The vanilla vigilante's recent adventures have
intrigued me since I spend more time than I'd like
involuntarily watching jaw-dropping demonstrations
of white entitlement in my neighborhood.
I might suspect that Walker Park dog owners, e.g.,
are in a class by themselves, but the vanilla
vigilante insists that they're merely typical.
My fave trick is to pretend to shoot a pic with
a cell of one of them breaking a park dog reg.
Absolutely freaks them. As well it should, anyone
who realizes the cell's not a camera phone. I had
the satisfaction of chatting with a Parks Department
smokie about this and that one evening while he
intermittently interrupted the conversation to
let bewildered dog owners know that while he's in
the park they're entitled only to their fair share.
The vanilla vigilante noticed a new perceived
entitlement start to emerge in spring, white locals'
attempted privatization of sidewalks.
Hardly surprising. The state GOP's rent decontrol and
greedy landlords and developers transformed this area
overnight from a funky, community-intensive bohemian
neighborhood to a faux luxury real estate zone populated
by rootless, fickle NYU trust-fund babies and baby
investment bankers dedicated only to their dogs. If
circumstances didn't require them to be here for the
moment they'd live in some gated community. N. told
me an NYU fraternity rents two floors of the old-law
tenement where she and M. live.
Owners of motorcycles (Vespas?–at any rate, these things
have two wheels and run on gas) have taken to chaining
their wheels to sidewalk bicycle racks. The vanilla
vigilante endorses street (vs sidewalk) parking
relief for them, just takes a dim view of their
owners appropriating cyclists' scarce resources.
In the vanilla vigilante's travels, most notably two
started thuggishly monopolizing bicycle racks close
to each other on a Hudson Street sidewalk where
transients and several delivery bikes also park.
Meanwhile, a half-block east of Seventh Avenue South,
much of the block has the narrow sidewalks that result
when sidewalk-parallel outdoor stairways provide the
access to tenement basements. To compound the narrow
sidewalk problem, protecting pedestrians from the
stairway is a wrought-iron fence that is catnip to
cyclists ever more starved for parking places.
[Many landlords hate these cyclists, too often for
good reason–sloppy lock-up is dangerous, abandonment
expensive, neither is uncommon. Ordinarily I'd never
even think of locking to one of these fences. Next
door, the owner has fastened chicken wire to the
wrought iron to defeat cyclists. But, one house west,
the super–who I'd never exchanged so much as a hi
with–invited me to lock my bike to his bldg's
fence. After I'd done so for a while he told me he'd
let the kvetching landlord (who I've never seen) know
that I'm ok. Go tell. New York, man. … New York.[My current NYC bike ownership began in, as I recall,
2002. I'd easily believe that I helped double the
number of bikes over a year earlier, and that the
number has doubled every year since. If the volume
of bike-riding expands the way a lot of folks high
and low would like, creative solutions are going
to have to emerge for parking in residential nabes.
Conventional bike racks are no fix on sidewalks that
were too narrow even before bikes' new popularity.]
Whatever, on the gutter side of a section of already
awkward, narrow sidewalk east of Seventh Avenue South,
an entitled white person cable-locked, to a traffic
signpost where one might expect yet another bicycle,
a bulky folding wire cart.
The vanilla vigilante hadn't quite absorbed that when
a canvas suitcase large enough to hold a small adult
joined the cart. A short slatted bed replaced the
suitcase (or was it the cart?) some days later.
The two-foot cable-lock may have been too short
to secure three items simultaneously. A rotation
of two of the three at a time seemed to be the rule.
Around here, except for brownstone owners, we all live
in small apartments. Not all feel entitled to compensate
by storing our extra stuff on the sidewalk. But the
vanilla vigilante saw no hint of protest, and the Sixth
Precinct wouldn't touch such a situation. At Hudson and
Leroy, see from the snap how effective verbal appeal is.
Chambers Street has gone to hell. Few remember
Manhattan Marine and Auslander's Hardware. The
memory of Ruby's is fading. Lately both 99-cent
stores, gone gone gone. And now Ralph's! I still
mourn the closing of that really shady Meshuganah
Ike's, and Joe's departure. Joe ran that office
supply store with a ladies' apparel section–his
mother's project. However much lamented, since
they weren't on Chambers, I won't even mention
Pushcart or Odd-Job. Regarding all … sigh.
Then, in a $1 store in Chinatown, the vanilla
vigilante found a rack of cable-locks. Only much
later did one recognize the obvious if subconscious
leap from M.'s brilliant tactic to recover his green
ATB.
Not sure if this is true everywhere, but around here
if it's daylight and you're not too dark-skinned
or gorgeous or weird, nobody pays attention to what
you do in public.
A vanilla vigilante, e.g., can take a $1 cable-lock
and lock a wire cart and a slatted bed to each other
(leaving the traffic-signpost out of the equation).
Or a vanilla vigilante can cable-lock to a
bicycle rack on Hudson Street the serious chain
that secures a motorcycle (Vespa?) to that rack,
leaving the machine itself ready to rumble.
And a vanilla vigilante can take a $1 cable-lock and
just loop it through the heavy-duty canvas-covered
chain that locks another motorcycle (Vespa?) to
a nearby bicycle rack. Cable-lock doesn't connect
anything, is just noticeably … there.
If you must, call it a wordless warning.
Consider for a moment the legal position the motorcycle
(Vespa?) and wire-cart/suitcase/slatted-bed owners are
in here. Nothing's been stolen. Nothing's been damaged.
So what is the owners' complaint to the police? Someone
else echoed exactly the owners' actions–illegally
locked their private property to public property? What
renders the vigilante vanilla is bland intent–precisely,
to terminate, not punish, civic discourtesy.
Next day, east of Seventh: Looks like a cyclone has
blown through. Bikes all gone. Wire-cart and slatted
bed are a pathetic sight. Helpless, splayed on the
sidewalk, they're joined now only by the vanilla
vigilante's cable-lock. The vanilla vigilante–who
didn't put them there–takes pity a few hours later
and returns to emancipate the furniture from the
cable-lock. A bicycle now is locked to the traffic
signpost where the furniture had been.
Next day:
Furniture has vanished and has never been seen since.
Some bikes are locked again to the fences but, ever
since, fewer: I guess blowback can be positive too.
Back on Hudson Street, motorcycle (Vespa?) #2
and its heavy-duty chain-lock also vanish from
the bike rack, apparently forever. The vanilla
vigilante collects the cable-lock that actually
never locked anything but itself to the rack.
Motorcycle (Vespa?) #1 vanishes, too, apparently
forever. Pressed for time, the vanilla vigilante
leaves the cable-lock that still attaches the owner's
heavy-duty chain-lock to the bike rack (in shadow
in the snap). The next day the vanilla vigilante
collects that cable-lock, freeing the expensive chain.
Weird. Finding the $1 cable-locks had thrilled the
vanilla vigilante because they were expected to be
sacrificial. Now all three are back in the v.v.'s
possession. The vanilla vigilante hopes that the
person who soon confiscated #1's chain–and for that
matter the wire-cart and slatted bed–was in each
case the owner. If not, well, when storing private
property on the street one does take one's chances.
… Whoops. Coupla weeks later, vanilla vigilante
tells me the declaration of victory turned out to be
an exaggeration. One motorcycle (Vespa?) is back on
the rack. Cable-lock antidote reapplied. But meanwhile
the dude who rolled up with the target-graphic shopping
bag had to lock his cycle to a parking meter instead
of the rack. … Next day:
All gone. since the motorcycle (Vespa?) owner seems
to be a slow study the vanilla vigilante plans
to detain the chain (like mine, not the heavy-duty
expensive stuff the v.v. cable-locked overnight
earlier) a little longer this time.
Wednesday, 4 July 2007
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