The Ghettoist

                Sorry it’s been so long since my last entry.  I came down with a severe case of writer’s baby.  If you have never heard of the condition, it occurs when you sit down on your couch, pick up your laptop and formulate two coherent sentences.   As soon as you start the third one a toddler is grabbing you by your index finger and leading you to the kitchen to show you how he took everything out of your silverware drawer and put it in the garbage pail.  He is so incredibly helpful.

                So I wanted to write about an incredibly historic day in one of everybody’s least favorite urban neighborhoods.  Yesterday Sharpe James was sent home from The FCI Petersburg Low.  Never heard of it, well you can see a lovely photo of it on the Federal Bureau of Prison’s website.  If you’re not from these parts you might not know the name of Sharpe James.  James was the mayor of Newark, New Jersey  who was indicted on 25 criminal charges ranging from mail fraud (never fuck with the mail,) wire fraud and conspiracy.  He was convicted on five and sentenced to 27 months.  The man was legendary in The NYC metro area.  He was mayor for 20 years.  In addition he was also a state senator of New Jersey for ten of those years.    Wait a second, hold the phone.  He  held two elected posts at the same time?  Hmm, I’m thinking I might be able to hold two elected posts at the same time.  The first being P.T.A. president, while at the same time being the North East Chairman of The Justin Bieber Fan Club.  Not the mayor for the 65th largest city in the country, and a senator for an entire district as well.  If we look at James’ laundry list indiscretions we see a modern day Boss Tweed without the cool middle name of Marcy, oh and without the results as well.  Tweed was corrupt, maybe the most corrupt but in between stealing millions he did accomplish a good deed or two.

                So with James now out (and finishing out his term in a half way house) if he ever goes back to the scene of his crimes he will see a very different Newark than the one he sucked dry.  Newark had always been a joke of a city.  It is the largest city in the metro area that is not one of the five boroughs.  From as long as I can remember it has always been straight up ghetto, but a second rate one at that.  Nobody swelled with pride to say they were” representin Brick City.”  Not like you would if you were from Jamaica, or Brownsville which had the nickname of A Square Mile of Death.  When you hailed from East New York, you could brag that the Seven Five Precinct had more murders than most of the cities in America.  Growing up, the joke was that Newark was so crappy that even the airport didn’t want to be there.  This stems from the fact that Newark Liberty Airport is actually in Elizabeth, New Jersey and not Newark.

                Then all of a sudden something changed.  The laughter just stopped.  Well actually it wasn’t sudden, but I remember waking up one day and saying to myself “Is Newark a respectable city now?”  The fact of the matter is that Newark will never be confused with the Upper West Side, but you cannot deny that the place has made huge strides to becoming a place where people don’t have to cower in shame when they say they come from it.  If you have to put your finger on what the biggest factor for that change it’s pretty obvious that it all falls on the lap of one man, Cory Booker.

                Now when I say that Cory Booker is responsible for the turnaround I should really say that it falls on the backs of Booker and the men and women who serve under him.  But what I can pin squarely on the shoulders of Booker is that he allowed those people to do their respective jobs.  I’ve seen firsthand what a mayor can actively do to reduce crime.  I was hired as a police officer under David Dinkins.  Whenever the shit hit the fan we were told that angry mobs just need to vent.  Really?  A group of heated up idiots taking to the streets to behave lawlessly is an entity that should be allowed to exist?  Is it any wonder that Dinkins held the distinction of being the mayor who had the highest murder rates on his watch.  This is not  joke, just look at videos of The Crown Heights Riots.  Under St. Rudy (I’m not a fan, but you can’t argue with his results) the amount of murders dropped to the lowest levels in forty years.  Booker seems to have charted a course for the same results.

                Newark hit a milestone last week by going thirty eight consecutive days with without a single murder.  Now this is just plain amazing.  Cory Booker and his cops have managed to not have anybody killed intentionally by another person for more than a month.  But at the same time I think about it, is it that big of an accomplishment to not kill?  I’ve gone 39 years without killing, using this logic shouldn’t the media be covering my every step then?  I’m not a bible scholar, nor am I that religious but I wholeheartedly understand the commandment Thou Shall Not Kill.   There are times I’d like to violate it, but I don’t.

                So I would like to congratulate Mayor Booker and the entire Newark Police Department for reaching their milestone. I mean they do have a former brilliant NYPD guy in Garry McCarthy at the helm calling the shots.   Most of all I would like to congratulate the citizens of Newark, New Jersey for behaving like human beings for a short period of time.  Stay Classy Newark, Stay Classy!  

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                Last week there was a bit of a controversy involving Gaborey Sidibe.  The powers that be over at Vogue said they will not be featuring the rookie actress in any issue as she is “too fat.”  This caused some outrage and controversy.  In addition Howard Stern came under fire for saying that she is not part of Hollywood and will vanish pretty quick because of her weight.  As much as I hate to do so, I have to defend those two entities.  I have to tell you Vogue is 100% correct in their actions and Howie, is probably right.

                I have to start by saying I am not a vogue subscriber.  I don’t read the publication.  I have thumbed through it but only as any other man does, to look at pretty ladies and hope for a glimpse of boob.  In addition I am no fan of the fashion industry.  I have worked indirectly in the industry and I have to tell you the stereotype of the shallow fashionista is based very much in fact.  Many (not all) people who work in fashion believe they are doing God’s work.  They think that by designing shoes and purses that their chosen career rivals surgeons who remove malignant tumors from cancer patients.  I bet if you surveyed ten cancer patients they would probably vote for the surgeon as having more important role.

                The editor and chief of Vogue Anna Wintour is legendary for her diva (there was another word I wanted to use that begins with a C…you can figure it out)like behavior.  Editor please!  In spite of your self-important view, you’re no more important to the planet than Rob Schneider.  I am sure when fashion week rolls around you feel like a big deal, and to your staff of servants in your Hampton’s estate you are the center of the universe, but lady you and I breathe the same exact air.  Can you see my disdain with Vogue and the fashion industry itself?  Guess I’m not getting a job writing for Conde Nast any time soon.  I’m okay with it, I will keep my soul.

                The other critic of Gabby is Howard Stern.  I am not a fan of Stern.  I just plain don’t find him funny.  This has nothing to do with his raunchiness either.  I am a Sirius subscriber, but you never see me tuning in to Howard 100.  I will say that channel 197 The Virus is on my presets.  I laugh my ass off every time I listen to Opie and Anthony.  They’re just funnier and edgier.  They also seem to understand that what they are doing is for an audience and not some self indulgent exercise in ego stroking.

                I will never deny Stern’s legacy.  He was at one time cutting edge and relevant.  His wit and antics were a machete that cut through a sea of boredom and fake politically correctness for the sake of preserving sponsors.  He set the bar really high and I feel like he might have been his own worst enemy.  It’s hard to live up to the image he created.  As time went on he got complacent and lazy.  The last time I seriously listened to him, he was bitching because he didn’t like the limo his driver picked out for him.  Are you serious?  Are you that out of touch with your listeners?  You have your fanboys who eat shit like this up, but the average listener does not want to hear about your model wife, Hampton’s mansion and how your chauffeur is an asshole.

                It’s hard to defend the positions of two entities you have a strong dislike of, but I’ll do my best.  In order to write this entry I shelled out the $4.99 and watched Precious on pay-per-view.  It wasn’t a movie that I was interested to see, as I have a hard time relating to urban literature sometimes.  I’m down with a lot of stuff in the hood, but Zane and other urban authors don’t speak to me.  It’s probably because most of the work is geared towards women.  So I did not read the book Push.  Besides, people who use one name like Sapphire and don’t have the name recognition annoy the piss out of me.  Stop trying to create a persona, you’re a writer not a pop singer.

                So I sat through a viewing of Precious.  I thought the film was good, I’m not sure if it was worthy of a best picture nomination, but I guess that it was a symptom of the expansion to ten.  I have some insider info that if there were eleven nominees that GI Joe:The Rise of Cobra would have been it…and if it weren’t for politics, it surely would have won.  Seriously though, I did like the acting in Precious.  It was good.  Gabby Sidibe proved she could play ghetto, and Monique made me want to throw  my television down a flight of stairs just like in the movie every time she appeared on the screen.   I can’t stand her to begin with, and she made me hate and respect her at the same time.  That’s a pretty strong indication of the performance when you can stir up hatred but still garner respect at your craft.  As I write this entry, Monique’s talk show (if you can call it that) is on my television.   It might be one of the most amateur productions on any network, ever.  And I am not referring to the people behind the scenes.  I am addressing the people in front of the camera.  But she’s sassy so I guess you have to listen to her.

                These two women became their characters.  I can’t say any more than any other film critic has already  stated.  I can imagine to channel these characters could not have been easy.  It has to put a black mark on your psyche to be able to live in the darkness that the mother and daughter characters existed in.  It could have been easy to take these roles and made them comedic, as the subject matter defies what a rational person would consider natural human behavior(I challenge you to find another species on this planet that would treat their offspring in that manner) , but neither woman fell into that trap.  If it were me and I had that kind of talent, then I know I’d need some therapy to recover from the experience.  But I ask the question, do we have to reward these woman for the rest of their lives for one role?  Unless they perform in their next respective projects they should be treated like every other actor who faded into obscurity.

                Should Gabby be on the cover of Vogue…HELL NO!  I recently posted as my Facebook Status, “Are we really shocked that Gabourey Sidibe will never appear on the cover of Vogue?”  It was more of a commentary on what a shallow bunch of douche bags Vogue was  as opposed to anything regarding Gabby’s weight or appearance.  I received a comment from a person who I went to grammar school.  She wanted to know why Vogue couldn’t do something different and put Gabby in their magazine that the situation as they are creating it sends a bad message to women everywhere.  I don’t disagree with her, but Vogue was built on a being vanity elitist.  Gabby obviously has inner beauty, but that’s not what Vogue is about.  The reality is though that she does not deserve to be worshiped as an object of physical beauty.  Vogue does promote unhealthy physical standards for women, but then again so does Gabby.  The woman is morbidly obese (my wife the doctor said so, so I am not just throwing the phrase around) and women should not aspire to look like her.  You can figure out for yourself what being that fat can do to a human body, I don’t need to give you a lesson in health.  I will never have a body like somebody who graces the cover of Muscle and Fitness or even Sports Illustrated (unless they feature a 13 year old girls softball team) no matter how much I lift weights and eat right.  I am just not genetically made up for that.  That’s just life, but it sends the same message as Vogue.

                These magazines make their living on selling a certain image of beauty and shouldn’t have to change.  Hollywood and Madison Ave know that sex appeal sell.  Ask yourself who would you rather see in a steamy love scene Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston or Kirstie Alley and John Goodman?  A friend of mine told me the easiest way to not be racist is to back up your views with unbiased facts.  This entry is not so much about race as it is about human nature.  Recently Arizona State University released a study that said when companies use regular people in their advertising campaigns that the results were not as positive as when they used models and people based solely on their appearance.  When Dove used “real women” the campaign drew raves, but the fact was that it actually hurt sales.  People develop lower self esteem by looking at plus sized models compared skinnier ones.

                Recently when I was watching The View (it’s okay call me a bitch) and Joy said that writers will now have to keep Gabby in mind when creating roles, and I agreed.  Much like the clothes she has custom made for her, roles will have to be specifically written with her in mind.  If I look at it from the other side of the coin, I can’t see her being that much of a box office draw where people are going to pay $12 to see projects where she is the centerpiece on a consistent basis.  People watch movies for the escapism.  They want to live vicariously through the characters they see on the screen for the most part.  Sometimes we like to take a masochistic journey through films like Precious.  But other times we want to do our best to identify with the ultra dreamy Robert Pattinson.  Do you really want to repeatedly take the voyage as somebody you can see every day on the 2 train?

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                Ridden the subway in the past few years?  It’s midday and you found a seat away from the homeless guy at the end of the car who smells like really good French Cheese and urine.  You’re about to really lose yourself in some smut that’s been authored by Zane.  You somehow manage to filter out the idiot standing in the doorway who is playing their damn IPOD so loud that you think Akon is actually in the train car with you.  You find the place where you left off in Addicted, and it’s getting steamy.

                Then without warning, your concentration is broken.  “Excuse me ladies and gentlemen.”  You cringe a little.  You think to yourself, “Shit, Zoe Reynard was just starting to really let go of her inhibitions and now I have to listen to this amateur P.S.A.”  It’s right about this time you start to wonder which one will it be?  Is it the guy who lost his job and needs to feed his family?  Is it old homeless black guy who tells jokes.  If I hear “I know where you got your shoes, you got them on your feet,” I might just punch somebody.

                Last night the car crier proceeded to let everybody on the train know that he was HIV positive and a brain cancer survivor.  He went on to tell us that he was also a marathon runner and the head of his own foundation.  As if his resume wasn’t impressive enough, he even shows us a picture of Barack Obama’s grandmother, as she is the one who fires the starting pistol of a marathon his foundation organizes every year in Kenya.  Hmm if you are the head of a foundation do you really think the New York City subway is the best spot to seek funding for your international charity?  If you personally know the president’s grandmother wouldn’t she be better to solicit for money than some construction worker on the 1 train?

                You might be treated to a spur of the moment concert by some out of work musician who plays the guitar, drums, bass, kazoo, or kazoo made out of a comb and tissue paper.  It can also be the cheapskate who doesn’t take the effort to buy an instrument but will regale you with their amazing voice.  I know, they’re saving up to get a ticket to audition for American Idol.

                There’s also a chance it could be a sports team selling candy to buy new uniforms, rent a bus to drive to the league championship or build a new state of the art training facility.  But you are most likely to have Zoe’s sexual epiphany interrupted by Michael Jones (or whatever name they are using) to tell you that he doesn’t play for no basketball team and he is selling candy just to put a little money in his pockets.

                I have to admit, out of all the subway solicitors, I like these kids the best.  If they are nothing else, they are honest…and I respect that.  Now with this being said every so often I throw these kids a few bucks when I have a sweet tooth, but I must admit that their speech does make me scratch my head.  It’s the same speech every time regardless of who says it.  I’ve had horrible sales jobs and the one thing they all have in common is the fact that they have a presentation that you have to memorize to sell the product.  The words are carefully selected and seem to have been written by some marketing firm for maximum effectiveness.  The candy speech has the same feel to it.  If we look at another commonality, we see the packaging is identical on every one of these kids.  Where are they getting these boxes?  These are obviously wholesale products, and not the type you can buy at Costco either.

                If I look at these two facts it tells me that these kids are organized, and that means that there is a head to this organization.  I have a hard time believing it’s a collective of ambitious youths who are conducting their own marketing experiment.  I wonder is there some Candy Fagin pimping street urchins out to hawk his wares and in turn they receive a pittance.  Or it might be an adult who uses the famous words to hook suckers into sales jobs where there’s no future,just in scams like Herbalife (just Google those two words to see what I mean,) “You will be owning your own business.”

                The one part of the speech that disturbs me is that they say they are doing this so they don’t have to “rob nobody,” or sell drugs.  Oh so you have two options as far as a career?  You can either sell candy or deal drugs and rob people.  Those are really the only two choices?  And since when did robbery and sale of controlled substances become viable career options?  They are the easy way out, a quick road to fast money usually with a bad ending.  How about you do what regular kids your age do, you get a paper route or your go work at McDonalds or some other fast food joint for a little more than minimum wage?  That’s what I did…I flipped cheese steaks at South Philly Steaks and Fries in The Staten Island Mall.  It wasn’t glamorous, or cool, but it was honest and honorable.

                Now if it is as it seems where it is just kids who is hustling trying to make an honest buck I seriously commend them.  Technically what they are doing is illegal as they need a license, and the MTA won’t let you sell anything on their property unless you pay a hefty tribute to them.  But I say Fuck the MTA.  They are one of the greediest most corrupt organizations on the planet.  They make Enron seem like a company that cared.  If by some weird turn I end up running a company I would hire these kids and show them what real work is like.  Give them a chance to put that hustle and ambition to good use.

                I must admit I am torn with the whole panhandling issue (whether it be selling a fugazy product or not.)  I used to be completely anti when I was a cop.  Under Emperor Rudy we were told take a zero tolerance policy to panhandlers.  I did my job, but at the same time I dealt with them as human beings.  They were the lowest rungs of the ladder that was society, but they were still people.  I would tell them, “I’m out here till 12:00.  When I am here, you are not.  Nothing personal, it’s what they’re making me do.  Go hang out in the park till then.”  I’d usually have no problems.  I didn’t bother them, I sure as hell wasn’t taking them to jail as the brass had wanted me to, but at the same time they weren’t on my post.

                Then one day I had a situation.  It was the only white panhandler I had ever seen on my post.  I walked up to him and he shook his cup at me.  Was he serious?  I was in full uniform and here he was asking for money from me.  He must not have read any newspapers lately.  City Hall had declared him the enemy.  I said to him, “You can’t be serious?  You know they want me to lock you up for this.  Besides, how about just a tiny bit of respect for the uniform?”  He told me that he was just trying to get something to eat.  I told the man to come with me.

                He and I walked to the coffee cart that was on my post.  I asked the man running it to give me a bagel and a cup of coffee.  He gave it to me.  I let him park his van in commercial parking even though he had passenger plates.  He was a working man…why would I want to fuck with him?  A bagel and a coffee was like a parking tax, cheap if you ask me.  We’d talk and he was kind of like a friend anyway.

                So after my friend Hassan gave the food and drink to Mr. Cup Shaker, I sent him on his way.  I gave him the speech about not shaking a cup when I was around.  He said okay and was gone, or so I thought.  Fast forward an half hour or so.  I walk up on Mr. Cup Shaker and another homeless guy Charlie that I knew.  They were sitting on the curb and talking.  Not knowing I was behind him Mr. Cup Shaker took the bagel and proceeded to throw it on the ground.  He took the coffee and dumped it out.  “I want bacon and eggs,” he barked, “I don’t want this crap.”  Let’s just say I was livid.  I went out of my way and this was his gratitude for my efforts. Let’s just say Mr. Cup Shaker was not seen in the vicinity of 57th and Broadway ever again.  No I didn’t murder him, but I did scare him a little, nothing illegal either.   It kind of led me to believe that people who live on the streets shaking a cup are often there by choice.  I’ve had other incidents which reinforced this.

                On the other hand I feel a great compassion and empathy for people who are truly down and out.  I’ve been there.  I know what it’s like to be hungry.  I myself walked around the streets begging, it was to stores and companies wearing a suit and begging for a job; but it was a time of desperation of my life so I know the feeling.  Human beings who have should help human beings who don’t, provided they want the proverbial hand up and not a hand out.  Some of the stories you hear are heartbreaking.  They can’t help but move you to tears, but some are rehearsed and that is their exact intention.  Just like a movie like Precious can get you to open your wallet with a moving tale so can a story of undeserved tragedy.  The hard part is finding out who is being honest and who is worthy of an academy award.

                So yeah if you’re just trying to put a little paper in your pocket and my sweet tooth is itching, I’ll give you $1.50 for some m&m’s…peanut please.  Now let me get back to my Zane book.

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Greetings Playas and Shorties.  Today I want to bring to your attention my two nominations for Parent of The Year.  Now these two fine specimens should share the award equally, and one nominee should for his effort receive the prize of a stoning, and I’m not talking about smoking some weed.  I am talking about stoning in a biblical sense.  Shamsid-Din Abdur-Raheem, 21, of Galloway Township, New Jersey is currently being held in an Essex County Correctional Facility because he is unable to make his bail of Seven Hundred Thousand Dollars.  The crime Mr. Abdur-Raheem’s crime is being charged with is attempted murder.  He did intentionally injure his sixty year old mother-in-law by striking her in the face and choking her. 

                Now to some he might seem completely justified for doing that to his mother-in-law, and some might argue that the bail is exorbitant.  But if we look further at this case we can see that these actions of harm were performed while he was kidnapping his three month old daughter.  Custody battles and violence often go hand in hand.  What makes this case so unique is that after snatching the newborn, he proceeded to drive to the Raritan River and throw the baby into the freezing waters below.

                The second nominee and although I do not feel she deserves the same fate as the first nominee, I feel at the very least she deserves an award of an elective surgery with all the cost absorbed by the state.  That surgery should be a complementary tubal ligation.  When I first heard about Jennifer Rodriguez’s offer of Ten Thousand Dollars (U.S.) for the return of her son, I was compassionate.  I feel for the woman and thought she should be commended for making an effort for doing whatever she  could to ensure the return of her son.  Then I looked further at the situation.

                Seven year old Patrick Alford Jr. walked out of his foster home in The Spring Creek Housing Development.  Wait a second…foster home?  Surely a mother who would be willing to offer a ten thousand dollar reward would have the means to provide a decent life for her child.  Hmmm, here’s a thought Jenny, how about you spend that ten G’s on young Patrick, or was that your kidnapping reward fund for just such an occasion?  If we delve deeper, we see that the child was removed because she was arrested on larceny charges.  Hold the phone…you were stealing, but you have ten grand?  WTF?  The child could not be placed with the father because Ms. R, who just so happens to be from my home town of Shaolin made an allegation against the child’s father’s new girlfriend that she was abusing the poor boy.  It’s a statement that she later recanted saying she made it when she was high on PCP.  Holy Shit!  PCP?  Really?  Didn’t we learn anything from those stupid videos in high school about dust?  Don’t you know you could put your kid in an oven while on that stuff…oh that’s right you don’t care about your kid.  Top this all off with the fact that after the boy left the home she was jailed for contempt because the judge believes there is more to the situation than she is letting on and does not believe that she is being completely up front with her statement that she has no knowledge of the boy’s whereabouts.  Jenny, for you I nominate you for the Casey Anthony Award…you’ve earned it baby.

                Am I being a judgmental douche, yeah.  I’m a parent and there are times I want to find the off switch for The Tasmanian Baby.  I never laid a hand on him, but there are times I sure want to.  Ultimately my question is this…how the fuck can either of you live with yourselves?  I think you both should do the responsible thing and find the largest fast moving object you can find (an express train would work well) and try and kiss it when it’s moving at full speed.  Not a little peck either, but a full on open mouth kiss.  You’d be doing the world and your kids if either of them are still alive a huge favor. 

                For both these children, I pray that you are both safe by some miracle.  I hope the three month old landed on some floating debris and that you are cold and safe, but like little Moses you are found and rescued and sent to live with a rich monarch, but not an oppressive one like Pharaoh.  And you little Patrick Alford Jr.  I pray that you are safe and with a relative.  Then they grow a conscience and turn you over to the police.  You are then turned over to your father who realizes that he could have lost you forever and it serves as a lesson to him and he treats you with love and respect for the rest of your life.  A man can dream, can’t he?

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