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August 25, 2004
Escape from the Republican National Congestion
Thousands of New Yorkers will work from home or leave the city to avoid next week's Republican convention and the tightest security in the history of U.S. political party gatherings. Memories of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks are still fresh and some residents and workers have chosen to avoid the street closings, traffic congestion and police searches that city authorities decreed to secure the Madison Square Garden venue.
During the convention, the U.S. Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security are responsible for the Garden, which sits above Pennsylvania Station, the busiest in the country with 500,000 daily train and subway passengers. To meet this additional security headache, some suburban train services have been changed or diverted and police plan to search every train. They will deploy up to 200 hundred bomb-sniffing dogs at the convention and other city buildings. At different times of the day, more than 20 blocks on the main avenues and streets around the Garden will be closed. - Reuters
I keep forgetting that this is standard operating procedure now, the new normal.
Cindy
Comments
I read a quote by David Letterman that went something like this: Even the crack dealers are getting ready for the Republican National Convention - they've switched to Viagra.
Brain matter deposited by: Kat on August 25, 2004 12:05 PM
How cool.
Think of the photo ops. You can watch right-wing nutjobs bash left-wing moonbats over theheads with their own signs. You can watch Bloomberg try and placate everybody while not actually saying anything at all. You can watch ten zillion LIRR customers funnel themselves through a single entrance to Penn Station, hopefully in the rain so they can stab each other with umbrellas.
You can watch the police shake their heads in dismay at the lunatics dancing in the street, throwing trash cans through the bodegas and practically raping the poor pretzel vendor as they ask themselves, "Why? Why, God? Why is this happening to us?"
Don't even get me going on the dogs. I sure hope they plan to enforce the pooper-scooper law. Run those highly trained canine professionals through a LIRR bar car, let them sniff around the Scotch spewing pinochle players and snuffle through the brown bagged Bud tallboys and we're talking policey poop. Everywhere.
Brain matter deposited by: Al on August 25, 2004 1:27 PM
Can you tell how much I miss my commute?
Brain matter deposited by: Al on August 25, 2004 1:28 PM