Hey, New Yorkers: worried about what happens when your free luxury apartment's toilet breaks and there's no one to fix it? Mandami's got it covered. Covered with s...

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Porta-Potty Prince of NY: Mamdani Promises Free 'Modular Bathrooms' and What Could POSSIBLY Go Wrong?

Ahh, the glories of Communism! Where you will always have a place to poop! 

Also, what is with his soaring rhetoric here? He's talking about Porta-Potties. Just say that. 

He can't say that, though, because everyone knows that Porta-Potties are filthy and no one wants them in their neighborhood. So he tries to recast them as some sort of cool, sophisticated European feature like 'modular public bathroom.' 

And then there’s this:

Of course, there is also the problem of how Mamdani is going to pay for the ongoing security, maintenance, and upkeep of his free, public outhouses. He almost certainly has no plan for that, so the inevitable result will be ... well, inevitable. 

San Francisco’s $1.7 million toilet experiment is going to look cheap in comparison.


AI Overview

Erecting and maintaining public toilets in San Francisco has seen extreme costs, from a controversial $1.7 million initial estimate (reduced to $200k after donations for one unit) to high annual maintenance around $350,000 per unit for 24/7 monitored facilities, while similar facilities in other cities can cost

$80k-$500k to build, highlighting SF's significant cost challenges, often attributed to labor, regulations, and complex site needs. 

San Francisco Costs

  • Construction (High-Profile Example): A single, self-cleaning, prefabricated unit in Noe Valley had a widely criticized initial estimate of $1.7 million, though it ultimately opened for around $200,000 after donations of materials and labor, according to NBC Bay Area and Wikipedia. [It cost the city less; the cost itself remained the same, but donations took a load off the city’s budget — Ed]

  • Construction (Other Units): More standard, self-contained units (like Portland Loo style) have been installed for costs under $300,000, notes Wikipedia.

  • Maintenance: 24/7 monitored facilities, including security and supplies, cost approximately $350,000 per unit annually, a significant operational expense, reports the Hoover Institution.

Our neighboring communist’s optimism about maintaining these shitholes may be based on the Ladies of Greenwich Invisibles’ promise to show up to clean them every Sunday after Christ Church Episcopal’s service lets out, but sad experience with these kind of noble enterprises has shown that volunteers’ enthusiasm dribbles away after a short time, often after just the first foray into manual labor in their life. That problem could be overcome the same way their sisters on the Upper East Side satisfy their work commitment at their local food co-op — send their maids – but what if Consuela is deported? It’s no wonder the AWFLS are so determined to abolish ICE.

Even remote cities in the frozen north have discovered that Porta-Potties breed infection and used needles and do nothing to solve the quandary of no place to take a dump — no one in his right mind would dare to enter one. Here’s a news story about Bangor, Maine’s experience. As of this writing, Bangor has pulled its toilets off the streets and is thinking about what to do next.

What Mamdani voters think they'll be getting, and what they actually voted for. Welcome to your Khrushchevka, suckers

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Bronx building Mamdani used to showcase new housing commish’s talents has 200 violations — after favored nonprofit ran it into the ground

A Bronx apartment building Mayor Mamdani showcased to highlight the talents of his new housing commissioner, Dina Levy, has racked up nearly 200 unresolved violations, The Post has learned.

The 102-unit building at 1520 Sedgwick Ave. in Morris Heights as of Saturday had a staggering 194 open housing-code violations dating back to 2016 — including 88 “Class C” violations considered “immediately hazardous.” 

They included rat and roach infestation; broken doors and refrigerators; and mold, records show. 

Mamdani visited the affordable-housing complex best known for being the birthplace of hip-hop on Jan. 4 to introduce Levy, 54, a longtime tenants’ rights advocate and former state housing honcho, as his new Housing Preservation and Development commissioner.

He gushed how Levy — who grew up the silver-spooned daughter of two high-powered DC lawyers – has non-profit experience in building and overseeing affordable housing, a perfect fit for his leftist housing agenda that seeks to replace private landlords wherever possible.

Levy, who will make $277,605 a year as HPD commissioner, helped facilitate a 2011 deal for nonprofit Workforce Housing Advisors to buy and rehab the Sedgwick Avenue complex from private landlords.

Levy did this with help from a $5.6 million HPD loan she and her own nonprofit, the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, brokered to stabilize the building’s finances and maintain its “affordable” rental status, recalled Mamdani.

“Dina will no longer be petitioning HPD from the outside,” the mayor touted. “She will now be leading it from the inside, delivering the kind of change that can transform lives.”

However, the 59-year-old building isn’t the success story Mamdani and Levy claim it to be, The Post found.

It has more than double the dangerous “Class C” violations racked up at 85 Clarkson Ave., a dilapidated, privately owned 71-unit complex in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, Mamdani showcased three days earlier as a poster child for everything he believes is wrong with the city’s publicly-subsidized housing stock.

Tenants told The Post conditions were better under the old, private landlord.

“I have been here over 20 years, and I preferred it when it was under private management because they used to screen people in and out of the building,” said Mordistine Alexander, among the dozens of tenants at 1520 Sedgwick whose homes have open HPD violations.

Alexander, 49, who has rented her three-bedroom apartment since 1999, said the unit routinely lacks heat and hot water, its bathroom and kitchen facades are crumbling and windows need to be replaced

She said she’s been without a kitchen light for months — despite asking for fluorescent light bulbs to be replaced since October.

And she said she had to take care of fixing a major rodent problem in the unit herself because she “couldn’t wait any longer” for Workforce Housing Group to respond.

“Since [the nonprofit] took over, the building has deteriorated. They lack porters. No one is maintaining it, and the complaints fall on deaf ears – especially if you complain a lot,” said Alexander, adding she wishes Levy never won her fight to turn the building over to the nonprofit.

Yet Mamdani wants more complexes like the Sedgewick Avenue building. He supports Stalinesque legislation designed to control how private property is sold so that more nonprofits can oversee rent-stabilized apartments.

“You have to laugh at the hypocrisy,” said Councilwoman Joann Ariola (R-Queens). “These nonprofits are proving themselves to be little more than taxpayer-funded slumlords, and this blatant double-standard is all part of the administration’s planned attack on private ownership in New York City.”

Like Cea Weaver, the much-maligned lefty boss of Mamdani’s newly created Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants, HPD Commissioner Levy grew up in privilege.

She is the twin daughter of lawyer Ed Levy and his late civil-rights attorney wife Mary, who owned multiple properties, including a townhouse in historic Georgetown they sold in 2023 that is currently worth $1.4 million. She has said she is a native of affluent Maplewood, NJ.

Levy, a Delaware University graduate, has been a rebel-rousing, radical tenant advocate for decades, even spending time in the slammer as a young organizer.

“It was cool,” Levy once told Crain’s New York Business of her 1997 Dallas arrest for criminal trespassing at a run-down affordable-housing complex. “I got really hooked.”

Levy boasted in the 2011 interview that her “rough, caustic style” irks landlords.

The Sedgwick Avenue site has more open HPD violations than roughly three-quarters of the privately owned, rent-stabilized buildings in NYC — but Mamdani is “too focused” on pushing the abolition of private property, said Kenny Burgos, a former Bronx assemblyman who heads the New York Apartment Association that represents landlords of rent-stabilized units.

Nonprofit-managed housing “consistently run higher violation counts despite having government-backed loans and [being eligible to avoid] paying property taxes, so they should have a lot more freed-up cash to make these buildings run efficiently, and yet are unable to do so — even with good intentions and no goal of profit,” added Burgos.

And for college students and aging socialists everywhere, here’s a video that should be mandatory viewing before they’re allowed to cast a ballot:

Geriatrics for … something

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"We're older and we were told to stay peaceful," said Rose, “dime bag” Weed.

I may have finally found a club that will have me as a member, but if so, then, like Groucho, I don't want to join

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Bringing new meaning to “clubable”

Quarter-ton (alleged) sex-pervert lawyers with BO, screeching victims of deck chair theft, the air thick with obscenities — ah, Florida!

Cannonball 550-pound NY lawyer accused of stalking mistress clashes with Fla. country club guests over pool chairs

A morbidly-obese, married Long Island lawyer once accused of tormenting his much younger lover made waves at his Florida country club on New Year’s Eve — grabbing a man’s phone and tossing it in a pool in an ugly confrontation over poolside lounge chairs.

Video of the wet-and-wild Dec. 31 incident shows 550-pound Ronald David Ingber towering over two people next to the pool at the Wycliffe Country Club in Palm Beach County, which has an initial platinum membership fee of $95,000.

Ingber, 52, can be seen grabbing a younger man’s hand before ripping away his phone and throwing it in the water.

The 49-second clip shows the stunned man frantically backing away, yelling and pointing at Ingber, shouting, “You f–king…!”

“What are you doing?” the man’s older female companion yelped at Ingber.

“Can you get my phone please?” the man, clad in a grey T-shirt and black shorts, asks a swimmer before turning to staff.

“He threw my phone in the pool!” the man can be heard shouting in the footage. “F–k you, send this f–ker to jail!”

Ingber briefly stared at him before turning away and sitting down as staffers arrived to separate the trio, the bystander footage shows.

A second clip shows another view of the incident — with the younger man and the older woman squabbling with someone lounging by the pool — claiming the man had stolen their seats.

As the clash unfolded, the woman loudly turned to people sitting nearby.

“Are you responsible for this?” she demanded, pointing to the alleged seat-thief.

Ingber, a father of two, then got up and confronted the pair, grabbing the phone, another clip showed.

Ingber was sued in October in Brooklyn Federal Court by his paramour, who claimed in court papers he smelled, gave her herpes, and tried to torture her by setting up secret cameras in her apartment, a tracker in her car, and a keystroke recorder on her computer. Ingber has vehemently denied the allegations in the lawsuit, which is pending.

The incident at the country club, where annual dues for top tier members are nearly $22,000, was self-defense, Ingber insisted to The Post.

“I was approached. I thought somebody waved a weapon in front of me,” he said, insisting the club has more videos. “And I disarmed them, period.”

The attorney said he did not know the man and woman, who were yelling profanities and screaming in front of children and families in an apparent dispute over stolen poolside spots.

The pair were arguing with someone sitting next to his family, then began yelling at Ingber’s wife, who didn’t know the people involved.

“I defended myself,” he said.

The confrontation was a battle over pool chairs, “a situation that went unchecked for an extended period despite staff presence,” a lawyer for Ingber told The Post.

The Ingber family wasn’t involved in the original dispute and “became collateral targets of the offender’s anger,” attorney Richard Portale added.

“When one individual advanced aggressively toward my client, while raising an unidentified object toward his face, he reacted instinctively to protect himself, his wife and children and to stop what appeared to be an imminent threat,” Portale said.

Probably thought they were back home at the Round Hill Club.

Oh, for God's sake

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Boo hoo hoo hoo

Portland police chief cries while admitting DHS was right about Tren de Aragua ties in CBP shooting

Portland Police Chief Bob Day choked up while revealing two Venezuelan illegal immigrants shot by federal agent have suspected Tren de Aragua connections

Portland Police Chief Bob Day wiped away tears Friday as he addressed new information showing that two illegal immigrants shot during a federal immigration enforcementencounter had ties to the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA).

Day confirmed a Department of Homeland Security statement identifying the two individuals — Luis David Nico Moncada and Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras — as Venezuelan criminal illegal aliens with suspected ties to TdA.

Both were shot by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent after Moncada, the driver of the vehicle, allegedly "weaponized his vehicle" and attempted to run over agents, prompting an agent to fire in self-defense, according to DHS.

"They do have some nexus to involvement with TDA. We can confirm that," Day said, pausing and choking up.

Day said he initially hesitated to disclose the suspected gang connection, citing what he described as the "historic injustice of victim blaming" by law enforcement, including within his own agency.

"I want to speak for just a moment, specifically to my Latino community," Day said.

"It saddens me that we even have to qualify these remarks because I understand or at least have attempted to understand your voices, your concern, your fear, your anger," Day said, removing his glasses mid-sentence and wiping tears from his eyes. 

"This information, in no way, is meant to disparage or to condone or support or agree with any of the actions that occurred yesterday," the chief added.

Day emphasized that he was disclosing the suspected gang ties for transparency only and that the information should not be interpreted as excusing or justifying the shooting, which remains under investigation.

"But it is important that we stay committed to the rule of law, that we stay committed to the facts, that we stay a trustworthy and legitimate police department for all Portlanders," he said.

Day said both suspects remain hospitalized in stable condition and are in federal custody.

"They are in custody of federal law enforcement, but they appear to be on the road to recovery, and I’m grateful for that," Day said.

DHS has rejected early reports suggesting the two were a married couple, calling such claims "revolting lies." The agency said instead that Moncada was a suspected gang associate and that Zambrano-Contreras was allegedly involved in a TdA-linked prostitution operation.

Day has come under fire previously from Camilla Wamsley, the director of Portland’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office, who said the facility has endured dozens of nights of violence and that Portland police have been largely absent while responding to protests under direction from the mayor and city council.

This story was included in the Week in Pictures but I wanted to confirm it was true. It is, and deserves a separate post of its own

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Lots of citations via Google, but here’s the NYPost’s story:

Affray in a manger …

Bizarre images show the moment a fugitive migrant on the run in Italy was spotted trying to blend into a Christmas Nativity scene by pretending to be one of the Three Wise Men.

The mayor of the town uncovered the unholy ruse — although he said he first thought about contacting the organizers of the outdoor scene to praise them because the “statue” was so lifelike. 

Then, it moved. 

The not-so-wise man was seen standing in the background of the festive scene with his arms held aloft, trying to imitate the life-size statues alongside him during the comical incident.

His less-than convincing scheme showed him wearing a winter coat entirely different to those of the statues.

The wanted man, a 38-year-old Ghanaian migrant, was fleeing from the cops after allegedly assaulting an officer and resisting arrest. 

He was previously sentenced to nine and a half months in prison by a court in Bologna before escaping south to the heel of the boot.

He tried to hide in the nativity scene in the small town of Galatone in Puglia while on the lam.

But his manger scheme was spotted by the town’s mayor.

“While standing in front of the Nativity carefully made by our [tourism office], I noticed a presence I had initially mistaken for part of the scene. A detail that seemed harmless, but turned out to be decisive,” Mayor Flavio Filoni wrote in a statement on Facebook.

“Thanks to the quick intervention of our Local Police, State Police and Carabinieri, it was possible to track down and identify a person who was [a wanted fugitive]. A result that confirms, once again, how fundamental it is to place full confidence in the day-to-day work of those who guarantee safety and legality. 

The unidentified migrant was quickly arrested and has since been remanded in custody in the nearby city of Lecce, where he will serve out the rest of his sentence.

Sale on Copper Beech

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10 Copper Beech Road, $11.375 million — asked for $11.750. Even at that lower, negotiated price, the market has certainly improved. The house was built by Aberdeen in 2007 and originally priced at $9.495 before finally selling in 2008 for $8.050. Those buyers tried for $8.295 million in 2016 and ended up selling to these now-former owners in 2017 for just $6.4. So far as I can tell there were no significant upgrades over the past none years except, as I’ve said, to the market.