MIKE! ARREST THIS COLUMNIST!
VANITY Fair columnist Christopher Hitchens has launched a one-man crime spree to protest some of Mayor Bloomberg's more overbearing ordinances.
In the space of a few hours, Hitchens managed to break a slew of New York's pettier laws: He sat on an upended milk crate, took his feet off bike pedals, put his bag on the subway seat next to him, fed pigeons in Central Park and sat on a subway step. He also smoked in a bar and in a restaurant.
While Hitchens emerged from his "orgy of lawlessness" unscathed, he recounts tales in Vanity Fair of New Yorkers victimized by Bloomberg's bureaucratic bullying:
* Jesse Taveras, who sat on a milk crate outside the Bronx hair salon where he works and was fined $105 for "unauthorized use" of the crate.
* Kim Phann and Bruce Rosado, fined for "loitering in front of a business" while taking a smoke break outside the Bronx barber shop where they work.
* Pedro Nazario, 86, of Morningside Heights, whacked with a summons for feeding pigeons.
* Yoav Kashidia, an Israeli tourist, fined $50 for falling asleep on the subway and occupying two seats during his slumber.
* Crystal Rosario, a pregnant Brooklynite, ticketed for resting on a subway step.
* Brian Bui, owner of Mekong restaurant in SoHo, twice fined $200 for allowing a customer to smoke under a retracted awning. Bui fought the second ticket and won, but only after spending $3,000 in legal fees.
Hitchens writes: "The law these days . . . states that New York City is now the domain of the mediocre bureaucrat, of the inspector with too much time on his hands, of the anal-retentive cop with his nose in a rule book, of the snitch willing to drop a dime on a harmless fellow citizen, and of a mayor who is that most pathetic and annoying figure - the micro-megalomaniac.
"Who knows what goes on in the tiny, constipated chambers of [Bloomberg's] mind? All we know . . . is that one of the world's most broad-minded and open cities is now in the hands of a picknose control freak."
Mayoral spokesman Ed Skyler shot back: "Ninety-nine percent of the laws mentioned were on the books before the mayor took office, which makes this so-called story nothing other than the latest hit piece commissioned by [Vanity Fair editor in chief] Graydon Carter."