-- When residents here elected former Brooklyn prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani as their mayor, few could have imagined Rudy's talent for using the law to piss off ordinary people. And few outside the tri-state area - New York, New Jersey and Connecticut - have any idea to what extent Giuliani has managed to do so.\n Besides limiting New Yorkers' choices of adult business shopping, "Giulianitis" includes the following:\n * Just in time for the 1997 Christmas shopping season, he had barriers erected at several major midtown intersections, forcing citizens to cross three streets just to get across one.\n * He proposed that all taxi drivers pay fines for "rudeness" and attend classes in "courtesy," which, among other proposals, led to a not-very-effective one-day cab strike plus several protest marches and caravans. After the strike, Rudy said he's thinking about banning the cabs from the city altogether for one day per week.\n * He drove an ordinance through City Council limiting the number of art peddlers who can set up shop around the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and requiring those remaining to buy city permits for what had formerly been a free activity. The artists are suing.\n * He wants to ban food-vending pushcarts and other street sellers from 144 blocks of Manhattan, including large portions of midtown and the Wall Street financial district, as well as several streets in Brooklyn and Queens. (Even the New York Times took him to task for that one: "There is a difference between making the streets safer and cleaner and making war on the New Yorkness of New York," read a June 4 editorial.)\n * He wants to build a new multi-billion-dollar sports stadium in midtown Manhattan.\n * In a move eerily reminiscent of Dr. Strangelove, the mayor has proposed the construction of a $15 million blastproof, waterproof, fireproof shelter, to be built on the 23rd floor of a privately-owned building in the World Trade Center complex. The shelter would include "food and beds for at least 30 members of [Giuliani's] inner circle" and "a secure åred' phone for the Mayor and video-conferencing capabilities so he can talk [to] and see the President of the United States if necessary," reported the New York Times. And according to the New York Post, Giuliani "wouldn't say just what special equipment or protection the command post ... would include to make it so much more desirable than the existing emergency command center at One Police Plaza." The Post quotes Giuliani as responding, "It would be totally absurd to discuss this widely. You would get people killed if you discussed it widely."\n "The mayor's actions are increasingly bizarre," City Council Speaker Peter Vallone said. "He doesn't trust the people on a referendum, he doesn't trust the legislature, he doesn't trust the judiciary. If he wants to build a bunker for the only people he trusts, all he needs is a phone booth."\n And Giulianitis may be spreading. According to two stories filed June 3, writers for the Associated Press can't seem to decide whether it's "146 of the city's 164 sex businesses" that will be forced to close or move due to the new zoning law, or "150 of the city's 177."\n Artist Robert Lederman has created 25 satirical cardboard canvas paintings of the mayor, including ones featuring Giuliani as "Adolf Giuliani," "Genghis Giuliani," "Mayor Ghouliani" and "Mayor Jailiani." The portraits are on exhibit at the temporary No York Museum in midtown Manhattan.\n "Increasingly, you see Mayor Giuliani handling dissent in a mean-spirited, bullying, autocratic fashion, and increasingly using the police as a private mayoral army to target those who disagree with him," said prominent civil rights attorney Ron Kuby.\n Giuliani's popularity, according to polls, remains high. However, at least one protest sign at a recent demonstration read, "One Goose-Step From Fascism," a reminder of other political leaders who remained popular by pitting one good citizen against another, also in the name of "improving the quality of life."
All models were at least 18 years old at the time of their performance. 18 U.S.C. 2257 Record-Keeping Requirements Compliance Statement.
