Jerry Meets Bill

This past Sunday, Jerry Delakas and his friend Kelly, co-administrator of the Facebook page Save Jerry's Newsstand, went to the Gracie Mansion open house to meet Mayor Bill de Blasio. If you've been following Jerry's saga, you know that the city padlocked his Astor Place newsstand in December and is kicking him out after 26 years, due to a technicality on his license.


photo from Save Jerry's Newsstand

Outside Gracie, Jerry and Kelly waited in the cold, carrying a homemade miniature Jerry's Newsstand as a housewarming gift to the mayor.

Wrapped in a bright red bow, the mini stand was made from found and donated cardboard, spray-painted Cemusa silver, and filled with New York newspapers--the Times, the Post--along with a Greek paper from Jerry's homeland, and an assortment of delicious candies. There was also a mini Jerry in his signature Greek fisherman's cap. But how did they get such an item past Gracie Mansion security?


photo from Save Jerry's Newsstand

Kelly told me: "We had some resistance bringing it in the house. They were under pressure to move 5,000 to meet the mayor smoothly. When we got to the gates with it, the security laughed. We put it through the metal detectors and the guards said, 'Jerry's newsstand is here!' Laughing. Going up the front steps, the security aide to the mayor asked what it was and laughed as well. When we got to the small room [for the photo op], I think the woman who is Bill's Chief of Staff took it from me and passed it to the back of the room. She said they were putting all the gifts together. I said 'No. We want to present it to the mayor. In the picture.' I turned to ask the mayor. The woman was giving me the frown. But he said something like 'Sure, pass it up.'"

Kelly and Jerry told the mayor about how the city seized and locked the real newsstand. De Blasio said he was aware of the situation, and that it is "a great injustice." He then instructed his aide to "get on it immediately." Jerry and Kelly talked to the aide and gave all the specifics.

I asked Jerry about his experience. He told me he enjoyed his trip to Gracie Mansion and found the mayor to be a very nice guy. "The visit with the mayor," he said, "was the greatest gift of all times to begin the new year." He wishes Bill de Blasio a Happy New Year and hopes he will help him to keep the newsstand and maintain his living.



If you'd like to help Jerry, there are a few ways to lend your support.

Tomorrow, join the 9:00 a.m. "We Got Your Back" rally on the courthouse steps at 60 Centre Street. You can also donate money to SaveJerry@Outlook.com via PayPal or the drop box at the NY Copy Center on 7th Street. And call the Public Advocate's office at 212-669-7250 to tell them: Don't leave Jerry Delakas out in the cold!



See Also:
Jerry Out in the Cold
Jerry's Newsstand

History of the New York Newsstand
More Newsstand Deaths
Newsstand Slaughter
Hojo's Lost Newsstand
Another Newsstand
Union Square Newsstand

Welcome to Gracie

For the first time in a dozen years, a New York City mayor will be living in Gracie Mansion. Something vanished has returned. Yesterday, in a rare event, Bill de Blasio opened the traditional mayoral residence to the public.



Thousands of New Yorkers with free tickets waited in the cold and rain, but no one seemed to mind. The mood was upbeat and friendly. Everyone seemed--dare I say it?--very happy. The event staffers were happy. The volunteers who handed out cups of hot chocolate were happy. The community relations cops were downright jovial. Security was minimal.

Even under the gray winter sky, there was a lightness in the air. The general feeling was one of welcome and openness. Gemutlichkeit was the word that came to mind--"a situation that induces a cheerful mood, peace of mind, with connotation of belonging and social acceptance, coziness and unhurry."





The line moved smoothly and, once inside, we wound our way through Gracie, from room to room, past oil paintings, fireplaces, a Christmas tree topped with its own miniature Gracie Mansion. Photographs were permitted. The guards chatted and laughed with the visitors. Docents answered questions. No one pushed. No one was talking on their phones or texting. Everyone seemed rather delighted to be there.





At the end of the tour we emerged into a room where Mayor de Blasio awaited. One by one, he took us under his arm (it's a very long arm). We put our arms around him in return and posed for the photographer. The mayor smiled and chatted, responding to whatever anyone had to say.



And then we were back outside, on the porch and down to the yard, looking at the river. We lingered in the unhurry, in the excited air of a new, unknowable era.

A woman said to her teenage son, "Bill de Blasio is very warm." And when the son asked, "What was Bloomberg like?" the mother answered, "He was, well, he wasn't very warm."



And it seems to me that whatever happens, whatever promises our new mayor keeps or breaks, whatever scandals are to come, whatever inevitable disappointments, there is this--this warmth, this openness, this Gemutlichkeit feeling in the city that simply was not here before, not for many years. And that's something to behold.

Inauguration Highlights

Top 10 highlights of yesterday's mayoral inauguration (in no particular order):


1. Watching the first family emerge from the subway station--and hearing everyone on the receiving line go crazy declaring their love for the fabulous Chirlane.




2. Bloomberg's unrelenting sourpuss. Without a glimmer of lightness, he never altered his unsmiling pouty face throughout the entire event. He looked like an angry child who just had his favorite toy taken away and who was determined to pout for the duration, no matter how much everyone around him was smiling. In fact, the more they smiled, the more he pouted.


photo: Corey Sipkin, Daily News



These are not the same photo. He just never changed his utterly joyless expression.







Even when shaking Clinton's hand, it was little Pouty McPoutface all the way.




3. The fact that no one thanked Bloomberg until Bill Clinton, nearly an hour into the event. He was barely mentioned at all. Not only that, almost every speaker ripped into his destructive vision of the "luxury city."


4. Public Advocate Letitia James. This woman is future mayor material and her speech pulled no punches--she said it all and then some. It’s time for a city government, she said, “that cares more about a child going hungry than a new stadium or a new tax credit for a luxury development... We live in a gilded age of inequality where decrepit homeless shelters and housing developments stand in the neglected shadow of gleaming, multi-million-dollar condos, where long-term residents are being priced out of their own neighborhoods by rising rents and stagnant incomes... Where hospital closures serve as an existential threat to the health of our community, and library privatization moves are little more than land grabs for more luxury condos.”


5. Dasani Coates, the little girl from the Times' expose on homelessness, held up the Bible for Letitia James' swearing in. After, Letitia and Dasani did a fist bump.


6. Today's New York City is a "plantation," said the Department of Sanitation's Reverend Fred Lucas, Jr.


7. The youth poet laureate Ramya Ramana kicked ass, whipping up the crowd with her indictment of classism (to which Bloomberg responded with a tepid "applause" of fingertips tapping the back of his hand).


8. The guy with the "End of an Error" sign who stood outside City Hall. On the reverse, his sign read "Beaux Riddance!" to Bloomberg.




9. The Bible that de Blasio used for his swearing in was once sworn upon by FDR.


10. And, of course, Bill de Blasio. The anti-Bloomberg. (So far.) The desperately needed breath of fresh air. In his speech, he was unequivocal: “let me be clear. When I said I would take dead aim at the tale of two cities, I meant it. And we will do it.” We will change the city, he said, “so New Yorkers see our city not as the exclusive domain of the 1%, but a place where everyday people can afford to live, work, and raise a family.”

Amen.