Prime 6 Petition a Hoax?
Today both the Wall Street Journal and Metro have stories about the truthiness of the online petition asking that the owners of Prime 6, the controversial club planned for the old Royal Video space on Flatbush, “embrace indie music” rather than hip-hop at their establishment. The Journal reports it wasn’t able to find a person…
Today both the Wall Street Journal and Metro have stories about the truthiness of the online petition asking that the owners of Prime 6, the controversial club planned for the old Royal Video space on Flatbush, “embrace indie music” rather than hip-hop at their establishment. The Journal reports it wasn’t able to find a person named Jennifer McMillen, the Park Slope resident supposedly responsible for the petition, in New York City. Meanwhile, Metro reports that others in the neighborhood didn’t recognize the name and a spokeswoman for Councilman Stephen Levin, who is meeting with the Flatbush Avenue BID about the club today, “said she suspected it might be fake because it is not in voter records.” So have the 700+ petition signers (as of this morning) been played? If so, is it a successful parody of the Slope or unnecessary race-baiting?
Brooklyn Venue Sparks Debate [WSJ]
Hip-Hop Club Stirs Up B’klyn Controversy [Metro]
Don’t look at it as a hoax. Look at it the same way the New Yorker potrayed Obama but claimed to be satire: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/07/obama-muslim.html.
It’s veiled racism that will be later announced as a joke, but still has its mission accomplished – it gets non-native Park Slopers (i.e. white hipsters from out of town) talking about their rivalry against the native New Yorker crowd just across the avenue (i.e. black Brooklynites trying to keep their neighborhoods from being gentrified)
If this is a hoax, it still did its job and still got the club owner thinking, and he’s just a pawn in this. Personally I wouldn’t call it a hoax, I’d just say it’s a petition with real intent, but simply with a fake name. Whoever created it knows that once it gets into social media channels, the author can pretty much forget getting a job in this city again.
the petition is funny, but pretty ironic. i mean, whoever wrote it was trying to encapsulate the people who live on st marks (aka ‘young rich whitebread indie rocker’), despite the fact that the locals on the block are nothing like that at all. unless you think the old caribbean woman who yelled at the owner at the CB meeting spent 5 years roadying for sebadoh or something. hell, just watch the video of the CB meeting and see if you can count the ‘indie rockers’.
strangely enough, the petition ended up making more of a point about the dude who wrote it than anyone else.
So if it was a hoax. Why do you still call it a controversial club. What would drive you ” Gabby ” to still call it that. And i thought more well known articles stopped calling this place a club. Its like your happy to prove that Jenifer didnt give her real name. Like its hard to do so. What would you have reported if the petition went the other way. I love your questions at the end. Maybe next time you wouldnt write so enthused by trying to prove something is a hoax. You sound so one sided.
just read it, and as a long-time lover, of the hoax, if this is one, it’s beautifully constructed. I’m guessing that there is a very sincere Jennifer McMillen – and if not, job well done!
Might be fake, might not be. If you heard the “my dog slipped on your ice†lady from the video – not a stretch to think that there’s a real Jennifer McMillen out there.
If it’s fake, the people that got played are the ones that signed their REAL names (and streets where they live in some cases) to a wacky and racist screed.
Loved the fake names … that burned more than a few minutes of my day yesterday.
clearly the Prime 6 thugs made Jennifer McMillen disappear
If you look through, of the 700 signatures, 99% of them are fake. Maybe a tiny handful of people signed it honestly but the rest were just trashing it.
just protecting her/himself i imagine nobody will let urban music into their buildings or neighborhoods issue of noise and race but mostly latter i have tried to set stuff up, most landlords won’t go near black music
“Too often the paranoid NIMBYs get overrepresented. This thing, like many others, is only “controversial” among a tiny, crazy, loud group. Unfortunately, to read the media, you’d think everyone in the area was out with pitchforks all the time.”
Yes.