Neighborhood Threat

When I first heard about the Election Night incidents at N. 7th and Bedford, and read some of the comments over on Free Williamsburg, I have to say that my immediate reaction was: stupid entitled white children acting as though only they matter, I am sure they did not help themselves very much.

On the other hand, I do not like or trust the NYPD. So I was completely certain that they were wrong, at least to a certain extent.

Now that I have seen the footage, and talked to a perfectly respectable citizen of our community who was handcuffed and taken in for giving a cop the finger, I will say this:

The NYPD was completely over the top on this. They were wrong.

I will also say this:

The stupid kids exercising white privilege and blocking traffic and keeping people up all night under the guise of entitlement are also wrong. Not everyone had the luxury of staying up all night celebrating. People had to get home to kids and family and to and from jobs. You can cry out for a car-free Bedford another time, right now, it’s a transportation artery - and that also goes for PUBLIC transportation, like the B61 (which should go down Berry and not Bedford, but that’s another story too).

There is no question that the cops were out of line, however. There is very little justification for their behavior. And they only got away with it because they were doing it to white kids in Williamsburg. If they had tried to pull an action like this in Bed-Stuy it would have been an international incident.

We went to vote at around 8:15 this morning. There was a line out of the McGuinness Senior Center, mostly due to the backup of not remembering what district we were in. The guy in front of us insisted that we had to wait in line even if we DID know our district.

Not true.

We are in District 75. It’s never that crowded, but today was not any normal day.

The poll workers seemed amazed that that many people were there that early. They said that lunchtime was when it really got bad.

I don’t even want to think about what that meant today.

My record was there just fine, but the boyfriend’s was not. He had to produce ID and then he disappeared. I love how we still have the old-fashioned booths that I remember from when my parents voted in the 70s, complete with pencil carefully clipped to the side in case you wanted to write someone in. I went into the voting booth, closed the curtain, twirled my knobs and pulled the lever.

When I came out it was even more crowded. The phone rang, and it was the boyfriend. I had no signal downstairs but had enough to hear him say he was outside. He had to vote on paper, even though he didn’t want to, he had to vote on paper because despite not being on the rolls the last time this happened and him sending them a letter AGAIN updating his address, he was still not there, even though his ID actually reflects his current domicile.

Him and Tim Robbins. He was in good company, and would have liked to have been afforded the luxury of taking Tim’s protest route and going down to the Board of Elections, but alas, that course of action was not for us peons.

(I’m glad Tim did, and at least he pointed out that he had the luxury of doing so.)

My flickr feed is here, and I cannot tell you how important it was for me to have my camera this morning.

I’ve always used Northside, after two incidents when I first moved to the neighborhood. Never had a problem, never had an issue.

Until yesterday.

The boyfriend is home sick with the flu. He never gets sick, which means it’s a million times more miserable for him than for me. I couldn’t stay home or go in late, so I left him cash to take a car to the doctor.

Northside charged him $40 to the Upper West Side from Greenpoint. He didn’t even really think about it or have the strength to argue, and didn’t really put two and two together until he took a cab home and it was only $25.

He didn’t tell the driver he was sick, but it’s pretty obvious from looking at him. It costs $40 to go to JFK, for heaven’s sake. Yes, he should have pushed back, and if he didn’t know how much it cost he should have checked with the dispatcher. But this blatant rip-off ensures we will never give Northside our business again. My guess is that the driver assumed he was new to the neighborhood and since he was white and male, had money and wouldn’t know the difference. That’s reprehensible.