Recharger The Dog » Ricky Sit

Something Nice About Brooklyn

Recharger — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 03:23:57 +0000

BECAUSE WINTER IS NIGH, REMINDING HIM THAT EVEN MEMORIES OF SOFT KISSES AT A CORNER TABLE IN A SOHO BAR CAN, IF NOT PROPERLY TENDED, WILT, Recharger wants to stare at a photo of Green Acres, a community garden at the intersection of Franklin and Greene Avenues in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn--the very intersection where Jake Gyllenhaal boinked Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain. Built by local residents with the help of GreenThumb— the largest community gardening program in the country--and Bette Midler’s New York Restoration Project, the garden is not only a place where wildflowers turn white men green, it is also a water conservation project that collects rain for plants and a pond. Best of all, for a $10 annual membership fee, neighborhood residents actually own their plots.

-- Ricky Sit

A Working Class Hero Is Something To Be

Recharger — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 17:10:05 +0000

Vito Fossella, Staten Island’s pretty-boy right-wing congressman (Fossella’s full voting record), arch-enemy of public school education, and the third most conservative congressman in New York State (according to the American Conservative Union), has a campaign finance track record that would make any Hollywood villain envious. During his 2004 re-election campaign, the bull-necked Fossella spent $20,000 on meals and $53,000 in campaign funds on trips to luxury resorts in Las Vegas, tickets to a Jets playoff game in Pittsburgh, 18 holes of golf in Key Biscayne, and ski school for his wife and kids. Yet, the Republican rep has gotten his blow-dried hair in a knot over all that cash the Verrazano Bridge generates in tolls. Most of the money goes to upstate transportation projects, as well as to the city’s subway and bus system

Fossella--running for reelection against an opponent who proposes eliminating the $9 toll for all Staten Island residents—wants at least half of the money to fix the bridge’s perennial traffic nightmare. To help thousands of Staten Island-bound drivers who do anything to avoid crossing the bridge (the bridge is free going into Brooklyn)—including, tragically, driving through New Jersey—Fossella has made several daring proposals: divert about $100 million--of the $267 million collected annually--to install EZ-PASS lanes on the Brooklyn-to-Staten Island side, widen exit lanes and allow right-hand turns at red lights on both sides. Strangely, Fossella has not yet written legislation for his proposal.

-- Ricky Sit

If Only We Could Spill A Starbuck On Our Lap

Recharger — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 04:40:12 +0000

RECHARGER WANTS TO HUG THE QUEENS WOMAN suing Starbucks because they wouldn’t honor her free drink coupon. When Kelly Coakley, 23, took the coupon to one of the coffee empire’s outlets in Queen, she was told it was no longer valid. So she did exactly what Starbucks did when it didn’t like a lowly cartoonist who, some years back, created a Starbucks logo parody—she sued, for $114 million—the approximate cost of one coffee a day for all the people with defunct coupons. Starbucks originally e-mailed the coupon to employees, telling them to forward it to family and friends. “Baxter,” we love to imagine Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz screaming into his coffee-cup-shaped intercom, “do you know how much free coffee we have to give away, you dolt!!” Hmm, 10,000 employees with 100 family and friends multiplied by $9.23—or whatever a Starbucks “tall” (that’s the teeny-weeny size) goes for…not enough as far as we’re concerned. Starbucks, with revenues of $10 billion in 2006, with 125,000 employees, with 11,784 outlets worldwide (including one that opened yesterday in Recharger’s living room), with a history of union-busting, with the balls to sue a small indigenous café on the remote island of Haida Gwaii because it called itself “Haidabucks,” with the cojones to brainwash its 125,000 employees into calling themselves “barristas,” absolutely needs this lawsuit.

-- Ricky Sit