Interesting: A court ruled that newsstand owners should be paid if city decides to "remove or replace their newsstands." The city has been looking at bids from a number of companies to provide new "street furniture," because the new street furniture will mean more places to put advertising. What's interesting that while the Newsstand Operators Associations gives a value of $5 million for the 300 newsstands at risk (which is averages $16,000 a pop), any deal for new newsstands will be worth much much more.
The NY Press had a rant about the "Street Furniture Initiative": "Michael Bloomberg is the right mayor to oversee the Times Square-ification of the city. A businessman-robot who made his fortune in part by stamping his own name onto anything that would fit the nine letters, he is unable to compute that anyone could have a problem with standardizing, branding and selling everything that can be standardized, branded and sold."
