Mayor Bloomberg insisted yesterday that the Occupy Wall Street protest is so peaceful that you wouldn’t know it was there from “just one block away.”
“You would never know it exists. It’s just literally, in any direction, one block away. There’s just nothing,” Bloomberg declared on MSNBC.
But people who actually live or work a block away from Zuccotti Park’s tent city say the mayor is totally tone deaf.
“I think the statement by Bloomberg is completely ignorant or he hasn’t been down here,” said Steven Cole, 26, a writer who lives on Cedar Street between Trinity Place and Greenwich Street, just one block from the park.
“The noise emanates [from Zuccotti] through the apartment 24 hours a day. It’s loud. Bloomberg has definitely never lived within a block of this kind of noise.”
Cole invited Bloomberg for a sleepover to prove his point — but didn’t think a single night would do the trick.
“I don’t think spending the night in jail gives you an idea of what it would be like living in a penitentiary,” Cole said.
Angela Roque, who lives on Liberty Street just a block from the protest, said she smells the odor wafting from the park in her apartment.
“The smell everywhere is awful!” Roque said. “The crowd is getting bigger and bigger [and] they are really loud. I hope Mayor Bloomberg does something about this.”