Mayoral Race

Tom Allon runs for his birthday (NY1)

Mayoral Candidate/Media Person Tom Allon Doesn’t Want to be Boris Johnson Or Berlusconi On His Birthday

Last night The Observer cornered Manhattan Media CEO and mayoral candidate Tom Allon at an apartment on Spring Street, where the savvy New Yorker was managing to combine his special day with some work stuff.

We had arrived in the middle of one woman’s speech about why Mr. Allon’s views on teachers was inspiring. (Mr. Allon had taught English at Stuyvesant High School after graduating from Columbia, after all.)

After the woman had tearfully finished, we approached Mr. Allon. “As someone who has to balance a media and political career, who is your inspiration?”

“Boris Johnson,” he said, laughing. And to clarify: “Wait, I’m just kidding!” Read More

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous

Gracie Mansion, SpecialKRB, flickr

Mayor Bloomberg Has No Gracie, But Successors (and His Girlfriend) Are Eager to Spend the Night

There’s a battle brewing over Gracie Mansion. Mayor Michael Bloomberg doesn’t live there and he doesn’t think anyone else should either.

“The mayor should not live there,” Mayor Bloomberg flatly told The Times. Mayors should sleep on their own dimes, just as he, and all other city employees do, the mayor, who has many many more dimes than most people, explained. Read More

Staffing Up

Dovere to Politico

After five years at City Hall News, Edward-Isaac Dovere is leaving to take a job at Politico. His new title will be breaking news editor, a new position for the Washington-based outlet.

The president and CEO of the company that publishes City Hall News, Tom Allon, told me Dovere “joins a long line of Read More

Can Taliban Kid Get a Book Deal? Agents Reach for 11-Foot Poles

When 20-year-old San Anselmo, Calif., native John Walker headed

to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban, he presumably renounced the commercial,

capitalistic

impulses that have contributed to the United States’ bad

reputation abroad.

But even before the prison

ship U.S.S. Bataan unloads its

notorious cargo in Cuba and the next step of Mr. Walker’s Read More