New Rochelle Mayor Noam Bramson and the rest of the cheerleading squad is now glomming on to a report that New Rochelle, NY was ranked the 43rd most exciting suburb in the United States. Yippee!
Bramson wrote:
Here’s something neat. Business Insider just published a list of the most exciting suburbs in America, and New Rochelle made the list at number 43. The rankings are based on nightlife, restaurants, and several other factors. Here’s the full article from Business Insider and a shorter summary from citybizlist.
Not so fast…
The Business Insider article is actually a promotional piece from a company called Movoto which generates lists from raw real estate data to generate what is known in the business as “link bait”. In this case, Business Insider took the list from Movoto knowing that those on the list will want to promote the article and drive traffic to their web site.
Talk of the Sound received a promotion from the same company a couple of weeks ago.
Hi Talk of the Sound team, it’s Erin from Movoto, the fun real estate research blog. Today we posted an article that brings the beauty of New Rochelle to life! We collected “30 Instagram Photos That Will Make You Fall In Love With New Rochelle”, and we think it turned out pretty cool.
To check it out, here’s the link: http://www.movoto.com/new-rochelle-ny/photos-new-rochelle/
Share the post with your blog readers and show them a new way to look at their city!
Take care,
Erin Marrs
Movoto PR Team
I asked Erin to tell me more about Movoto:
Hi there! Movoto is a licensed real estate brokerage, and you can check out our site here: www.movoto.com but I myself am not a realtor. I work on the Movoto Blog team (www.movoto.com/blog ) where we write different sorts of articles on cities across the country, to give people a little bit of an insight into the area. Every so often we have a little fun and do a piece focused on Instagram pictures of a city, because we think it’s neat to see what people appreciate about their homes.
Take care,
Erin Marrs
Movoto PR Team
I replied:
I could not help noticing that a few of the photos were clearly not actually in New Rochelle — like a woman sitting on train tracks in the mountains (we do not have mountains and anyone sitting on the Metro-North/Amtrak rail lines in New Rochelle would be killed within a matter of minutes as trains come through the station with great frequency given out proximity to New York City.
Erin wrote back “Thanks for the note, I’ll let the editor know!”
But of course the image of the woman sitting on the train tracks is still among their supposed photos of New Rochelle.
So, what is our Mayor really promoting here? A company that knows NOTHING about New Rochelle putting out a load of bollox, knowing dupes like our Mayor will promote their company if they place New Rochelle on some meaningless list.
Does anyone in their right mind believe that New Rochelle is one of the most exciting suburbs in the United States? Consider that White Plains is down the road, New Rochelle would not even qualify as the most exciting place in Southern Westchester.
It would be difficult to explain how ridiculous our Mayor looks promoting this list but a picture is worth a thousand words.
So here is a picture.
I would direct your attention to the first photo in the list Movoto sent to Talk of the Sound: 30 Photos That Will Make You Fall In Love With New Rochelle
Movoto describes New Rochelle as “…a city of dreams, intertwined with sunrises that wipe the sweat of the night from its brow and these pictures will absolutely make you fall in love with this city.” How romantic!
If you click the link you will see the New Rochelle page they created: http://www.movoto.com/new-rochelle-ny/photos-new-rochelle/
Isn’t that sweet?
According to Movoto, the first thing to know about why you will fall in love with New Rochelle is that New Rochelleans “never forget the past”.
And there is a lovely Instagram photo by Ricky Flores of an older woman looking through a scrap book of photos of her children.
So, who is Ricky Flores? Well, he is a photographer for the Journal News.
And Ricky’s photo? It’s from a Journal News article about the woman’s son.
The article is about the brutal murder of the woman’s son.
This is what Movoto knows about New Rochelle — that the reason you will fall in love with New Rochelle is because mom’s like to sit and look at old photos of their murdered children.
And this is the same company that Noam is citing in his article today!
Of course, we have seen this sort of lunacy from Bramson before.
Here is another photo. It’s Noam Bramson accepting the great honor of New Rochelle being inducted into the Environmental Hall of Fame. This is quite an honor, right? The Mayor stopped a City Council meeting to receive this wonderful award and the City touted this “achievement” for months.
We wrote about this sort of nonsense from the Mayor several years ago, including this excerpt:
4. New Rochelle Receives Environmental Hall of Fame Award
EOF NewRo
What is the Environmental Hall of Fame Award and how did New Rochelle get the award?
By now you might be asking if there is any “award” given for GreeNR that does not come from organizations directly affiliated with the GreeNR Advisory Board? Well, there is one.
New Rochelle Mayor Noam Bramson and Sustainability Coordinator Deborah Newborn received the Environmental Hall of Fame Award from Carol Froehlich-Hull, a representative of the Environmental Hall of Fame. There is no known connection between Noam Bramson, GreeNR and the Environmental Hall of Fame or Carol Froehlich-Hull. In receiving the award during the public portion of a City Council meeting last June, the Mayor said as much when he admitted having not heard of the Environmental Hall of Fame. Of course, that didn’t stop him from posing for photos in the City Council chambers with Ms. Froehlich-Hull accepting the “coveted” EOF Award, little more than a scrap of paper with the word “Award” on it placed in a gaudy faux gold-leaf frame.
Had the Mayor done even a cursory background check before turning over City Hall to Froehlich-Hull he would have realized the whole thing was a marketing stunt designed to sell vitamins.
Incredibly, Noam’s fourth and final award, was a “membership benefit” purchased by Carol Froehlich-Hull, a “franchisee” of Shaklee Corporation a multi-level marketing network for nutritional supplements, weight-management products, beauty products, and household products. In other words, an Amway competitor. Her company is called A Breath Away Group.
Ms. Froehlich-Hull paid $123 to become a member of Green Megatrends. Who? Never heard of them? Don’t worry, neither has Noam. It was through this highly suspect organization that she obtained the “exclusive right” to present a certificate to the Mayor of New Rochelle, get her picture taken doing it and have that picture displayed at the Environmental Hall of Fame which appears to be little more than a crudely built web site full of photos of other suckers Mayors, elected officials and a handful of celebrities many of whom appear bemused as they try to appear grateful at receiving an award they never heard of, from an organization they never heard of, from people they have never met and will likely never see again.
Think I’m kidding?
Listed among Green Megatrends Membership Benefits is “A photo of you presenting an award to your city for one of its best sustainability programs. ($100 value)” This woman paid money so that if she could con the Mayor into accepting the piece of paper the web site operator would upload the picture to the EOF web site.
There are still two other potential victims out there. Other benefits of joining Green Megatrends include the right to “Present an Environmental Hall of Fame award to a deserving environmentalist in your community (great publicity). ($100 value)” and “Present a HOPE Award (Hero of Planet Earth Award) to a deserving student or school (great publicity). ($100 value)”. I can just hear Paul Costiglio, the PR guy for the school district, rushing to get her over to the high school for her next photo op.
We can only wonder if Froehlich-Hull ever got the “greater traffic to your business, thousands of dollars of publicity, and gratitude from your family and community” that she was promised by Green Megatrends for her one hundred and twenty-three bucks. We will do our best at Talk of the Sound to see that she gets loads of publicity for her little stunt at City Hall and her shameless exploitation of taxpayer resources to promote her multilevel marketing business. Well, at least Noam picked up one more donor for his next run for Mayor in 2015.
Maybe next time Noam will do his homework before blindly prattling on about awards and honors bestowed on New Rochelle.
If Noam really cared about New Rochelle’s nightlife then maybe he would have done something about effectively closing downtown last Friday and Saturday night to remove snow because his own policies have so depleted the capabilities of our DPW that they cannot clear snow on any sort of normal schedule.