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re: FBI Arrests Queens Man for Allegedly Burning Police Car on West 83rd While Wearing Guy Fawkes Mask
jimbo says:
You think that block is bad now? You should have been around in the 60s. Superman and Batman would not have ventured down that block.
re: Lucerne Resident Explains How the Shelter Has Improved His Life, and What He Hopes Locals Understand
20 Years in the Neighborhood says:
Thank you for posting this interview and I hope everyone watches it. It’s so important that we recognize the humanity in everyone, including the residents at The Lucerne who might be further down a dark hole than Michael here appears to be. Choose empathy, generosity, and gratitude, even when (especially when) it’s difficult.
Tired of false dichotomies says:
“Choose empathy” presents a false dichotomy. You can be kind and loving and yet correctly conclude it ill advised to house mentally ill and drug addicts without adequate support – and to boot in a school zone…There are other housing choices that would actually help the mentally ill or drug addicts in question. Supporting this setup is not empathy. It’s foolishness.
UWSHebrew says:
“Yeah, crime is probably up now and why? Because the NYPD has essentially gone on strike” — crime is up because criminals are emboldened. When people are not prosecuted for dumping buckets of water on the head of a cop, it will only get worse, and it has. But keep blaming the only people that are between you and someone trying to murder you. — “Right now, the NYPD is effectively your enemy.” — speak for yourself. The NYPD have their hands tied, and if they are too “aggressive” with a criminal, not only can they be suspended without pay, but prosecuted and face jail time. Can you IMAGINE having to deal with those possibilities, with a job that has lousy pay to begin with? Don’t even start the racism bit with me, the NYPD is the most diverse police force in the country, easily half of the cops I see are black or hispanic.
Doro says:
I shouldn’t have to walk around a drunk laying on the sidewalk.
Ken says:
Why is that exactly? Why are you so thus privileged? How have you earned this exclusive privilege? What did you do to ascend to this exalted status? In a world in which, unfortunately, there are occasional drunks lying in the street, what is it that makes you so very very indignant about what you believe you DESERVE?
re: Openings & Closings: Scarlatto, Saje, Tom’s Delicious Pizza, Manhattan Valley Pediatrics
EGF says:
The hyberbole in the comments on this page is comical. Cheer up! NYC will make it.
Daniel says:
The people who support this new group and those like them will say that this is about ‘the children’ and how they just want the right help for these men. It’s nothing but rank NIMBYism, as always. Sometimes they even come out and say it straight up: one guy started yelling at a homeless man, complaining about how his presence was decreasing his property value. Most of these men are doing nothing wrong, and I bet if you asked most UWSers, they’ve hardly noticed or don’t mind the new hotel residents. There is no crime wave. These policies are literally saving lives. Don’t try to dress up your desire to not have to look at or walk by poor people as a social problem. This is a temporary situation, anyway. Within a year, these hotels will be back to serving tourists and these people can go back to their ordinary lives of pretending homeless people don’t exist.
Juan says:
Actually, I think many want to help these people. Admittedly, not all of their intentions are pure, but a lot of people in this group believe that moving people with mental illness to a new neighborhood and providing them with few if any resources to help them is not really very humanitarian. They should not be left to wander the streets and have access to drugs and alcohol. Meanwhile, we don’t want our money wasted just warehousing them in an expensive hotel without support services and to feel threatened when they are high on drugs due to mental challenges that they can’t control. So it is a lose/lose situation.
re: Local Librarians Give Remote Advice and Suggestions While Doors Stay Closed
Peddie J says:
Librarians are angels on earth and NYPL remains a treasure — online and off. Thank you for your devotion to curious minds in our city.
Clip art by bitterjug.
All dichotomies are false. Reality exists in an infinite multidimensional matrix of probabilities; reducing the number of those possibilities to two may simplify cognition, but it always leads to just this kind of confusion and error. “Choosing” between empathy and self-preservation is like choosing between fire and ice. Why not choose both? Then you can have a bowl of chili and a grape popsicle.
Yup it’s a false equivalent. Wanting to help can be done in many ways. Dumping hundreds of these men in the middle of a neighborhood serves no one. Especially those who live in said neighborhood. It’s a foolish, unethical, blatant money-grab. You want to destroy a city? This is exactly how you do it. Keep it up Deblasio, you may get richer by colluding with landlords but what a vile price to pay.
Dichotomies notwithstanding, some of us elected to buy or rent on the UWS for its attractiveness and family-friendliness, among other features. We could have chosen the less-expensive UES; or the trendy but unaesthetic LES, SoHo and Tribeca. We may well have compassion and donate our fair share; but we chose the UWS precisely for ‘NIMBY.’ Nobody rents or buys on the UWS because it’s cheaper to live here. We could have had larger apartments in less expensive areas. One should get what one pays for.