Some people celebrated Columbus Day on Monday, so you could forgive Gov. Cuomo for lapsing into Italian at a press conference during the annual parade for the genocidal beloved explorer. But no matter the language, the governor again behaved in a manner he often attributes to his rival in the Oval Office — specifically his insistence on maintaining his own facts and his constant mistreatment of the press.
On Monday, the governor was asked for a comment on a Wall Street Journal story that found that car traffic over the $1-billion Kosciuszko Bridge was not doing much better since the new span opened this summer. Here's what The Prince said in Italian (translation by Google, where possible, from a video post by Matthew Chayes of Newsday):
It's impossible! It's not possible. That's crazy. Do you understand? It's not possible. Now there are nine — how do you say 'lanes' in Italian? [Continuing in English with a weird Hollywood-style Italian accent]: Nine lanes where there were six lanes. When you have six lanes and then you go to nine lanes, there's gotta be a better a-traffic a-flow. Non è passo. It's simple math."
(Well, it's not simple Italian, as "non è passo" does not mean "It's not possible," as the governor thinks it does.)
In any event, it's always depressing when elected officials deny legitimate media reports and ridicule reporters rather than just say, "I will look into that and get back to you before your deadline."
And here's the rest of the news from a slow day:
- We learned more about Queens resident Bogdan Darmetko, a 65-year-old bicyclist who was killed by a driver on Sunday on deadly Cross Bay Boulevard. (NYDN)
- The MTA's debt crisis is now a pandemic. (NY Post)
- We tried to find Vin Barone's story in amNY, but the website was down for a second day after the newspaper's sale to the minor leaguers at Schneps Media. If we spot Barone's story on any of the Schneps's community sites, we will update this post. (Updated: Barone has a piece in the PDF version of the paper.)
- Lyft has joined Uber in suing the city over its cruising cap. (Curbed)
- City Lab did a deep dive on Uber (which followed another deep dive on bus networks).
- Two members of the City Council are hoping to make sirens less wailing. (NBC News)
