A couple of years ago I went on a tear here on Footenotes about Macy’s taking the fireworks off of the East River.  I didn’t move to Greenpoint for the killer pierogis, though they are superb, I moved here so I could drink on my roof and watch fireworks on the 4th.  I might have been a little bitter about the fact that, not only did I get cheated out of my own personal fireworks venue, but we now had to share our scant fireworks with New Jersey.  The New Jerseyian cadre on the Commons piped up and shamed me publicly in the comments.  It was awful.  I mention all of this though because I was delighted to see that I was a visionary.  This year Public Advocate Bill De Blasio and State Senator Daniel Squadron stepped up for the people of New York and started a petition to bring the fireworks back to Brooklyn.  It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

Next year Macy’s…next year.

Here on the Commons terrible fireworks logistics didn’t stop Adam Wandt from filming the show and putting together some video for us.  I’m sad I missed it, but its great to see these clips — Thanks Adam!

Things tend to slow down on the Commons in the dog days of summer but you wouldn’t know it from the blogs this week.  Everyone was posting these great, full posts.  My hunch is that we’re all stuck inside next to the air conditioners while New York melts.  Speaking of the heat, the folks over at Bike CUNY posted some helpful tips for biking around the city under the murder sun.  Seriously though, read it.  If you bike around New York in the summer take care of yourself.

Lee Hachadoorian threw in his two cents on Mayor Mike’s new soda ban and the subsequent backlash.  The pictures on the subway of the soda turning to fat were pretty impressive.  The 11,000% increase in taxes on cigarettes definitely curbed a lot of people’s habit.  Shutting down the OTB parlors probably saved a marriage or two.  But this soda ban thing…I feel like I going to wake up one morning with Michael Bloomberg in my living room making me do yoga.  You gotta leave us something Mike.  I feel like we’re all going be doing the cinnamon challenge for kicks after the infinite mayor decides it’s time for bars to close at midnight.

While I’m pulling up links from Youtube…Earlier in the week I somehow made my way over to this video and the first thing that popped in my head was, “I bet this is what Helldriver does when he’s cleaning house or doing laundry.”  Lo and behold that same day a new Helldriver post showed up on the Commons.  Here Helldriver abandons previous form and presents us with a kind of “Sleep No More” version of a blog post.  That loud clank you heard was just the bar getting set a little higher.

Finally this week the game lovers of the Commons came out in full force.  New blog Transformative Games promises to take us through the development of educational games.  The Commons has always had a vibrant edu-game culture here and I’m happy to see a new blog on that front.  Over at the CUNY Games blog we learned that BMCC will put together a game library.  Also, Wil Wheaton, I need say no more.  Lee Hachadoorian showed up again in the games rush this week to talk Monopoly and the Panopticon.  If they try to add one of those nanny towers to Risk it’s going to be ugly.

Till next week!