Back on my mom's birthday, September 10th, there was a shooting in our neighborhood. It was of the drive-by persuasion, which is rare for Bed-Stuy. Young black men shooting each other is sadly less rare out here, as this 'hood has New York's highest homicide rate. That evening Corrie exited the subway to walk the few blocks back to our apartment, and was blocked by police cars and yellow tape, and was forced to take a circuitous way home. Earlier in the day I'd noticed helicopters hovering loudly for a solid ninety minutes, rattling the entire neighborhood. The next day there was this story in the paper. It highlights the grim and tragic tale in whatever details were made available to the cops by normally uncooperative witnesses.
A few days later, this made it's second appearance in our area, just away from the subway. It first appeared here a while ago, and was packed up soon after. I took this picture today, more than a month later.
Feel any safer?
Also, strangely in the same issue of the paper, I saw a photograph that looked familiar, that of a broken fire-hydrant that had been leaking for weeks, and that I was about to call 311 (our all-around helper line) to fix. I thought the article was about the broken and wasteful hydrant. It wasn't. It was about an apartment building across the street that hadn't had water for two months, and the hydrant had been broken by these residents so they could get some water for their daily needs. Another sad story, this one about a landlord dying before making repairs, about no heirs to rescue the building, about no electricity and water, and about another ghetto story of how it really works can be found here.
The picture from the paper was almost the same one that follows (but closer up), but the website has a picture of the building.
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