Monday Bulletin: International Intrigue, Stooping, Trumpstock, Police Records Unveiled
Photo by Jordan Cooper.
July 27, 2020 Weather: HOT again, with a high of 95 degrees.
Notices:
Our calendar is full of events you can enjoy from home.
News:
There’s a condo at The Aldyn at 60 Riverside Boulevard that may not be selling anytime soon, as its owners are tied up in court in both the United States and Australia, over money laundering and bribery charges involving a tiny island nation. “Ashok and Amit Gupta were reportedly directors of a chemical extraction company, Getax, at the time of the bribery in 2010, and sought access to phosphate deposits in Nauru, the world’s smallest republic,” The Real Deal reported. Critics say the Australian government may have a hidden reason for delaying the proceedings.
Some serious “stooping” led a WSR reader to a cache of colorful paintings left on the concrete for the taking in June. Apparently, it’s a trend. “From March on, as thrift shops and secondhand sellers remained shuttered due to the coronavirus, many New Yorkers came to rely on the informal give-and-take economy known as stooping,” the New York Post reported. “The practice of sharing and snagging discarded freebies has gotten a boost from Instagram accounts dedicated to promoting pieces out on the sidewalk and ripe for the picking, like StoopingNYC and CurbAlertNYC.” A pair of Upper West Side roommates “nabbed a leather armchair from Riverside Drive after seeing its photo and cross streets on StoopingNYC. The duo chronicled the chair’s 30-block journey to their Upper West Side walkup using a janky bed frame on wheels as a makeshift cart.”
It was reminiscent of Tulsa, Oklahoma: 600 vessels were supposed to show up on the Hudson River on June 19th for “TrumpStock NY,” a floating political rally, which, its organizers hoped, would “make liberals cry,” wrote The New Yorker. Instead, around 120 came and could not be seen from the West Side of Manhattan (*until they veered toward shore)…“Kevin Young, who, along with his family, had come downriver from Westchester aboard a cabin cruise called Grandpa’s Wake, joked, ‘I think those kids on TikTok bought all the tickets so people couldn’t show up.’”
“After New York state repealed a law that kept police disciplinary records secret, ProPublica sought records from the civilian board that investigates complaints by the public about New York City police officers.” This link provides a database of complaints, from 1985 to the present, that can be searched by name, precinct, or nature of the allegations.
*Updated
The trend, though new to the pandemic, in not new to NYC. Around 1979 I found a trove of oils, gouaches, prints and other work in a dumpster outside a former artists’ building on 74th.
The super was clearing out a studio left by the deceased tenant who as it turned out, was listed along with his companion in Benezit.
Both muralists, the trove was a delicious ‘saving’ containing depictions of the building of the El on 2nd (?) Avenue, a portrait of a Black woman on the subway reminiscent of the work of the Soyer brothers (who also had studios in the building) and many renderings of proposed and realized murals.
Then, there were no second hand stores in the neighbourhood. The oils hang in my apartment today.
I have a lot of things I’d like to put out on the street for ‘stoopers,’ but does anyone know if it’s actually legal to do this? I’m only asking because when I attempted to leave out some very nice and neatly packed items a few years ago a super from another building told me my landlord would be fined for it.
but I think you can only do leave it on the street on garbage day.
If you have things you want to get rid of, you can download the app ‘let it go’ or post it under the free section on Craigslist.
There are probably other avenues you can use as well that other readers can reference.
Thanks for the tips, I really appreciate it!
I love posting stuff to the free section of craigslist, it’s such a great way to re-home things instead of tossing out. The free section is *bumpin* and every time I’ve posted, someone has come to collect the Item in Question within a couple hours–I just leave it in the foyer of the building at the confirmed time. No dog markings to worry about and 100% no contact 🙂
TY, great idea about leaving things in the foyer! 🙂
That’s what we’ve been doing! We offered 4 chairs for free and someone actually said they rather retrieve them early and pay. That was a nice surprise.
You can post free items on Freecycle. I’ve given away a lot of things there, and always had positive experiences. The best part is that you can find new homes for items that aren’t in perfect shape: many Freecyclers like to fix and repurpose stuff. You can also offer things like extra paint that thrift shops won’t take.
Here’s a link for The Buy Nothing Project.
https://buynothingproject.org/find-a-group/#NY
It will take you to NYC page. Once there you can read about the project/guidelines/covid-19 issue.
It seems very interesting has it helps within the contributor’s neighborhood.
gorgeous photo by Jordan Cooper – thanks !
Thanks Lady Di! It was a very long & intense storm of pure electricity late Thursday night into Friday morning – no rain, just loads of lightning bolts streaming through the sky.
hope you’ll shoot more and that WSR will continue to post your shots.
I am obsessed with Stoopingnyc and found it after the article of the painter who left his paintings in the street. I’d love to have the room to pick up some of the beautiful treasures left on the street.
The Trumpstock flotilla was easily seen from the westside jogging path, and anywhere that had a view of the river. A cursory online search provides anyone, including editors, with obvious images and videos that shows well over a hundred boats cruising upriver. If WSR writers want to mock Trump supporters, I understand their unobjective political bias, but to suggest the boats were not at all visible is just ridiculous.
As per The New Yorker: “After they realized that, in the middle of the Hudson, they were not visible to people onshore: “Everyone to the Manhattan side! No one can see your flags!”
At this exhortation, some mutinying boats and Jet Skis veered toward the bank, skimming over submerged pilings off Riverside Park. A local paddleboarder who was nearly wiped out by the racing vessels said later, “I’m surprised none of them got hulled.”
Sickening to read Orwellian requests for snitch reports on our men in blue, under attack by disgraceful and apparently shameless mooks who can’t discern who is the felon, or who, the decent citizen doing his or her best. The public is appalled by this upside-down recitation of reality. We majority would welcome the arrest of Marxist idiottarians bent on destroying our once-glorious city—now a phantom shambles. Disgraceful.
Chuckle.
The ProPublica database is incredibly useful and frankly it’s embarrassing that it wasn’t set up years ago. For example, the 20th precinct had 67 civilian complaint allegations over 18 years, but just 6 officers drew 41 of those 67 allegations. Twelve officers had the other 26 allegations, and all the other officers had zero. As everyone knows, city taxpayers do finance the hundreds of millions in payouts for the bad apples. Last year we covered a ‘sickening’ $260 million in payouts for substantiated NYPD abuse. That stacks up against the city’s entire annual operating budget for all our parks, at $534 million in 2019, and with Parks enduring an unwelcome cut for 2020. Maybe Dawn Vickye doesn’t care to know how many complaints of abuse are lodged against individual members of the NYPD, but given there’s a $260m annual expense, I think it’s probably overdue.
Resident complaints are “snitch reports” now? Lick those boots harder!
All we need is more trash all over the upper West Side. What a great idea!