if she was a nice little old lady, she'd have people willing to to the raking for her. obviously she's a nasty little old lady who deserves to sneeze her little old ass off.

Really, what I want is a bleak, concrete waste with no trees or grass. Poor NIMBY lady, I feel her pain-- I hate how we're forced to not live in a sparse industrial shithole.

The trees they plant are pretty small anyhow; by the time they're producing more than a handful of leaves, it won't be her problem anymore.

the bronx(i always forget the 'the') does need more trees. trees will make some aggressive people less aggressive, i hope. and hopefully we'll have more tree-huggers in the bronx instead of hugging guns.

anyway, i think that's what bloomberg is thinking. and if it doesn't work, uproot them--i mean the trees, not the people.

there's some evidence that pink prison cells affect the inmates:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/oct/11/usa.danglaister

If you don't make a million dollars and cannot contribute to the little fascist's political campaigning, Bloomberg doesn't want to hear from you.

Can I please have her trees?

Exactly - I have been REQUESTING trees in front of my building for the better part of 3 years. There is enough pit bull crap out there already to ensure their growth for years.

Replace the trees with grass, just routine yard work. On my block 2 different houses cut down their Bloomberg trees to date.

76 and 90? Where are they gonna get "a few bucks" or more for a blower? Ever hear of senior citizens and fixed incomes? No COLA for them this year.

If you think they're whining, go over and offer to do it for free.

Jeez. Just toss one the neighborhood kids or one of your grand kids, even better, a few bucks, problem solved AND you get to breathe a little easier. Yeesh.

Forget about the suburban problems of leaves on a lawn. Out in PA where I have my "weekend" place a neighbor who happened to be the first to build a suburban house in the middle of farm land complained when the farmer didn't plow under his corn stubble in time and he had corn husks all over his lawn. Boo Hoo! All the neighbors laughed at him. Fortunately he moved away to the mountains where there aren't any corn fields, but a shit load of trees. I hope he's happy.

Planting ONE TREE in front of someones house is causing all this screeching and publicity and uproar. This is why NOTHING CAN GET DONE IN THIS STATE AND CITY.

A new term: NIMFY.

Lady, you've been consuming oxygen for longer than most of us. Where the hell do you think it comes from? Plenty of elderly folks manage to survive in the country and suburbs where there are a lot more trees. Some people will whine about anything.

To be fair, people in the suburbs and the country generally own the property 6 feet from their door and can decide for themselves how many pounds of leaves they want to be responsible for. To be honest I'd rather see more trees and less wrinkles around the city but the lady definitely has a point.

If my experience of living in a suburban-style development is at all representative, I'm gonna cry foul on that. My parents used to complain nonstop about this particular tree in the neighbor's yard that shed leaves like a mofo, most of which drifted into our yard due to quirks of the wind and property lines.

I'm wondering whether this is what happens when you throw generations of people into shitty concrete jungle neighborhoods and then suddenly BAM! spring some "nature" on them, or if this woman would be bitching whether they'd planted the trees or not.

Well my suburban credentials are 12 years in a cul de sac, granted most of the trees were evergreens. If your neighbor's tree (or paint job or anything at all) angers you, you go to the homeowner's association and bitch and moan until they deal with it to make you be quiet. In my neighborhood you had to get approval from the neighborhood association to do just about anything; painting your house, planting a tree over 4 feet, putting up a shed etc.

Here, city agencies are just large-scale neighborhood association but on a bigger, less personal scale. Her letter to Bloomberg is just the NYC equivalent of whining to your neighbors. Maybe she should just stop caring about clearing the leaves. They're prettier than concrete anyway.

Of the 102 million dollars Bloomberg spent on his campaign approximately 98 million was spent to piss off old people using arbor-related tactics.

Don't buy a leaf blower, buy a chainsaw. At 90 and 76 you might as well go out with a bang.

The Mayor went out of his way to do this one.