In a parallel metropolis all too close to our own . . .
Tusks clashed this week over the city’s plan to buy 100 woolly mammoths cloned by Russian scientists and, in the words of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, “Put them on the streets within three years.”
The beasts are touted as a new, energy-efficient way to get around town; each wide-seated mammoth can carry up to 10 at a time. But PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) and the New York Taxi Workers Alliance announced a “coalition” to condemn it.
“Are we going to have mammoth lanes now?” sneered a Brooklyn Community Board 1 member who declined to be named.
In fact, the battle has just begun over an initiative Mayor Bloomberg regards as part of his legacy.
The first mammoth will arrive in time for the 2017 opening of the Cornell University Technology Campus on Roosevelt Island. “This will signify to the world that the city of New York is at the global cutting edge of science,” the mayor said.
“Far from shrinking from the promise of genetic engineering, we are thrilled to embrace it.”
Economic Development Corp. President Seth Pinsky crowed that the no-longer-extinct mammals will bring the city $4 billion a year in tourism spending and create 300 temporary jobs and 1,500 permanent ones.
Heckled by skeptical reporters, Pinsky explained the shaggy beasts would serve unspecified roles at street fairs and in Times Square pedestrian plazas. They’d also be the “main draw” at “festival sites” to be launched at underused locales such as the rotting former New York State Pavilion from the 1964 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows Park.
Zoning changes to permit mammoth-mecca construction would have to pass through the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure. Critics accused Bloomberg of trying to “railroad” them through before he leaves office in January.
“Three years from now, we’ll have these monsters cooling their heels on Rikers Island perhaps. The pressure to give them homes, when we have tens of thousands of homeless people, will be overwhelming,” said Regional Plan Association President Robert Yaro. (Yaro’s alternative proposal, to offer a “nose-to-tail” feeding of selected beasts to the homeless, has already been shut down by the city Health Department over mammoth meat’s high fat and salt content.)
Madison Square Garden’s owners, wary of competition with the circus, threatened to move the Garden to Burbank, Calif. “After losing ‘The Tonight Show,’ Burbank will give them the moon,” said a source familiar with the Dolan family’s strategy.
Meanwhile, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz declared, “We will not let Ice Age interlopers take jobs away from our community.”
Asked how a six-ton animal with 12-foot-long tusks could take a job from a human being, Diaz recalled that Bronx Zoo elephants once hauled trash until DC 37, the union representing zoo employees, threatened to strike.
Real Estate Board of New York President Steven Spinola fumed, “A fur-bearing creature from 10,000 years ago does not send the right message to corporations seeking state-of-the-art office space.”
But at least one real-estate mogul offered qualified support. Donald Trump said, “Yes! Give me the mammoths, and I’ll create the greatest spectacle in the world.
“But let’s prove they’re real mammoths and not dressed-up elephants. You know, there are a million elephants in Kenya. Show me the DNA.”