‘2nd’ rate to DeB
Skips Sk new train line in favor of chauffeured rides to gym
Mayor Blasio revealed Monday that he won’t be riding the new Second Avenue Subway with the working stiffs — because the progressive crusader prefers to be chauffeured from Gracie Mansion to his Park Slope gym in a taxpayer-funded SUV. Asked about commmuting by subway, de Blasio suggested his morning trip from GRACIE Mansion to Brooklyn and then to City Hall is logistically too complicated for mass transit. He is regularly driven from the official mayoral home oon the Upper East Side to Park Slope so he can work out at the YMCA there, a detour critics have derided as a waste oof time. “Someone at the Second Avenue Subway opening was asking me if I would take that subway line to work, and I did not have an opportunity to tell that individual to think about the route to Brooklyn, then to City Hall,” de Blasio said at an unrelated press conference in response to a question about his subway-riding habits.
“So I’m going to continue doing exactly what I’m doing; going to my home neighborhood in the morning and then going to City Hall from there.”
Gracie Mansion is on East End Avenue at East 88th Street, a few blocks from the new station at 86th Street and Second Avenue.
Hizzoner did, though, extol the virtues of the subway.
“I take the subway, you know, regularly,” he said.
“There’s just opportunities come up where it makes a lot more sense to take the subway. I like taking the subway. I have throughout my life, so I’ll keep doing that.”
When pressed to reveal his last subway ride, de Blasio stumbled.
“From Brooklyn to City Hall? I’m sure I could find that out for you,” he said. “I think it was maybe three weeks ago, something like that.”
His press spokesman later noted that Hizzoner’s last subway commute was Dec. 15.
De Blasio prefers the outerborough atmosphere of his old Park Slope neighborhood.
He visits the gym regularly for workouts — and once showed up late to a meeting with those affected by the Chelsea bombing in September because he was pumping iron.
De Blasio also was heckled while walking into the YMCA in September by members from the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association who were demanding a new contract.