Oh for crying out loud, can't an important billionaire get a break? All poor Mayor Bloomberg wanted to do is land one of his many helicopters at a heliport on the east side that's conveniently located closest to his townhouse. Sure, there are antiquated "rules" closing the landing pad on weekends, and some ungrateful area peons have been whining about the noise, but come on—it's not like he was landing his choppers directly on their rooftops with Wager's "Ride of the Valkyries" blasting! Would they prefer that? Because he can probably get a law passed to make that happen.
After getting caught on tape repeatedly using the heliport on the weekends—when it's supposed to be closed because of noise pollution—a reporter for ABC 7 confronted the mayor, who explained, "It's not closed on the weekend. I've been using it. I have a lot of things to do. I'm trying like everybody else. And the heliport is there, it's available to land and take off from, and you can't get other surfaces." (We'd play the world's tiniest violin for Bloomberg, but it would just get drowned out by the propeller noise.)
So he's TRYING, you ungrateful lickspittles, just like EVERYONE else (with a helicopter). Take billionaire Ira Rennert, for instance—he's also trying so hard to cross things off his to-do list that he has no choice but to ignore the rules. Local residents videotaped Rennert's massive helicopter repeatedly violating curfew at the heliport. "It's humongous. And when it lands, it shakes the windows the noise is just unbelievable," says sensitive local serf Ron Sticco, who can probably forget about being invited out to Rennert's sprawling Hamptons estate this summer.
Back to Mayor Bloomberg, it turns out he was wrong about the heliport being open after all. How was he supposed to know—yes, the chart handed to all helicopter pilots lists the heliport as closed on weekends, but he's the mayor, not a helicopter pilot. Oh, wait. Well, at any rate, the fun's over. Bloomberg's spokesman says, "While the heliport’s waiting rooms are closed on weekends and you can’t get fuel, we always thought that pilots could still take off and land — a courtesy that, it turns out, had been extended to mayors over the years." Being an entitled plutocrat just isn't what it used to be.
