The lame-brain media for bitter old men like Fox Fake News must be on fire this morning with burning rage that Mamdani crushed the obsolete white establishment to elect a Muslim mayor! The Dick Bulger Media Empire would like to extend a huge congratulations!
Dick Bulger heard the news on a beat-up Cobra 29 that still smelled like lighter fluid and onion rings.
“Breaker one-nine, confirm: Mamdani just snagged the keys to New York City?” crackled a Bronx trucker.
Dick leaned back in the driver’s seat of his very stationary sedan (his apartment, technically), adjusted his scally cap, and squinted at the dashboard bobblehead of a roast beef sandwich. “Ten-four, pal,” he said to absolutely no one who could hear him. “We’re goin’ to Queens.”
He celebrated first by planning poorly. Step one: a sheet cake from Market Basket that said “CONGRATS MAYOR MONDAY” because he’d only ever heard the name on the radio. Step two: a Playmate cooler stuffed with Michelob and three emergency packets of mayonnaise. Step three: a ceremonial “gift antenna”—a six-foot Firestik he’d convinced himself the new mayor would use to talk to Staten Island on clear nights.
Twenty hours later, Dick rolled off the Chinatown bus like a loose bowling ball, clutching the cake in one hand and the Firestik in the other. He was wearing dark sunglasses, a stained Revere Beach t-shirt, and the expression of a man who thought “Astoria” was where they filmed the moon landing.
Queens smelled like triumph and halal cart steam. A spontaneous street party surged down Steinway: teenagers waving flags, an uncle blasting dabke from a trunk, a woman in a Mets jacket dancing with a guy holding a potted basil plant, just because. Dick loved it instantly. He climbed onto a milk crate and declared, “Attention! City of New York! The name’s Bulger—Dick Bulger—ambassador from the Free Commonwealth of Roast Beef. I come bearing cake and a municipal radio plan!”
“Who invited the museum exhibit?” someone shouted, cheerfully.
Dick set down the cake and unfurled a laminated map of the five boroughs. He had drawn circles around every bridge. “Your brand-new mayor,” he continued, “needs proper comms. Number one: we designate the Queensboro Bridge the Official Bulger Repeater. Number two: we run a coax from Prospect Park to the Staten Island Ferry. Number three: we ban all static that sounds like a Yankee game.”
People were laughing, filming, adding confetti. A kid asked if the Firestik was a lightsaber. Dick winked. “Kid, it’s better. It talks to truckers.”
A man from a nearby deli noticed the misspelled cake, frowned, and then made a show of slicing it into perfect squares like it had always said the right thing. “For the new mayor!” he shouted, handing out pieces. Dick took a slab, held it high, and toasted with a Michelob he absolutely did not open in public, no sir.
“Here’s to Mamdani,” he boomed. “May your potholes be filled, your spectrum be quiet, and your bagels be structurally sound enough to hold clam chowder.”
A horrified silence. Then—roaring laughter. Someone gave him a lemon ice before the NYPD could issue a bagel felony.
A parade formed around him, not because he was important but because he was clearly magnetic in the way a miswired antenna is. A drummer started a beat; a cyclist strapped Dick’s Firestik to the frame and turned him into a moving landmark. Dick marched with a traffic cone for a megaphone, shouting civic slogans he made up on the spot:
“Make Every Crosswalk a Cross-Town!”
“Ranked-Choice? Buddy, I rank roast beef number one five times!”
“Emergency decree: first Wednesday of every month—DIP YOUR FRIES IN GRAVY DAY!”
Someone handed him a Mets cap and he put it over his scally, resulting in a hat sandwich. A woman in a sari fixed it so he looked less like a malfunctioning Pez dispenser. “You’re celebrating with us, yeah?” she asked.
“Lady,” he said, eyes misting, “I celebrate any win that makes sidewalks dance.”
They detoured to a halal cart where the vendor, having clocked Dick’s ancient CB handheld, leaned in. “You do the radios, right? My cousin’s bodega scanner just picks up weather and a guy named ‘Possum.’”
Dick nodded gravely. “I can tune that. But first—official business.” He dialed a number on his phone: the new mayor’s constituent line. A recorded voice gave the usual options. He waited for the beep and delivered his pitch:
“Congratulations from the Commonwealth of Revere. I’m proposing Citywide Roast Beef Unity Nights: everyone brings a sandwich from their culture, we compare gravies, and we call it policy. Also, I’ve installed, uh, a ceremonial antenna on a bike. Please don’t ticket the bike. Okay love you bye.”
He hung up, thrilled. Government, he decided, was easy.
The party spilled onto the 7 train platform, and Dick—true to form—treated the subway like a rare DX band. “We’re goin’ underground!” he shouted, and when the doors opened he cupped his hands like headphones. “I can hear it! The faint whisper of a taxi dispatcher and a guy hawking Knicks tickets!”
“That’s just the announcements,” a kid said.
“Kid, that’s New York’s control channel,” Dick replied.
They rode to Times Square because even celebrations need a final boss. Times Square was Times Square: glowing, loud, and ready to eat a Midwesterner as a snack. Dick bee-lined for Olive Garden out of force of habit, but a manager recognized him from a Boston incident involving breadsticks and a portable soldering iron and politely asked him to celebrate elsewhere.
“Fair,” Dick conceded. “But I got a municipal antenna—”
“No.”
He rejoined the parade with dignity and a pocketful of free coupon pamphlets. Someone convinced him to taste a fancy artisanal seltzer from a pop-up. He took a swig, blinked, and said, “Ah yes, the terroir of expensive air.”
By midnight the crowd thinned to clusters of new friends leaning on one another. Dick sat on the steps by Bryant Park, still wearing the hat sandwich, the Firestik leaning against his knee like a knight’s lance at rest. He passed around the last of the cake. The city hummed—taxis, laughter, a distant siren doing its own remix. A fox trotted by like he had a dinner reservation.
“You know,” Dick said to no one in particular, “I thought I came to celebrate some election result. But this—this is better. Whole neighborhood sounds like a good radio net. Everybody checks in, everybody heard. You got your Mets guy, your auntie with the basil plant, the drummer, the lemon-ice guy. Then the net control keys up”—he tapped his chest—“and says: ‘All stations, stand by for community.’”
A breeze lifted his Revere Beach shirt like a parade flag. Somewhere, a car alarm harmonized with a saxophone. Dick grinned.
“Breaker one-nine,” he whispered, raising the last square of “MAYOR MONDAY” cake to the skyline. “To Mama-Dandy, to the Borough of Parties, to the city you can hear before you see. Bulger clear.”
He ate the cake, wiped his beard with a napkin that said “Welcome to New York,” and leaned back to listen as the city kept talking—all voices, all at once, the happiest kind of static.
