By Bas Nuchter Jr.
“Here in Yonkers, we built a city that delivers for businesses, for developments and for the people that matter most. So if you’re looking to take your business someplace else, think Yonkers.”
– Recent Mike Spano promotional video.
On my way to Stew Leonard’s this morning on the Deegan, I get held up behind traffic gridlock. Looking ahead, I see like a quadruple wide trailer, warning signs and flashing lights all over the place. I pull over to the shoulder, flash my ID to the motorcycle cops, and they wave me ahead.
Next thing you know I’m driving past this huge building that’s been lifted onto flatbeds. It looks familiar. Big columns. Very majestic. I must be woozy, but it really looks like this is the New York Stock Exchange.
Once I get past the jam, I’ve got the highway to myself. All I can think about is the apple cider donuts at Stew’s, so I floor it. Maybe it’s my need for speed, but as I fly by Murray’s ice skating ring, I see a crew of construction workers operating a 1000 ft high crane, lowering an enormous statue of a bronze god guy holding what seems to be the globe on his shoulder. I don’t think anything of it, but something is troubling me at the back of my mind. And then I remember. That’s the guy in front of Rockefeller Center. Atlas!
I’m careful to stay in the far left lane as I take the Ridge Hill exit, about to make the turn at the County Waste Station and the Yonkers Animal Shelter. The car rattles. There’s a terrible wind. Deafening Noise. Choppers. Big Ones. They glide overhead, and begin to lower a massive office building right on top of where I recently adopted our schnauzer. I’m stopping at the light, where some construction workers are devouring Costco roast chicken. “What gives?” I shout out to them. “That’s Goldman Sachs World headquarters. They couldn’t stay in Manhattan one more minute than was absolutely necessary.”
I call up my pal, a well-informed former city official, and he has no explanation for what seems to be going on here.
I’m able to put it out of my mind for a while until I turn onto Central Avenue. Just as I drive past what used to be the Romantic Depot, I see a new sign going up. Bergdorf Goodman. As I continue further up the street, I’m amazed. Louis Vuitton. Prada. And Nathan’s, now a French place with 4 Michelin stars.
I now feel as if I’m in some kind of weird post-apocalyptic science fiction movie, so I turn around. Head for City Hall. Usually, it’s a cinch to find a parking space in the municipal garage. But today, I’m seeing that it’s filled with all kinds of black SUVs.
At security, there’s a whole bunch of guys in very expensive suits waiting to get in. I collar this private equity type. “ Would you mind telling me what’s going on?” “The local mayor put out the welcome sign for businesses from Manhattan to move here,” he says. “Do you live around here? Do you need a job? We’re hiring.”
I head home. I try to get onto South Broadway but there’s bumper to bumper traffic. The funny thing is it’s all New York City MTA buses. Total gridlock, the worst yet. Can’t believe it. So I pull off onto Ludlow where I see one of the MTA bus drivers on a break. I ask him what the hell is going on. “They ordered all the buses to come up here to Yonkers,” he says. “The city, they lowered the bus fare to zero, free. They figure put all the buses up in Yonkers where we can still get away with charging a decent fare. Like they say, Yonkers, it’s open for business.”
This was more good news for Yonkers than I could handle in one morning. I walk down the street to my apartment. Except I see all my furniture at the curb and my wife in tears on my couch.
“What the hell?”
“What the hell what?” she asks.
It doesn’t take me long to figure it out. That communist Mandami in Manhattan freezed rents. And us, well, up here, where it’s open for business, we have to make up the difference.
Yonkers PD now must screen New York City businessmen fleeing the city in search of better business conditions.
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