New York’s Racistest?
• The U.S. Department of Justice is suing the Fire Department for discriminating against minorities. A complaint filed in Brooklyn alleges that the firefighter recruitment exam is racially weighted and serves to “weed out” blacks and Latinos. [Metro]
• We’ve said it should take more than greening your mansion to make it into the news. This qualifies: An abandoned upstate steel mill has reinvented itself as a wind farm, a first for the Rust Belt. [NYT]
• Peter Braunstein didn’t just want to kill Anna Wintour: He also spoke of heading down to New Orleans to head up a gang of angry Katrina survivors, according to a shrink. (Braunstein did briefly pretend to be a hurricane victim to get free food and shelter while on the run.) [amNY]
• Subway Superman Wesley Autrey left NBC’s Deal or No Deal with $25 after picking the wrong suitcase (the other two held $1 million and $10,000, respectively). No X-ray vision, then. [NYDN]
• And there’s some sort of conspiracy afoot among the Post, CBS, Amy Fisher, and Joey Buttafuoco to pretend that there’s some juice left in the Long Island pair’s story — enough, perhaps, to sustain a reality show. Let’s not encourage any of them. [NYP]
photo op
‘Floodwall’
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans artist Jana Napoli collected hundreds of drawers from destroyed furniture abandoned by Big Easy residents. Starting today, she installed them as “Floodwall,” a 230-foot-long piece being exhibited at the World Financial Center. Under the collection of salvaged drawers, an LED displays the words of the people who left them behind. You can see the installation at the Liberty Street Bridge through February 9.
