NYC gun battle: stuck in the crossfires

[zehero]

it's because I don't carry a nylon knapsack full of privelege that i'm so insensitive

you're serious? so non-rich kids can get away with saying shit like that?

straight up fucking bullshit

If I was pulling $15,000 a year and my kid condoned the killing of innocent people I'd quickly reconsider myself as a parent. I find it difficult to comprehend what kind of person would say something so ridiculous seriously. So logically, I've concluded that you're nowhere near serious, because shit like that shouldn't be tolerated by anyone. Priveledged or not.

fuck

[Crillz]

I'm gonna wait for what will hopefully be a better explaination from you and then try and move for your ban I guess, I really don't think this kind of kind of viewpoint should be condoned anywhere.

[Servo2000]

[goldengloves]

"coooooold bloooooooooooodeeeeeddddd"

[destructodisk]

it's because I don't carry a nylon knapsack full of privelege that i'm so insensitive

or perhaps you're simply too busy hanging out in department stores taking pictures of what you're wearing to concern yourself with petty matters like innocent people being murdered..?

:eek:

[shinobi2000]

that was the famous de marco's pizzeria..the "spin-off" of De Faro's in Brooklyn that I went to all the time as a kid and never imagined that it would become this big. I hope they return to business as usual, this isn't the sort of thing that happens in this neighborhood. I was walking home from the gym that night when I saw all the cops and helicopters around me. It was bizarre.

[nettiemoore]

wow thats terrible...

[Guest StuckOnStupid]

i wish this would happen more often in nyc

why cant i plus rep more than once on anyboy?

coco, after a line like that, i want you to have my blackarican baby.

ps: fuck cops.

[mizanation]

it's funny how people get all sensitive when people die like this. shit happens, people die, life goes on.

[Guest StuckOnStupid]

couldnt have said it better, guy.

[viv1984viv]

totally hear you miz, people do die everyday for all the wrong reasons ( no medical care, starvation, guns, war etc etc etc ).However I expect when its on your doorstep its only human to sympathise more than usual, for some people who are actually there its normal to sympathise or feel concern.

Being an englishman, I must admit guns really worry me, gangs in the cities here have guns ( put im going to presume the problem/access of guns is more widespread across the pond ), what scares me is not that people want to kill each other over petit or not so petit things.... its that with guns around its just so easy to kill, a person doesnt even need to cross the street or get out of a car to kill. The same concern could be extended to politics and military action.

I dont really want to get into all that, just thought id explain why storys like this are concerning.

Piece.

[C0C0]

okay you guys must wear thongs more often than i do because they seem to be stuck really tight in your asses

i didn't say " i wish more people would get shot more often' maybe i didn't elaborate on what i meant with my statement...but i didn't feel like it because i don't feel many of you share my perspective so why bother....

by saying i wish things like this happened more often, i was alluding to the rates of crime and gentrification in the city and how they are connected.

to quote emaze "feeling ok actually, --was overwelmed with the police presence they were not playing around. Swat teams, k-9 units, cops on horses, helicopters....

15 shots the gunmen used to kill this dude in the back no less..... what a coward.

then to shoot two young unarmed auxiliary cops....(one wasn't even 20 years old)

I'm glad the cops shot this guy dead in the street in front of everybody."....

guess that last line was REALLLYYY so sensitive and endearing

you guys have not actually been that sympathetic in this thread at all...from the beginning there has been a tone of "oh my god, can you believe what happened, my dinner / shisha / whatever was ruined because there was a scene in my neighborhood"

ala rabka "so I was enjoying a nice dinner in my neighborhood lastnight when an all out gun battle started."

so don't point your polished fingers at me for sharing an opinion....no one in this thread said, " wow, that's so sad / omg those poor people/ i hate when things like this happen to good people/ we really need to get crazy people like this off the street" there are wars going on in this world, people starving in the streets right in front of us, children having children, but when a crime scene occurs in greenwich village (not harlem, the south bronx, or east new york of course because there it would be "normal" for people to commit heinous acts[well that would be true until the cheapie neighborhoods are completely scooped up by the up&coming]) superfuture decides to care

it's all of you that need to get your priorities straight, yeah i'm into capitalism, yeah i take pictures and post them on waywt occasionally, yeah I go to school and work, yeah i take the time out to help my community, yeah i work with a group whose focus deals with empowering young females, yeah i spoke my mind on how i viewed the posting of this article, yeah a couple of weeks ago while riding on the train a guy threatened to shoot everyone on aboard the car that late night, and yeah things like this happen in the little thing we call life

[destructodisk]

I appreciate you elaborating on your opinion, and I can, to a certain extent see where you're coming from.

However, don't treat this article being posted as if emaze had been scouring New York's news in order to find an article that he deemed shocking/revolting enough to share with people.

He posted because he was there. He wanted to share the fact that he was part of an awful event that made the news, and hoped to spark a discussion with people who have similar experiences to share.

emaze wasn't looking to garner sympathy for himself, or even for the victims (although sympathy for the latter should be automatic). This thread's intent was not to mourn the victims and talk about how awful this was, and especially not to discuss how awful this was because it happened in Greenwich Village. Yet still, you somehow managed to misread what this thread was about, and it obviously got you worked up somehow.

Coming along and dropping a comment so vague that people can only assume that you're being insensitive is not the way to help whatever cause you're trying to fight for. If you have something to say, say it. Don't expect us to understand what you mean by your one-liners, and then attack us with a condescending tone because we interpreted what you said in the wrong way. You clearly have some strong opinions about the social climate of New York, but I do not think this is the proper outlet to express them, nor do I think you're doing it in the right way.

[emaze]

thanks Destruct.... I was trying to find the right words to post on the matter.

I wasn't trying to spark some huge debate on the topic, but merely a "holy shit guess what happened to me lastnight"

[C0C0]

i'm not trying to use this forum as a means of pushing any agenda that's why i chose not to elaborate plus i hate typing scrollable posts...

excuse me for examining the world i live in and having an opinion on it...

but if you guys are cute i will forgive u

[onemancult]

i'm sided with c0c0 because her explanation validated what i interpreted her comment to mean, and maybe even what stuckonstupid interpreted her comment to mean. i think we're coming from the same place, roughly speaking, in terms of our perspective on this issue, and unfortunately for everyone else, i think we may have the upper hand in this argument simply because of experience.

it really did come across throughout this entire thread like the underlying tone was of the "aw shit, not in my backyard" syndrome. to people who are better acquainted with the reality of bullets tearing through the sky, all of that shit sounded like the kind of talk that gets politicians into deep shit.

[Crillz]

Y'ALL SO GRITTY UP ON THE FASHION FORUM HUH?

Buck up, people in Africa don't have water. If you miss your fucking shootouts so much, I'd advise you go there. But god forbid you don't have an internet connection so you can post pictures of your outfits on a shopping forum. But hey, I guess it's pretty easy for all of us to say we miss the old New York when we're not the ones getting shot.

[C0C0]

*rolls eyes* it's much more than 'shoot outs' my friend, and I can't continue to wastefully elaborate any more...try to delve deeper and you might be able to understand the details

[Crillz]

Quit digging your grave any deeper, I was born and raised in NYC as well, I know what it's like to buy fried plantains from street vendors in Red Hook, I know what it's like to get robbed, get called cracker by strangers on the street, and I know what it's like to drink 40s in the hot summer in the LES. But you know what? All of that is fine and well without human suffering and death. So why don't you just quit being so fucking ignorant and have some compassion for your fellow humans.

[C0C0]

no on said what you did or did not know about...like i've said enough times already in this thread i stated my opinion...

and like i just said in the post above it runs much deeper than you're obviously able to comprehend

you need to go back to public school and learn how to read

(and just a minor flaw if you knew anything you wouldn't be calling them fried plantains)

case closed stop jocking me already

[Crillz]

Bottom line, you wished death upon people, so I hope you suffer for it. "Case closed."

[MilSpex]

guns save more lives than they take. if those reserve cops were armed or more good citizens were armed less good people would have died, just the shop owner and the gunman.

[partytaco]

really pisses me off when people pull this "old new york" shit especially when they can't be any older than 18. if you don't like it you always have the option of moving. we still have plenty of crime ridden, fun cities in the US where the rent is cheap, the sidewalks are empty as are most of the shopping areas and you can see shootings on an almost daily basis. ahhh the good ol' days.

[onemancult]

Crillz, you know I love the sheer hell out of you, but don't you think you're being a little harsh just because her initial comment lacked context and a little bit of tact?

I don't think that c0c0, or anyone else who agreed with her (myself included), was serious in wishing death upon anyone. The aim was to say something extreme in order to show how ridiculous it is that events like these make people perk up and take notice, whereas in other situations, these things are taken for granted, or even worse, used to stereotype entire races and classes of people.

The way the entire media portrayed the events, and the way people have been talking about it, here as well, has consistently reeked of the fear that emerges when people who feel entitled to safety and a certain standard of living realize that they aren't really safe and that their standard of living isn't absolute. After focusing on the loss of life for maybe a day, all everyone could talk about was 'omg, can you believe this happened downtown'?

To those of us who have to suffer through conversations that start off with "oh my god, you live where? its so dangerous there, isnt it?", there is that beaten-down part of us that is somewhat appeased by the fact that this happened. we're tired of validating our existence and, more often than not, the color of our skin and the numbers on our paychecks with the phrase "it's not so bad as people think, actually".

saying, "i wish this would happen more often" doesnt necessarily mean that more people need to die- it means more people do die, every single day, in all those places

your average manhattanite fears to tread, and as much as they'd like to think they're a world away, the so-called ghettoes that they love to demonize and ridicule are in their favorite restaurants, at their office, in their face, every single day.

[Crillz]

The deal is, the way she talked in regards to this incident was disrespectful, her responses were disrespectful, and her explaination did little to explain her original statement. You have done a decent job explaining what you meant, but unfortunately it doesn't account for her. It just seems like having a snobby attitude about growing up lower class is the new having a snobby attitude about growing up upper class.

EDIT: I thought it just might be worthwhile to explain my own background a little bit and why I feel so strongly about this. Growing up, my parents weren't exactly wealthy, but thanks to my Grandmother's wise real estate purchasing choice in the 70s, the neighborhood my mom used to grow up in that had coke dealers on the block and the shootouts you treasure so much has actually shaped up into a decent neighborhood for a kid to grow up in (though I suppose to you that's gentrification and should be stopped). So I had a decent place to live, despite my parents not being too rich, but things started going better, and though I became one of the wealthier kids in my school, my parents low-income upbringings made them want to raise me in a similar situation, which was public school all the way. And you know what? Even in my "good" gentrified neighborhood, I still got plenty of shit. I've had to fight, I've had whole weeks where day after consecutive day people have attempted to rob me, and to this day not much time goes by where I DON'T get a comment out of nowhere regarding my race (white, funny how that's okay for pretty much anyone who wants to, to call me "cracker," and the city is working on banning "n*****"), or the tightness of my pants. And you know what? I've got nothing to show for it. People think I grew up soft because of my race, my financial situation, and the place in which I was raised. So I'll never have the privelege of saying "I miss the old New York," because my parent's income was higher than average, or because I'm not black or hispanic, but you know what? In a lot of ways, I don't miss the old New York, and I don't think most of the people that were killed pre-1999 (give or take a few years, before the murder rate went waaay down) do either.

[onemancult]

fair enough- i completely understand why and how you feel as strongly as you do: the initial comment was over-the-top, and her follow-ups have lacked a little substance to back up the shock value. but can't we just dole out some neg rep and start forgetting this whole mess?

being snobby about both of those things has been a part of nyc culture for centuries;

that constant push and pull is like the greatest cultural battle of the urban world.

it'll be interesting to see where that goes with a true middle class rapidly disappearing.

i have to ask, is it simply the fact that her initial comment seemed to wish death upon people, or do you have some other connection to this issue? a respect for nyc cops or a connection to one of the men who was murdered, etc? your passion about this doesn't seem to mesh with my assumptions about your socio-political outlook, i had you pegged as a slightly less insane/more mature anarcho-punk kinda guy.

[Crillz]

Despite my love for the music and the fashion (and that's pretty much what all "punks" today care about, the only difference is I'm not pretending here), I think most of the ideals of (more contemporary) punk are bullshit. If I see one more kid in Leftover Crack t-shirt proclaiming "Kill a Cop" I'm going to go ballistic. The idea that you can lump together one group of such diverse people for the slaughter really pushes my buttons. It's the same thing as the Nazis, and people don't even bat an eyelid. I think what C.R.A.S.S. was doing, living in an abandoned barn and keeping a very D.I.Y. approach to things was respectable, albeit not neccesarily correct. My passion comes from my own personal experience growing up, and my bitterness regarding people not thinking before they speak/act, not just for policemen. Judge people on their ideals first, race, financial situation, occupation, and everything else is secondary.

[onemancult]

hear, hear for ideals!

[Crillz]

Can we please get back to talking about clothes now?

[homi29]

i really apprecaited reading some of the comments in here

i was abit taken aback by c0c0s original comments, but i do see where she's coming from, but i still think its horrible that she seems to feel as if the loss of life is nothing to mourn.. I mean no matter where when someone is murdered needlessly (in this case 3 people), that not only affects them, but also their families and everyone thats ever cared about them..

so i always try to have a little compassion for the victims , and not be so nihilistic about the world..