埃里克·亚当斯是谁：纽约令人困惑、无拘无束的市长
【中美创新时报2024 年 9 月 27 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）纽约市长亚当斯一直都是公众人物，也是一个不可捉摸的人物——他总是能说出令人费解的话，对记者越来越恼火，在一个面临多重危机的城市里，他鼓吹虚张声势。《纽约时报》记者Dodai Stewart 和 John Leland 对此作了下述报道。
亚当斯以“招摇”的市长身份当选。他是纽约夜生活的热情参与者，在俱乐部里闲逛到凌晨，然后在市政厅举行清晨会议。
他自称是素食主义者，喜欢吃鱼，几乎不睡觉。当他睡觉时，没人知道他在哪里。他在布鲁克林有一套公寓，在上东区的格雷西大厦有一处官邸，在新泽西州的李堡有一个女朋友。
从埃里克·亚当斯 2021 年新年前夕上任的那一刻起，他就承诺要成为纽约人从未见过的市长。
“我就像西兰花。你现在会恨我，但以后你会爱上我，”他曾经说过。
亚当斯一直都是公众人物，也是一个不可捉摸的人物——他总是能说出令人费解的话，对记者越来越恼火，在一个面临多重危机的城市里，他鼓吹虚张声势。
他颠覆了这座城市的一些政治边界：一个拥护警察局并与更自由的市议会发生冲突的民主党人。一个街头智慧的孩子，与商界关系密切，身边都是忠诚的人。
周四，困扰市长近一年的联邦调查最终以起诉书告终，这一切都轰然倒塌。
亚当斯曾是一名前警察，他承诺要给这座城市带来秩序，他经常从技术中看到救赎：他支持在时代广场地铁站短暂巡逻的矮胖警察机器人。虽然在他任职期间犯罪率有所下降，但零星的随机暴力事件让许多纽约人感到不安全。
当 2023 年大量移民涌入，压垮了纽约市的庇护系统时，市长宣称移民将“摧毁纽约市”，并补充说，“我看不到这种情况的结束。”
他在城市害虫中找到了另一个克星，向老鼠宣战。他发起了全国城市老鼠峰会，任命了一位老鼠沙皇，并宣布在他的哈莱姆老鼠缓解区（四个此类区域之一）举行反老鼠行动日。但他也因布鲁克林公寓的虫害问题而遭到 300 美元的罚款。
像他之前的许多市长一样，他似乎不接受任何批评。当他执政几个月后支持率暴跌时，他简单地回应道：“C 不是 A，但 C 不是 F。”
然而，不满情绪随之而来。面对预算短缺，他将其归咎于移民危机，夸大其影响，并对警察、学校和图书馆进行了不受欢迎的预算削减。
故事和问题纷至沓来。他住在纽约吗？还是住在他与同居伴侣特蕾西·柯林斯 (Tracey Collins) 在新泽西拥有的公寓里？1993 年，一名佛罗里达州妇女指控他性侵犯，当时他是纽约警察局的成员，但他否认了这一指控。
在其他方面，他简直让人无法捉摸。
“我不是传统的市长，”他不必要地说。他身穿瓜亚贝拉长袍出席新闻发布会，并承诺将为纽约移民群体提供更多服装：“当我穿上他们的服装时，我说我作为市长也要为你们效力。”
但他通常穿着昂贵的、剪裁完美的西装，袖扣耀眼夺目，或用小铆钉固定的领口衬衫——金属的闪光。
然后是他的格言，其中最著名的是他经常重复的：“当我坐在成功的餐桌旁时，所有恨我的人都成了我的服务员。”
选民们从来都不知道他接下来会在哪里出现。
他在华盛顿高地，抱着一只吉娃娃；他在中城的一家夜总会，坐在说唱歌手 French Montana 旁边的包厢里；他在一家银行举办的派对上，模特 Cara Delevingne 在他身边跳舞时，他摇头晃脑。
亚当斯称自己为“嘻哈市长”，并坚称四处游荡是工作的一部分。“这是一个夜生活的城市。我必须测试产品。我必须出去，”他在深夜脱口秀节目中说道，并补充道：“我们曾经是世界上最酷的地方。现在我们太无聊了。”
他曾被称为纽约市最著名的素食主义者——并将奶酪比作海洛因——但后来他澄清说，他只是试图坚持植物性饮食。那些质疑他吃鱼或肉的人，他称他们为“食品警察”。
他从未停止支持他的家乡，即使他举行升旗仪式来纪念一个又一个国家。
“纽约市是美国的特拉维夫，”他说。他还说，纽约市也是美国的雅典、美国的伊斯坦布尔、美国的基辅、美国的首尔和美国的萨格勒布。
“所有搬到佛罗里达的人，都滚回纽约去吧，因为纽约才是你们想去的地方。”他说。
周四上午，纽约最难以预测的市长表示，没有一件事情是不可能或无法预见的。
“我们并不惊讶。我们预料到了这一点。”亚当斯在新闻发布会上轻声说道，他周围有二十多名支持者点头表示赞同。
经过数月的调查，许多纽约人已经预料到了这一天。也许连亚当斯都预见到了。在三月份的“早餐俱乐部”广播节目中，他尝试写下自己的传奇故事：
“当我的手套挂起来时，”亚当斯说，“人们会看着、听着，那是一个真正的秃头、戴着耳环的兄弟，他作为纽约市长做了他该做的事。”
本文最初发表于《纽约时报》。
题图：纽约市市长埃里克·亚当斯周四接受媒体采访，此前他被联邦指控收受贿赂和来自外国的非法竞选捐款。Ted Shaffrey/美联社
附原英文报道：
Who is Eric Adams: New York’s baffling, boundless mayor
By Dodai Stewart and John Leland New York Times,Updated September 26, 2024
New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, spoke to media on Thursday after he was indicted on federal charges alleging that he took bribes and illegal campaign contributions from foreign sources.Ted Shaffrey/Associated Press
NEW YORK — He swept in as the mayor of “swagger.” He was an enthusiastic participant in New York’s nightlife, swanning around clubs into the wee hours, and then holding early-morning meetings in City Hall.
He was a self-proclaimed vegan who dabbled in fish, and he hardly slept. When he did, no one knew quite where. He had an apartment in Brooklyn, an official residence at Gracie Mansion on the Upper East Side and a girlfriend in Fort Lee, N.J.
From the moment Eric Adams took office on New Year’s Eve 2021, he promised to be a mayor such as New Yorkers had never seen.
“I’m like broccoli. You’re going to hate me now, but you’re going to love me later,” he once said.
Adams has been both a constant public presence and an unknowable figure — quick with an incomprehensible quote, increasingly irritated with reporters, riding a wave of bravado and bluster in a city faced with multiple crises.
He upended some of the city’s political borders: a Democrat who embraced the Police Department and clashed with the more liberal City Council. A street-wise kid who grew tight with the business community and surrounded himself with loyalists.
It all came crashing down on Thursday as a federal investigation that had plagued the mayor for nearly a year culminated in an indictment.
A former police officer, Adams had promised to bring order to the city, often seeing salvation in technology: He championed a squat police robot that briefly patrolled the Times Square subway station. Though crime has fallen during his tenure, trickles of random violence have made many New Yorkers feel unsafe.
When a flood of migrants arrived in 2023, overwhelming the city’s shelter system, the mayor declared that migrants would “destroy New York City,” adding, “I don’t see an ending to this.”
He found another nemesis in the city’s vermin, declaring war on rats. He sponsored a National Urban Rat Summit, appointed a rat czar, and announced an Anti-Rat Day of Action in his Harlem Rat Mitigation Zone, one of four such areas. But he also fought off a $300 fine for an infestation at his apartment in Brooklyn.
Like many mayors before him, he seemed not to accept any criticism. When his approval numbers dived a few months into his administration, he responded, simply, “A C is not an A, but a C is not an F.”
Yet discontent followed him. Faced with a budget shortfall, which he blamed on the migrant crisis, exaggerating its effects, he made unpopular budget cuts to the police, schools, and libraries.
Stories and questions swirled. Did he live in New York, or in the New Jersey condo he owned with his domestic partner, Tracey Collins? A Florida woman accused him of sexual assault in 1993, when he was a member of the New York Police Department, which he denied.
In other ways, he was just impossible to peg.
“I’m not a traditional mayor,” he said, unnecessarily. He showed up to a news conference wearing a guayabera, and promised more sartorial ensembles from New York’s immigrant groups: “When I rock their clothing, I say I’m going to rock for you as a mayor.”
But he was usually seen in expensive, impeccably tailored suits, featuring dazzling cuff links or a pin collar shirt secured with minuscule studs — a little flash of metal.
Then there were the aphorisms, the most famous of which he repeated often: “All my haters become my waiters when I sit down at the table of success.”
Constituents never really knew where he was going to pop up next.
He was in Washington Heights, embracing a Chihuahua; he was at a nightclub in Midtown, sitting in a booth next to rapper French Montana; he was at a party thrown by a bank, bobbing his head as model Cara Delevingne danced beside him.
Adams called himself “the hip-hop mayor,” and insisted that gallivanting was part of the job. “This is a city of nightlife. I must test the product. I have to be out,” he said on a late-night talk show, adding: “We used to be the coolest place on the globe. We’re so damn boring now.”
He was once called New York City’s most famous vegan — and compared cheese to heroin — but he later clarified that he merely tried to stick to a plant-based diet. Those who questioned him about eating fish or meat he branded “the food police.”
He never stopped championing his hometown, even as he held flag-raising ceremonies to honor nation after nation.
“New York City is the Tel Aviv of America,” he said. It was also, he said, the Athens of America, the Istanbul of America, the Kyiv of America, the Seoul of America and the Zagreb of America.
“Everyone who moved to Florida, get your butts back to New York City, because New York City is where you want to be,” he said.
On Thursday morning, New York’s most unpredictable mayor said that nothing that was transpiring was impossible or unforeseen.
“We are not surprised. We expected this,” Adams said, speaking softly at a news conference while more than two dozen supporters around him nodded.
It is a day that many New Yorkers had anticipated after the long months of investigation. Perhaps even Adams envisioned it. On the “Breakfast Club” radio show in March, he took a stab at writing his own legacy:
“When my gloves are hung up,” Adams said, “people will look at, listen, that was an authentic bald‑headed, earring‑wearing brother that did his thing as the mayor of the city of New York.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
