I returned home this week to headlines describing violent bikers, a deranged scissor attacker and brazen yet-to-be-caught downtown parachuters. I voted for the loser in the Public Advocate’s run-off and then met a police roadblock on my Tuesday afternoon bike ride up the west side. Cops shut down Riverside Park to reconstruct the rampage of scissors-man so I deposited my bike share bike in front in front of John Jay College while news trucks and newspaper photographers on foot scrambled away from the scene with their accounts.

Back in my neighborhood, there’s a sign in the window of the shuttered Cuban restaurant. Looks like the great Thai place Arunee will come down the block and occupy the space left vacant by Novo. This is a positive development. Arunee will fit right in on 37th Avenue. Novo drew the ire of nearby residents with their late-night scene and piss-in-the-alley noisemakers.

It’s funny, Roosevelt Avenue is just one avenue block south and buzzes bright and loud all night but the long tradition on 37th Avenue has been quiet by 10 PM. Silence. Darkness. Novo broke the code. Arunee is right there with Sripraphai as the best Thai in the city and will now occupy a more prominent storefront. I look forward to seeing how it pans out.

-My employer and union jointly announced a new tentative agreement covering 28-thousand airport workers a week ago. We rejected the first proposal and appear to have won a better deal although we still haven’t seen the full document. I’m ready to vote yes and move on. Lock in.

-I support Obama’s determination not to blink at the blackmail while the so-called shutdown is applied in politically selective ways. This shutdown should more accurately be described as a partial freeze on certain federal government functions. The obstructionists will lose this one eventually with some collateral damage to their cause if the Senate and President hold firm.

-The Rado performance in Big Sur still has a grip on me so I bought a ticket to the Foxygen gig in Brooklyn later this month despite strong hints of continuing uncertainty over band cohesion via their official Twitter page. While Rado is listed as the author on that outlet of missives it appears to me Sam France is the source of a flurry of middle-of-the-night nuttiness on Twitter the last few days. Rado is doing a couple of opening sets during CMJ (for White Denim and Real Estate) but both gigs immediately sold out. I figured if I can’t get into those shows, I’ll take a shot at Foxygen’s Music Hall performance as a consolation. The outcome of Foxygen’s pending commitments in Austin the next two weekends should serve as a good signal about whether the band makes its NYC dates on October 21 and 22. I really wonder whether Rado isn’t better off with a full-on pursuit of his own thing. He’s that good.

-WBAI is again saying it’s on the brink of financial ruin and listeners to the weekly Bob Fass program Radio Unnameable called in last week with a consistent message. The non-stop pleas for pledges using the station’s imminent death as a rallying point will not work unless there’s some transparency about WBAI’s future plans to escape the red. Frustrated callers spoke of the station’s failure to mail promised gifts in return for donations. Others urged more modest aspirations as it relates to the station’s next studio location and some wonder whether programs (and the local news department) that have vanished from the air in recent weeks will ever return. “There are some people who are very dissatisfied with this station, clearly,” said Bob. “I’ve been dissatisfied with some aspects of it for many years.” In the meantime, Bob seems to have settled into a good place at the temporary studio on CCNY’s campus in upper Manhattan after several rocky months of technical issues. Last week’s show featured calls from night owls woven into the program two-at-a-time, a technique Bob uses to liven up the discourse. After discovering more than an hour into his show that invited musicians Jeffrey Lewis, Peter Stampfel and the Deposit Returners were waiting outside of the locked studio, the show veered into a short set of live music.

-My Dad recently mailed me a full-page advertisement pulled from the Chicago Tribune’s 9-22-13 print edition. It was a public plea by the brewer of Old Style beer to remain available at Wrigley Field in 2014. Pabst owns the Old Style brand. The brewing conglomerate apparently fears the Cubs and the contract outfit that serves food and drink at the ballpark will remove Old Style from its menu of options next season. As it is, Old Style has been hard to find at the Friendly Confines in recent years. Not that I have much of a stake in the outcome but I would hope for the sake of new Cub fans coming of age that the crisp and flavorful beverage integral to enhancing the ballpark experience on the North Side remains in place. An online petition has been set up at KeepOldStyleinWrigley.com .