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Cops in Florida Go “Bum Hunting”

By on January 21, 2013 in News 14

Picture: 83d40m (cc)

Another example of biased framing by the mainstream media: this is an Associated Press article, and most outlets have been running it under the headline “Homeless are a Challenge for Sarasota, Fla.” You know, as if the homeless are the problem as opposed to the people being given problems. The Washington Post, however, runs it with the more accurate and informative headline “Sarasota’s wealthy and homeless clash in Florida city’s downtown; ACLU has filed 5 lawsuits“:

On a recent sunny winter day on a downtown Sarasota street corner, a cluster of homeless men lounged on the back steps of a building, grimy backpacks and bags at their feet, while a few folks ambled to the nearby bus station.

Parked at a meter just feet from them was a red Ferrari and around the corner was Sur la Table, an upscale cookware store offering $400 juicers.

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NYC’s Beloved Monster Island Closes

By on September 12, 2011 in News 2

MONSTER2-popupSurprisingly, the demise of non-profit music and art venue Monster Island (which was as weirdly charming as it name would imply) drew a write-up in this past weekend’s New York Times. Like its brethren Market Hotel and Silent Barn (both of which also shuttered their doors this past year) Monster Island stood in stark, defiant contrast to the commercially-oriented music club model. It helped to foster some of the city’s most acclaimed and exciting bands in recent years, before falling prey to the incessant steamroller of gentrification:

The concert was particularly poignant for the hundred or so people who stood listening intently in the bright light off the East River in Brooklyn because it was the last time they would be able to gather for a block party at Monster Island, a collection of performance spaces and studios in a faded commercial building covered with murals near the Williamsburg waterfront.

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What’s Wrong With Gentrification?

By on December 12, 2009 in News 1

So is gentrification really so bad? This article by Adam Sternbergh for New York Magazine suggests maybe not:

At least there was one upside to the downturn: It brought gentrification to a thudding halt. Because gentrification, as we all know, is a dirty word, and one that never tastes more sour than in the mouths of the people who practice it. n+1, the literary journal of the Brooklyn renaissance, headquartered in the rigorously revitalized Dumbo, just published two tut-tutting pieces on the subject: a book review titled “Gentrified Fiction” (en garde, Jonathan Lethem!) and an essay, “Gentrify, Gentrify,” which decries the annexation of Brooklyn into “Ikea-hoods” and calls on gentrifiers to (somehow) “ally with the displaced.”

Displacement is understood, of course, to be gentrification’s primary evil consequence. Housing prices balloon; boutiques and bistros blossom; and before you know it, some bearded dudes in vests have bought the local bodega and opened a saloon festooned with taxidermied animals.

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