Wednesday’s Headlines: Whatever Happened to the Swagger Edition

Maybe it’s the seemingly endless investigations. Or the daily resignations. Or simply Mayor Adams looked in the mirror and realized that this emperor has no clothes.

How else can you explain the complete collapse of Hizzoner’s beloved swagger?

Whatever the cause, people are noticing.

“The Death of Outdoor Dining Is a Blow to New York’s Vitality,” Times opinion writer Parker Richards pointed out on the op-ed page. The headline itself was a stinging rebuke of Mayor Adams, but the story went further:

“Where people could have socialized, eaten and supported the local economy, helping small businesses stay afloat, there is now a space that serves the desire to park,” Richards wrote, adding that the loss of outdoor dining is “another example of shortsightedness, lack of creativity and choosing an outdated status quo over a vision of a better, healthier city.”

The final paragraph is a stinging rebuke of the current leadership of Fun City:

“A gutless city government has undermined outdoor dining — adding it to the Second Avenue subway extension, shelved by the rollback of congestion pricing and innumerable bus lanes, in the dustbin of improvements New York City badly needs in order to stay vital.”

Where’s the swagger when we need it, Mr. Mayor?

In other news:

• NY Focus continues to do a good job looking at what a bad job Gov. Hochul is doing — in this case, spending $1.3 billion to widen a highway upstate to save drivers six minutes.
• You know the Parks Department has completely screwed West Side cyclists when even the West Side Rag is sympathetic. We also covered the ongoing detour catastrophic along the Cherry Walk.
• G train riders can’t catch a break. (NYDN)
• Remember that high0rise development we mentioned yesterday that got approved by the City Planning Commission? Well, the developer changed his mind. (NY Post)
• Wednesday’s MTA board meeting will be historic. (amNY)
• Voters really dislike Gov. Hochul. (Gothamist)
• Celebrate the 50th anniversary of Robert Caro’s “The Power Broker” with this Times interview.
• There are so many psychopath drivers out there, as this Reddit post shows (by the way, if you run that vanity plate through the city summons database, you come up with two dozen speeding tickets):

• And speaking of psychopathic drivers, while we don’t condone the use of firearms over here in the livable streets movement, this Florida cyclist obviously has good reason for threatening Sunshine State drivers: