Reasons to Stay in Williamsburg; Green-Tea Cupcake in West VillageBattery Park: The Treats Truck will be on hand at CultureFest NYC on Saturday from noon to 4 p.m. [Treats Truck]
Clinton Hill: Two armed men robbed the White Castle at 531 Myrtle Avenue yesterday. [Clinton Hill Blog]
Meatpacking District: Next Tuesday is Dirty Bingo night at Paradou. [Paradou NYC]
Midtown West: The Royalton hotel has reopened after a brief renovation and has already started serving breakfast at Bar Forty Four. [NewYorkology]
Upper West Side: Thankfully, the old-school Murray’s Sturgeon Shop holds a long-term lease because the neighborhood’s “soul currently hangs on the continued existence of a few shops, among them Zabar’s, Fairway, Citarella, H&H Bagels, Barney Greengrass, Gryphon Book Store and Murray’s.” [Lost City]
West Village: The green-tea cupcake Josh DeChellis serves at BarFry is not only intensely and deliciously flavored, it’s also ” a study in green: the kind of snack a stay at home Incredible Hulk would send off to the school bus in dozens if his kid were having an in-class birthday party.” [Gothamist]
Williamsburg: In an effort to dissuade those thinking of leaving Brooklyn for greener (cleaner) pastures out west and elsewhere, one blogger has compiled this list of some of the hood’s best dishes. [Cakehead]
party town
Movies and Galas• Venus premiere. Celeste Bartos Theater, MoMA, 4 W. 54th St., nr. Sixth Ave., 6:30 p.m. Expected attendees include Natasha Richardson, Corinne Bailey Rae, Dan Hedaya, Arianna Huffington, and Damian Loeb. Dan Hedaya isn’t in Venus. But he was in Swimfan. Once again, point Hedaya.
it just happened
Bloomberg’s Agenda Anything But Lame Duck
Proving that six years of prosperity can get a mayor thinking of posterity, Mayor Bloomberg announced ambitious environmental goals this morning in a speech at Flushing Meadow. Gone is the Bloomberg of December 2001, who chased quick economic fixes, like football stadiums and Olympics. Today Bloomberg wants to balance rising population against rising sea levels. He noted that city planners expect 900,000 more residents here by 2030. “With our administration not beholden to special interests, we now have the freedom to take on obstacles looming and to begin clearing them away,” he fairly gloated.
Bloomberg’s goals would pursue indisputably good things: get everybody within a ten-minute walk of a park, cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 30 percent, make 90 percent of the city’s waterways clean enough for recreation, improve all sewers, and invest in regional mass transit to keep travel times stable. As parsed, these goals have less stick than a can of Crisco in City Council chambers. They seem flexible enough to make good business sense, but what will happen in post-Bloomberg New York? Will potential Mayor Dick Parsons funnel them into a big bond package?
