March 2005

Jen blogged about this before, but I have a few things I’d like to add.

This guy El Moreno describes the Opera House Lofts, across the street from us, as a happy building of artists and musicians, plagued by a neighborhood full of rapists, drug dealers, thugs, and whores. (Although I have to laugh when he says his budddy’s “stash” got stolen. I guess El Moreno has one set of morals for poor people who smoke crack, and another for artistic people who smoke pot.)

But the neighborhood he describes isn’t the one I’ve experienced. Sure, I’ve heard the “all these fucking white people” comments. They annoy me, but I take them in stride. See, I’ve watched Opera Loft dwellers pass through the neighborhood. They nearly run from the train at Broadway and Myrtle down to their nice lofts, seemingly afraid that if they’re not inside their razor-wired bunker, they’ll be attacked. They never lift their heads to acknowledge their neighbors, much less say Hello or stop for conversation.

Contrast that with some of the neighbors Jen discussed. The Delgados and Pedro have been open, friendly, funny. Pedro offered the use of his van if we ever need it. Emily Delgado described our street as one where the neighbors look out for each other–the implication being that they’ll look out for us, too. The Lofters, meanwhile, are seemingly only looking out for themselves and each other.

They live inside an insular community, guarded by razor wire, flood lights, alarm systems, and security gates. They have a laundry, music and rec rooms, a yoga studio, a rooftop patio, and a garden. They have no reason to be part of this street, and so they choose not to. They walk briskly past the storefronts on Broadway, never lifting their heads. They don’t buy from those stores, except MAYBE to go to the corner market for milk, smokes, or beer. If FreshDirect delivered here, they wouldn’t spend a dime in this neighborhood.

El Moreno bitches about how “dangerous” this neighborhood is, but he doesn’t mention that Opera House dwellers come and go at all hours of the night. We hear them coming home at 3, 4, and 5am. Common sense might tell you that any part of most cities and towns is potentially dangerous at 4am, but I guess El Moreno flunked Common Sense.

By the way, we know they come home that late because they’re loud. They yell like drunken frat boys, they bicker among themselves, and they slam the security gate behind them when they enter.

When Opera House residents have parties, we see stylish 20-somethings running drunk, up and down the street, wearing very little no matter the temperature. I will never say that any woman deserves to be assaulted, but I will say, again, that common sense suggests that perhaps it’s unwise to run down a street in an unfamiliar area, after midnight, dressed only in a miniskirt and a loose-fitting blouse.

El Moreno discusses an incident from late October, when an Opera House resident was badly beaten late one night. I can understand why that shook him up. It shook us up. But I wonder whether El Moreno knows or cares that our neighbor upstairs called the police that night.

When Opera House residents have parties, we hear car services coming at 3 and 4 and 5am to pick up party guests and take them home to Williamsburg and SoHo and the East Village. We know they’re out there because we hear the drivers honking for ten or twenty minutes or more; Opera House guests, apparently, never bother waiting downstairs for the car.

When the weather warms up, I know that there will be Opera House residents and their guests in the courtyard across the street or up on the rooftop patio, partying and laughing and shouting until 5am every weekend.

Opera’s neighbors are happy that the lofts are here. For decades, that beautiful, historic building was boarded up and empty. Large empty buildings breed crime. They’re happy that the new owners didn’t demolish and rebuild because our neighbors value the history of the neighborhood.

El Moreno and his former neighbors in the lofts clearly disdain Bushwick. Perhaps they were dumb enough to believe the “East Williamsburg” hype, and came here looking for young pretty white people, cool bars and restaurants, and cute little record stores.

So they hide away in their ghetto oasis, sneering at the Salvadorans and Puerto Ricans around them, unaware that they’ve made themselves a target by being so conspicuously “protected” all the time. The razor wire and other security measures tell the few bad eggs who are around, “Look at us. We have stuff you want that you can’t have.”

It’s hard for me to blame people for hating them, when they’ve gone out of their way to be such assholes to people in the neighborhood.

Hard Case Crime is a new publishing imprint that’s been putting out a line of pulpy crime novels. The imprint is reprinting old books by classic authors like Lawrence Block, Donald Westlake, and Erle Stanley Gardner. It’s also putting out books by newer writers.

Hard Case hired illustrators to paint old-style pulp-detective covers, and the imprint designed the trade dress in that fashion as well. The books look like this:

I’m going to buy and read them all because they look so great. They need to be in my home. They’re fun reads, too. Eight of them are available right now, with eight more on the way; I’ve bought four and read two.

I’m buying them in publication order because there’s no thinking that way. I just go out and look for the next one in the list. If I find it, I get it. Sometimes a guy just likes to be big and dumb and not think about what to read next.

8 oz. organic tomato juice
8 oz. vodka
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp. Evil Hot(TM) brand habanero hot sauce
1 tbsp. horseradish
1/2 tsp. clam juice
1 1/2 tsp olive juice
3 dashes bitters
1 dash onion powder
1 tsp lemon juice
1 pinch salt
1 twist black pepper

Stir ingredients in a cocktail shaker. Serve in a tall glass over ice. Garnish with a wedge of lemon, an olive, and a pinch of ground celery seed.

Makes 2 servings.

This is rich. Via the Panda’s Thumb comes word of Benevolent Design, a website dedicated to using astrology to prove the concept of intelligent design.

Although the site might be an elaborate hoax, commenters at Panda’s Thumb point to the books offered for sale by the Magi Society (the organization behind Benevolent Design) as proof that the site owners are sincere.

Don’t let the site’s tagline (”EVOLUTION THEORY IS A MONUMENTAL HOAX”) fool you, though. Benevolent Design seeks not merely to throw over Darwinian evolution but virtually all of genetics as well:

There is definitely truth to some theories in genetics. For example, genes have a bearing on us in matters such as the color of our hair and eyes, our blood type, skin color, and many other such physical ways. But at the Magi Society, we have learned through Magi Astrology with certainty that astrology is more powerful than genetics in shaping exactly who we are. Our natal charts have a much more powerful and deeper influence on us than our genes.

I’m amused by some of the other claims of Magi Astrology. For example, Magi Astrology explains why some people and companies are successful (financially or romatically) and others are unsuccessful. Here, the Magi astrologers analyze two celebrity marriages, the stock failure of AOL Time Warner, and the Marlins/Yankees World Series.

Of particular note here is the analysis of two celebrity marriages: The “Heartbreak Marriage” of Liza Minnelli and David Gest and the “Cinderella Marriage” of Lance Armstrong and Kristin Richard. Lance, apparently, owes his successes in marriage and cycling to his marriage chart. Let’s look at the Magis proof claims:

…On the day Lance Armstrong married Kristin Richard, three of the four Financial Planets were each making aspects to each other. …

…This type of alignment is called Planetary Synchronization and this concept was first introduced in our first book, and discussed in each of our other books. …

…In the case of the Armstrong Marriage Chart, the Planetary Synchronization of Chiron, Venus and Neptune would mean a Cinderella (Chiron plus Venus equals Cinderella) through ENDURANCE. (Neptune rules endurance in Magi Astrology and you need extraordinary endurance to win the Tour de France, an event that lasts about a month.)

Where Are They Now? Well, Lance is still winning races, that’s for sure. But Lance and Kristin split up in February 2003 and divorced in September of the same year. Lance is now porking Sheryl Crow.

What I can’t figure out about the Magis is that they wrote this pithy analysis of Lance and Kristen in December 2003, after the couple had filed to end their “Cinderella Marriage.” What happens to your astrology when the prince and the chambermaid fail to live happily ever after?

I spy with my little eye: Autonomous

The MTA has so far failed to pass the subway photography ban, Newsday reports. The article cites a spokesman for NYC Transit, who says that a flood of public comments about the proposed ban has led the MTA to temporarily shelve the measure, pending further review.

I still think we’ll see a ban of some sort–probably on photographing “sensitive” equipment such as switches and support structures–but I suspect the MTA will back away from a full ban.

This is ridiculous: The MTA is suing a Brooklyn bagel shop, claiming it is violating the MTA’s trademarks. The shop, F Line Bagels in Carroll Garden, has a subway theme, based on the nearby F train.

Now, the original point of trademark law was to protect consumers, and by extension trademark holders, by avoiding marketplace confusion. If you’re Milton Hershey, marketing your new chocolate bar, you don’t want some fraudster to copy your name and package design to sell inferior chocolate. And if you’re a consumer who happens to enjoy Mr. Hershey’s product, you’d like to know that you’re buying the real thing, not some cheap knockoff.

So, tell me MTA: How is a subway rider likely to confuse F Line Bagels with the nearby Smith-9th St. subway station? Especially since F Line Bagels appears to be much prettier and cleaner than any Brooklyn stop along the F line?

Graffito seen near the W-burg bridge:

CARL SAGAN CARED, PUNKS!!

I haven’t followed copyright and intellectual property here as closely as I used to, so I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the U.S. Copyright Office has requested public comment about using orphan works.

Simply put, orphan works are copyrighted creative works for which the rights holder is hard to find. For example, perhaps your grandfather published a collection of poetry through a small publisher in 1947, having sold to that publisher his interest in the poems. You would like to republish the collection, but the original publishing house is now out of business. Who owns the copyright?

Or say your parents are celebrating a wedding anniversary. You are throwing a party for their dearest friends, and as party decorations, you want to enlarge and display some of your parents’ wedding photos. You take the originals to a nearby lab, but the lab owner refuses to reproduce the photos, saying the original photographer owns the rights.

The copyright office is seeking to clarify issues surrounding these orphan works. If this problem affects you, please consider telling the office.