It is a universal truth that New Yorkers love NY1: it might be the sole reason why some grumbling football fans aren’t jumping ship during this Time Warner/CBS war.
After deftly handling a strange caller on air Wednesday night, one NY1 anchor has given viewers one more reason to love the channel.
John Schiumo hosts “The Call,” and on Wednesday night he took a call from someone identified as “Joan from the Upper West Side.”
Joan was meant to weigh in on mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio, but instead embarked on a meandering stop-and-frisk monologue in which she somehow went from being very much against the practice to . . . being something else.
Schiumo asked if Joan was a de Blasio fan and she responded: “I was at first because of the stop and frisk which I’m totally against but when I saw him on the street with his entourage I had gone up to him and introduced myself and told him how active I was in liberal politics and I said you’re not going to end stop and frisk in Manhattan, right? Just in Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens and — I’m still up in the air about the Bronx.”
According to Joan, de Blasio asked why he should continue stop-and-frisk in Manhattan, to which Joan replied, “Well, you can’t expect us to live by the same rules we dictate to other people for heaven’s sake, just because people like me are against stop-and-frisk in places like Brooklyn and Queens and Staten Island, doesn’t mean we don’t want it to continue in Manhattan.”
Joan explained that Manhattan is “special,” whereas “Brooklyn and Queens and Staten Island — I don’t even like talking about those places!”
Complex has the full transcript here.
A baffled Schiumo struggled to accept Joan’s insisting she was not being sarcastic. He eventually pushed Joan to say who she plans to vote for in the primary — she said so far she’s leaning toward Quinn — and then hung up.
“That’s Quinn’s base, my friends,” Schiumo said on air.
A Twitter user later criticized Schiumo, arguing that the dig at Quinn was an insinuation that her supporters are racist.
“I agree,” Schiumo tweeted. “Not my best live ad lib.”
The jury is still out on whether it is possible that there really does exist a Joan from the Upper West Side who considers herself “active in liberal politics,” is against stop-and-frisk except for in Manhattan and will just barely tolerate public housing as long as it’s not in Manhattan — or whether this is an elaborate performance art piece.
Schiumo himself said it was “impossible to tell in the moment.”
If you are Joan from the Upper West Side or the performance artist playing Joan from the Upper West Side, e-mail danielle.tcholakian@metro.us.
Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat
