The New York City Council voted 38-12 to rename the Queensboro Bridge in honor of Ed Koch (New York Post). Moving forward, the structure will be known as the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge. Of course, there are some who still call it the 59th Street Bridge.
A complete history of the bridge is available from Steve Anderson's NYC Roads.
Longtime Channel 4 newsman Gabe Pressman penned an open letter to the former mayor.
It does beg the question: doesn't City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have ANYTHING better to do? The answer: of course not! Why would they?
Of course, the people of Queens asked - correctly - if anyone would co-name the Brooklyn Bridge? Um...no, of course not (well maybe for that mouthpiece Judge Judy Sheindlin...or maybe not). But then again, the Queensboro has always had a bit of an identity problem, and really, does it matter if Queens is being dissed? There's no Bronx Bridge is there? None of the bridges to and from Staten Island are named for that boro, and who has a worse identity crisis than them?
At least it will be a co-named thing, and most of us will continue to call it the Queensboro Bridge anyway. As it is, most of us don't refer to the Triborough Bridge by it's new name - the RFK Bridge (another farce).
By the way, I like Ed Koch, one of the most colorful leaders in the history of New York. I'd just rather see him honored with something else.
In the end, it's all much ado about nothing (and takes the news away from fawning over the death of Elizabeth Taylor - never a favorite of mine).
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