While we're busy defining deviancy down, could you imagine, for a moment, of Yokohama or Tokyo or Osaka or Bonn or Paris or any other RESPECTABLE city council would even contemplate this?
Why would anyone go to New York?
They're killing their own tourism. In some cities, the rank smell of urine in alleys and doorways causes people to decline another visit downtown. Why does NYC think they're SO special that it won't apply to them as well?
It’s even smaller than a drop in the bucket for the city, but DeBlasio has personally saved me a couple thousand dollars. From no longer taking the family up there around Xmas time to go to the Radio City show, Rockefeller Center and the tree, Times Square, etc.
And I’ve recently told my wife to assume a couple extra hours to trips up to New England to visit my parents, given that I’ll bypass the city completely and cross the Hudson on the Tappan Zee (as decrepeit as it is) rather than the GW.