Results tagged “crowds”

If you were one of the 150,000 New Yorkers who tried and failed to nab one of the golden tickets to the Obama Inauguration distributed by Senator Chuck Schumer, consider yourself lucky. Schumer is now calling for an investigation into last Tuesday's utterly predictable clusterfuck, which left thousands languishing in lines far from the area where President Obama took his mangled oath of office. (Some were reduced to calling family at home and listening to Obama's address on TV via cell phone!) The Daily News obtained an e-mail sent to Schumer from one bitter ticket winner named Cathy Shannon, who writes, "I'm sorry I was a winner, as now I am a big loser. After waiting on line for 3-1/2 hours... I actually got to miss the event. It was disgraceful... The most disorganized event I ever attended in my life. Schumer says he "feels terrible" and promises he'll make it up to everyone in 2012!

Red Hook seemed eerily quiet on Saturday, as we checked out the traffic flow on Columbia and Van Brunt Streets on the West Side of the neighborhood. Any prediction of overwhelming weekend gridlock seemed not to be panning out-- except for one Ikea bus ferrying people from Boro Hall, the scene seemed as quiet and bucolic as any summer weekend in years past. Indeed, maybe even quieter, as people who'd normally be out at the Van Brunt shops were checking out the Swedish wares. Local shops seemed to realize this-- we spotted a few signs like the ones above attempting to draw people away from the store.