Afternoon View - Quisling Street Fair

The Log Cabin Republicans are the sponsor of today's street fair in the West Village, where their booth is across from the tube socks and next to the gypsy wear. The LCR's is just one of the city's 321 annual street fairs, a number that Bloomberg recently capped after complaints that most of them are run by the same three companies and feature all the same crapola.

Those three companies keep the lion's share of the revenue, but since each fair must be "officially" sponsored by a different non-profit, the producers kick a meager few thousand dollars to them to keep things kosher. The city collects $1.6M annually in fees from the fairs, but spends more than $4M to police them and manage the street closures.

RELATED: The LCR used today's event to flog the campaign of Wall Street lawyer Joe Mendola (seated right in the top photo), an openly gay father of two who is running for the state Senate against openly gay incumbent Thomas Duane, who (along with Assemblyman Daniel O'Donnell) very nearly brought marriage equality to New York state last year despite eight traitorous Democrats. Mendola is hanging his hat on the recent closure of St. Vincent's Hospital in the West Village (below), about which he says, "I say that Duane ought to be ashamed of himself for letting the community down and denying the district an important and longstanding provider of quality medical care." Last year Mendola failed in his bid against John Liu for City Comptroller. And I'm very sure he doesn't have the remotest shot at unseating Thomas Duane.