Though I am a New York State resident, for some reason I keep receiving spam emails from the committee to elect Rob Andrews, who is running as a primary challenger against incumbent Senator Frank Lautenberg in, you guessed it, New Jersey.
Now the first time I received this type of email, I didn’t mind so much. In fact, I even followed the instructions noted at the bottom of the email:
Paid for and authorized by Andrews for Senate Committee.
To unsubscribe from this list, please reply to this message with “unsubscribe” in the subject line.
So I followed the instructions and even said in the e-mail- “I am not a Jersey resident so this is meaningless to me. Remove me from this list.” Maybe I could have been more polite, but I wanted to get to the point. That took place on Monday, April 28.
naturally, what email did I receive this evening:
Dear Neighbor,
At a time when our community and our nation are facing overwhelming challenges — an economic recession, historical foreclosure rates, and millions of Americans without access to healthcare — we need leaders who can chart a course to solve these problems. A whole new generation of challenges awaits us - here in Burlington County and across New Jersey - and we need leaders like Rob Andrews to fight for us in the Senate.
Rob started his race to give New Jersey a choice for the U.S. Senate and to change the status quo. He’s starting with his campaign, hosting Town Hall meetings in every corner of New Jersey. Rob wants to hear directly from residents and to share his vision for the future. I want to invite you to the Burlington County Town Hall Meeting in Evesham on Saturday, May 3rd at 12 noon. We’ll get the chance to see Rob, to ask him questions, and to hear how he can bring the change we need to the Senate.
This is going to be a great afternoon, so bring your family and friends and come prepared to see why Rob Andrews is the change we need right now.
Hope to see you there,
Mayor Randy Brown
Okay, so I might be jumping the gun- it’s only the second email and it’s been just two days since the first one. My real concern here is that his primary season is starting to hit its peak. If I don’t nip this in the bud and get unsubscribed, I will likely get inundated by emails from this Congressman as the season unfurls, particularly if he dethrones Lautenberg in the primary and is up for the top prize in November.
So Congressman Andrews, if you have any college interns working for you whose job it is to scour the internet and the blog-o-sphere to search for news/posts about you- and they see this one, please give them the carte blanche to unsubscribe me from your mailing list.
Thanks,
Scott
P.S. Thanks for invite Mayor Brown, but I will have to pass on this one. I will be in a far sunnier place at that time.
Now I’m really hoping that I can get some help from the BLOG-O-SPHERE on this one. Since Friday, wifey has had a cravin’ for some Hershey’s chocolate milk. Not that busta ass Nesquik with its anthropomorphic bunny mascot, but some smooth, rich and creamy Hershey’s chocolate milk.
The problem is that this stuff is really hard to find. I couldn’t find it for her on LI, couldn’t find it in Jersey either . In fact the only place I know that sells it is Gristedes in the city, and I’ll be damned If I have to go there every time she needs a fix.
If anyone has any suggestions on where I can find this product, especially in LI, please let me know. For those who don’t know about it, this is what it looks like:
If I write one more post about the LIRR or any NYC area public trans, I just might have to rename this “Scott’s Choo-Choo Blog” and get myself linked to 2nd Avenue Sagas. But I have to blog about this one, only cause I can’t believe I didn’t find out about this earlier.
Seems that Amtrak workers may go on strike which would effect both LIRR and NJ Transit trains coming into Penn Station every day. As this AP article states:
“Just over half of NJ Transit’s 740 weekday trains travel for all or part of their routes on lines owned by Amtrak; if Amtrak employees aren’t at work, trains can’t run on those tracks. Some 218,000 daily trips are taken on the affected lines. East of Manhattan, the vast majority — about 85,000 — of the Long Island Rail Road’s morning rush-hour passengers travel to Penn Station, where Amtrak owns the tracks and handles the dispatching. Without the use of its only Manhattan terminal, the LIRR faces the prospect of thousands of extra customers overwhelming smaller stations in Queens as they get off to transfer to the subway.”
For my LIRR homeys, here is an update on the MTA’s contingency plan in case Amtrak wokers decide to fight the power.
Yeah…um…uh..this move to LI is really working out so far…um…
UPDATE- The strike has been averted, THE STRIKE HAS BEEN AVERTED!
Courtesy of my Aunt Sherrie, who BTW used to live in Huntington many years ago, a comprehensive list of places on Long Island that used to be and what exists in its place today.
What Places Used To Be On Long Island
Was
Is
Mays
Tri-County Flea Market
Commack Arena
Target
Busy Bee
Kohls
Jolly Rogers
Shopping Center
Levittown Roller Rink
Staples
Billy Blake’s
Stop and Shop
Taco Bell - Lindenhurst
A&W Root Beer Stand
Drive In - Copaigue
Home Depot
Westbury Drive-In
UA Westbury Stadium Theater
Mid-Island Movies, Hicksville
Broadway Mall, IKEA
Jann’s Ice Cream, Chevys, Hammerhedz
Bob Stores, Levittown
Spit/Uncle Sam’s, Levittown
Bally’s Total Fitness
OBI
A Big Empty Lot!!
The Bay Shore Farmer’s Market
now a Best Buy
Howard Johnson’s by the Airport
now a diner
2002 Roller Rink
now the Attias flea market
Bethpage Farmer’s Market
Waldbaum’s
Cheers - Deer Park Ave. North Babylon
Beachtree Restaurant
West Islip Movie Theater
A&W restaurant
Islip Speed Way - Drag races
Houses
Zahns Airport Farmingdale
Industrial Park
National Speedway in Suffolk
now condos
110 drive-in(LIE)
now office complex
Lollipop Farm(children’s zoo)Syosset
now Borders
Farmers Market(Bethpage)
now Walbaums
Island Garden(Hempstead)(Nets played)
now Shoprite
Putt(Farmingdale)
now Wendy’s
Roosevelt Raceway
now stores, stores, & more stores
Gruman(Bethpage)
senior housing, vending supply, offices
Mitchel Air Force Base
now Nassau Comm College, Coliseum, offices
Calderone Theatre(Hempstead)
now a church
Arby’s - Centereach
Chock Express
Nunley’s in Baldwin
Pep Boys
Massapequa Movie Theater
Infinity Car Dealership
My Fathers Place
strip of stores
Malibu Nightclub
private beach, Lido Beach
Reds nightclub
now a closed PC Richards, Hempstead Tpke., Levittown
Orbachs
The Source Mall
Rumrunners Nightclub
Empty lot
Loehmann’s Plaza - Lake Grove
DSW Plaza
Loehmann’s Plaza - Copiague
Home Depot Plaza
Nassau Mall
BJ’s Wholesale Club
Melville Mall
Melville Plaza
Gardnier Manor Mall
Gardnier Manor Plaza
Huntington Square Mall
Huntington Square Center
Shirley Mall
Shirley Plaza
Centereach Mall
Wal-Mart Shopping Center
Clearmeadow Mall
Wal-Mart/Stop & Shop
Korvette’s (Hicksville)
Broadway multiplex
Korvette’s (Massapequa)
Wal- Mart
Mays (Massapequa)
Kohls
UA the Meadowbrook
Commerce Bank
Commack Drive In
King Kullen
A & S (Hempstead)
Home Depot
A & S (Babylon)
National Wholesale Liquidators
Commack Bruno’s Bowl
Commerce Bank
Modell’s Shoppers World (Commack),(Patchogue),(East Meadow)
Macy’s (Huntington - Walt Whitman Mall old location)
Bloomingdale’s
roll and ice copiague
car dealer ship
Moonraker restaurant (Syosset)
Boulder Creek Steakhouse
Vanderbilt Disco, Plainview
OTB
Music Lounge, Main St., Farmingdale
Office Building
Mini Cinema, Uniondale
now a church
Gertz
Stern’s, then Macy’s (Hicksville)
The old Reds
La cage Hempstead turnpike Levittown
Though I’m not familiar with these places of old, it seems that most of these spots were eventually replaced by retail stores and/or chain outfits. In a lot of these cases it seems that many of them were malls that got replaced with newer retail stores, like Orbachs becoming The Source.
So ultimately, I moved from one colossus of suburban consumerism to another.
In case you haven’t heard, New Jersey’s state deficit is in the shitter again.
Jersey’s crazy, no seat belt wearin’ guvernor has a solution - raise the Turnpike and Parkway tolls the likes of which ye have never seen!
How high you ask? This article from the NYTimes breaks it down like this -
“Mr. Corzine wants to increase tolls by 50 percent every four years, beginning in 2010 and ending in 2022. Tolls would also rise up to an additional 3 percent per year for 75 years to account for inflation. What’s more, the initial toll increase in 2010 would include four years of inflation adjustments, backdated to 2006″
So what does that means to the good people at Long Island Calling? Alot.
My fam still lives in South Jersey (exit 4 to be exact) and the wifey and I try to visit them at least once a month. We usually take the Belt parkway, then the Verrazzano bridge, cut through Shaolin and then we hit the turnpike at Exit 13. To figure out the potential cost of this trek, I found this toll calculator on NJ.com.
Final proposed damage, not including the $8 for the bridge and money for gas:
So by the time the Phillies win the World Series in 2022, it will cost me $25.04 to go one way down the turnpike to Exit 4.
And then people wonder why they make fun of my home state…
