By Eric Wolf Schoen
The streets of New York City are empty, and the one’s with people are dirty because out of town folks are pigs and drop their garbage. You fall over the homeless on the streets of the city. You can prepare your fall as you can smell them miles away. The subways, dangerous so much that people are afraid to take them. It’s either buses or Ubers for residents of the Big Apple.
The numbers of people returning to work in Manhattan offices is low. Who is going to get on the dangerous subways, filled with homeless with their life’s belongings in bags to start the day or end it. The Mayor wants Police Officers to patrol the subways in single patrols. They don’t want to do that. Hey, it’s dangerous down there.
Covid has returned with a vengeance. Variant, schmariant it’s still not good. Yes we have to learn to live with it, but tell that to someone who is sick and under quarantine. Masks are abundant indoors at restaurants and department stores, half the people not wearing them correctly. Pink, green, blue you can wear a mask but not if you are in a car by yourself, in a swimming pool or in a park where you are half a mile from the person closest to you. In those situations don’t think one is useful. Hey, you are in the park for fresh air!
Our new disease of the month? Monkeypox. Sadly it’s being blamed on the gay community though many heterosexual people are getting it. 7,000 vaccines are being snapped up as we speak, while the FDA holds over a million in some foreign country.
The only affordable foods are fruit, cereals and bread. The question is what to put on the bread. Fewer and fewer meat specials. My sister ordered a steak, nothing fancy for home delivery from a local diner. Though it was delicious $30 bucks?
In the midst of the craziness what do we have broadcast on the radio stations and television stations covering Manhattan and the other boroughs and suburbs like ours. A public service announcement telling New Yorkers what to do in case of a Nuclear attack.
‘Stay in the house’ the PSA instructs New Yorkers and those of in the suburbs lucky enough to hear it. What did they expect we were going to do? Go outside and have a party. Stay in your house as long as there is a house for you to stay in!
So this is information Mayor Adams feels we need to know to keep us safe. Drugs being peddled all over the streets. The stench of marijuana permeates the air whether you are inside or outside. Crime, well they tell you it’s gone down but when you see what happened to that poor bodega owner, the kid shot dead from Yonkers and, well where do I begin? You know they are lying.
Let’s talk about the bodega owner for a minute. The wife of the President of the United States is talking to a group of bodega owners from throughout the country and she can’t even pronounce bodega properly. I guess she is sheltered where she is in Delaware as they don’t have bodegas. In case you don’t know what a bodega is, it’s a small grocery store that has the basics, often a little higher priced than the supermarket. The small grocery stores my dad owned off Palmer Road, on Warburton Avenue by Otis, and his uncles owned on Glenwood would by todays standards be considered bodegas.
Why are they called bodegas. Why are Stores that sell lox and bagels called Appetizing stores. My dad probably called his store a grocery store. He offered customers the convenience of not having to wait on line and personal service like meats cut to order and home delivery. You don’t mind paying a little more for that.
So we have a sad episode in New York City. A hard working bodega worker (these people often put in 12 plus hour days) minding his business, selling his chips, pretzels (why do so few companies sell pretzels…they are so much more healthy than fried chips) and deli items and a woman picks up a bag of chips, goes to pay with a credit card, the credit card won’t go through, she pulls a knife out of her bag while her companion attacks the poor bodega worker, cutting him at various parts of his upper body. Out of self defense so he doesn’t get killed the bodega worker pulls a knife on the companion and kills him. The bodega worker didn’t come to work that day looking to kill someone over a bag of potato chips. You know whether you have enough money in your account for potato chips. If you don’t use cash.
So who spends the night, actually several nights at Rikers Island? The poor bodega worker probably earning minimum wage. The district attorney, a character named Alvin Bragg sets bail high so the bodega worker and his family can’t afford it. Bragg let’s criminals some of whom have committed 50, 100 crimes out jail with no bail and no guarantee they will ever return to court. Many don’t.
Finally, cooler heads prevail and the obnoxiously high bail set by the district attorney is made more reasonable. They took the bodega workers passport away. He had been planning to leave the country, was honest with the authorities but don’t trust the bodega worker. The DA puts his trust in the criminals with multiple felonies.
In the midst of the Covid increase, Mayor Adams says he should do a better job of wearing masks in public. Do as I say, don’t do as I do. Mayor making it easier to get home Covid kits. It’s easy now through your pharmacy or mail order. There is no mechanism for reporting Covid at home testing so will we ever know the real numbers of people infected by the virus. Or will we continue this ridiculous guessing game based on the numbers of Covid cases reported through public testing.
Half of Republicans have had it with Donald Trump. Over sixty percent of Democrats don’t want Joe Biden running again. Kamala Harris’ accomplishment are negligible. She’s in charge of the border. So get your ass there frequently to see what’s going on.
The Republicans and Democrats have weak Presidential candidates for 2024. And as long as abortion is on the table, Democrats will continue to occupy the White House. The overwhelming majority of Americans continue to support a woman’s right to chose, and those people are not on Republican side of the ledger! They are active, they are energized after the Supreme Court’s decision and they vote!
No one is in charge in Washington. Our Congressman Bowman thinks he’s an orator and marches up and down on MSNBC but doesn’t tell you a member of his campaign committee is related to an executive at the station.
Things are bad. What we have to to is elect candidates in all districts in all states who agree with our principles and values. Otherwise we will be stuck with what we have now! And spread our campaigning to encourage friends throughout the country to do the same.
Don’t kid yourself for a minute. The madness in New York City is a mere 10 minutes from us in Yonkers and Westchester!
Reach Eric Schoen at thistooisyonkers@aol.com. Follow him on Twitter @ericyonkers. Listen to Eric Schoen on the Westchester Rising Radio Show alternating Thursday’s from 10-11 a.m. On WVOX 1460 AM, WVOX.com click listen or download the WVOX app from the App Store free of charge.
