be more protective of our treasures.

“Civic Virtue” comprises a male figure wielding a sword and towering over two writhing female figures, sirens of Greek mythology, meant to symbolize vice and corruption. Those who want to keep it where it is understand the symbolism.

But from day one the sculpture has been misinterpreted, both knowingly and not, as sexist. Elizabeth King Black of the National Women’s Party is one who decried it, saying, “Men have their feet on women's necks, and the sooner women realize it the better!” That was no recent comment made by someone ignorant of history; she said it at a hearing in the 1920s.

So while we sympathize with those who know what the sculpture is meant to convey, we also understand the view of those who look at it and just see misogyny.

That, however, is not the main reason people in Queens should throw up their hands and just let “Civic Virtue” go. The main reason is that we let our officials allow it to all but fall apart over the years, and now it’s too late to do anything about it. Those who wanted it preserved should have demanded that funds be allocated for that years ago.

Instead, in typical Queens fashion, no one got it done. Now that the statue is just days away from being moved to Green-Wood — which will pay to restore it with private funds and let those who want to admire it afterward do so — we get a too-little, too-late press conference, led by two City Council members trying to stop the process.

The hearing was held, the decision was made, and all we can say now is that Queens residents should do a better job protecting other borough assets, such as the New York State Pavilion from the 1964-65 World’s Fair, the Bowne House, the Steinway Mansion and so many other endangered landmarks. If we lose another, the fault again will be not in our stars but in ourselves.

Is Times Square mural racist and sexist?

From Fox 5:

In Times Square, where oversized billboards and flashing lights are routinely ignored, one mural is turning heads.

The mural was recently put up on 42nd Street. It depicts black and Latina women with long fingernails and little clothing. The mural and its creator -- a 26-year-old artist -- are facing fierce criticism.

"Why are they not standing here with briefcases and cell phones or even communicating with people to show the professionalism of black and Latino women?" says Anthony Herbert, a community advocate.

The young artist, Sofia Maldonado, a Latina woman herself, says she's bringing to Times Square a community of women representative of Harlem, Brooklyn, and other boroughs. And with it, a side of New York most tourists don't see.

But critics argue this mural is a step back in time -- back to a day when 42nd Street was overwhelmed by prostitutes and peep shows.