Mayor Eric Adams has defended his late-night party lifestyle, insisting he is helping the Big Apple’s economy.
“My nightlife is a multi-billion dollar industry,” Adams told CNN’s Chris Wallace in an installment of “Who’s Talking To Chris Wallace” airing Sunday.
“People are afraid to go back to restaurants; now they see our mayor walking out saying ‘he’s coming back to our city’. That’s what the whole thing is about.”
Hizzoner insisted that the city’s economic downturn made it more important than ever for him to show solidarity with district workers while painting the city red.
“It is a 24-hour city. When I go out, I am frequenting my restaurants, my hotels, my dishwashers, my cooks,” she said.
“Then what I do next, I go into the subway system to see if my midnight people are working. I go to my hospitals. I am going to visit this city for 24 hours.”
“This is not a 9 to 5 city, and this is a city that never sleeps. So the mayor shouldn’t be napping.”
The 62-year-old Democrat has earned praise from nightlife insiders for frequenting high-end nightclubs and restaurants long after the workday at City Hall is over.
But his partying lifestyle has also drawn condemnation from critics, who question how he allows himself to hang out at the posh, members-only NoHo Zero Bond club and pricey downtown restaurant, Osteria La Baia.
The social legislator visited the upscale restaurant 14 times in a month over the summer, on his annual salary of $258,750.
Adams, who claims to operate on just four hours of sleep every night, also insisted he doesn’t pay attention to pundits who have issues with their party ways.
“You can’t get up and read the newspapers of the day and say, ‘My God, I’m afraid they’ll criticize me.’ I have 8.8 million people in the city, I have 35 million opinions. That’s the city we call New York.”
Source: news.google.com