It may well come to that, but for now we cover the costs for you here at the Propaganda Pre$$ Monitor:
"New York police create Times Square unit" Associated Press August 27, 2015
NEW YORK — Police have announced a new unit dedicated to patrolling Times Square following weeks of complaints about the panhandling tactics of costumed characters such as Elmo and Batman and topless women covered in body paint.
Where is this?
The area, one of the busiest and most crowded in the nation, eventually was going to receive new officers who would work regular shifts and be assigned to the same posts every day, but the past few weeks of attention accelerated the decision to recruit, the New York Police Department said.
‘‘It just seemed natural,’’ Chief of Department James O’Neill said Wednesday.
Yes, and there are ancestral tribes and peoples to prove it all across the planet.
The news came a week after Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio assigned a multiagency task force to figure out how to deal with costumed characters and so-called desnudas — women wearing thongs and covering themselves only with body paint — seeking tips in exchange for photos at the Manhattan tourist attraction.
Let me see what I have in my pocket.
In New York, toplessness and panhandling are legal. But that hasn’t stopped the city’s tabloids and some elected officials from calling for action.
That was where I said leave 'em be, simply because of the source of complaint.
Among the women who accept tips for photos, Saira Nicole said she doesn’t think the practice should be an issue.
‘‘People are having fun,’’ she said. ‘‘There’s no problem.’’
Apparently there is for the uptight moral degenerates lecturing to us all form on high under the banner of public $ervice.
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I'm glad New York doesn't have serious crimes like rapes, robberies, murders, or illegal drugs.
What's next in New York, the removal of park benches?
As for that bag you are carrying (if homeless) or tossing out (if not)....
"Trash offers peek into New Yorkers’ lives; Garbage trucks now research lab for anthropologist" by Verena Dobnik Associated Press August 31, 2015
NEW YORK — New York’s sanitation department has its very own anthropologist-in-residence, a garbage guru who studies the refuse along the curbs of the nation’s biggest city as a mirror into the lives of its 8.5 million residents.
She must work for the FBI. Hoover had agents doing that.
‘‘What does trash tell you about us?’’ asks New York University professor Robin Nagle, who frequently goes out on trucks with garbage-collection crews in search of an answer.
So, what’s her take on the nearly 3.5 million-ton annual trash pile collected by New York’s Department of Sanitation?
‘‘We’re a throwaway culture that’s going too fast,’’ she says. Modern Gotham, she adds, tends to treat just about everything — from furniture to electronics to clothing — like so many paper coffee cups.
‘‘We assume that we don’t need to waste time taking care of mundane, useful objects when we can, with no responsibility, get rid of them,’’ she says.
Well, who $et that tone for the last 50+ years?
Factor in a city of mostly small apartments, where residents are constantly tossing out stuff to make more space, and you get what Nagle considers a gold mine for garbage pickers.
Here we go again! When the economy is bad the propaganda pre$$ promotes poverty as a good thing!
See what I'm dining on every morning?
So when do the Wall Street bankers head down and start digging through it?
Many residents furnish their homes with other people’s refuse.
I wouldn't expect (sniff, sniff) lots of visitors.
Some forage for edible food that’s never been cooked, such as bagels, rice, and pasta.
Yes, it is a veritable buffet and feast going through the garbage!
And a private wardrobe could be filled with rejected clothing, shoes, and jewelry, along with sofas, beds, domestic appliances, even paintings.
Poverty in AmeriKa? What poverty? Look at what people are throwing out.
‘‘The quantities of trash that New Yorkers throw out are dazzling,’’ Nagle says. ‘‘And the quality of goods they put on the street because they’re done with it and discardable is also very impressive.’’
I wish I had some worthwhile garbage to put out on the street because then I'd sell it.
Is it just me, or is the swirling steamer of a breakfast from the corporate pre$$ offensive?
On a micro level, Nagle says, sanitation workers get to know the rhythms of the people on their route from the refuse, which she calls ‘‘the physical record of our daily lives.’’
Oh, she's working for the NSA! Isn't all the electronic data enough?
If there’s a divorce, they might find photos of the former spouse thrown out. Or if someone has had a drinking problem, it’s reflected in the bottles. When babies arrive, so do disposable diapers.
Nagle, 54, lobbied sanitation officials for two years before being named to the unpaid position of anthropologist-in-residence in 2006.
Been going through your garbage that long?
Her research has led to several books, a New York University course she teaches titled ‘‘Garbage in Gotham,’’ and a personal campaign to get manufacturers to use more recyclable materials.
You know where those are going.
(Sorry for extrapolating a certain someone coming across them and laughing to myself. I'd try and sell 'em, but....)
But Nagle has not been merely an ivory-tower scholar. She’s gotten her hands dirty, literally, by going through the training, learning to drive the trucks, and working for almost a year as a regular, salaried sanitation worker.
So when are the war-mongering politicians going to be the point of the spear on a special forces operation and become heroes like the garbage-picker here?
Her biggest contribution is in raising morale for a job that is often overlooked.
Ah!
Did you guys get paid? Health and pension benefits okay?
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Elliot Belnavis, a 27-year-old newcomer, notes that while members of the police and fire departments are treated as heroes, ‘‘we’re invisible.’’ Nagle’s introduction to his new job left him with a greater appreciation of his role, he says.
No offense, but I think, sniff, sniff, there may be a reason, sniff, for that.
‘‘I now definitely feel like sanitation workers are the most important workers that we have in this city,’’ Belnavis says. ‘‘If we don’t pick up the garbage off the streets, if we don’t take care of the snow, nobody can move. It starts with us, and when we do our job, everybody else can do their job.’’
He is 100% right there, which is why I want those guys (like nurses) kept happy.
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Nice looking girl, but.... she stinks!
What is one man's trash is another treasure, right?
"Harvard’s glass pavilion plan for plaza meets resistance; Fans of Forbes Plaza’s footloose style balk at project" by Beth Teitell Globe Staff August 27, 2015
Gregory Daugherty — a homeless man also known as the Spare Change Guy of Harvard Square — has been working the same stretch of sidewalk for so long that when Matt Damon and Minnie Driver filmed a scene at the plaza in front of Au Bon Pain for 1997’s “Good Will Hunting,” there he was in the background, energetically greeting the public just as he does today.
Those are the breaks in Bo$ton.
But Daugherty’s outdoor office alongside the plaza on the corner of Mass. Ave. and Dunster Street may be getting a makeover, courtesy of property owner Harvard University, and not everyone is happy about it.
He's not wearing a thong and covered in body paint is he?
Harvard wants to build a glass pavilion that would simultaneously encroach on the spot formally known as Forbes Plaza and add indoor space that would be open to the public, including areas on the second floor, offering views toward Harvard Yard and ambience from a couple of fireplaces.
Critics say the glass enclosure would intrude on the freewheeling culture of one of the square’s best-known public spaces, a gathering spot for professors and students, protesters and tourists, chess players and street performers, and homeless people who may not feel comfortable going inside.
Then go on over to the Inn (maybe you will be lucky enough to get a cookie, too).
Depending on who’s telling the story, the school is either a civic-minded neighbor interested in enhancing public space and adding much-needed restrooms, or a villain intent on turning Cambridge into a “Harvard theme park,” in the words of Harvey Silverglate, a well-known attorney and Harvard Law School graduate.
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The planned plaza renovation is part of a larger project that involves renovating the first, second and 10th floors of the Smith Campus Center (nΓ©e Holyoke Center), a Brutalist-style, 1960s-era building that houses Harvard’s information center, the university health service, and administrative offices.
At its most basic, the fight centers on matters of square footage, and whether the public really would feel welcome in public space inside glass walls....
The university has already received a favorable recommendation from the city’s Planning Board and the Harvard Square Advisory Committee, and a certificate of appropriateness from the Cambridge Historical Commission. Charles Sullivan, the historical commission’s director, said his agency felt the loss of open space would be balanced by enhanced indoor facilities.
But opponents said that Harvard’s glossy proposed changes are more in keeping with the new Harvard Square than the square of the past, an intellectual and edgy place with offbeat characters part of the mix....
You "offbeat" characters stuck in the past.
What do they do, sit around reading newspapers?
Even as critics fight the potential loss of outdoor space, a Harvard urban-planning scholar who has studied public-private spaces — and said he has been approached by both Harvard and its critics — said that if done right, indoor public space can truly become a gathering spot.
Not an architect?
“Even if the public and the property owner have different goals and needs, thoughtful design and stewardship can accommodate both,” said Jerold Kayden, a professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and author of “Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City Experience.”
“I know it sounds bland,” he added, “but it’s true.”
He points to a Manhattan building, 590 Madison Avenue, where the developer built a glass-enclosed, tree-filled, covered pedestrian space that is so popular it has turned into the city’s “living room.”
For traditionalists of a certain viewpoint, the gripe about today’s Harvard Square is that it’s become a generic outdoor mall, filled with chain stores and banks.
Yeah? Then what is the problem?
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Do the Globe have no $hame?
Oddly enough, here come's the trash man now.
Sorry I didn't have enough for coffee.
UPDATE: Buskers push Cambridge to embrace street performing
