Category Archives: TSR

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The lone hearing seeking public input on an ill-conceived MTA proposal to eliminate airport stops from the popular and successful Q33 bus route to LaGuardia went off Wednesday evening without much coherent resistance to the measure.

MTA police officers on hand to maintain order both inside and out of the Clarion Hotel’s lower level conference room doubled in number those who registered to speak.

Limited to just three minutes, I voiced strong opposition to the Q33 route alteration set for implementation the fall.

I followed two MTA public hearing gadflies who make it a hobby of appearing at these legally-mandated opportunities for members of the public to stand and speak before assembled board members and staffers.

First up was a guy known city-wide as Mr. X. Wearing sunglasses and shorts, X unleashed a hostile diatribe at the six well-dressed bureaucrats at the main table. His rambling speech exceeded the bounds of decorum but included one salient point. X mocked the MTA’s claim that the newly-created Q70 bus slated to run down the BQE and Grand Central Parkway would be a faster, more reliable ride to the airport. The MTA “staff summary” claims the Q70 will shave ten minutes off the Q33’s scheduled travel time and attract a bulk of the 33’s airport customers as a result. That potentially flawed reasoning is the basis for removing the airport from the Q33’s path.

Even if one were to accept the MTA’s shaky argument that the 70 will be a quicker way to LaGuardia for luggage-toting tourists exiting trains at Woodside and Jackson Heights, it’s impossible to defend the traumatic amputation of the Q33’s most vital quarter-mile of route given the number of people who rely on it along the way.

The Q33 has become a wildly successful mode of public transport for a mix of airport passengers and workers as well as people running errands or going to churches in the neighborhoods the bus passes through. Its success has taken years to develop.

To suddenly lop off a critical terminus because of an experimental effort with a new route that will run down a notoriously-congested highway is horribly misguided.

Unfortunately, the public who will be impacted by this change didn’t show up to voice displeasure in meaningful numbers.

There was no media that I could see, although I believe I caught a glance of Gridlock Sam when I walked in. Gene Russianoff wasn’t there. No regular riders of the Q33 besides me made their voice heard.

The hearing started at 6 PM. After five people with convoluted agendas were done speaking, the hearing officer put the meeting into “recess” at 6:16 PM. At that point, everybody looked at each other, unsure how a gathering with a 8 PM cutoff would proceed. I walked out, a bit disgusted by the indifference. And then I got on a bus. At least I said my piece.

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After a 5 and 2 start, the Mets have gone 5 and 13 since. It kinda feels like the season is slipping away already. The April schedule was considered soft. To finish the first month under break-even shouldn’t prompt panic with two wildcards in the deck but the team’s weaknesses are glaring and seem likely to fester.

Perhaps the most frustrating development of the young season is how brutal Met cleanup batter Ike Davis has looked at the plate. In 85 at-bats, Ike has struck out 29 times. He no longer gets written into the four slot in the order. On Tuesday night, he batted in the six spot.

Met fans are used to seeing Ike whiff. He’s good for 150 strikeouts a season. But this year, his swing is almost always late.

Appearing on Francesa’s radio show Tuesday afternoon, Bobby Valentine seemed to blame Mets hitting coach Dave Hudgens for allowing Ike to rack up so many plate appearances without altering an obvious flaw in his mechanics.

Said Bobby V: “I don’t think (Ike’s) swing is a functional swing. People in the Met organization don’t like to talk mechanics and I don’t know why. He’s missing a whole beat in his swing. I don’t know why (the Mets) think he can go out there and be functional with that at the major league level. When he takes his practice swing, he takes a swing that’s functional. Then when he gets in the box, he doesn’t use the same little swing that he has when he’s outside the box. Hitting is timing. Hitting a ball properly deals with a biomechanical link that you need to have to time the ball. I think it’s fixable.”

On the game telecasts, Keith Hernandez has suggested moving Ike closer to the plate, given the opposition‘s strategy of working the lefty slugger on the outer edges of the plate. Bobby V said that wouldn’t help. “With the swing he has right now, if you make him more vulnerable to pitches inside, he’ll have no chance – and he’ll cost the team a lot of money because he’ll break his bat every time he swings. Getting him closer to the plate with the same mechanics is not a functional fix.”

Speaking of the Mets, the indie rock and roll band here most closely associated with the team got an unexpected invite to the Letterman show last week and played a song that directly refers to their fandom. The So So Glos (Brooklyn) made their network television debut on Late Night Friday and performed “Son of an American.”

Bassist and singer Alex Levine was in fine form as he recited the following verse from the band’s first track on the latest record:

Take me out to the ball game
I want to sit in the stands and scream
I wanna root for the losing team
Like that day
The stadium was Shea
And I lived in a rally cap
And the underdog would say

I’m a Son of an American

After singing the refrain, Levine took off his bass and handed it to a bandmate wearing a custom-made Mets hat. Levine went on to sing the balance of the song while flashing his typically frantic stage moves. It was a rare and memorable appearance by a quality indie band likely made possible by someone on Letterman’s staff who had to stick their neck out to make the booking go down.