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Posts tagged: Busker

Mar 28 2015

Skin Graffiti from Lyrics

#GiveMeSomthingICanBreatheWith – Lyrics from “Brighter Day” by Heidi Kole
Photo & Skin Grafitti – Mitchell Parsons

backcovershot

Jan 03 2015

‘In in alternate Universe’, my life just got a whole lot easier #Buskon

Rolling Stone

The NYPD’s ‘Work Stoppage’ Is Surreal

In an alternate universe, the New York Police might have just solved the national community-policing controversy.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-nypds-work-stoppage-is-surreal-20141231?page=2

workstoppage

By  | 

Brace yourselves for a weird night. There might be a little extra drama when the ball drops in Times Square, thanks to one of the more confusing political protests in recent memory.

 On a night when more than a million potentially lawbreaking, probably tipsy revelers will be crowding the most densely-populated city blocks in America, all eyes will be on the city cops stuck with holiday duty.

Why? Because the New York City Police are in the middle of a slowdown. The New York Post is going so far as to call it a “virtual work stoppage.”

Furious at embattled mayor Bill de Blasio, and at what Police Benevolent Association chief Patrick Lynch calls a “hostile anti-police environment in the city,” the local officers are simply refusing to arrest or ticket people for minor offenses – such arrests have dropped off a staggering 94 percent, with overall arrests plunging 66 percent.

If you’re wondering exactly what that means, the Post is reporting that the protesting police have decided to make arrests “only when they have to.” (Let that sink in for a moment. Seriously, take 10 or 15 seconds).

Substantively that mostly means a steep drop-off in parking tickets, but also a major drop in tickets for quality-of-life offenses like carrying open containers of alcohol or public urination.

My first response to this news was confusion. I get why the police are protesting – they’re pissed at Mayor de Blasio, and more on that in a minute – but this sort of “protest” pulls this story out of the standard left-right culture war script it had been following and into surreal territory.

I don’t know any police officer anywhere who would refuse to arrest a truly dangerous criminal as part of a PBA-led political gambit. So the essence of this protest seems now to be about trying to hit de Blasio where it hurts, i.e. in the budget, without actually endangering the public.

So this police protest, unwittingly, is leading to the exposure of the very policies that anger so many different constituencies about modern law-enforcement tactics.

First, it shines a light on the use of police officers to make up for tax shortfalls using ticket and citation revenue. Then there’s the related (and significantly more important) issue of forcing police to make thousands of arrests and issue hundreds of thousands of summonses when they don’t “have to.”

It’s incredibly ironic that the police have chosen to abandon quality-of-life actions like public urination tickets and open-container violations, because it’s precisely these types of interactions that are at the heart of the Broken Windows polices that so infuriate residents of so-called “hot spot” neighborhoods.

In an alternate universe where this pseudo-strike wasn’t the latest sortie in a standard-issue right-versus left political showdown, one could imagine this protest as a progressive or even a libertarian strike, in which police refused to work as backdoor tax-collectors and/or implement Minority Report-style pre-emptive policing policies, which is what a lot of these Broken Windows-type arrests amount to.

But that’s not what’s going on here. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing enlightened about this slowdown, although I’m sure there are thousands of cops who are more than happy to get a break from Broken Windows policing.

I’ve met more than a few police in the last few years who’ve complained vigorously about things like the “empty the pad” policies in some precincts, where officers were/are told by superiors to fill predetermined summons quotas every month.

It would be amazing if this NYPD protest somehow brought parties on all sides to a place where we could all agree that policing should just go back to a policy of officers arresting people “when they have to.”

Because it’s wrong to put law enforcement in the position of having to make up for budget shortfalls with parking tickets, and it’s even more wrong to ask its officers to soak already cash-strapped residents of hot spot neighborhoods with mountains of summonses as part of a some stats-based crime-reduction strategy.

Both policies make people pissed off at police for the most basic and understandable of reasons: if you’re running into one, there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to end up opening your wallet.

Your average summons for a QOL offense costs more than an ordinary working person makes in a day driving a bus, waiting tables, or sweeping floors. So every time you nail somebody, you’re literally ruining their whole day.

If I were a police officer, I’d hate to be taking money from people all day long, too. Christ, that’s worse than being a dentist. So under normal circumstances, this slowdown wouldn’t just make sense, it would be heroic.

Unfortunately, this protest is not about police refusing to shake people down for money on principle.

For one thing, it’s simply another public union using its essential services leverage to hold the executive (and by extension, the taxpayer) hostage in a negotiation. In this case the public union doesn’t want higher pay or better benefits (in which case it wouldn’t have the support from the political right it has now – just the opposite), it merely wants “support” from the Mayor.

On another level, however, this is just the latest salvo in an ongoing and increasingly vicious culture-war mess that is showing no signs of abating.

Most everyone across the country knows the background by now. The police in New York are justifiably furious about the Saturday, December 20th ambush murder/assassination of two of their officers, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, at the hands of a rampage-killer from Baltimore named Ismaaiyl Brinsley.

Brinsley, who shot his girlfriend and promised on Instagram to put “wings on pigs” before coming to New York and doing the evil deed, had cited the killing of Eric Garner in his rants, saying among other things, “They took 1 of ours…let’s take 2 of theirs.”

According to the transitive theory of culpability so popular in our left-right media echo chamber, Brinsley’s monstrous act put de Blasio in the political jackpot, since both had expressed dismay about the death of Garner, an African-American man from Staten Island who died this past summer in a struggle with police over a 75-cent cigarette.

De Blasio of course never urged anyone to put “wings on pigs.” And his comment about the actual grand jury decision – that it was something “many in our city did not want” – was really just a simple statement of fact.

But de Blasio also clumsily personalized the incident, talking about his own half-black son Dante, saying that he and his wife Chirlane had had to “talk to Dante. . .about the dangers that he may face.” Then he added, “It should be self-evident, but our history requires us to say that black lives matter.”

As maximally uncontroversial as that sounds, the local tabloids went nuts over de Blasio’s remarks, bashing the boss of the nation’s biggest police force for quoting a globally-surging protest hashtag and talking about how he has to teach his own son to be wary of police.

And then Ramos and Liu were murdered in a horrible tragedy that will have lasting implications for people on all sides of the political spectrum.

The thing is, there are really two things going on here. One is an ongoing bitter argument about race and blame that won’t be resolved in this country anytime soon, if ever. Dig a millimeter under the surface of the Garner case, Ferguson, the Liu-Ramos murders, and you’ll find vicious race-soaked debates about who’s to blame for urban poverty, black crime, police violence, immigration, overloaded prisons and a dozen other nightmare issues.

But the other thing is a highly specific debate over a very resolvable controversy not about police as people, but about how police are deployed. Most people, and police most of all, agree that the best use of police officers is police work. They shouldn’t be collecting backdoor taxes because politicians are too cowardly to raise them, and they shouldn’t be pre-emptively busting people in poor neighborhoods because voters don’t have the patience to figure out some other way to deal with our dying cities.

This police protest, ironically, could have shined a light on all of that. Instead, it’s just more fodder for our ongoing hate-a-thon. Happy New Year, America.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-nypds-work-stoppage-is-surreal-20141231#ixzz3NoYQlrJb
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook

Nov 21 2014

Think less ~

Think Less, Feel More – When you think, you draw only on what you’ve experienced in this, life thus far, when you feel, you draw on the entirety of that which is Universal Intelligence ~ HK ~

THinkless
Nov 08 2014

Moved again

Never fails to blow me away when a homeless person passes me in a wheelchair on the platform, then turns around & wheels close enough to throw coins in my case. Coins straight out of their paper cup‪ #‎somekindaundergroundlove‬ 

wheelchair

Oct 11 2014

“Boo!”

T-Ricky sharing his new Subway Diaries “T” w/ the farm help 🙂

ScareCrowT

Oct 08 2014

An unlikely tipper

Tonight, I think I got tipped with a $10 from a hooker #undergroundfirst

hooker

Sep 13 2014

‘Soul Knowing’

‘Best human of the night’ award goes to the homeless underground NYC tonight who really listen, they hear & never fail to give even though they most likely have less than anyone else on the platform at any given time. There’s some kind of etherial connection between me & the homeless who hear me sing. I cannot tell you exactly what it is, it’s some kind of a ‘soul knowing’, but we ‘get’ each other somehow. We rarely say anything to each other, but it’s clear, it’s in the eyes.

wheelchair-man

Aug 28 2014

Busking Gifts

People kept stopping by bearing random gifts today Underground. First it was a Box of Girl Scout Cookies, then some kinda fancy-schmanzy shampoo & conditioner (at least the lady who dropped it in my case said it was). By the end of my day I kinda felt like the baby Jesus & the three wise men  #newyorkundergroundlove

2014-08-28 14.42.132014-08-28 14.42.432014-08-28 14.42.51

Aug 16 2014

This week in NYC

Beginning of the Rally/March against Police Brutality here in NYC, in Ferguson & Nationwide which ultimately moved up to Time Square where the NYPD kettled & threatened protesters  with mass arrests (last shot) #UnionSquare #TimesSquare #Ferguson #NYC
2014-08-14 18.32.012014-08-14 18.35.022014-08-14 18.32.192014-08-14 18.49.522014-08-14 18.52.352014-08-14 19.01.272014-08-14 19.07.452014-08-14 19.11.28nastaranshot

Aug 13 2014

No, seriously, again?

Ok no, seriously? Again? So tell me NYC…which trains AREN’T infested???? 

Nowhere Is Safe: Third Subway Line Reportedly Infested With Bedbugs

http://gawker.com/nowhere-is-safe-third-subway-line-reportedly-infested-1621087254 

A tipster has revealed to Business Insider that a third train line in the New York City subway has potentially been infested with bedbugs. The first subway line to get fumigated—the N train—wasfollowed by the 5 train, and now the pests have reportedly taken to feeding on passengers on the 7.

After riding the 7, the tipster told Business Insider: “I am a regular 7 line rider in New York. I take the line every morning from Woodside to Bryant Park. This morning, I noticed them coming out from under the seat to feed on people’s legs.”

The tipster, Kedem Deletis, said he called MTA officials on a help line after seeing the bugs, instead of starting a panic among other passengers.

Via Business Insider:

“What exactly should I have done? Raised a panic on the train and have people screaming and hurt?” Deletis asked. “Maybe captured one of these bedbugs and risk bringing one home?”

Deletis said he was certain the insect he saw was a bedbug because he had an infestation in his building “about four years ago” and “that nightmare experience made every resident an expert.”

MTA officials say they are looking into Deletis’ bedbug observation. A friend of a Gawker staff writer simply advises to not sit on the wooden seats on the platform, because the disgusting pests breed there. But maybe, for now, just don’t take the subway at all.

subwaysbugs