Like B*sh, the Pope needs a whole NY neighborhood locked down while he's there.

[icymist]

A Neighborhood on Papal Lockdown

It takes a village to accommodate a Pope.

Or at least a small segment of the Upper East Side. That’s what the locals were coming to terms with on Thursday, as the area around the block where the pope is staying this weekend — East 72nd Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues — was prepared for full papal security lockdown by the authorities.

The pope is staying in a town house on the block from Friday through Sunday, and the authorities have shut the street to motorists and have restricted pedestrian access to the block, basically to residents, and employees and other people with official business on the block. These people said they have been instructed to carry identification to show to authorities to gain access to the street.

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Some shopkeepers said they had been told nothing about traffic restrictions and grew alarmed when they saw the shiny new metal barricades put along the curbs along stretches of 72nd Street and Madison Avenue, not to mention the traffic cones, wooden sawhorses and heavier, more imposing barriers like the heavy concrete barriers and bulky steel vehicle gates that one sees at traffic checkpoints in war zones. There was a bulletproof police booth installed near the town house where the Pope is staying, and one could see several air monitors in the area bearing the logo of the city’s Department of Environmental Protection.

Some people who live in the neighborhood acknowledged that the presence of the pope over the next few days would be a nuisance, but most described that as a tolerable inconvenience.

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