Saturday, April 14, 2007
Saturday Morning Just Before Sunrise at Ray's
Thursday, April 12, 2007
May Day in Tompkins Square Park ...
May Day in Tompkins Square Park has been celebrated in the past decades typically by Communists , Socialists or the lighter spirited ones who want to dance around a May Pole dressed as butterflies , fairies and flowers . Who and how they will celebrate this years May Day 2 weeks or so from today is yet to be seen .
During the early '90s , Jerry "The Peddler" Wade put on a May Day celebration that became a regular affair , though some years the cops did their best to minimize the success of the event . Jerry's version of May Day included a Pig Roast and a Marijuana smoke-fest.
The May Day pictured above was one of the more successful events in the yearly series of May Days with a plentiful supply of roast pig to be eaten and marijuana to be smoked . The "boys-in-blue", for this May Day at least , remained at a distance chuckling , knowing full-well who the roast pig represented and perhaps also affected a little by some of the faint blue intoxicating haze forming above heads the jolly , stuffed celebrants that was beginning to waft their way .
Red Tail in Black & White
Five years ago this immature Red Tailed hawk wintered in Tompkins Square Park leaving the park in late February for more open territory probably somewhere north of here . This behavior is typical for the immature hawks that we see in TSP .
The two immature Red Tails that were regularly seen in TSP and pictured here in digital color this winter seem to have now left the park , having left a bit later than usual in the middle of March .
In the one picture of the hawk on the wing in a snowstorm one can see the damage that these hawks are subject to in their first winter among the trees : several of the important feathers necessary for well controled flight are missing . This conditionn makes it significantly more difficult to hunt successfully especially among trees . I have been told that the majority of the immature Red Tailed hawks do not survive their first year.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Critical Mass ('97 0r '98) in the East Village with NYPD bringing up the rear
Last Stand on 13th Street...
Two nights before the Giuliani administration , employing hundreds of cops and a single 1950 s era International Harvester (remember Haymarket Square ) APC (armored personnel carrier) , forcibly evicted the members of the 13th street squats , Carl the Trotskyist (right) and John the Communist are seen tabling : hustling books , pamphlets and "Class War Organizer " T-shirts . Behind them can be seen some other squatters and the 13th street squat buildings ,one of the largest squat building complexes in the East Village .
A week or so before this night some of the squat interiors had been pictured in the Sunday design magazine of the New York Times as examples of " Squatter Chic " . Seen as examples of good , low- cost design by some design critics the pictures and article were also seen as an affront to the Giuliani administration making the military style mass eviction inevitable .
Monday, April 09, 2007
New Accessories
ABOVE and BELOW : Outlaw ,Spike and Outlaw's new hat .
ABOVE : Bill's new shades .1997 : Another Night at Ray's Candy Store...
Back then one could live at Ray's : bring your own furniture , T.V. , musical instuments ,clothing and Ray sold you the beer , hot dogs ,chips , ice cream and cigarettes . You could wake-up with Ray's coffee , donuts and the New York Times or what ever paper that you liked .
On this night Wayne ,leaning over the arm of the sofa , had his own sofa and toy xylophone which in the picture he is playing .
Your T.V. could be plugged surreptitiously into Ray's sign lighting circuit or if that wasn't possible on a given night then it could be plugged into the base of the light post on the corner .
Friends visited with you , drank with you , sometimes hugging and sometimes trying to cut you or others with their knives .Occasionaly a fire-arm was brandished but I never saw anyone shoot anyone .Though perhaps not a good environment in which to raise children or entertain the precious , culturally sophisticated bourgeois types , it was more than satisfactory for many a homeless soul .
It Was Spring in Tompkins Square Park and Elwood's Thoughts Turned to Love ...
Elwood , who I have written of before in an obituary , on this spring day had been buying and fetching beer and cigarettes all day for the young woman in the tree . She had led him on , suggesting that his generosity would be rewarded with a sweet , lascivious favor sometime later in the day . But of course such was not the case : she had no such thought of a reward of any kind in her mind , just an obssesion for more beer and cigarettes . Finally late in the afternoon , in a fine ruttish mood , Elwood chased the young temptress around the park and up a tree where she was as shown here not quite out of reach.
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Jewels : Tormented and Tormenting
ABOVE :Just at sun-down a man that Jewels has accosted and harrassed and perhaps even , technically speaking , assaulted is seen reaching for a knife...or perhaps he is just pulling up his pants which appear to be falling off.
ABOVE : A few minutes later Jewels smashes a Sushi restaurant's sign ; a restaurant employee confronts him and a fight will soon begin .
ABOVE : The fight begins and continues until the police arrive.
ABOVE : Police at the scene talk to Jewels but do not arrest him .
ABOVE : Later Jewels accosts another passer-by on avenue A where he is restrained by a bodega owner.
ABOVE : Then another hostile confrontation : the man in brown pants is running away in fear having dropped the cigarette that Jewels wanted from his mouth . Jewels is picking -up the cigarette to smoke .
Above : Jewels climbs onto a passing car on avenue A .
ABOVE : Jewels blocks traffic on avenue A . The police come to the scene and succeed in getting Jewels to leave the street but again they do not arrest him .
ABOVE : Jewels' friend Amy ,much distraught , finds Jewels and tries to calm him down but without much success .
ABOVE : With Amy watching Jewels accosts a young woman who responds by pulling a container of Mace or pepper spray from her purse which she does not use because the police again come to the scene to talk to Jewels .
ABOVE : Jewels walks away from the police .
ABOVE : A few minutes later while he is sitting in the door-way next to Ray's candystore the police surround Jewels . LT. Corcoran talks to Jewels about his behavior but again he does not arrest him .
A half hour later at the corner of 5th street and avenue A the police do arrest Jewels and take him to the precinct where he is given a summons for disorderly conduct ; he is then immediately released .
He was back on avenue A shortly doing much the same kind of hi-jinx as he had been doing for the hour and half before being arrested ...which included at least three times the number of confrontations pictured here. .
Dog and Cloud
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