WPCNR VIEW FROM THE UPPER DECK. By Bull Allen. November 6,2009: Congratulations to the Bronx Bombers on their 27th World Championship, won Wednesday in The House The Taxpayers Built. Today, the Bombers will be hailed with a parade in a very bad neighborhood.
A 6-ounce beer and a dog:$14 in the upper deck in the fabulous new Stadium. September 16
Those of you going to the parade really should bring personal security you will be in the worst neighborhood in New York City filled with some its most dangerous criminals at large who have not yet been indicted.
The neighborhood is the financial district, perhaps the worst neighborhood in New York City by crime volume, a place where the Yankees never play, but houses many of the greatest thieves of all time: the investment bankers, the insurance giants, the brokers, the fund managers, the hedge fund fliers, did I leave any ganiff out?
People who by their greed and misrepresentation and stupidity and egos have made millions of New Yorkers and Americans miserable. They’re recovering now. You bailed them out.
But America is not recovering. Every week their apologists in Washington tell us things are recovering. Tell that to the 149 homeowners in White Plains who are in default as of October 2.…46 in Battle Hill, 34 in the Southend (10605), 10 in the downtown (10601), and 59 across the Bronx River Parkway (10603)—all in one year.
The thugs who created this do not have tattoos, wear earrings, or piercings or bandanas or carry guns. They wear a different kind of bandana, $75 ties. Their piercings are cufflinks. Their weapons are computers. Their gang members: henchmen, press spokespersons, p.r. men, Senators and Congressmen and Presidents, business associations, lawyers. They’re generally pretty overweight, but that’s a generalization. They buy their coffee in Starbucks, their lunches in steakhouses, and exploit youth. They buy the$10 beers, the$9 drinks, lots of them and put it all on the expense account you eventually pay.
Yeah, that’s where they’re going to have their parade—the street of a nation’s shame. The carpeted crags in concrete canyons in the Canyon of Ganiffs. It is a place of disgrace a monument to false achievement of phonies based on exploiting peoples’ dreams. We have saved them. Are they saving us? No.
But, I digress.
I say since the new Yankee Stadium has, according to two separate reports in The New York Times (disgracefully not placed in the Sports Section -- so sportsfans miss it) Thursday and National Public Radio, not helped the area and merchants around 161st street and Jerome Avenues in Da Bronx, but hurt them big time, the parade should not be in the Canyon of Ganiffs.
The Yankees should parade through the Tenements of Titans – where they speak Spanish, Haitian, Creole, English, and all live together, two jobs, both spouses. Where the kids try to learn, avoid gang violence, and try to work a job too to earn money. The people who do the menial, lousy jobs the ganiffs in the canyons wouldn’t be caught doing --hard-working Bronx that they rip off every day. The vendors that deal the beers and the $7 footlongs.
Why do I say the Yankees are ripping off the Bronx? It’s true.
Because they have put 100 restaurants in their ballpark, mini department stores and have taken tons of business away from the local businesses which used to do great souvenir and food sales around the old stadium. The Yankees are getting it all.
Their success this year was purchased, and baseball appeared to let them get the best free agents, because the Yankees need to contend for baseball to be successful in the media. But that's another column.
Remember how Mayor Bloomberg, and Governor Spitzer (remember him?) sold those taxfree financing bonds they gave to the Yankees, who have not paid for the entire stadium. New York taxpayers, people in the Bronx, you, me, lent the Yankees the money at the best interest rates you can get – tax free bonds which the Yankees can resell. Too bad there was not a referendum on that.
They even make money on the financing. Remember the "lines": The new ballpark will bring new business to the Bronx Mayor Bloomberg said. Well that is not the way it has worked out for the merchants around the ballpark in year one of the Stadium.
In fact National Public Radio did a long report last week showing no new ballparks built around the country (21) in the last decade have increased local business in their neighborhoods.
So, in order for the Yankees to “give something back” to The Bronx that has been ripped off by the Stadium that is so overpriced the neighbors cannot afford a ticket ($20) for a seat in the top rows of the third deck, have to spend $14 for a beer and a very short hot dog -- how about this:
I submit they should put the parade in the Bronx so the real people can hail the heroes who have won the World Championship: C.C., Derek, the Great Matsui, the miraculous comeback kid, Andy Pettite, and the Great Riviera, and A-Rod, who has been rehabilitated by the media,(though it is a disgrace they relied on him to win so many games), the Melkman, Robbie Don’t Cha Know Cano, Jorge and Nick.
The old Stadium.Seats Gone. September 16
I suggest starting the parade on East 138th Street, the heart of the South Bronx and wending up East 153rd Street, up 161st past the old crumbling Yankee Stadium, under the rumble of the subway, and then up to the Grand Concourse, marching down that old boulevard past the Grand Concourse Hotel (where Babe Ruth once lived, and all the ballplayers stayed). Vendors could line the streets, make tons of money, maybe.
Let the ballplayers see the real New York that keeps the city going through their sweat and toil.
I won’t be at that parade.
I don’t think the Yankees are paying for all the police overtime for that parade security either.The cost of the parade is a disgrace.
Do the Yankees ever pay? Do professional sports teams ever pay for something the community needs?
Fans don’t get it.
The idea is that you pay.
You always pay.
So long everybody.
Still the greatest place to be a ballpark on a summer night.
