Time to man up, New Yorkers.
Out-of-town yokels can grow a pair, too.
New York is a tough town. A place where savvy city-dwellers wouldn’t dream of plunking down 20 bucks on a three-card monte game. And where a majority of codgers of 73 (with the exception of one who’s suing a babe a third his age) know that hooking up with a hot dancer of 26 means the lady is only interested in one thing the man carries in his pants — his wallet.
Scams are everywhere. Yet day after day, from Midtown to Central Park West, folks get into those infernal pedicabs — modern-day rickshaws powered by old-fashioned hucksters. And — horrors! — they get ripped off.
One wide-eyed tourist was Brenda Rodriguez, 31. She came from Texas with husband, Mark, and two daughters to see “Mary Poppins’’ on Broadway, then eat dinner at Estiatorio Milos on West 55th Street — a Mediterranean joint that charges an astonishing $33.50 for a zucchini-and-eggplant appetizer. As far as I know, no one’s filed an official complaint about that.
“My husband and I are pretty much financially stable,’’ said Brenda. “We spend money left and right.’’
So it makes sense that, after “Poppins,’’ in a hurry to get ripped off at an upscale chow house, Brenda & Co. were only too eager to jump into a pedicab, and get ripped off some more.
They climbed into the leg-powered vehicle operated by licensed city pedicab driver Savas Avci, who told Brenda the fare would be $1 a block, per person, from 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue to 55th near Sixth. Uh huh.
“It was a neat experience,’’ she said yesterday, a week after being taken for a ride. “We had no cash, and he took credit cards. We were taking pictures on the pedicab. He got out and took a picture of all four of us. It actually was nice.’’
Brenda realized at the time that four passengers was one human over the limit for a pedicab. She didn’t mind. “We told him, ‘You’re getting a good workout.’ ’’
And then came the bill.
Ouch. That $1-per-person, per-block ride came out to a staggering $442. For a little more, the family could have taken a helicopter tour. (Or bought dinner).
Did she complain? Scream? Refuse to pay? Brenda and Mark questioned the charges, but Avci’s answer satisfied their concerns.
“This isn’t my company,’’ he said. “I’m just doing my job.’’
And then, the family saw Avci’s rate card, which noted, in tiny type, that he charges $100 person, which, in the Wild West of pedicab driving, is perfectly legit. (Though the $35.54 he tacked on for sales tax might not be.)
“We’re like, OK, let’s get this over and done with.’’ Brenda pulled out her credit card. Before dinner was over, Avci e-mailed her a receipt.
You can’t really call this a scam. The perpetrator followed the law. Though the “victims’’ complained to the city, they didn’t really miss the money. What would Avci do if they refused to pay? Call a cop?
Now, City Councilman Dan Garodnick wants to add a kind of Tourist Protection Law to this nannified city. He wants pedicabbies to reveal the entire fare before the ride. But this doesn’t deal with the bigger problem — the law says drivers can charge tourists whatever they want to ride in these contraptions.
Like a plague of slow-moving locusts, pedicabs clog the streets of Manhattan on a hot summer day, competing with garbage trucks, hot-dog carts, and the inevitable jaywalkers for a piece of pavement. Why doesn’t the city simply ban this scourge at once?
One who would be upset at a pedicab ban is Brenda Rodriguez. The next time she’s in New York, she plans to get right back inside a foot-powered vehicle.
I’m sure Avci is free.
Not-so-mighty quinn
The thrill is gone. Mayor Bloomberg’s former BFF, City Council Speaker and mayor wannabe Christine Quinn, no longer has Hizzoner’s coveted endorsement in the bag, The Post’s David Seifman reports.
Bloomberg clashed with Quinn over the council’s passage of a “living wage’’ bill for city projects, a measure bound to increase unemployment. Quinn is also pathologically opposed to the entry of jobs-creating Walmart in this city, and doesn’t like Bloomy’s plan to ban Big Gulps.
But Quinn’s near-threat to boot Chick-fil-A from New York after the company’s president publicly opposed gay marriage might have done her in. Was this the last straw for our free-speech-loving mayor?
I hope so.
Evil needs no reason
Some in the media blamed Nazi skinhead Wade Michael Page’s six years in the Army for his shooting spree at a Wisconsin Sikh temple that left six victims, and Page, dead. His stepmom, Laurie Page, also pointed fingers at the uniform.
“I don’t know if the military was good for him,’’ she told “Good Morning America.’’
But Page was booted from the service for showing up drunk for exercises. Two years ago, he was fired from a trucking company after being pulled over for driving while impaired.
I think this 40-year-old failure, who saw immigrants succeed while he couldn’t keep a job, harbored insane fits of rage aimed at innocent folks. It wasn’t the military.
Some losers are just evil.
Now this is a true Olympic hero
Courageous Alexandra “Aly’’ Raisman, all of 18, makes me proud to be an American. And a Jew.
The Jewish gymnast from Massachusetts won a gold medal for her nearly flawless floor exercise at the Olympics in London Tuesday, while strains of the Israeli folk song “Hava Nagila” swirled around her.
In a few minutes, Aly atoned for an insult leveled by the International Olympic Committee. The spineless anti-Semites refused to honor the memories of 11 Israelis massacred by Palestinian terrorists during the Munich Games 40 years ago with a moment of silence.
Aly’s victory was as bittersweet as any silent moment.
“The fact it was on the 40th anniversary is special, and winning the gold today means a lot to me,’’ said Aly, yanking a tear from my eyes.
Heroes come in all shapes and sizes. At 5-foot-2, Aly is a giant.
Dangerous half twits
Some maniac threatened on Twitter to shoot up Broadway’s Longacre Theatre, where “Iron Mike” Tyson appears in a one-man show.
“I’m serious, people are gonna die like aurora,’’ said one tweet, referring to last month’s bloodbath in a Colorado movie theater.
Guess what.
Sickos at the social-media Web site shielded the tweeter’s identity from cops for at least four days, forcing the Manhattan DA’s Office to get a subpoena. Twitter caved and grudgingly gave up the twit’s identifying info. So who are among the most dangerous psychos out there?
I vote for the twerps who run Twitter.