‘Bing Bong, New York City!’ Things Eric Adams Has Said That Prove He’s An Alien

Eric Adams is the mayor of New York City. That is a fact: something with which Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City, takes great liberties. A fact, to our Eric Adams, is but sand slipping through one’s fingers at Rockaway Beach. A fact is a faint howl in the wind, whipping through the Financial District. A fact is as malleable a thing as the ooze seeping from the ceilings of the majority of the city’s subway stations.

Adams’ loose relationship with facts has created a breeding ground for the absolutely bizarre statements he’s made and situations he’s found himself in. In an anthropological study of sorts, it felt important to gather these moments with the goal of capturing what it has been like to be a constituent of or mere witness to this man.

This slideshow isn’t meant to be a comment on his politics, which veer...bad. But he is at least bad and fascinating, whilst most politicians are bad and boring. The latter, in my dopamine addict opinion, is the greater sin.

During his tenure as Brooklyn Borough President, Eric Adams hosted a “Rat-Summit” to address the (very real!) rat issue in New York City. There he proudly debuted his “Rat Bucket,” which kills rats in such a way that it made me consider joining PETA. And he bragged on a podcast in 2020 that he killed exactly 107 of them:

“When I did that initiative of mothers coming into my office telling me about rats biting their babies, and showing me bite marks from the children by rats. And I went over the country and said, ‘Can we find a device to deal with the rat infestation?’ And we were able to put it in place as a pilot project and killed 107 rats, and then we want to put the pilot project into NYCHA developments. It was folks coming over and saying, ‘Why are you killing rats?’ You know, those things that are important to everyday residents. We have a welcome sign to New York, but how about being welcoming to the people who were there?”

“I’m like broccoli. You’re gonna hate me now, but you’re gonna love me later.”

Mayor Adams has referred to himself multiple times as the “Broccoli Mayor.” Most recently it was because he is proposing Vegan Fridays at city schools, but he also called his inhumane sweeps of homeless encampments his “broccoli moment.” From purely an editorial standpoint, maybe he should hone in on what the hell he thinks broccoli represents.

A scandal that rocked Adams’ mayoral run was the debate over where he truly lived. Some people, like those who’ve looked at his property taxes, think he was living in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Others, like Eric Adams, think Eric Adams was living in his son’s home in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn. During his campaign, Adams showed reporters the inside of “his” refrigerator in a Bedstuy, but it was full of meat, which he blamed on...his son.

New Jersey, New York. Potato, potahto. Broccoli, broccoli.

The origins of “Bing Bong” are murky. Was it a Pixar film that launched the trend? A Knicks fan? What definitely ended it was Eric Adams saying in his first TikTok as he drank his death smoothie and glared out his office window: “Bing bong, New York City. Your mayor’s on TikTok. Let’s get stuff done.”

A lot of people know that the city of Manhattan is built upon a giant bedrock of schist. But did you know that according to Eric Adams, we actually sit upon rare gems and stones, and because of that, “there’s a special energy that comes from here?” Oh, ok, I was wondering about the energy.