New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg just addressed the 1,000+ attendees of TechCrunch Disrupt. Reinforcing his new media acumen, he leads by rattling off all of the updates and check-ins he did on the way over here. “I even put a classified on Craigslist,” he added, “the Cleveland Craigslist” – trying to get LeBron to come to New York (when he managed to compare King James to Arrington taking TechCrunch Disrupt to New York — several in the press section nearly gagged). Bloomberg, of course, was a pioneer in new media and fits right in in this room, have founded Bloomberg L.P. after being fired from Salomon Brothers in the early ’80s.

Bloomberg then goes into pitch mode. NYC needs smart people, developers, entrepreneurs, and engineers apparently. “It doesn’t matter if you’re from New York or New Jersey or New Delhi, if you have an idea or an app, New York City is the place for you. “This is the city where it’s happening….”

Erick Schonfeld: “You know there’s a friendly rivalry between Silicon Valley and the New York tech scene…” “Who says it’s friendly?” joked Bloomberg.

Bloomberg alludes to Bloomberg’s acquisition (resuscitation) of BusinessWeek saying that they lost their way. “You don’t know what is going to be important to you tomorrow” — you need editors, real, trained journalists. But is the mayor out of touch? He still believes most people in the room read the newspaper as delivered each morning. It’s a good thing he’s the mayor and not physically running media operations at his company.

Preliminary reports indicate that US Airways Flight 1549 made an emergency landing in the Hudson River soon after takeoff from LaGuardia around 3:20 EST. It’s suspected that a flock of birds flew into the engine, windshield, or otherwise interferred with the plane prompting the emergency landing, which, according to witnesses was impressively controlled.

This photo tells the story so much better than anything else. Actually seeing people getting off onto the floating escape chutes is the most relieving sight possible. News outlets are still scrambling for details. It appears that all passengers and crew were rescued — dry. I am currently watching live coverage via ABC 7 Online in NYC.

Photo by Janis Krums aka jkrums via TwitPic (which is currently down).

UPDATE: Check out this video 4 minute clip from the scene below: