Panhandlers Are Rare On Subways, Mayor Bloomberg Claims

In his third term, Mayor Bloomberg seems to be choosing his words more extemporaneously.

At a press conference, Bloomberg cut off a reporter who mentioned panhandlers in a question about cell phone service in subways.

"There aren't very many panhandlers left, in all fairness to the MTA, come on," Bloomberg told the reporter. "That's a cheap shot at an agency that's worked very hard to fix that."

NBC New York reports that homeless advocacy groups refuted the mayor's claim of a subway system mostly free of those in need.

"I'd love to live in whatever city the mayor lives in," said Joel Berg, head of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger. "it's an entirely different one from the one that I and eight million other New Yorkers live in."

The Village Voice points out that, back in 2007, the New York Times wrote a piece about Bloomberg riding the subways. The article noted that Bloomberg gets picked up by two SUVs that whisk him past his neighborhood subway stop and drop him off at one where he can take an express train to City Hall. NBC New York notes that the mayor is flanked by a security detail when he rides the rails.

The mayor's panhandling statement is just one in a growing list of off-the-cuff remarks that have angered New Yorkers. Several women bristled at Bloomberg's assertion that females "could walk in virtually every neighborhood in this city during the day and not look over her shoulder, and most neighborhoods at night."

The mayor also garnered unwanted headlines when he made a drunken Irish joke during a speech at the American Irish Historical Society.

Bloomberg even drew the ire of beer snobs when he admitted that he likes to drink his beer with ice.