Wednesday Links

Late in the day…already evening but I thought I’d add my take on the ipod crime wave in Fort Greene. I really don’t think this is any major crime wave. There is no mention of what “FGLady” (first time post…imposter?) wrote in on yesterday’s Fort Greene thread about a violent Fort Greene mugging witnessed. I think it may have been a fib…who knows…there’s been no mention in the crime blotters…

Meanwhile, the young man whose laptop was taken, if the article had the details correct, one really has to wonder. Could he have thought he was on a college campus?…and even THEN! I can see kids living laptops in bags lying around on a bench or on the grass at Bryn Mawr but not anywhere at Yale for example…maybe the victim was fresh in from prep school (Mt. Tabor, St. Paul’s, Loomis Chafee?)…

It used to be that in Brooklyn (not just in Fort Greene mind you) if you put anything down and didn’t nail, chain, glue or screw it to concrete or a matal grill, it would be gone when you took your eyes off it for two seconds…or at least by the next morning. I have to say I was very surprised when the yuppies–who Action Jackson complained about so heartily about on that FG thread yesterday (look, at least he enjoyed himself)–started putting nice potted plants and other things on their Fort Greene stoops a number of years ago. I was even MORE suprised when those planters, pumpkins, etc. (whatver is seasonal at that moment) would go untouched!

My, my, my…what is the world coming to?

We go back and forth with a city in New England that will remain nameless. Unemployment is getting very high there according to the press. This past weekend I think the husband (the husband unit, the H.U.) didn’t lock the car. We parked at the house and were inside for a couple hours, not too long. We got in the car a little while later and the ashtray was pulled out. Very odd. We don’t use it…not sure what it’s there for in fact.

Well, it turned out someone must have silently tried the car doors which we only later guessed we must have left unlocked, and rifled through things while we were in the house. We heard nothing. Luckily for us, the H.U. had emptied all sorts of things out of the car on Sunday to bring the car to get washed so all the things I tell him (i.e. kind of scream at him about) not to leave in the car, like a checkbook, etc. were all in the house in a little box, not in the car’s armrest thing when the supposed rifler rifled the car.

It’s very sad that the economy was so unfair to begin with, got worse these last 25-30 years, more skewed to the rich and the rest sliding downhill…that with this final big recession we’re heading into, the people at the bottom and lower rungs are completely tapped out with no wiggle room at all. The old middle class is not far behind. This was being pointed out by astute critics, social scientists, economists and critics since the 80’s but the mass media didn’t lend an ear.

I always thought playing frisbee was just something you do with your dog. How lame.

You’re ight. I think in this case at most its a tax-deductable charitable contribution to those more desparate and more intelligent than the victim.

Here’s my question: why does an 11 year-old have his own “gold colored” blackberry? Wouldn’t a $20 cellphone have sufficed? Not saying he asked for the mugging, but certainly, a cheap cellphone would be less conspicuous. And why does an 11 year-old need instant access to email and Internet news anyway? Just sayin’.

Would a retraction of yesterday’s “Ft. Greene Best Nabe” story be in order after these reports of so much crime???