July 2006

DIY neighborhood improvement.

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not a really good picture, as i left my serious flash at home. but here’s a bike cop (they always have great bodies) talking to a radio car cop (who was old and unattractive and obviously annoyed and didn’t talk) that’s right in front of the policy emergency tape, which i’ve been questioning with every cop that has hit 116th street in the last week (far more than we’ve seen in the last year, for some reason). the bike cop tells me that it’s basically not their problem — BUT he does send me in the right direction. the two (TWO!) incorrect signs on 116th Street are the responsibility of the department of transportation. so i just filed a complaint with them. if you would like to add your voice to mine, please click the title of this blog to be directed to their website, which is http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/about/assist.html

here are the issues on the south side of west 116th st. between manhattan & 8th (aka frederick douglass blvd).

1) one indicates a bus stop (southeast corner, and still has a bus shelter where the DOT is renting advertising space) that has been out of operation for more than TWO YEARS. previously there was a garbage bag placed over the bus stop sign. it must have fallen off.

2) one indicates (southwest corner) a “construction in progress” sign for a building project that was completed more than 6 months ago. people are getting tickets for NO REASON and it is not fair. no garbage bag ever placed there.

(note to self: maybe all i need to fix this is a tall ladder and some garbage bags?)

i asked the DOT to address these problems. i followed procedure, though without much hope.

please add your complaints to mine if you feel this is worthy of attention.

their original, low-tech but effective, way to obliterate the bus stop was to cover the bus stop sign with a lawn-leaf garbage bag. now there’s police emergency tape there, which sends an entirely different message, and still doesn’t make it clear that this is no longer, and has not been for quite some time, a bus stop. the bus stop itself is now on the north side of 8th avenue. this is because manhattan avenue, for reasons never explained, was changed from a two-way to a one-way southbound street from 110th street on up. so the old bus route changed. the old bus shelter remains. there is NO bus shelter at the new official bus stop, but the DOT is clearly still making money from the old one, which is now nothing more than an advertising kiosk, since the ads change from time to time. (from guinness to heineken, last i checked).

you know what? this would NOT happen in midtown, or on the newly prosperous lower east side. why is it OK to have the residents of harlem — regardless of color, this is not a racist issue, you can’t tell what color the owner of a car is by looking at their car — subjected to this kind of pathetic inaccuracy for such extended periods of time?

mayor bloomberg: despite the fact that i am a democrat, i think you are a good mayor and i voted for you twice and would vote for you again. you’ve done some great things — 311 being the best among them, in my opinion. but, unfortunately, you still haven’t done enough. can we get a little rational attention uptown, please?

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since the ruckus back in june, when the NYPD nearly started a riot on west 116th street by brutalizing one of the favorite people on our block, victor the security guard on the corner of manhattan avenue, i have seen more police on this street than in all the five years i’ve lived here.

more police in ONE DAY than i used to see in a month. but what are they actually doing here? well, unless somebody’s looking at them or asking them a question, they’re either socializing with one another or spending long periods of time in personal conversations on their cell phones. one cop — i timed him — was on what seemed to be a single call for 45 minutes, and i know it was personal because i passed him close by twice, and paused to listen in. i hope his problems with his girlfriend get better, but i wish he’d solve them on his own time, the way the rest of us have to do.

i got this shot from inside the yellow-taped off bus shelter written about in my previous post, and they had no idea i was there. but when people are around, the story changes. check the link on this blog title to see what a big difference less than two minutes made, when i went up to ask them why the no-longer-used bus shelter was roped off. (they had no idea, and apparently it didn’t occur to them to take the tape down since there is obviously no emergency there right now. but maybe they’re not allowed to be proactive in their jobs.)

just another day.

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i’d only seen Victor once since the NYPD chose to beat him down for doing his job correctly (see june archives). we exchanged cell phone numbers, but he got my number wrong and lost his phone the next day. i’ve been trying to get in touch with him ever since (as have several members of the press who are interested in publishing the details of this case). just for the record, nobody who lives around here was surprised by the near-riot created by the NYPD on 6/22, this is business as usual for harlem — at least, for the black people living in harlem. seems like us whities get a free pass most of the time.

since the widely published accounts of the attack on Victor, i have seen more cops on this street than ever before in the 5 years i’ve lived here. the sight of a uniform anywhere around used to be a rarity — every now and then a sweep, but easily a month or more could pass without me ever running into an officer of any kind on or around my block. now, it’s an everyday thing, and i have to wonder whether the neighborhood outcry over the way Victor was mistreated has something to do with it.

full disclosure: yes, i have in the past been the victim of unwarranted violence by NYPD officers. but i’ve also had my life saved by the NYPD, who went above and beyond to help me at that time. i am also, for the record, the daughter of a 20-year NYPD street cop and have published an anthology (Off the Cuffs: Poetry by and about the Police) which is extremely even-handed, including work by police officers, inmates, victims, perpetrators, lawyers. i am not on a vendetta against the NYPD, but on a vendetta against injustice, wherever and however it’s encountered.

Victor, i’m glad to see you back at your post!

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this sign is on is the southeast corner of West 116th Street. once upon a time, long, long ago, this was a bus stop in front of a vacant building adjacent to an empty, crack-and-rodent-ridden lot. the bus stop was moved about two years ago, when Manhattan Avenue became a one-way southbound street. at that point, the bus stop sign was covered with a black garbage bag, the traditional, economical way of eliminating bus stops uptown. people parked there with impunity (there are about 4 spots between this sign and the corner, and no fire hydrants).

maybe 6 months later, when construction started, merging the lot and the building into (still more) luxury condos, the sign above appeared. it was hardly necessary, since dumpsters and tractors and pallets of building brick and suchlike constantly occupied that portion of the street.

but the building was finished more than six months ago. it has several tenants, and was the subject of my first blog here (see “NYPD police brutality and fraud in Harlem” in the June 2006 archive). yet the sign remains. (if you want to see what a “real” construction site looks like, click the title of this blog.)

this afternoon i happened to pass by as an officer was writing a ticket for one of the two cars parked in the forbidden zone. i asked him, politely, if he knew why parking was prohibited on that stretch of curb, and he pointed to the sign. but officer, the sign says it’s prohibited for “temporary construction” — do you see any construction going on around here? he shrugged, smiled, suggested i might call 311 and let them know it was a problem.

then he lowered his face to his daybook to finish writing the ticket, just as the owner of the car strode across the street saying “godDAMN!”

apparently, no one’s minding the store.

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took my camera to work with me today. i used to walk the whole way, but then the office moved and it took too long and it was tiresome to walk down the east side, where people pick up the shit of dogs that cost more than some people’s houses. so i compromise, walk down the west side of central park from 110 to 59th, then take the subway down to 18th street.

today i thought i’d take pix of all the homeless people i saw sleeping on the benches. i left late, like 8am, or else there would have been more, but still there were plenty. if they were awake, i asked their permission. if not, i didn’t wake them up.

the two attached to this post seem to break my heart the most, though i’m not sure why. the rest of them can be seen by clicking on the title link of this blog.

we are a city of millionaires and billionaires. can’t we do better than this for the people who have nothing?

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homeless 3 years. initially due to a drug problem which he no longer has but we all know how the past haunts you. he is smart, articulate, unaggressive, and charming. like most sane new yorkers, he will not go into our shelter system, which is dangerous, filthy, and demeaning.

if you’re the type that’s into prayer, please say a quick one for adolphus tonight.

where does he sleep? wherever he can.

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