Results tagged “boycott”

Is Ellen Degeneres starting a boycott of growing burger chain Five Guys? This poorly-written flier says so! Eater found some of these stuck to the windshields of cars left on Waverly Place last night, but this is the first anyone's heard of night manager Carlos "Leo" Rivera's "discriminating views" of the neighborhood gays.

Might as well check your trenchcoat with the Skycap, fellas; American Airlines has reversed course and decided to filter pornographic content on its in-flight Internet service. You'll recall that flight attendants had been pressuring the airline to block porn because they didn't want to police pervs who can't go a couple hours without pleasuring themselves to Edward Penishands or Sex Trek: The Next Penetration. Wired reports that Girls Against Porn has also been lobbying American to install filters, citing a lawsuit against American over a particularly nauseating masturbatory incident that, incidentally, occurred without pornographic inspiration. Of course privacy rights advocates are alarmed that once airlines take away the pornos, they'll start blocking other sites like maybe all the ones trashing American Airlines.

After 21 years in business, beloved David's Bagels on 1st Avenue and 14th Street closed at the end of August. According to Vanishing New York, the landlord opened a Hot & Crusty franchise next door and refused to renew David's lease. In retaliation, a group of devastated neighbors have banded together to hit the Crusty where it hurts, with a weblog BLAZING WITH CAPS: "It is TERRIBLE and a downright SHAME...It hurts that they are gone because of your corny EYESORE of a “Hot and Crusty” that doesn’t even serve a decent bagel nor an “OK” pizza. In addition, it is NAUSEATING to walk by your pizzeria to see your Spanish guys leave half-made UNCOOKED pizzas to linger in the sun for long periods of time. Leaving the uncooked pizza dough in the sun while the chintzy layer of sauce dries up, is plainly NOT HEALTHY, UNSAFE and UNBELIEVABLY UNAPPETIZING." But what really burns is that David's lovers must now traverse five blocks to the owner's other location.

Northside Car Service, the dominant livery cab company in Williamsburg, has become the target of a boycott after an accident with a cyclist last week. In a widely circulated email, a friend of the unidentified cyclist—who himself called for a boycott in a Gothamist comment Friday—says that on September 10th the driver made an “irrationally fast turn” from Kent onto North Seventh, forcing the cyclist to "slam on the brakes, flip completely over the handlebars, and land under the hood of the car." (Under the hood?) The driver sped off, but the cyclist, who broke his elbow and collarbone, later met with Northside and received compensation for his medical expenses. His friend is not so easily placated, and tells Brooklyn Paper he wants to "make them accountable for the hit and run." Only time will tell if Northside will be able stay afloat without business from the cyclist demographic.

City Council member and probable 2009 mayoral candidate, Tony Avella, is the latest politician to ask for America's withdrawl from the Beijing Olympics if China will not grant Tibet independence. Under China's rule for over 50 years, Tibet has made no headway, even with the support of human rights groups, activists...and Richard Gere. When we interviewed Robert Thurman, co-founder of the Tibet House, earlier this year he touched on the Olympics, saying:

The thinking is that if you give them a big P.R. thing to do like the Olympics, they won’t want people to see how they’re beating up the Falun Gong or whatever it is they’re doing lately. This is a fallacious concept but within that it’s true that the Chinese are trying to clean up their act so they won’t be embarrassed during the Olympics. Unfortunately, what the Chinese consider ‘cleaning up their act’ is to wipe out people who might do human rights protests; they don’t mean stopping the human rights violations.

Today a rally in Manhattan is taking place commemorating the anniversary of the 1959 uprising against China. Avella is in attendance and will most likely use this event to introduce his resolution, which demands New York City-based corporate sponsors boycott the 2008 Olympics, and that the International Olympic Committee move the games from Beijing. He stated, "That's the only thing that will make them do anything — international pressure."

The only way to save Harlem for the benefit of its longtime residents is to economically cripple the neighborhood. So says Dr. James Manning of the ATLAH World Ministry church. He's proposing an economic boycott of the area in Manhattan between 110th St. and 155th St., from the Harlem River to the Hudson River. The plan is that once interloper businesses have been driven out via bankruptcy, Harlem will become a less desirable place to live for people like whites, rising rents will decline, and Harlem will have been purged of the problems that have been driving people out of their homes.