The British Are Coming!
• Remember Steven Johnson, the freak who terrorized Bar Veloce in 2002, splashing kerosene on patrons? Well, he just got 240 years in prison. Yeah, we don’t know what took five years, either. [NYP]
• Renaming corners, part one: A coalition of local businesses, backed by no less than Virgin Airways, is campaigning to call a slice of the West Village “Little Britain.” The stage-one strategy apparently involves sub–Benny Hill humor. (“What’s one more queen in the Village?”) [MetroNY]
• Renaming corners, part two: Elaine Orbach may yet get the intersection of 53rd and Eighth named after her late husband, Jerry. After striking out with the grumpy Community Board 5, she found fans on Board 4 — which controls the west side of the same avenue. [NYT]
• In a high-tech twist on a classic, a married couple is suing a Park Avenue clinic for allegedly inseminating the wife with the wrong man’s sperm: The father is white, the mother Dominican, the baby black. [NYDN]
• And New York has joined more than twenty states moving their presidential primaries up to February 5. With any luck, Assemblyman Keith Wright’s coinage for the occasion — “Super-Duper Tuesday” — won’t get any kind of traction in the media. Oh, crap, we just did it. [NYT]
the morning line
The Perfect Firetrap
• Yesterday’s lethal Bronx fire was a perfect storm of human error: faulty wiring, two dead smoke alarms, no fire escape, the tenants’ panicked attempt to deal with the flame themselves, and a tardy rescue truck. [NYT]
• Look who’s back in business: Former mayor Ed Koch will head a commission that will review, and help reform, the state comptroller’s office. Also on the commission: Tom Suozzi, the would-be Spitzer, and the AFL-CIO chief. We’re getting serious “shadow government” vibes. [amNY]
• Mathieu Eugene, who beat nine opponents for a City Council seat, is demanding a revote. Despite his decisive victory, Eugene can’t take office: He flouted the residency requirement by living in Canarsie before the election. Meanwhile, leaderless East Flatbush shockingly does not descend into anarchy. [NYDN]
• In a Law & Order–worthy case of creative definition of jurisdiction, the Manhattan D.A. is indicting a Brazilian congressman, Paulo Maluf. Maluf has never been in New York, but his money sure was: $11.6 million of it, all allegedly stolen and funneled through a Fifth Avenue bank. [MetroNY]
• Speaking of Law & Order: The community-board meeting on renaming a midtown intersection the Jerry Orbach Corner turned into meta-farce when Sam Waterston showed up to address the surly board. The vote ended in hung jury. [NYT]
the morning line
Strike Two?
• Mere months after the cabbie-mollifying rate hike, the City Hall is, once again, getting taxi drivers riled up. Bloomberg’s plan to stick GPS (no navigation, just tracking) and a camera into every cab has many calling for the first strike since 1998. [MetroNY]
• The drive to rename (or, as the City Council calls it, co-name) the corner of 53rd and Eighth Jerry Orbach Way has run into a tough community board that opposes such things on principle. How tough? They already shot down Guy Lombardo Place. [NYT]
• A prominent, albeit imaginary, Lower East Sider has been viciously murdered today by a sniper’s bullet while exiting a courthouse: Marvel has killed off Captain America, né Steve Rogers. First Libby’s guilty and now this. [NYDN]
• And, per gleeful L.A. Times reprint in West Virginia’s Charleston Daily Mail, “Despite New York City Council decision, the n-word [is] still being used.” And we’re fairly sure that somewhere in Charleston, despite the state’s common law, anal sex is still being had. [Charleston Daily Mail]