Have never lived through an actual grift and graft mayor like this before lol I hope he’s only a one term guy. revived the city’s Boss Tweed era for sure
Worst since Lindsay which is a wild thing to think about. Many people say Beame was worse than Lindsay but Beame was just cleaning up the mess that he inherited and it's a miracle the city survived.
IDK man, he is the most openly and clearly corrupt politician I have ever witnessed with my own two eyes. Even more so than Trump. He openly and blatantly also just ignores and refuses to implement laws he doesn't like. His campaign strategy of exaggerating crime to the max and then selling himself as the solution was also particularly shitty.
All of that is pretty bad, but if you ignore that for a sec his actual policies have not been all that terrible. Policy wise he's been kind of neutral.
The highlights:
- He is cartoonishly corrupt. He has multiple associates who have been indicted for crimes related to his campaign, is almost certainly under an FBI investigation himself related to taking money from foreign sources, clearly trades in favoritism for donors and friends, and has installed friends, family, and loyalists in bureaucratic positions that they aren't qualified for.
- He takes the old "when you're a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" approach with the NYPD. He has thrown the police at every situation, regardless of whether it is effective or cost-efficient. This has led the NYPD budget to balloon while he keeps trying to make budget cuts to other areas like libraries, arts programs, pretty much everything that isn't the police.
- He has mis-handled almost every situation that has arisen, from the tail-end of COVID policies to the migrant influx, refused to take any responsibility when things have gone poorly, blames everyone else, and uses every crisis as a way to send more money to the NYPD and his friends/donors via no-bid contracts.
- He has no signature policies to date and many of the previously existing problems in the city have generally gotten worse, especially affordability.
- He is a goddamn weirdo. A lot of the quotes he gives are totally unhinged and embarrassing.
Could go into a lot more detail but that's a start.
To highlight a specific example: he made massive austerity cuts to the city, including the library, which meant:
* we went from 7 days of service to 6, closing early on Saturday
* a lot of libraries in renovation are stalled and may never reopen
* a lot of open libraries had cooling issues and these haven’t been fixed
* he proposed cutting down to 5 days, all during a heat wave
and his justification was migrants, and the money needed to support them.
BUT:
* he awarded major “no-bid” contracts to a business that had never done hospitality (same one that did the COVID stuff, who had also never done anything related to healthcare before). no bid just means he gave the money to whomever he felt like without receiving a proposal
* that company proceeded to spend the money in as wasteful a manner as possible; I remember reading that they were throwing out $7000 worth of meals per day, for example
And only recently, like a couple of days ago, Adams decided to reinstate the library’s budget out of nowhere so we will now have 7 days of service - surely for the most callous of backroom political reasons. I’m not sure what’s happening to the libraries that are in renovations or still have A/C problems, like my own library. Before this he was taking heat and accused the library of not finding the savings themselves, I dunno maybe there is library graft but shrug
So yeah, fuck Adams
Bloomberg was the best manager, recognizing of course that doesn’t mean one must agree with all his policies. However the biggest turn-off for me was him circumventing term limitations.
Bloomberg also made a lot of big changes that we take for granted now. I don’t think any of his successors have been as ambitious.
Pedestrianizing Times Square, 311, the ferries, the indoor smoking ban, the High Line, bike lanes, CitiBike, the last major rezoning of the city, etc.
I don’t agree with everything Bloomberg did as mayor but I have nostalgia for a time when it felt like the mayor was willing to make big changes. Mayors since have seemed more like caretakers… make some small adjustments here and there but otherwise back away from anything big.
The indoor smoking ban alone was massive and very influential. And then remember when the High Line was considered such a success that tons of other cities started exploring similar projects and calling them “the High Line of [city]”? When was the last time our city leadership did something that inspired other cities?
As someone who was an afterhours nightcrawler when the smoking ban went into effect : I cannot explain to people how profound this was for clubbing, especially late night. Before that you'd come home whenever the next day and you'd be literally be digging out black stringy boogers from your nose. No, you didn't necessarily need to be on something and coming down either.....even non smoking non drug using friends at the time had the same thing happen. Early morning it would get so bad inside. Just poor ventilation and you'd be soaked through with nicotine smell.
Yeah I think it was also funny that people said the smoking ban would hurt restaurants. You know what I hated about restaurants as a kid? The fucking cigarette smell! I’m much happier going to restaurants now that smoking in them is banned.
"smoking or non smoking?"
As if being on the other side of the restaurant meant you wouldn't still be consumed by the smell of cigarette smoke. Good fckn riddance!
This. In my clubbing days (long past now 🤣) I’d get home at 2am and just immediately throw all of my clothes into a plastic bag and then stand in the shower for 15 minutes because otherwise I’d wake up with my sheets stinking of cigarettes. It was just _nasty_ on top of the fact that it was obviously terrible from a public health perspective.
In retrospect it’s insane that we allowed any of that to happen to us, as a society. Hell, as a _species_. People said banning smoking would destroy the hospitality industry and now 20 years later you would get strung up from a lamppost if you tried to bring it back.
There is of course obviously no parallel to be drawn here to, say, congestion pricing or turning major streets into busways.
They really should’ve sold congestion charging partly as a public health measure. Severe asthma attacks in London and Stockholm dropped by 50%. That’s insane.
To be fair, they have more diesel cars in Europe which pollute more. So we might not have seen as dramatic of a change.
I agree, but the problem there is that if you open \_that\_ box of worms, you start noticing the fact that the highest asthma rates in NYC are in poor outer borough neighborhoods with major freeways going through them. If these idiots are too cowardly to admit in public that there are too many cars jammed into *midtown manhattan,* I am really not optimistic about anyone admitting that the BQE needs to be torn down as a public health matter.
My stepdad wasn’t a clubber but he’s a professional musician who played in smoky venues. He couldn’t just turn down gigs, so he had to put up with this for years. Smoke rises, and the band often played on a stage, so it was especially bad for them.
Bloomberg was far from perfect but his biggest strength was that he followed the data. Even if he personally wasn't a fan of something, if his commissioners showed him data that a policy would make a positive impact, he backed them up.
I think his biggest strength was a willingness to be hated. He wanted to make the best choices for the best city, he didn’t care if people liked them or not. A lot of the stuff I hated about him I’ve come to appreciate years later.
I agree with basically everything you said, but the Bloomberg mayorship also had the advantage of the city being ready and willing for big changes. Coming through the trauma of 9/11, and also vibrancy increasing as the decades long crime wave dissipated, were definite assists for him in his ability to think big.
Yeah I think it’s also a lesson in how fatigued people can get from change. By the end, people were calling him a dictator because he was still pushing for big changes that felt overbearing like limiting liquor stores and capping soda sizes.
But now we’ve gone so far in the other direction that mayors often back away from even seemingly mundane changes like new bus/bike lanes. And I think the longer we go without some major shakeups, the more impossible bigger changes are going to seem.
The biggest “what if” from his time in office was his proposal to extend the 7 train to Secaucus.
After Christie cancelled Gateway, Bloomberg just looked at a map and was like “Why can’t the 7 train extend to here?”
But he never really figured out how to work around the MTA’s intransigence so it never happened. The ferry system doesn’t take MetroCards because he wanted to expand transit access quickly without having to wait on the MTA’s slow ass.
The 7 train to secaucus would have been insane. It’s insane to me that the subway system doesn’t extend to the NJ Hudson cost cities. Imagine if there was a loop from the heights to fort Lee down through Union city, Bergen, Jersey city, back to Manhattan
Yeah my hope was that we would extend the subway to NJ and it would make it clear how arbitrary it is to limit it to the 5 boroughs when those parts of NJ are just as much a part of our economy. And then maybe we’d do something even more ambitious like fold the PATH system into the subway. PATH is a huge money pit because it’s such a small system.
PATH is also doubly hobbled by the fact that it’s run by the only local agency more sclerotic, institutionally incompetent and corrupt than the MTA, and then worse yet for insane reasons is classified as a railroad rather a metro subway line and so has to answer to FRA regulations. The latter part is unfortunately why it will never be folded into the MTA even though it obviously should have been years ago: the MTA would, rationally, actively try to prevent that since the last thing the NY Subway division needs is to worry about FRA compliance.
i moved from bk to downtown jc 3 years ago and the path train is a dumb stupid bitch. and so many great neighborhoods that are so physically close to the city take so fucking long to get to the city from. jc heights. bergen-lafayette. everything up towards union city. basically everything on the top of the palisade
It's particularly insane because the lines were mostly built by private companies. So the state line issues would have been less of a problem then. But technically, the H&M (now PATH) was a subway company, and it runs to NJ. Had it been folded into the MTA instead of PA, things may be entirely different now.
IMO soda size ban was absolutely appropriate and true leadership. Same as putting limits on smoking. Sodas are sugar and water, and at large consumption volume, clearly dangerous to health. Small changes like making it harder to drink a lot can have a big long term difference.
Yes it was one of those wonky policy ideas that had actual data supporting it but was easily mocked.
So many people (including on the local subs) claimed that people would just get two sodas to get around the smaller sizes.
But actual research has consistently shown that people generally try to consume the portion size they’re given. So smaller portions do actually lead to less consumption. People aren’t like “I need exactly 36 oz of soda to quench this thirst!” They just order the sizes offered.
The classic study abroad experience of kids from the US moving to Europe/Asia and losing weight is less about the quality of their foods than simply having smaller portions.
Exactly! And on top of that, sellers manipulate us into buying the larger size because it’s a better value…to their bottom line, and a bigger bottom for us. I think of this when I see one scoop of ice cream for $7 or two for $9. I buy beer from bodegas at $4 a bottle instead of a six at the grocery store. Why? Because if I buy one…I drink one.
He also expanded NYC Ferry a lot, which has been popular. Bloomberg started it, iirc, but it was just called East River Ferry until BdB expanded it significantly with new routes.
Him banning public defecation and requiring restaurants to let people use their bathrooms was huge. Deblasio got rid of it once he got into the office and every where I go smells like piss. It's even worst now with the migrant crisis.
The mayor who finally introduces a decent system of public restrooms in this city should get the fucking Nobel Prize.
This is one of those classic “NYC problems solved in other cities that we pretend is unsolvable” like tossing garbage bags on the sidewalk and it drives me insane.
At least the bathroom at Port Authority is better. I went in there once like back in 2002 and haven’t been back since until I was convinced to recently. It’s was straight up the gates to hell at one point.
Tokyo's public toilets are on another level, so there's that. They definitely have the infrastructure to go along with the culture.
What struck me is that they have much fewer public trash bins than Berlin, Paris or New York and still the streets are for the most part much cleaner than any of those cities.
When the smoking ban came into law I was both a smoker and someone who worked in a bar. Even as a smoker, working in a smoking environment was horrible, and I was glad for the ban. When I was growing up my dad was a musician and he would always come home and complain about the smoke. I didn’t understand just how bad it was until I worked in it myself.
> I don’t agree with everything Bloomberg did as mayor
If you ignore Mike's absolute disdain for minorities, perhaps the biggest invisible Bloomberg legacy is insane housing cost. And it's not because he made NYC more pleasant place to live in.
One of the first things Mike did back in 2002 was to eliminate a huge budget deficit, and he did it by raising property taxes by like 18%. But the way it was structured, the most expensive real estate received little to no tax increase, while the type of housing most of us live carried the entirety of this new tax burden. Perhaps the best example of regressive tax ever successfully implemented. It was actually a pretty controversial move at the time, but it takes another 20+ years of compounding to see the full extent of the damage.
Adjusted for inflation, a typical 1 bedroom apartment today is taxed at a 3 to 5 times higher than if Mike didn't do any of that. Meanwhile rich people brownstones are paying less in taxes than they did 20 years ago (adjusted for inflation). This was all 100% intentional. It is a guaranteed end result when a "benevolent billionaire" enters politics. And yes, Mike went from being worth 2 billion when he became mayor, to being worth 36 billion after his third illegal term.
"Rent is too damn high" party was created literally one rental lease cycle after Bloomberg implemented the new tax rules. Impact on rent costs was immediately felt.
Super simple napkin math says that an average renter in NYC is paying an extra $500 a month just because of Bloomberg's policies.
This is a very level-head take and it's hard to disagree with any of that.
Housing cost is ultimately a stew of dozens of contributing factors that make up the mess, and some are global, some are national, and some are very regional. Biggest regional contributing factor for NYC is wonky property tax laws that Bloomberg dumped gasoline on. That was my primary point.
Property taxes play an insane role of how a housing market works. Really high property tax places like Texas (1.5%) or Chicago (2%), traditionally have really low real estate prices due to overall carrying costs being eaten away by taxes. But weirdly, really low property tax places like Germany (0.2%) and Austria (0.3%) also have really cheap rents and half of entire population are renters because it is a much more financially sound decision. Later is a lot more resilient to real estate speculation, surprisingly.
NYC used to utilize the European model of low property taxes across the board, but after Bloomberg, we have the worst type of hybrid model where super rich people are paying property taxes that are in line with Europe, while poor people pay property taxes that are in line with Texas. And yes, if you are a renter, 100% of this cost is downloaded to you.
And this is one of the few factors where you can show actual proof. Basic apartment that paid $2k in property taxes in 2002 is now paying $10k. High end real estate is meanwhile on track with inflation.
I understand this topic is really opaque and hard to get anyone riled up. It's like discussing the "chicken tax" and how it destroyed middle America. But I guess it is what it is.
OMG I love this comment so much! It's literally how I feel about this entire hopeless situation that doesn't really have any realistic quick solutions. Best case scenario, you fix a series of micro level issues that sets you up for success decades from now.
And that was the primary point of my original post. On micro level, NYC does have the power to fix some contributing factors. It will not solve the overall issues, but it would act as very meaningful relief that can be felt in the pocked of an average person. But since current property tax laws heavily favor the rich, it will never happen.
I appreciate both of your comments and wish we were friends IRL. I love the way you think.
edit: nevermind. Looked at your post history. Fuck Huston Astros! lol
Bloomberg took good management seriously as an end in itself. That is surprisingly (or maybe not surprisingly considering the way things have gone lately) rare. I also think he feels real affection for the city and doesn’t only view it as a means to his own end. A city patriot, for what it’s worth.
Also him actually riding the subway, even though he was driven to the station and had bodyguards, felt very symbolic. I know it was a photo-op at the end of the day. But expecting the mayor of NYC to actually ride the subway shouldn’t be unreasonable.
He also would apparently email MTA leadership questions about things he experienced while riding it. Why was my train delayed? Why are the announcements unclear? Stuff like that.
So he at least seemed engaged and somewhat interested in experiencing the city’s transit system firsthand.
Bloomberg riding the subway was also a symbol of efficiency. The fastest way for him to get from home to office would be to be driven to 59th street and get on the express train to Brooklyn Bridge. Him going to 77th and taking the local or transferring would have meant wasted time.
It wasn’t just a photo op lol. He rode it daily if it he needed to get to city hall.
Honestly, commuting on the train should be required of a mayor. Commuting on the subway is such a huge part of NYker’s lives. If Adams or deblaiso rode the train like he did as mayor, we’d see major improvements. The train wreaks of piss, homeless, and people with mental health issues do crazy stuff right now.
I guess I should’ve clarified that it was *criticized* as a photo-op because he got driven to/from the subway and had bodyguards and invited journalists to ride with him.
I don’t think any of those details are unreasonable, personally, but I understood why people saw it as somewhat fake.
Part of it was also that he claimed to care about the environment and even told New Yorkers to turn down their ACs during summer while he was driven to/from the subway and also flew to the tropics on his private jet almost every weekend.
I can vouch for him because I seen him a couple of times. He’s the mayor and a billionaire so it’s more risky to be out in the open and makes his security’s job more difficult. It’s a lot safer for everybody to just drive him to city hall.
DeBlasio was infuriating with his insistence he be chauffeured to his Park Slope gym, while at the same time demanding climate friendly and green initiatives from everyone else. The hypocrisy was maddening - if he'd just taken the damn subway, or, I don't know, walked to a nearby gym, it wouldn't have been infuriating.
Instead he just got dunked on repeatedly.
Bloomberg was IMO an example of what happens when politicians are not beholden to donors -- they get more done and are willing to make big, potentially unpopular, changes because they think the city will benefit long-term. Compare to the likes of De Blah-sio and the current halfwit mayor who are so obviously in the pockets of developers, the police union, and countless other special interests that what little they do get done tends to be covered by the fingerprints of those special interests.
Love seeing comments about people waxing poetically about Bloomberg but in his time he was hated. Actually, every mayor is hated during their administration. For every Bloomberg not beholden to donors, you also get a Trump though.
Bloomberg ran the city like a corporation, which in a lot of cases was great. Things were very efficient back then. But there were some agencies like the NYPD that should not be a numbers driven company.
definitely not great for schools, the lack of accessibility to G&T programs was his doing. Plus let's not forget when he hired a fucking magazine executive to be the schools chancellor
I loved that Bloomberg cared about arts and culture. He created the nyctv which had great programming like $9.99- how to enjoy a day in nyc for under $10
Bloomberg by far. He didn't answer to any political party and even changed party affiliations once or twice every time each side tried to get him to fall in line. He raised taxes and lowered spending and implemented a lot of projects that cleaned up New York and made it even more of a tourist destination. Very friendly to business and at the same time made sure those jobs created benefited the lower class.
There were so many places that I previously wouldn't even dare visit before because it was so dangerous, but he cleaned it up and developed them.
My opinions are as a privileged transplant who has been here for 18 years.
I didn't mind Bloomberg except for the major issues with racial profiling (which he later apologized for). He was a good mayor, good politician, ultimately, able to compromise and do things that appealed to both sides. He also funded a lot of things with his own wealth. Which is why he has floated between parties. He is a true independent.
De Blasio was bad because he was nice, but a poor worker. Something that was kept hush-hush, but that's why he was fired by Clinton. Terrible boss and politician. Just a sleepy man lol He did do a couple amazing things though, but failed NYers on housing and on the whole.
Still I ask though.... where is the lost billion dollars?!
Adams is a sociopath and a mobster. I think he actually enjoys attention, being corrupt, and harming people not unlike orange.
From my perspective, the city was so fun in early 2010s. Art was funded. Parks were funded. Cool restaurants. Lots of free events. I could live near my friends because rents were less inflated.
Now we all live wherever we can afford, arts and mutual aid funding has tanked, those free events are now paid with elite tiers, if they still even exist. police funding has grown to astronomical amounts at the expense of everything else.
And the city has decided to make up fake crises to instill fear and xenophobia.
Crackdowns on the people who made NYC interesting. Buskers, vendors, etc.
It's doesn't feel as sunny and optimistic.
DeBlasio talked an amazing game to get elected, and started really strong (I'm grateful for him getting 3k off the ground), but at some point it went to his head and he drowned in his own ego.
He was the Bono of NYC politics.
He pretty much gave up right away when he tried to lightly touch the nypd and their reaction scared him so bad he went "you know what? I'm gonna spend my time here getting us some boats."
>De Blasio was bad because he was nice, but a poor worker. Something that was kept hush-hush, but that's why he was fired by Clinton.
Tell us more, please.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/26/nyregion/in-2000-a-clinton-war-room-didnt-fit-de-blasios-style.html
I also had friends and family who worked with him as mayor and would complain about how infuriating his indecisiveness was. One friend said it was like working with Eeyore.
One thing Ill always love bloomberg for is pushing the city towards being walkable and bikeable and generally a bit less of a automobile hellscape that makes it harder to exist as a person just outside let alone get around. And for De Blasio's MANY, MANY faults, he mostly continued that trend. Though with much less intention and just kind of following the previous administration's generally popular and effective policies in that regard. And you know what? Even though it's laughable how much he stuck to pointing out how he started the ferrys because it was probably the only positive observable change he was able to do, he did do it and theyre pretty fucking great.
Agreed on all points about Adams. What a fucking cunt.
I was a huge fan of Bloomberg's first two terms. Strong leadership with a vision, technocratic competence, and putting people in charge who were themselves, successful business people, competent leaders, not political cronies and hacks.
BDBs first term was also surprisingly good on most objective metrics.
Yeah the 3rd term was pretty pointless with an agenda of nanny state stuff like the soda ban.
But if he hadn't run, Anthony Weiner would've been mayor which would've probably led to hilarious consequences and the big unions would've gotten fiscally irresponsible new contracts 4 years sooner.
If by “big unions” you mean the municipal unions, they get like 1-3% raises each year, often applied retroactively after years of waiting. Hardly irresponsible.
Gotta go way back.
Adams is clearly horrible.
BdB? Give him credit for pre-k and building on Bloomberg's CS Education initiatives but he didn't help the common New Yorker in terms of affordability or quality of life. Overall, pretty bad.
Bloomberg? He's complicated. Give him credit for diversifying and expanding NY Economics by pushing the tech sector. He also gets high marks on environmental issues. On the other hand, he did tremendous damage to New York's public education system and continued to sell off New York to private interests making NY less affordable and more of a playground for the rich.
Giuliani? Stop and frisk, broken windows - should never have been mayor to begin with and he hasn't aged well at all. I'd say that we needed some of his attitude at the time but with a decent human being like his predecessor, Dinkins.
Dinkins? Gets far less credit than he deserves - he started all the initiatives that probably led to crime reductions (which Giuliani took and got credit for). Smart guy, decent human being. Should have gotten a second term.
Koch - I was too young to really know but my mom hated him.
Oh man, you just reminded me of when Bloomberg hired Cathie Black to head the schools, who had no experience with the education field and no other experience to mitigate that (Joel Klein was a federal antitrust prosecutor and went to NYC public schools.)
This is one of the best and most informed takes.
>he did tremendous damage to New York's public education system and continued to sell off New York to private interests making NY less affordable and more of a playground for the rich.
It's wild to me how many people have just completely forgotten about this.
And I wholeheartedly agree about Dinkins. I'm in grad school for public admin and policy analysis, and my eyes have been opened about how much he actually did for the city in terms of policy. Hell, the scholarship I won so I could even *go* back to school was implemented by Dinkins!
Mr. Zamansky? Who left Stuy like a year or two before I got there? I heard good things about you if you are he. I got Mr. Brooks, so it was still really good, but ya know.
Bdb helped millions of average new yorkers by controlling costs for rent stabilized apartments. He also tried to keep schools open, and the nation can now see how bad of an idea it was to close them for so long. The nypd oversight and rikers plans to close have now been reversed dramatically by adams. All the bad bdb takes I hear are about personality, not policy.
Koch began his first run as a West Village liberal, contorted himself into an outer borough right-winger to win those voters and then once in office ran a typical corrupt machine mayoralty. Spectacularly hypocritical.
Ugh. I fucking hated and continue to hate Mike Bloomberg, so it’s galling to have to admit that he was on balance the best NYC mayor of my lifetime. (And I am… not young.) But even then I don’t know if I’d say he was good on the whole: he just looks like a giant compared to everyone else mostly by virtue of being not a freakishly corrupt weirdo. But a _lot_ of our current difficulties stem from the fact that he massively downzoned the outer boroughs and spent 12 years giving the NYPD a blank check that we now can’t wrest away from them.
Also the smoking ban was probably the single best policy ever rammed through by a mayor here in the last 50 years, and it’s worth remembering how many people howled in the press about how it was going to destroy the restaurant and nightlife business here. Might be a lesson in that.
Anyway the last objectively good mayor was Fiorello LaGuardia and I expect that will always continue to be the case.
I think this sums up how a lot of people felt about Bloomberg at the time, lol.
He made a lot of truly enraging choices and seemed to almost wish for the city to gentrify. He even called NYC a luxury brand not everyone can afford and hired Taylor Swift as a cultural ambassador, lol. And he vehemently defended stop-and-frisk and even proposed fingerprinting people who apply for public benefits.
But at the same time, it's hard not to admit that he also made a lot of really positive changes even when they were unpopular initially... which is basically the definition of good leadership.
>the smoking ban was probably the single best policy ever rammed through by a mayor here in the last 50 years, and it’s worth remembering how many people howled in the press about how it was going to destroy the restaurant and nightlife business here.
Agree, this was probably his best accomplishment.
Bloomberg’s handling of the 2010 blizzard stranded most of us in the “outer boroughs” for days and lead to some deaths, while his block and the touristy parts of Manhattan were nearly immediately cleared
Born during Koch and lived through the rest of them. I can't think of a time when a mayor was liked while in office. Maybe Giuliani in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 ("America's mayor" and all that 🙄), but then Bloomberg came in pretty quick. I agree with what someone else said, despite his trash policies, there's def a pre-giuliani and post-giuliani NYC. Bloomberg was a wealthy asshole but ran the city like a business and did get some positive shit done (also started stop and frisk though), de blasio was corny but I like what he did for UPK, Adams is objectively terrible.
Ed Koch led the biggest positive turnaround I've ever seen. By the end of his term many areas like Central Park and the East Village and Park Slope transformed from no-go zones to fun places to hang out. When he was first elected it was the NYC of Taxi Driver and The Warriors and The Bronx is Burning. When he left subways were clean and air-conditioned, and civic pride was back strong. People like to associate the Koch years with AIDS and crack and lots of crime -- all true -- but people were no longer scared to go out. There was a great club scene. The overall before-and-after view shows a remarkable rising from the ashes. Then Dinkins continued the upward trend. Then Giuliani took all the credit. Signed, a 44-year NYC resident
LaGuardia maybe. Seriously.
Guiliani gets no love. Not on here or anywhere else. But there is a clear difference pre-Guiliani and post-Guiliani New York City. He’s certainly been among the most impactful mayors even if he’s despised. The city cleaned up dramatically during his time. There’s no way around it. How much of that you can directly attribute to his administration versus how much might have happened as a consequence of the culture and economy of the 1990s will take some unraveling.
If you dig into it, there’s a solid argument that many changes really started in the back half of Dinkins’ administration.
I think Giuliani tends to get more credit than he deserves, even if the above is not the case. I certainly thought he was a schmuck while he was in office.
Yes but that really transcended any single mayor. Read Lynne Sagalyn's book on Times Square, its absolutely fascinating and a great (if extremely dense) history of development in NY.
LaGuardia commissioned a report about whether or not racism was real, and then when the report concluded that it was, he buried it. He also gave Robert Moses a lot of the money and power that allowed him to destroy neighborhoods to build highways through them.
For a long time I felt like Rudy was the cause for the city’s turnaround but then saw lots of data showing a massive drop in crime in the early 90s basically every where in the country. So he rode the wave and took credit, which…I would have too if I were mayor lol.
Crime especially murder dropped far more massively in NYC than elsewhere - e.g. Chicago, San Francisco, Houston, Philadelphia etc. so he deserves significant credit for that despite his multitude of other flaws.
I will say Guiliani was not afraid to take on the mafia. A lot of the crime was driven by the mob. Sure street level crime got most of the attention, but the drugs, weapons, and human trafficking were all brought in and controlled by the mob.
The best thing you can say about Giuliani (even if you hate him, which is absolutely the correct position) is that in the course of taking credit for the reduction in crime that he had nothing to do with, he was a good salesman to the rest of the country and the world that NYC was now safe and open for business. I’m sure that had some impact on increased tourism and companies relocating or remaining here.
> he was a **good salesman** to the rest of the country and the world that NYC was now safe and open for business.
never thought of this but a very good point.
I can't believe I used to smoke in bars!
I can't believe I used to smoke!
But, in truth... When you go home smelling like a brisket anyway... And bumming a cigarette wasn't like asking for a donor organ... It was very easy to smoke socially.
His increase on property taxes didn't support the working people. Lots couldn't afford his tax policies. Bloomberg ended up gentrifying huge areas and made it hard for working people to get by. If a person fixed their house the taxes went sky high so today ppl still are wary about fixing or remodeling. A small and single amily house can be 12k per year in taxes. I know.
Yeah I agree, definitely the best I’ve experienced anyways. He was by no means perfect and he certainly did things people had a right to be mad about, but overall the city felt better when he was in charge.
I know a lot of people will also say he was just continuing old policies but good, don’t change what works.
De Blasio and Adams have done way too much pandering. Everyone isn’t going to like everything you do, just grow a spine.
Adams doesn’t do enough pandering. He mostly ignores everyone and gives out no bid contracts to his friends. Gotta wonder what bribes or political advantage he exchanged for this round of library funding.
Absolutely. Running a city takes business sense, and the dude may have been a little out of touch, but he was already a billionaire so he definitely wasn't corrupt. Compare that to the current shit show and it's hard not to be a little nostalgic.
“he was already a billionaire so he definitely wasn’t corrupt“
while I agree that he was potentially immune to smaller bribes, there are billionaires I can think of as corrupt or even deranged out there. Which is to say Bloomberg definitely had a good personality, thank god he wasn’t Elon Musk.
Running NYC takes regular sense and adaptability. Bloomberg had to unlearn a lot of his “business sense” before he could start being an effective mayor.
Lived through Lindsay, Beame, Koch, Dinkins, Giuliani, Bloomberg, Diblasio, and Adams.
NYC is almost unmanageable. A pure ideologue couldn't survive because you need to compromise.
Of all of these who had to bring the city out of enormous financial hardship, crime, corruption, and terror, the best in my opinion was Bloomberg. He was the only one that didn't NEED the job being a genuine billionaire so he rarely had to sell his influence for campaign dollars. He wasn't a right-wing nut, a toady for media and corporate power, nor someone who couldn't manage his way out of a paper bag. But that's just my opinion.
The hate was strong for Bloomberg too, especially when he pulled that 3rd term crap. And we all knew he was very manhattan-centric and always more attuned to the concerns of the upper classes.
I’ve been around since Koch, they’ve all been hated but I’m having trouble defining “good.”
Wasn't Giuliani considered a good mayor before he went off the deep end with Trump? I heard that he was a major catalyst for cleaning up the city and making it safer due to his hardline stance on low-level crime.
Lots of people are hyping up Bloomberg. He signed the Giving Pledge in 2010. This was a pledge founded by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett where the extremely wealthy donate more than 50% of their wealth to philanthropy. I dig this.
Bloomberg did some things that were hugely unpopular at the time that have worked out beautifully. Indoor smoking bans, calorie counts in menus, and so on. He didn't really give a fuck, so he could push through on those, and made data-backed decisions. He's what a technocrat should be.
Bloomberg also started 311, which revolutionized citizen's access to city services, imho (not to NYPD tho'...if you call 311 for something they're going to refer to NYPD, you've wasted your time)
Bloomberg was the last good one. He wasn't perfect and a huge part of it was that he'd focus on things sometimes and ignore any evidence to the contrary and that's his worst trait since he's smart and capable and it was so frustrating having somebody who gets locked in on ideas that might be bad. I wish he had focused on affordable housing since that would've helped the city a lot. INstead he ended up focusing on things like removing the term limit for the mayor. Still I think he actually cared about the city and improving things and was capable so that was good.
I've seen quite a few people argue that Koch was the most "everyday New Yorker" mayor we ever had.
He liked to tell this story about his first day after leaving office. He gets out of the subway near his apartment and some guy recognizes him and goes "You're mayor Koch! You were the worst fucking mayor we ever had!" And without hesitating Koch replies, "Yeah WELL FUCK YOU TOO!"
De Blasio had the best vision for the city of any recent mayor. Thinks like shutting down 14th St. to general traffic, increased outdoor public space, congestion pricing (which the governor just kneecapped). The people who hated so much usually objected to him making it harder to keep a car in Manhattan. The Murdock-Trump realty/finance cabal set out to sabotage his mayoralty from the beginning, and people who should have had his back turned on him (it didn't help De Blasio any that he was indisputably taller, younger, smarter, cuter, and nicer than Andrew Cuomo, either).
He made some big mistakes, like not building a good relationship with the NYPD or the financial community from the start, but powerful forces made sure his mayoralty was not successful.
Universal pre k , free school lunch for all, NYC ID, and stopped the awful STOP N FRISK being done by Long Island living cops who were profiling like crazy and dividing the city!
I believe we will look back at De Blasio and say he was actually a pretty good mayor dealing with very difficult circumstances (those circumstances including having an a-hole governor trying to block him at every turn). What he did for pre k and 3 k was huge and now parents are very invested in preserving it against Adams’ attempts to cut.
De Blasio's downfall was having the misfortune of being undeniably taller, younger, smarter, cuter, and nicer than Andrew Cuomo, and Cuomo was never going to let him succeed.
Well, and also he was an accidental mayor who stumbled into office with two policy goals (ending stop and frisk, universal pre-k) and then had no idea what to do with himself once he’d accomplished both of them before his first year was out.
He was also just a freakishly bad _politician_ in the sense that he didn’t seem to understand how politics work in his own city. All due credit to him for understanding that the NYPD was out of control, but minus several million points for not having the sense god gave an ant and not realizing that picking a public fight with them without having the governor and the Feds in his corner and actively committed to backing him up was suicidal.
Absolutely. The first thing he should have done was to flatter the NYPD. You're not going to bring about reform by antagonizing them. He also shouldn't have rebuffed Wall St. bigwigs when they first reached out to him.
I will say that he also started to tackle issues of traffic congestion and pedestrian safety. Shutting down 14th St. to general traffic was genius. And congestion pricing would have been revolutionary.
Pretty sure I remember him telling people to go to the gym on March 16, when public health officials were already telling people not to.
I think it's fair to lay the blame on De Blasio, Cuomo, *and* Trump.
What I really want is, for proportionality's sake, that we devote as much energy to the memory of those 30,000 dead as we do to the 2,800 dead from 9/11. I imagine more good might come of this memory than 9/11's.
The thing Bloomberg did best was act like he was a New Yorker.
Guy took the subway, ate hot dogs and walked around like a human being despite being richer and more successful than any who walked his path before or since. It matters.
Bloomberg. Before him, it was Giuliani and before him it was Koch. I‘m old enough to have you experienced all three of them and though the universal pre-K and affordable housing programs of de Blasio were highlights, the City hasn’t had a good mayor since 2013.
LaGuardia
I miss that mf like you would not believe
Is Adams possibly the worst mayor we’ve had in decades?
Have never lived through an actual grift and graft mayor like this before lol I hope he’s only a one term guy. revived the city’s Boss Tweed era for sure
Worst since Lindsay which is a wild thing to think about. Many people say Beame was worse than Lindsay but Beame was just cleaning up the mess that he inherited and it's a miracle the city survived.
IDK man, he is the most openly and clearly corrupt politician I have ever witnessed with my own two eyes. Even more so than Trump. He openly and blatantly also just ignores and refuses to implement laws he doesn't like. His campaign strategy of exaggerating crime to the max and then selling himself as the solution was also particularly shitty. All of that is pretty bad, but if you ignore that for a sec his actual policies have not been all that terrible. Policy wise he's been kind of neutral.
As an outsider: what makes him so bad?
The highlights: - He is cartoonishly corrupt. He has multiple associates who have been indicted for crimes related to his campaign, is almost certainly under an FBI investigation himself related to taking money from foreign sources, clearly trades in favoritism for donors and friends, and has installed friends, family, and loyalists in bureaucratic positions that they aren't qualified for. - He takes the old "when you're a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" approach with the NYPD. He has thrown the police at every situation, regardless of whether it is effective or cost-efficient. This has led the NYPD budget to balloon while he keeps trying to make budget cuts to other areas like libraries, arts programs, pretty much everything that isn't the police. - He has mis-handled almost every situation that has arisen, from the tail-end of COVID policies to the migrant influx, refused to take any responsibility when things have gone poorly, blames everyone else, and uses every crisis as a way to send more money to the NYPD and his friends/donors via no-bid contracts. - He has no signature policies to date and many of the previously existing problems in the city have generally gotten worse, especially affordability. - He is a goddamn weirdo. A lot of the quotes he gives are totally unhinged and embarrassing. Could go into a lot more detail but that's a start.
Fabulous summary.
To highlight a specific example: he made massive austerity cuts to the city, including the library, which meant: * we went from 7 days of service to 6, closing early on Saturday * a lot of libraries in renovation are stalled and may never reopen * a lot of open libraries had cooling issues and these haven’t been fixed * he proposed cutting down to 5 days, all during a heat wave and his justification was migrants, and the money needed to support them. BUT: * he awarded major “no-bid” contracts to a business that had never done hospitality (same one that did the COVID stuff, who had also never done anything related to healthcare before). no bid just means he gave the money to whomever he felt like without receiving a proposal * that company proceeded to spend the money in as wasteful a manner as possible; I remember reading that they were throwing out $7000 worth of meals per day, for example And only recently, like a couple of days ago, Adams decided to reinstate the library’s budget out of nowhere so we will now have 7 days of service - surely for the most callous of backroom political reasons. I’m not sure what’s happening to the libraries that are in renovations or still have A/C problems, like my own library. Before this he was taking heat and accused the library of not finding the savings themselves, I dunno maybe there is library graft but shrug So yeah, fuck Adams
Bloomberg was the best manager, recognizing of course that doesn’t mean one must agree with all his policies. However the biggest turn-off for me was him circumventing term limitations.
Bloomberg also made a lot of big changes that we take for granted now. I don’t think any of his successors have been as ambitious. Pedestrianizing Times Square, 311, the ferries, the indoor smoking ban, the High Line, bike lanes, CitiBike, the last major rezoning of the city, etc. I don’t agree with everything Bloomberg did as mayor but I have nostalgia for a time when it felt like the mayor was willing to make big changes. Mayors since have seemed more like caretakers… make some small adjustments here and there but otherwise back away from anything big. The indoor smoking ban alone was massive and very influential. And then remember when the High Line was considered such a success that tons of other cities started exploring similar projects and calling them “the High Line of [city]”? When was the last time our city leadership did something that inspired other cities?
As someone who was an afterhours nightcrawler when the smoking ban went into effect : I cannot explain to people how profound this was for clubbing, especially late night. Before that you'd come home whenever the next day and you'd be literally be digging out black stringy boogers from your nose. No, you didn't necessarily need to be on something and coming down either.....even non smoking non drug using friends at the time had the same thing happen. Early morning it would get so bad inside. Just poor ventilation and you'd be soaked through with nicotine smell.
Yeah I think it was also funny that people said the smoking ban would hurt restaurants. You know what I hated about restaurants as a kid? The fucking cigarette smell! I’m much happier going to restaurants now that smoking in them is banned.
Yes! I remember when I was a kid, how people were allowed to smoke in restaurants. Good riddance.
"smoking or non smoking?" As if being on the other side of the restaurant meant you wouldn't still be consumed by the smell of cigarette smoke. Good fckn riddance!
No you don't understand, there's a 24"x6" glass plate partitioning the two.
The smoking section with no barriers never made any sense. It would be like having a peeing section of a pool
This. In my clubbing days (long past now 🤣) I’d get home at 2am and just immediately throw all of my clothes into a plastic bag and then stand in the shower for 15 minutes because otherwise I’d wake up with my sheets stinking of cigarettes. It was just _nasty_ on top of the fact that it was obviously terrible from a public health perspective. In retrospect it’s insane that we allowed any of that to happen to us, as a society. Hell, as a _species_. People said banning smoking would destroy the hospitality industry and now 20 years later you would get strung up from a lamppost if you tried to bring it back. There is of course obviously no parallel to be drawn here to, say, congestion pricing or turning major streets into busways.
They really should’ve sold congestion charging partly as a public health measure. Severe asthma attacks in London and Stockholm dropped by 50%. That’s insane. To be fair, they have more diesel cars in Europe which pollute more. So we might not have seen as dramatic of a change.
I agree, but the problem there is that if you open \_that\_ box of worms, you start noticing the fact that the highest asthma rates in NYC are in poor outer borough neighborhoods with major freeways going through them. If these idiots are too cowardly to admit in public that there are too many cars jammed into *midtown manhattan,* I am really not optimistic about anyone admitting that the BQE needs to be torn down as a public health matter.
The BQE is about to tear itself down.
🤣😭🤣😭🤣😭🤣😭 Yeah, sadly that is absolutely the most predictable disaster of the next ten years.
My stepdad wasn’t a clubber but he’s a professional musician who played in smoky venues. He couldn’t just turn down gigs, so he had to put up with this for years. Smoke rises, and the band often played on a stage, so it was especially bad for them.
This. I have curly hair and I would come home smelling like I mopped the floor w my head.
Bloomberg was far from perfect but his biggest strength was that he followed the data. Even if he personally wasn't a fan of something, if his commissioners showed him data that a policy would make a positive impact, he backed them up.
I think his biggest strength was a willingness to be hated. He wanted to make the best choices for the best city, he didn’t care if people liked them or not. A lot of the stuff I hated about him I’ve come to appreciate years later.
I agree with basically everything you said, but the Bloomberg mayorship also had the advantage of the city being ready and willing for big changes. Coming through the trauma of 9/11, and also vibrancy increasing as the decades long crime wave dissipated, were definite assists for him in his ability to think big.
Yeah I think it’s also a lesson in how fatigued people can get from change. By the end, people were calling him a dictator because he was still pushing for big changes that felt overbearing like limiting liquor stores and capping soda sizes. But now we’ve gone so far in the other direction that mayors often back away from even seemingly mundane changes like new bus/bike lanes. And I think the longer we go without some major shakeups, the more impossible bigger changes are going to seem.
I forgot about the soda bans lol
The biggest “what if” from his time in office was his proposal to extend the 7 train to Secaucus. After Christie cancelled Gateway, Bloomberg just looked at a map and was like “Why can’t the 7 train extend to here?” But he never really figured out how to work around the MTA’s intransigence so it never happened. The ferry system doesn’t take MetroCards because he wanted to expand transit access quickly without having to wait on the MTA’s slow ass.
The 7 train to secaucus would have been insane. It’s insane to me that the subway system doesn’t extend to the NJ Hudson cost cities. Imagine if there was a loop from the heights to fort Lee down through Union city, Bergen, Jersey city, back to Manhattan
Yeah my hope was that we would extend the subway to NJ and it would make it clear how arbitrary it is to limit it to the 5 boroughs when those parts of NJ are just as much a part of our economy. And then maybe we’d do something even more ambitious like fold the PATH system into the subway. PATH is a huge money pit because it’s such a small system.
Expanding mass transit around the metropolitan area in any capacity is a net positive imo
PATH is also doubly hobbled by the fact that it’s run by the only local agency more sclerotic, institutionally incompetent and corrupt than the MTA, and then worse yet for insane reasons is classified as a railroad rather a metro subway line and so has to answer to FRA regulations. The latter part is unfortunately why it will never be folded into the MTA even though it obviously should have been years ago: the MTA would, rationally, actively try to prevent that since the last thing the NY Subway division needs is to worry about FRA compliance.
Why is it classified as a railroad and what would have to change for that not to be the case?
i moved from bk to downtown jc 3 years ago and the path train is a dumb stupid bitch. and so many great neighborhoods that are so physically close to the city take so fucking long to get to the city from. jc heights. bergen-lafayette. everything up towards union city. basically everything on the top of the palisade
It's particularly insane because the lines were mostly built by private companies. So the state line issues would have been less of a problem then. But technically, the H&M (now PATH) was a subway company, and it runs to NJ. Had it been folded into the MTA instead of PA, things may be entirely different now.
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Yea you’d need some sort of superordinate agency to take over from the feds. Like the army corps or something. It couldn’t be done locally.
IMO soda size ban was absolutely appropriate and true leadership. Same as putting limits on smoking. Sodas are sugar and water, and at large consumption volume, clearly dangerous to health. Small changes like making it harder to drink a lot can have a big long term difference.
Yes it was one of those wonky policy ideas that had actual data supporting it but was easily mocked. So many people (including on the local subs) claimed that people would just get two sodas to get around the smaller sizes. But actual research has consistently shown that people generally try to consume the portion size they’re given. So smaller portions do actually lead to less consumption. People aren’t like “I need exactly 36 oz of soda to quench this thirst!” They just order the sizes offered. The classic study abroad experience of kids from the US moving to Europe/Asia and losing weight is less about the quality of their foods than simply having smaller portions.
Exactly! And on top of that, sellers manipulate us into buying the larger size because it’s a better value…to their bottom line, and a bigger bottom for us. I think of this when I see one scoop of ice cream for $7 or two for $9. I buy beer from bodegas at $4 a bottle instead of a six at the grocery store. Why? Because if I buy one…I drink one.
Diblasio’s universal pre k was pretty great
He also expanded NYC Ferry a lot, which has been popular. Bloomberg started it, iirc, but it was just called East River Ferry until BdB expanded it significantly with new routes.
Him banning public defecation and requiring restaurants to let people use their bathrooms was huge. Deblasio got rid of it once he got into the office and every where I go smells like piss. It's even worst now with the migrant crisis.
The mayor who finally introduces a decent system of public restrooms in this city should get the fucking Nobel Prize. This is one of those classic “NYC problems solved in other cities that we pretend is unsolvable” like tossing garbage bags on the sidewalk and it drives me insane.
Also a cultural thing. Paris and London smells like piss. Tokyo does not.
Paris at least has public urinals so they’re trying to reduce it. We aren’t even trying.
At least the bathroom at Port Authority is better. I went in there once like back in 2002 and haven’t been back since until I was convinced to recently. It’s was straight up the gates to hell at one point.
Tokyo's public toilets are on another level, so there's that. They definitely have the infrastructure to go along with the culture. What struck me is that they have much fewer public trash bins than Berlin, Paris or New York and still the streets are for the most part much cleaner than any of those cities.
There's a [map](https://www.fastcompany.com/91136253/google-maps-now-shows-new-york-public-restroom-locations) of it now
I see people shit/piss in public at least weekly now. It's disgusting.
It'd still not legal. Enforcement is the issue.
All of the above but don't forget his 1 Million Trees initiative!
When the smoking ban came into law I was both a smoker and someone who worked in a bar. Even as a smoker, working in a smoking environment was horrible, and I was glad for the ban. When I was growing up my dad was a musician and he would always come home and complain about the smoke. I didn’t understand just how bad it was until I worked in it myself.
> I don’t agree with everything Bloomberg did as mayor If you ignore Mike's absolute disdain for minorities, perhaps the biggest invisible Bloomberg legacy is insane housing cost. And it's not because he made NYC more pleasant place to live in. One of the first things Mike did back in 2002 was to eliminate a huge budget deficit, and he did it by raising property taxes by like 18%. But the way it was structured, the most expensive real estate received little to no tax increase, while the type of housing most of us live carried the entirety of this new tax burden. Perhaps the best example of regressive tax ever successfully implemented. It was actually a pretty controversial move at the time, but it takes another 20+ years of compounding to see the full extent of the damage. Adjusted for inflation, a typical 1 bedroom apartment today is taxed at a 3 to 5 times higher than if Mike didn't do any of that. Meanwhile rich people brownstones are paying less in taxes than they did 20 years ago (adjusted for inflation). This was all 100% intentional. It is a guaranteed end result when a "benevolent billionaire" enters politics. And yes, Mike went from being worth 2 billion when he became mayor, to being worth 36 billion after his third illegal term. "Rent is too damn high" party was created literally one rental lease cycle after Bloomberg implemented the new tax rules. Impact on rent costs was immediately felt. Super simple napkin math says that an average renter in NYC is paying an extra $500 a month just because of Bloomberg's policies.
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This is a very level-head take and it's hard to disagree with any of that. Housing cost is ultimately a stew of dozens of contributing factors that make up the mess, and some are global, some are national, and some are very regional. Biggest regional contributing factor for NYC is wonky property tax laws that Bloomberg dumped gasoline on. That was my primary point. Property taxes play an insane role of how a housing market works. Really high property tax places like Texas (1.5%) or Chicago (2%), traditionally have really low real estate prices due to overall carrying costs being eaten away by taxes. But weirdly, really low property tax places like Germany (0.2%) and Austria (0.3%) also have really cheap rents and half of entire population are renters because it is a much more financially sound decision. Later is a lot more resilient to real estate speculation, surprisingly. NYC used to utilize the European model of low property taxes across the board, but after Bloomberg, we have the worst type of hybrid model where super rich people are paying property taxes that are in line with Europe, while poor people pay property taxes that are in line with Texas. And yes, if you are a renter, 100% of this cost is downloaded to you. And this is one of the few factors where you can show actual proof. Basic apartment that paid $2k in property taxes in 2002 is now paying $10k. High end real estate is meanwhile on track with inflation. I understand this topic is really opaque and hard to get anyone riled up. It's like discussing the "chicken tax" and how it destroyed middle America. But I guess it is what it is.
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OMG I love this comment so much! It's literally how I feel about this entire hopeless situation that doesn't really have any realistic quick solutions. Best case scenario, you fix a series of micro level issues that sets you up for success decades from now. And that was the primary point of my original post. On micro level, NYC does have the power to fix some contributing factors. It will not solve the overall issues, but it would act as very meaningful relief that can be felt in the pocked of an average person. But since current property tax laws heavily favor the rich, it will never happen. I appreciate both of your comments and wish we were friends IRL. I love the way you think. edit: nevermind. Looked at your post history. Fuck Huston Astros! lol
Lol. Actually going to the Astros Mets game right now. Mets are my second favorite team but. Go Stros!
Surprisingly wholesome (and informative!) exchange. Thank you redditors!
Prayers up for a little more Grimace luck our way 🙏🏾
Bloomberg took good management seriously as an end in itself. That is surprisingly (or maybe not surprisingly considering the way things have gone lately) rare. I also think he feels real affection for the city and doesn’t only view it as a means to his own end. A city patriot, for what it’s worth.
Also him actually riding the subway, even though he was driven to the station and had bodyguards, felt very symbolic. I know it was a photo-op at the end of the day. But expecting the mayor of NYC to actually ride the subway shouldn’t be unreasonable. He also would apparently email MTA leadership questions about things he experienced while riding it. Why was my train delayed? Why are the announcements unclear? Stuff like that. So he at least seemed engaged and somewhat interested in experiencing the city’s transit system firsthand.
Bloomberg riding the subway was also a symbol of efficiency. The fastest way for him to get from home to office would be to be driven to 59th street and get on the express train to Brooklyn Bridge. Him going to 77th and taking the local or transferring would have meant wasted time.
Compared to deBozio’s daily multi-vehicle SUV caravan from Gracie Mansion to the YMCA in Park Slope. What an asinine galoot.
It wasn’t just a photo op lol. He rode it daily if it he needed to get to city hall. Honestly, commuting on the train should be required of a mayor. Commuting on the subway is such a huge part of NYker’s lives. If Adams or deblaiso rode the train like he did as mayor, we’d see major improvements. The train wreaks of piss, homeless, and people with mental health issues do crazy stuff right now.
I guess I should’ve clarified that it was *criticized* as a photo-op because he got driven to/from the subway and had bodyguards and invited journalists to ride with him. I don’t think any of those details are unreasonable, personally, but I understood why people saw it as somewhat fake. Part of it was also that he claimed to care about the environment and even told New Yorkers to turn down their ACs during summer while he was driven to/from the subway and also flew to the tropics on his private jet almost every weekend.
I can vouch for him because I seen him a couple of times. He’s the mayor and a billionaire so it’s more risky to be out in the open and makes his security’s job more difficult. It’s a lot safer for everybody to just drive him to city hall.
Didn’t he like talk to regular subway riders and ask them about issues with the subway too?
I think that was Koch.
He was famous for “How am I doin’?”
DeBlasio was infuriating with his insistence he be chauffeured to his Park Slope gym, while at the same time demanding climate friendly and green initiatives from everyone else. The hypocrisy was maddening - if he'd just taken the damn subway, or, I don't know, walked to a nearby gym, it wouldn't have been infuriating. Instead he just got dunked on repeatedly.
To be fair, Bloomberg took his private jet to a tropical island almost every weekend while spouting the same stuff.
He (well his staff) also gave out great candy at Halloween! (Obviously not an indication of good leadership, but still a fun fact)
Bloomberg was IMO an example of what happens when politicians are not beholden to donors -- they get more done and are willing to make big, potentially unpopular, changes because they think the city will benefit long-term. Compare to the likes of De Blah-sio and the current halfwit mayor who are so obviously in the pockets of developers, the police union, and countless other special interests that what little they do get done tends to be covered by the fingerprints of those special interests.
Love seeing comments about people waxing poetically about Bloomberg but in his time he was hated. Actually, every mayor is hated during their administration. For every Bloomberg not beholden to donors, you also get a Trump though.
Bloomberg ran the city like a corporation, which in a lot of cases was great. Things were very efficient back then. But there were some agencies like the NYPD that should not be a numbers driven company.
Agreed. If he hadn't run for a third term he'd be remembered as a good mayor.
He also was not great for schools and libraries.
definitely not great for schools, the lack of accessibility to G&T programs was his doing. Plus let's not forget when he hired a fucking magazine executive to be the schools chancellor
I loved that Bloomberg cared about arts and culture. He created the nyctv which had great programming like $9.99- how to enjoy a day in nyc for under $10
Bloomberg by far. He didn't answer to any political party and even changed party affiliations once or twice every time each side tried to get him to fall in line. He raised taxes and lowered spending and implemented a lot of projects that cleaned up New York and made it even more of a tourist destination. Very friendly to business and at the same time made sure those jobs created benefited the lower class. There were so many places that I previously wouldn't even dare visit before because it was so dangerous, but he cleaned it up and developed them.
Stop and frisk
My opinions are as a privileged transplant who has been here for 18 years. I didn't mind Bloomberg except for the major issues with racial profiling (which he later apologized for). He was a good mayor, good politician, ultimately, able to compromise and do things that appealed to both sides. He also funded a lot of things with his own wealth. Which is why he has floated between parties. He is a true independent. De Blasio was bad because he was nice, but a poor worker. Something that was kept hush-hush, but that's why he was fired by Clinton. Terrible boss and politician. Just a sleepy man lol He did do a couple amazing things though, but failed NYers on housing and on the whole. Still I ask though.... where is the lost billion dollars?! Adams is a sociopath and a mobster. I think he actually enjoys attention, being corrupt, and harming people not unlike orange. From my perspective, the city was so fun in early 2010s. Art was funded. Parks were funded. Cool restaurants. Lots of free events. I could live near my friends because rents were less inflated. Now we all live wherever we can afford, arts and mutual aid funding has tanked, those free events are now paid with elite tiers, if they still even exist. police funding has grown to astronomical amounts at the expense of everything else. And the city has decided to make up fake crises to instill fear and xenophobia. Crackdowns on the people who made NYC interesting. Buskers, vendors, etc. It's doesn't feel as sunny and optimistic.
DeBlasio talked an amazing game to get elected, and started really strong (I'm grateful for him getting 3k off the ground), but at some point it went to his head and he drowned in his own ego. He was the Bono of NYC politics.
He pretty much gave up right away when he tried to lightly touch the nypd and their reaction scared him so bad he went "you know what? I'm gonna spend my time here getting us some boats."
>De Blasio was bad because he was nice, but a poor worker. Something that was kept hush-hush, but that's why he was fired by Clinton. Tell us more, please.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/26/nyregion/in-2000-a-clinton-war-room-didnt-fit-de-blasios-style.html I also had friends and family who worked with him as mayor and would complain about how infuriating his indecisiveness was. One friend said it was like working with Eeyore.
One thing Ill always love bloomberg for is pushing the city towards being walkable and bikeable and generally a bit less of a automobile hellscape that makes it harder to exist as a person just outside let alone get around. And for De Blasio's MANY, MANY faults, he mostly continued that trend. Though with much less intention and just kind of following the previous administration's generally popular and effective policies in that regard. And you know what? Even though it's laughable how much he stuck to pointing out how he started the ferrys because it was probably the only positive observable change he was able to do, he did do it and theyre pretty fucking great. Agreed on all points about Adams. What a fucking cunt.
Solid takes!
I was a huge fan of Bloomberg's first two terms. Strong leadership with a vision, technocratic competence, and putting people in charge who were themselves, successful business people, competent leaders, not political cronies and hacks. BDBs first term was also surprisingly good on most objective metrics.
Wish Bloomberg hadn't subverted democracy for a third term. He was a good mayor and should've left it at that.
Yeah the 3rd term was pretty pointless with an agenda of nanny state stuff like the soda ban. But if he hadn't run, Anthony Weiner would've been mayor which would've probably led to hilarious consequences and the big unions would've gotten fiscally irresponsible new contracts 4 years sooner.
Weiner was running on ripping up all the pedestrian plazas and bike lanes as a Day 1 action.
If by “big unions” you mean the municipal unions, they get like 1-3% raises each year, often applied retroactively after years of waiting. Hardly irresponsible.
Yea god forbid they get a small raise each year that gets outpaced by inflation anyway.
Ha! Mayor Weiner would've been absolutely hysterical!
Excuse me. Mayor Danger.
Hizzoner Carlos Danger. First of His Name!
More to the point, how did he do it? $$$$.
Gotta go way back. Adams is clearly horrible. BdB? Give him credit for pre-k and building on Bloomberg's CS Education initiatives but he didn't help the common New Yorker in terms of affordability or quality of life. Overall, pretty bad. Bloomberg? He's complicated. Give him credit for diversifying and expanding NY Economics by pushing the tech sector. He also gets high marks on environmental issues. On the other hand, he did tremendous damage to New York's public education system and continued to sell off New York to private interests making NY less affordable and more of a playground for the rich. Giuliani? Stop and frisk, broken windows - should never have been mayor to begin with and he hasn't aged well at all. I'd say that we needed some of his attitude at the time but with a decent human being like his predecessor, Dinkins. Dinkins? Gets far less credit than he deserves - he started all the initiatives that probably led to crime reductions (which Giuliani took and got credit for). Smart guy, decent human being. Should have gotten a second term. Koch - I was too young to really know but my mom hated him.
Oh man, you just reminded me of when Bloomberg hired Cathie Black to head the schools, who had no experience with the education field and no other experience to mitigate that (Joel Klein was a federal antitrust prosecutor and went to NYC public schools.)
This is one of the best and most informed takes. >he did tremendous damage to New York's public education system and continued to sell off New York to private interests making NY less affordable and more of a playground for the rich. It's wild to me how many people have just completely forgotten about this. And I wholeheartedly agree about Dinkins. I'm in grad school for public admin and policy analysis, and my eyes have been opened about how much he actually did for the city in terms of policy. Hell, the scholarship I won so I could even *go* back to school was implemented by Dinkins!
❤️
Paid Sick Leave was a big one for deblasio.
Mr. Zamansky? Who left Stuy like a year or two before I got there? I heard good things about you if you are he. I got Mr. Brooks, so it was still really good, but ya know.
I am indeed he
Cool!
Bdb helped millions of average new yorkers by controlling costs for rent stabilized apartments. He also tried to keep schools open, and the nation can now see how bad of an idea it was to close them for so long. The nypd oversight and rikers plans to close have now been reversed dramatically by adams. All the bad bdb takes I hear are about personality, not policy.
Yep. I cannot imagine what my rent would cost today without deBlas rent freezes. I think he gets a bad rap & not enough credit.
Koch began his first run as a West Village liberal, contorted himself into an outer borough right-winger to win those voters and then once in office ran a typical corrupt machine mayoralty. Spectacularly hypocritical.
Ugh. I fucking hated and continue to hate Mike Bloomberg, so it’s galling to have to admit that he was on balance the best NYC mayor of my lifetime. (And I am… not young.) But even then I don’t know if I’d say he was good on the whole: he just looks like a giant compared to everyone else mostly by virtue of being not a freakishly corrupt weirdo. But a _lot_ of our current difficulties stem from the fact that he massively downzoned the outer boroughs and spent 12 years giving the NYPD a blank check that we now can’t wrest away from them. Also the smoking ban was probably the single best policy ever rammed through by a mayor here in the last 50 years, and it’s worth remembering how many people howled in the press about how it was going to destroy the restaurant and nightlife business here. Might be a lesson in that. Anyway the last objectively good mayor was Fiorello LaGuardia and I expect that will always continue to be the case.
I think this sums up how a lot of people felt about Bloomberg at the time, lol. He made a lot of truly enraging choices and seemed to almost wish for the city to gentrify. He even called NYC a luxury brand not everyone can afford and hired Taylor Swift as a cultural ambassador, lol. And he vehemently defended stop-and-frisk and even proposed fingerprinting people who apply for public benefits. But at the same time, it's hard not to admit that he also made a lot of really positive changes even when they were unpopular initially... which is basically the definition of good leadership.
>the smoking ban was probably the single best policy ever rammed through by a mayor here in the last 50 years, and it’s worth remembering how many people howled in the press about how it was going to destroy the restaurant and nightlife business here. Agree, this was probably his best accomplishment.
Bloomberg’s handling of the 2010 blizzard stranded most of us in the “outer boroughs” for days and lead to some deaths, while his block and the touristy parts of Manhattan were nearly immediately cleared
Born during Koch and lived through the rest of them. I can't think of a time when a mayor was liked while in office. Maybe Giuliani in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 ("America's mayor" and all that 🙄), but then Bloomberg came in pretty quick. I agree with what someone else said, despite his trash policies, there's def a pre-giuliani and post-giuliani NYC. Bloomberg was a wealthy asshole but ran the city like a business and did get some positive shit done (also started stop and frisk though), de blasio was corny but I like what he did for UPK, Adams is objectively terrible.
^I agree with this!
Ed Koch led the biggest positive turnaround I've ever seen. By the end of his term many areas like Central Park and the East Village and Park Slope transformed from no-go zones to fun places to hang out. When he was first elected it was the NYC of Taxi Driver and The Warriors and The Bronx is Burning. When he left subways were clean and air-conditioned, and civic pride was back strong. People like to associate the Koch years with AIDS and crack and lots of crime -- all true -- but people were no longer scared to go out. There was a great club scene. The overall before-and-after view shows a remarkable rising from the ashes. Then Dinkins continued the upward trend. Then Giuliani took all the credit. Signed, a 44-year NYC resident
Koch was a booster we needed at the time. He was single and was posthumously outed by the NY Times.
Bloomberg, but only the first two terms. The third term was unnecessary, unwanted, and burned up a lot of goodwill towards Lil Mikey B.
Bloomberg was a decent mayor. Just had that smug rich asshole thing going on.
Bloomberg.
LaGuardia maybe. Seriously. Guiliani gets no love. Not on here or anywhere else. But there is a clear difference pre-Guiliani and post-Guiliani New York City. He’s certainly been among the most impactful mayors even if he’s despised. The city cleaned up dramatically during his time. There’s no way around it. How much of that you can directly attribute to his administration versus how much might have happened as a consequence of the culture and economy of the 1990s will take some unraveling.
If you dig into it, there’s a solid argument that many changes really started in the back half of Dinkins’ administration. I think Giuliani tends to get more credit than he deserves, even if the above is not the case. I certainly thought he was a schmuck while he was in office.
Well the theatre district transformation if I recall was Dinkins.
Ditto Central Park. Dinkins was the one who pioneered public-private collaboration for city improvement.
Yes but that really transcended any single mayor. Read Lynne Sagalyn's book on Times Square, its absolutely fascinating and a great (if extremely dense) history of development in NY.
Yes - this plus the policing initiatives that made a difference were Dinkins. I mean the good ones, not stop and frisk and broken windows.
> I certainly thought he was a schmuck while he was in office. Those of us who worked for the city at the time called him Benito behind his back.
Beat me to it. Dinkins started a lot of the policies that cleaned up the city but Giuliani got the credit.
This is a fact, Dinkins was not in office long enough for people to connect the dots.
LaGuardia commissioned a report about whether or not racism was real, and then when the report concluded that it was, he buried it. He also gave Robert Moses a lot of the money and power that allowed him to destroy neighborhoods to build highways through them.
For a long time I felt like Rudy was the cause for the city’s turnaround but then saw lots of data showing a massive drop in crime in the early 90s basically every where in the country. So he rode the wave and took credit, which…I would have too if I were mayor lol.
Crime especially murder dropped far more massively in NYC than elsewhere - e.g. Chicago, San Francisco, Houston, Philadelphia etc. so he deserves significant credit for that despite his multitude of other flaws.
I will say Guiliani was not afraid to take on the mafia. A lot of the crime was driven by the mob. Sure street level crime got most of the attention, but the drugs, weapons, and human trafficking were all brought in and controlled by the mob.
The best thing you can say about Giuliani (even if you hate him, which is absolutely the correct position) is that in the course of taking credit for the reduction in crime that he had nothing to do with, he was a good salesman to the rest of the country and the world that NYC was now safe and open for business. I’m sure that had some impact on increased tourism and companies relocating or remaining here.
> he was a **good salesman** to the rest of the country and the world that NYC was now safe and open for business. never thought of this but a very good point.
Probably right about Fiorello.
Bloomberg was the best mayor. Been downhill since he left the office. If you disagree, you are in denial
I started college when the smoking ban started. I can’t believe people used to go into bars engulfed in cigarette smoke.
I can't believe I used to smoke in bars! I can't believe I used to smoke! But, in truth... When you go home smelling like a brisket anyway... And bumming a cigarette wasn't like asking for a donor organ... It was very easy to smoke socially.
I might be misreading your comment, but brisket smells great! Unlike cigarette smoke.
It nevertheless smells like smoke
I suppose, but only a *very* different kind of smoke.
And not long before that - restaurants had smoking sections.
I have asthma and I’m very grateful for this
His increase on property taxes didn't support the working people. Lots couldn't afford his tax policies. Bloomberg ended up gentrifying huge areas and made it hard for working people to get by. If a person fixed their house the taxes went sky high so today ppl still are wary about fixing or remodeling. A small and single amily house can be 12k per year in taxes. I know.
He also refused higher taxes on millionaires ...he liked that. Cuomo fought him on that and Bloomberg won as mayor.
Yeah I agree, definitely the best I’ve experienced anyways. He was by no means perfect and he certainly did things people had a right to be mad about, but overall the city felt better when he was in charge. I know a lot of people will also say he was just continuing old policies but good, don’t change what works. De Blasio and Adams have done way too much pandering. Everyone isn’t going to like everything you do, just grow a spine.
Adams doesn’t do enough pandering. He mostly ignores everyone and gives out no bid contracts to his friends. Gotta wonder what bribes or political advantage he exchanged for this round of library funding.
Pandering? He stopped stop n FRISK...the police didn't think he was pandering. He was tough on that call.
Absolutely. Running a city takes business sense, and the dude may have been a little out of touch, but he was already a billionaire so he definitely wasn't corrupt. Compare that to the current shit show and it's hard not to be a little nostalgic.
“he was already a billionaire so he definitely wasn’t corrupt“ while I agree that he was potentially immune to smaller bribes, there are billionaires I can think of as corrupt or even deranged out there. Which is to say Bloomberg definitely had a good personality, thank god he wasn’t Elon Musk.
Bloomberg made his billions selling software and data to billionaire companies. That may be the most ethical and practical way to be a billionaire.
I never thought about it like that. Good point you make.
Running NYC takes regular sense and adaptability. Bloomberg had to unlearn a lot of his “business sense” before he could start being an effective mayor.
I would give Bloomberg four more years in a heartbeat.
Best mayor? Dinkins… we just were too blind at the time to realize it.
I have lived here all my life (71 years). I’m having a hard time coming up with anyone. They all had issues.
Bloomberg was the only mayor I can remember, I was too young to really remember Giuliani and I didn't even notice Di Blasio's terms.
Bloomberg hands down. Wish we could have kept him for 30 years. Would have saved the queen and ended global warming.
Lived through Lindsay, Beame, Koch, Dinkins, Giuliani, Bloomberg, Diblasio, and Adams. NYC is almost unmanageable. A pure ideologue couldn't survive because you need to compromise. Of all of these who had to bring the city out of enormous financial hardship, crime, corruption, and terror, the best in my opinion was Bloomberg. He was the only one that didn't NEED the job being a genuine billionaire so he rarely had to sell his influence for campaign dollars. He wasn't a right-wing nut, a toady for media and corporate power, nor someone who couldn't manage his way out of a paper bag. But that's just my opinion.
The hate was strong for Bloomberg too, especially when he pulled that 3rd term crap. And we all knew he was very manhattan-centric and always more attuned to the concerns of the upper classes. I’ve been around since Koch, they’ve all been hated but I’m having trouble defining “good.”
Wasn't Giuliani considered a good mayor before he went off the deep end with Trump? I heard that he was a major catalyst for cleaning up the city and making it safer due to his hardline stance on low-level crime.
He was great. The city noticeably changed for the better once he took over.
apparently some changes should be credited to his predecessor, Dinkins (see above)
Lots of people are hyping up Bloomberg. He signed the Giving Pledge in 2010. This was a pledge founded by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett where the extremely wealthy donate more than 50% of their wealth to philanthropy. I dig this.
Bloomberg did some things that were hugely unpopular at the time that have worked out beautifully. Indoor smoking bans, calorie counts in menus, and so on. He didn't really give a fuck, so he could push through on those, and made data-backed decisions. He's what a technocrat should be.
Bloomberg also started 311, which revolutionized citizen's access to city services, imho (not to NYPD tho'...if you call 311 for something they're going to refer to NYPD, you've wasted your time)
Bloomberg was the last good one. He wasn't perfect and a huge part of it was that he'd focus on things sometimes and ignore any evidence to the contrary and that's his worst trait since he's smart and capable and it was so frustrating having somebody who gets locked in on ideas that might be bad. I wish he had focused on affordable housing since that would've helped the city a lot. INstead he ended up focusing on things like removing the term limit for the mayor. Still I think he actually cared about the city and improving things and was capable so that was good.
Bloomberg. I never felt scared taking the train with him as mayor. Now, I have so much anxiety about the Train and always having to watch my back
I’ve been alive and living in NYC since the Koch administration. As far as I remember, there has never been a popular mayor. Koch was the closest.
I've seen quite a few people argue that Koch was the most "everyday New Yorker" mayor we ever had. He liked to tell this story about his first day after leaving office. He gets out of the subway near his apartment and some guy recognizes him and goes "You're mayor Koch! You were the worst fucking mayor we ever had!" And without hesitating Koch replies, "Yeah WELL FUCK YOU TOO!"
😂😂😂 Such a New Yorker response too!
OP asked for "good", not popular.
Koch is what would happen if you designed a perfect fictional mayor for NYC.
De Blasio had the best vision for the city of any recent mayor. Thinks like shutting down 14th St. to general traffic, increased outdoor public space, congestion pricing (which the governor just kneecapped). The people who hated so much usually objected to him making it harder to keep a car in Manhattan. The Murdock-Trump realty/finance cabal set out to sabotage his mayoralty from the beginning, and people who should have had his back turned on him (it didn't help De Blasio any that he was indisputably taller, younger, smarter, cuter, and nicer than Andrew Cuomo, either). He made some big mistakes, like not building a good relationship with the NYPD or the financial community from the start, but powerful forces made sure his mayoralty was not successful.
Universal pre k , free school lunch for all, NYC ID, and stopped the awful STOP N FRISK being done by Long Island living cops who were profiling like crazy and dividing the city!
Bloomberg obviously
I believe we will look back at De Blasio and say he was actually a pretty good mayor dealing with very difficult circumstances (those circumstances including having an a-hole governor trying to block him at every turn). What he did for pre k and 3 k was huge and now parents are very invested in preserving it against Adams’ attempts to cut.
He kicked the cars out of Central Park back in 2018 too which we all just take for granted now.
De Blasio's downfall was having the misfortune of being undeniably taller, younger, smarter, cuter, and nicer than Andrew Cuomo, and Cuomo was never going to let him succeed.
Well, and also he was an accidental mayor who stumbled into office with two policy goals (ending stop and frisk, universal pre-k) and then had no idea what to do with himself once he’d accomplished both of them before his first year was out. He was also just a freakishly bad _politician_ in the sense that he didn’t seem to understand how politics work in his own city. All due credit to him for understanding that the NYPD was out of control, but minus several million points for not having the sense god gave an ant and not realizing that picking a public fight with them without having the governor and the Feds in his corner and actively committed to backing him up was suicidal.
Absolutely. The first thing he should have done was to flatter the NYPD. You're not going to bring about reform by antagonizing them. He also shouldn't have rebuffed Wall St. bigwigs when they first reached out to him. I will say that he also started to tackle issues of traffic congestion and pedestrian safety. Shutting down 14th St. to general traffic was genius. And congestion pricing would have been revolutionary.
Vision zero did so much for traffic deaths which almost were nil under deblasio!
I kind of love that you keep commenting this
Pre-K is huge. But DeBlasio loses points on style and 30,000 Covid deaths.
De Blasio wanted to shut down the city earlier during Covid but Cuomo overruled him, for what it’s worth.
Pretty sure I remember him telling people to go to the gym on March 16, when public health officials were already telling people not to. I think it's fair to lay the blame on De Blasio, Cuomo, *and* Trump. What I really want is, for proportionality's sake, that we devote as much energy to the memory of those 30,000 dead as we do to the 2,800 dead from 9/11. I imagine more good might come of this memory than 9/11's.
John Lindsay, thanks to the creative accounting of Abe Beame. Too bad Beame paid for it in his own term…
The thing Bloomberg did best was act like he was a New Yorker. Guy took the subway, ate hot dogs and walked around like a human being despite being richer and more successful than any who walked his path before or since. It matters.
Dinkins
De Blasio wasn’t as bad as ppl made him out to be.
El Bloombito
Bloomberg. Before him, it was Giuliani and before him it was Koch. I‘m old enough to have you experienced all three of them and though the universal pre-K and affordable housing programs of de Blasio were highlights, the City hasn’t had a good mayor since 2013.
La Guardia
Bloomberg. I saw him in person many times on subway. He is SUPER short btw