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Making Fifth Avenue Safe For Our Only Mayor

“Crazy Eddie Sweeps the Streets”

I’m starting to get the feeling that John Leonard doesn’t like Ed Koch. Here’s the opening line of this section, “Our only mayor congratulates himself.” It’s a brief, blistering condemnation of Mayor Koch’s move to clear 5^th Avenue of illegal street vendors before the Christmas shopping season, costing $300K of police over time, while basically ignoring the “The crack dealers…on Eighth and Eighty-Seven every afternoon when school…lets out.” Leonard remarks that the street vendors are there for those who can’t afford to go in the pricey boutiques and department stores and “…lick the Gucci boots of the merchandise prince.” He recounts that the police confiscated “14,735 cubic feet of …gloves, umbrellas, coloring books, beaded ear rings, Maxell tapes, incense and falafel.”

Were there really still crack dealers on the upper east side and Maxell tapes for sales on the streets of NYC just 20 years ago...time flies.

Old word: Maxell tapes were used for recording music before CDs.

New learning: 14,735 Cubic Feet is approximately the size of Big Ben in London…this wasn’t in the essay, I just looked it up.