As the story goes, Bloomberg let his steam out on Taxi Club Management CEO Gene Freidman. The witch-fit (we’re watching our language) heard round the world was kicked off during a recent Knicks game, when the taxi company owner approached the mayor to (innocently, he says) ask Bloomberg what’s up. Bloomberg shot back saying, “Come January 1st, when I am out of office, I am going to destroy your [expletive] industry.”
Freidman, though hardly a household name, is regarded as one of the New York’s wealthiest and most powerful head honchoes owning around 925 cabs city-wide. The 42-year-old businessman told the Post he treaded lightly the second time he approached Bloomberg, asking, “Why can’t I sit down with you and figure out something that works?”
But was shot down again as the mayor repeated his original sentiment: “After January, I will destroy all you [expletive] guys.”
And as Freidman and a friend walked away from the brawl, physically unscathed but presumed to be emotionally scarred, he turned to his buddy and asked, “Did the mayor just threaten me?” To which the buddy replied, “No, he threatened you twice.”
The self-professed “King of the Road” also told the Post that the flushed Bloomberg appeared “very angry, very scary… He was grinding his teeth, he was spitting he was red and he was in my face. The mayor was extremely disrespectful, and not ‘mayorly’ at all. He cursed me.”
Freidman assured the publication that he wasn’t trying to instigate anything, and even planned on reminding Bloomberg of a 2006 meeting when the mayor sang him praises for introducing hybrid fuel and wheelchair-accessible taxis. And yet still, the mayor tried to have security throw Freidman out of the club.
“This was my club that Bloomberg was a guest in, that I had to paid to get in, and he wasn’t getting me kicked out of my own place,” Freidman told the Post.
He was also perplexed as to how exactly Bloomberg planned to make good on his threats.
“I don’t know how he’ll destroy me, whether he’ll start a blackcar service that will take people for free,” he pondered. “Perhaps he’ll put $10 million of his own money to lobby against the taxi industry- that is pretty powerful.”
In response to the allegations, Bloomberg has come down with a case of memory-phobia (the New York Post beat us to the word “amnesia”), as he told the media all he remembered of the event was that “it was a great game.”