IT’S FINALLY OVER: WHY 2017 WAS A YEAR TO FORGET
A year of pervnados, ’canes, tweetstorms
Good bye to 2017 — and good rid dance! Last year was a hot mess of terror, toxic political fights, subway disasters, nuclear dread and mass killings — and New Yorkers couldn’t wait to see the end of it. Here are some things we’ re all hoping to leave behind in 2018:
1. THE RELENTLESS NEWS CYCLE
Sen. John McCain killed the ObamaCare repeal, Anthony Scaramucci was hired, Anthony Scaramucci was fired, John Kelly arrived in the White House, the FBI raided Paul Manafort’s home, President Trump banned transgender people from the military via tweet, Donald Trump Jr.’s dirt-digging meeting with a Russian lawyer was exposed, former FBI chief James Comey testified before Congress — and that was just July.
2. TRUMP’S TWEETS
Driving much of the news churn was the president’s incessant use of Twitter, where he railed against “fake news,” the FBI, Chuck and Nancy (Schumer and Pelosi), the Russia investigations, kneeling NFL players, Snoop Dogg, Mika Brzezinski and even invented a new word — “covfefe.”
“Every time the [president] tweets, it unleashes a new wave of craziness. Reading the news makes me so anxious,” said Upper East Side resident Henry Mason, 35. “Get off social media, you’re not a teenager.”
3. TERROR ATTACKS
Terrorism hit home last year, with an ISIS fanatic plowing a rented pickup truck into people along the Hudson River bike path in lower Manhattan on Halloween, killing eight — and a second sicko trying to blow himself up with a pipe bomb in a subway-station corridor near the Port Authority Bus Terminal in December.
Gotham residents say fear of an attack was a constant presence.
“My husband works near Times Square, and it freaks me out that some attack will kill him,” said Josephine Wagner, 52, a Brooklyn teacher.
Americans also watched in horror as dozens died in attacks across Europe.
A suicide bomber outside an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, in May killed 22 and injured dozens more, while 12 people died in separate vehicle attacks on the Westminster and London bridges in London.
In August, a group of ISIS supporters killed 14 people in a van attack on a Barcelona shopping strip and fatally stabbed two more later that day.
“I think we as Americans are starting to understand the mentality of people in the rest of the world,” said Sam Abramowicz, 34, a building contractor.
4. MASS SHOOTINGS
Islamic extremists weren’t the only fear — homegrown killers also terrorized the United States.
Two of the deadliest shootings in modern American history took place in 2017 alone, with Stephen Paddock killing 58 people when he opened fire on a Las Vegas country-music concert in October, and Devin Patrick Kelley slaughtering 26 when he shot up a Sutherland Springs, Texas, church in November.
“It’s almost like we’re putting our lives on the line just to live our lives, go to the movies, go shopping. It’s absurd,” said Jack Thompson, 29, a Brooklyn musician.
5. NORTH KOREA
And citizens also worried, more than they have in decades, about being nuked.
North Korea ramped up its threats and arsenal in 2017, test-firing 23 missiles and labeling Trump a “dotard.” The Hermit Kingdom capped off 2017 by debuting its Hwasong 15 ICBM, capable of reaching the US mainland.
Stateside, sales of bomb shelters and emergency rations boomed, while New Yorkers were so petrified that even hipsters started signing up for survival classes.es.
6. THE PERVNADO
Bombshell allegations in October that movie mogul Harvey Weinstein had been sexually assaulting actresses with impunity for decades opened the floodgates for the naming and shaming of dozens of other powerful men.
“I’ve lost a lot of faith in humanity this year. It feels like every day a new pervert is being outed. It’s disgusting,” said Anna Sokolov, 34, a makeup artist.
Weinstein was fired and exiled to sex rehab in Arizona and was soon followed in disgrace by other big names, including “Today” host Matt Lauer, newsman CharlieCha Rose, ac- tor Kevin Spacey and comedian Louis C.K.
And then the Pervnado came for Capitol Hill. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) reluctantly resigned from his seat amid accusations of serial groping and Republican Roy Moore lost a shoo-in Senate race in Alabama after he was accused of creeping on young girls.
7. TRANSIT HELL
Long-suffering Big Apple commuters endured the Summer of Hell when the city’s ancient rail system finally entered its death throes, causing a snarl of shutdowns, derailments and mechanical failures that made the city late for work.
“If I have to live through another Summer of Hell I’m going to scream,” seethed Maria Moretti, who takes the subway from Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, to her real-estate job on the Upper East Side.
“I really don’t think it’s too much to ask to get to work on time.”
The pain wasn’t only felt by landlubbers. Mayor de Blasio’s NYC Ferry system weighed anchor to much fanfare in May, but six of the new taxpayer-funded boats were out of commission by year’s end after springing leaks. Captains also twice ran the vessels aground at night, stranding passengers on the water until the NYPD could come rescue them.
8. ANOTHER YEAR IN DE BLASIO LAND
New Yorkers let out a collective sigh as de Blasio was handed another four years in office in November, with the mayor winning a barely contested election that saw only 10 percent of voters actually got off the couch to cast a ballot for him.
The re-election capped off a banner year of Hizzoner’s signature public blunders.
There was the time he jetted off to protest the G-20 summit in Germany while the city mourned the murder of an NYPD of- ficer. He also angered the Italian-American community by putting the city’s Christopher Columbus statues on the chopping block. And then came damning revelation that he had known about the city Housing Authority’s failure to inspect buildings for lead paint for more than a year before the lapse was exposed to the public.
9. CHRIS CHRISTIE
One bumbling politician who will be left on the garbage heap of 2017 is New Jersey’s term-limited governor, who leaves office Jan. 16 as a historically unpopular national laughingstock.
Christie started the year already smarting from Bridgegate, his failed presidential campaign and ill-fated attempts to cozy up to Trump for an administration post.
But even with an abysmal 15 percent ap- proval rating, Christie managed to make himself even more reviled when he was caught sunning with family and friends at the governor’s official beachfront residence in Island Beach State Park over the Fourth of July weekend — after he shut the state-run shores in a budget crisis.
Photos of the portly pol catching rays went viral and became his defining image.
10. AIRLINES BEHAVING BADLY
Video footage of Dr. David Dao bloodied and screaming as he was dragged violently off an overbooked United Airlines flight in April was one of the year’s defining images — but he was just one of many passengers treated like trash by commercial airlines.
There was also the Baltimore professor hauled off a Southwest Airlines flight because she had an allergy to dogs on board, a Brooklyn family booted off a JetBlue plane after their baby kicked a seat, a mom removed from an American Airlines plane after a flight attendant whacked her with her own stroller, and a Houston cancer researcher who says she was ejected from a Spirit Airlines flight for breast-feeding.
“I think people feel very abused by the airlines,” said aviation lawyer Arthur Wolk.
11. KILLER HURRICANES
Wild weather battered the mainland’s coast and Puerto Rico in one of the worst Atlantic hurricane seasons in years, killing hundreds and causing unprecedented damage.
Harvey hit Texas on Aug. 25, killing 77, displacing more than a million people and causing an estimated $180 billion in damage. Irma followed not long after, bashing its way across the Caribbean before whipping the Florida Keys.
Two weeks later, as Puerto Rico was still recovering from Irma, Maria showed up and devastated the US territory, killing at least 64 but possibly as many as 1,000. As the clock ticks over to 2018, half the island will still be without power.
12. NAZIS IN THE STREET
It was shocking enough when torchwielding neo-Nazis descended on Charlottesville, Va., in August yelling, “Blood and soil,” but the city became a scene of horror when a white supremacist plowed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing activist Heather Heyer.
The attack was a low point in a year that saw a surge in hate crimes across the country, and violent clashes in the streets between extreme left- and right-wing thugs.
“I think it’s a shame how we forgot how to have civil conversations to reach compromise and understanding and instead our solution is going to extremes,” said Sabrina Prince, 44.
13. ‘THE EMOJI MOVIE’
Hollywood continued flogging dead franchises with flaccid cinematic reboots of “CHiPs,” “The Mummy” and “Baywatch,” but finally hit rock bottom with this stinker about digital smiley faces that saw Olivier-winning actor Sir Patrick Stewart playing a piece of poop.
Things can only get better from here — unless there’s a sequel.