Blazing restaurant shanty delays transit service on the 7 line

Outside Dining Structure Engulfed in Flames @CitizenApp

84-19 Roosevelt Ave 2:20:01 AM EDT

The Greek Restaurant Shanty Ruin Of Austin Street

Crappy told me about this shanty, apparently the roof couldn't persevere under the primal forces of Mother Nature or maybe Zeus. But like every other decrepit shanty, it still remains taking up valuable parking space, which is what the regulatory captured Department of Transportation Alternatives wants.

 

The NYC Open Restaurants Clustershanty Of Koreatown

Impunity City

 It wasn’t much long ago when yours truly did a expansive on the street eyewitness story about the much ballyhooed NYC Open Restaurants program (albeit ballyhooed by our feckless and bought elected officials in NYC Council, former mayor Bill de Blasio and current Mayor Eric Adams) and what an actual clusterfuck it was and making a case out it shouldn’t exist anymore. Now thanks to a judge’s recent decision to order the city to make a thorough environmental review of the restaurant shanties all over the five boroughs, it has thankfully put a pounding kibosh on the City Council Cronies plan to make these unsafe, blighted, filthy, ugly and traffic congesting eyesores a permanent part of the street infrastructure which the restaurants have been using for free for the last two years.

 

But before the Council Cronies begin their study, I would like to present exhibit A on why every public space these restaurants has usurped must cease to exist and that’s the massive triple cluster shanty on the southwest corner of 32nd St. and 5th Ave, just two blocks away from the Empire State Building.

This is truly the tipping point of public space misuse and the heinous blight that has befouled the streets in the last year, which continues unencumbered because of the willful obliviousness of elected officials and the persistent bickering demands of the hospitality industrial complex lobby, represented by some neoliberal runt named Andrew Rigie.

Behold.

 

 

 

Impunity City 

Shanty no more

 

AMNY
 

The omnipresent restaurant curbside sheds could become a thing of the past under the city’s plans to make the pandemic-era outdoor dining initiative permanent.

The Department of Transportation’s Open Restaurants Program director told the New York City Council that the curbside eateries will be less heavily-constructed than those that restaurant owners have built outside their establishments around the Five Boroughs.

“We don’t envision sheds in the permanent program, we’re not planning for that,” said Julie Schipper during the virtual Feb. 8 oversight hearing. “What would be in the roadway is barriers and tents or umbrellas, but not these full houses that you’re seeing in the street.”

The DOT rep said that the structures were no longer necessary because people don’t have to dine outside anymore like they did early on during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Something we saw over COVID is you cannot eat indoors and so you had to eat outside in all weather, but that won’t be the case going forward,” she said. “This program is really being planned for a post-COVID scenario where you can dine outside when that feels nice and comfortable but you won’t need to be in a house on a street.”

 

 

Impatient woman crashes her car into open restaurant shanty and kills a scooter rider

 

PIX News

 A man was was killed and a woman was injured in Queens when a speeding car struck a moped and multiple parked vehicles before crashing into an outdoor dining space Thursday night, police said.

Officials said it happened at Rosatoro Restaurant, near 35th Street and Ditmars Boulevard, around 7:45 p.m.

According to police, a woman, 60, behind the wheel of a Mercedes Benz C-300 was speeding northbound on 35th Street when she struck a man on a Yamaha Chappy moped.

The car kept going and struck two unoccupied vehicles parked along the east side of 35th Street, officials said.

Soon after, the Mercedes crashed into the outdoor dining structure at Rosatoro, where it came to a rest within the structure, police said.

Responding officers found the moped driver, 37, unconscious and unresponsive, laying in the road with visible trauma, the NYPD said.

He was rushed to an area hospital where he was pronounced dead. Officials identified the victim Friday morning as Xing Lin of Queens.

Police said a woman, 32, was also found at the scene with injuries to both legs. She was also hospitalized for treatment.

Open streets and restaurants has led to blowback blight

This is going to be a real change for anyone living on Cornelia Street, especially if these dining sheds permanent after the pandemic. There are 10 of them on this one tiny narrow block. Only a few are open right now, but the other ones are getting ready. ⁦⁦@ebottcher⁩ pic.twitter.com/NdIfVplBp8

— CentralVillageBA (@CVBA10014) March 12, 2021

 

Medium

Remake New York is the new buzzword for pundits and politicians. It envisions the post-pandemic city as a blank slate on which to try out cool new ideas. There’s nothing wrong with cool ideas but actual policy requires more than slogans and press releases. It requires planning. It requires expertise. It requires debate and public input.

Permanent outdoor dining is warning for what can go wrong when you remake New York on the fly. Beginning as a temporary measure designed to help restaurants survive the lockdown, the public took to outdoor dining right away. After a grim spring, when moving vans were more common than taxis, people loved the sight of the funky shacks, festooned with fake flowers and painted in gaudy colors, that were bringing life back to the streets.

Elected officials love popular programs, especially if the official has worn out his welcome. Mayor de Blasio jumped all over outdoor dining, declaring that it must “be part of city life for years to come.” Just a few weeks later his wish became an actual law mandating “the establishment of a permanent outdoor dining program” by October 1, 2021. In the blink of an eye, and with no debate, the city tossed out long-established policy, ignored long-established zoning restrictions and gave away public land — sidewalks and roadways—to private businesses.

Local Law 114 is a textbook example of how not to make policy. At a single hastily convened hearing, members of the City Council tossed softballs to representatives of the restaurant industry and Business Improvement Districts. Representatives of the neighborhoods impacted by the new law were nowhere to be found. The official voice of these neighborhoods, Community Boards, didn’t learn what was in the bill until after it had passed.

The one saving grace of this whole misbegotten process was that the city had an entire year before the permanent program took effect. One would think that the Mayor and City Council would have used that time for due diligence on a program they’d cobbled together so quickly. Instead, elected officials took the three-monkeys approach: neither seeing, hearing and certainly not speaking of the problems that came with outdoor dining.