#scotbrawell

My good friend Scot Braswell wrote this letter to New York City's brand spanking new Mayor. You can tweet to him @BotBraswell.

If you want to be pen pals with a world leader, go for it. If you want to have your letter featured on the blog send it to [email protected]. Enjoy!

Dear Mayor Bill De Blasio,

Congratulations on becoming the 109th Mayor of New York City. People are very excited. Though it must come with the territory, you seem pretty tolerant about getting attention for everything you happen to do. Here’s an actual quote from USA Today about you doing a chore: “It's a new year and there's a new mayor in New York City, and apparently a new world order when it comes to winter storms.”

During the Polar Vortex, I found myself perusing reasonable news coverage about you. I came across this in the closing paragraph of a blog post by the New Yorker: “De Blasio won in a landslide, but his mandate won’t extend beyond the first severely botched snow removal, the first transit disaster, the first spike in violent crime.” I hope you didn’t severely botch shoveling snow in front of your Park Slope home last week.

I moved to Brooklyn this summer during the primary. I remember hearing a debate on the radio and not being able to tell which candidate was which because the radio is a terrible way to watch a debate, but I knew you were out there somewhere. You touted universal pre-K, reeling in Stop and Frisk, raising taxes on the wealthy, fighting hospital closures etc. As your candidacy picked up steam, haters inevitably began to talk about a possible return to the ‘bad old days’ in New York City.

My best idea of the ‘bad old days’ comes from a film called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. If you’re wondering, the actual secret of the Ooze is that it blows things insanely out of proportion, including animals and sub-par plot lines. The NYC of TMNT fame was lit by neon and always venting steam. It found villainy in unreal monsters and gangs of anonymous teenagers. The most prominent of these gangs was the Foot Clan, which I hear maintains a chapter in Bushwick to this day. I bring all of this up to say that you’re going to have some problems in your first term. That’s okay. Don’t let them get blown out of proportion.

In what isn’t the end of the movie (inexplicably), the Turtles take on a couple ooze-exposed monsters. The fight spills into a nightclub, and everyone panics. All is seemingly lost. When singer Vanilla Ice, who happens to be performing, convinces everyone that the grotesque monsters are part of his act, people get way into it instead. They do a song number with the creatures, some fancy dancing, and everyone relaxes some. The Turtles spray the monsters with fire extinguishers and revert them back to a normal snapping turtle and wolf, somehow.

Mayor De Blasio, you’re Vanilla Ice in this story. Keep the show going and everyone will be okay, somehow. Don’t let random monsters with convoluted origins shake you.

Best of luck in your mayoral endeavors.

Go Ninja go,