The 'Heroin-Addicted Hobo' Invasion of Williamsburg Has Begun
Ha! Apparently word has spread like wildfire through the nation's "heroin-addicted hobo" community about the Mad Max-esque, post-apocalyptic wasteland that is Williamsburg, Brooklyn, because they're descending upon the hipster utopia in droves to squat in the neighborhood's abandoned developments. Residents of Williamsburg—Still looking to pick up some street cred to enhance hardcore quotient? Well, now you've got it! Williamsburg is rapidly turning into Alphabet City circa 1979. Heroin-addict hobos from around the country are overrunning hipster haven Williamsburg - living in stalled luxury condo projects in the trendy Brooklyn neighborhood. The squatters, from middle-class families, hop freight trains to the city, where they can earn up to $150 a day panhandling in Manhattan. At night, like plenty of other borough commuters, they return to their homes: grubby hideaways inside boarded-up lots that pock the once-booming neighborhood. "I've got to sleep somewhere, and I might as well do it in Williamsburg," said Stuart, 22, a Florida college dropout. The admitted alcoholic and heroin user makes $15 an hour panhandling in Union Square, holding a sign that reads "Traveling Broke and Sexy." "The girls here like it that I'm dirty and I ride trains," he added. Ha! We never really thought of it in this way, but Williamsburg has to be one of the few places in the country where "hobos" can get ass from non-prostitutes on the regular. Really, if you're a girl who's turned on by the whole homeless heroin addict look, might as well bang the real deal if it's available to you rather than someone who's just pretending, right? We imagine that a real homeless heroin addict walking into a bar in Williamsburg is just like the real Tucker Max walking into a kegger at Arizona State—The world is your slimy oyster. Punks Invade Williamsburg as Heroin-Addicted Hobos Set Up Shop in Trendy Brooklyn Neighborhood [Daily News] MORE >>
Those Cute Kids of Yesteryear Are Now Getting Drunk in Capes
Are twenty-somethings fueling drunken Potter-mania out of genuine love of magic or just for the ironic Facebook updates? So you're in a bar last night and there's a girl in sweater vest, tie, plaid skirt, holding a wand, and she has a zig-zag drawing on her face. You order a drink. She orders one too. She giggles and coos with the rest of her broom-swinging friends. You know this girl. She's your friend's younger sister and you remember what she looked like when she was 12. And she's in your bar, in costume, getting sloshed while waiting for a kid's movie to start. What does it all mean? For starters, it means you're old. Second, as somebody who is stitching together her Slytherin scarf right now, I can tell you that the 25-year-old hipster in the knee-socks does geniunely love Harry Potter! We grew up with him. You guys had Remo Williams or some shit but we have this totally charming, decent, wizard fella who is nice to look at and lives in a world of rich political and cultural complexity! Order of the Phoenix was obviously a political tome about infantilizing effect totalitarian rule has on it's citizenry (also maybe an allegory for torture given Ms. Umbridge's approval of 'hard interrogation tactics?) And the 'Half-Blood Prince' (which also happens to be my pet name for our weekend editor) is a tale of masculine anxiety in a war time state. It's also about potions. Which is totally sweet! So Old Person, now you know. And godspeed to those young, underpaid, bleary eyed office workers of today who still can't get that mark stain off their forehead. We'll see you in line for the second round tonight! Be sure to send us your pics! Pictures Via Flickr MORE >>
Senator Franken Finally Tells a Joke!
This is Al Franken's first week on the job, so he didn't have time to prepare actual questions for Sonia Sotomayor. Instead he talked about Perry Mason, and how that show made Sotomayor want to be a prosecutor. Which is weird! Because, see, the prosecutor on that show never won. It's funny! Then Al sort of rambles a bit about how Sonia watched Perry Mason in the Bronx, as a child, with her mom, and he watched in St. Louis Park, as a child, with the Coen brothers (j/k!), and now she is going to be on the Supreme Court, and that's "pretty cool." This is obvious proof that he lacks the depth and gravitas necessary to be a US Senator. Unlike, say, Tom fucking Coburn. MORE >>
NYC Prep: Mr. PC and the Vicious Circle
Meow! Last night's episode was all about people being bitchy. Girls being bitchy, boys being bitchy, couples being bitchy, dates being bitchy. Bitchiest of all, though, was darling PC Peterson, a confused and disorderly young man who's basically King Bitch. The funniest thing about this show is kind of what's universally funny about teenagers: that they like to pretend they're a lot older than they are. That the experiences of short days and fleeting months compounds for them into years' worth of torturous drama. Their newly formed, Bambi-legged personalities are given such weight and consideration. Kelli is This, PC is That. These kids don't seem to realize that basically everything in them is malleable at this point, that they'll be entirely different people—aside from a few core things—by the time they wake up tomorrow morning. So watching them be so steadfast and sure of Who and What they are, with all these things that they've done, is both silly and sad. Just like being young! Part I: Feelings Are the Farts of the Mind We'll begin our recounting with a rustle of sticks and a clinking of soda can tabs. Of course I'm speaking of kiwi-faced Rags McTattershanty, a public school hobo who was discovered by young Lord Sebastian and rescued from the heap of milk cartons and broken wheelchairs that is her life. For a brief spell (an eon in Teen Time!) the pair was flourishing. They shared wet, snowy kisses. They met cute at parties and fancy French dinners. They stared at each other with dewy, innocent gazes that belied the strange hormonal churning going on down below their necks, all the furtive fumbling awkwardness covered up and kept in by expensive clothes and artful rich kid slouches. But as all of these stories must end—even My Fair Lady comes to an end, eventually—Rags and Sebastian danced their last worried waltz last night, torn asunder by the gaping chasm between their two lives. He's a landed lad of Mustiques and Rossignols, floppy fancy feathered hair and million dollar sneakers. She's a creature of soiled footie pajamas, bum cover open and flapping in the breeze. Of mostly-broken Wurlitzers played forlornly in windswept junkyards. While one can, for a time, find romance in the other, it's just too wide a breach to build a lasting bridge. Mostly the end came about because Rags was being re-enchanted by her old hobo husband Soots McKenzie. Soots, who sells fish bones to gypsies down by the loading docks, makes her feel special. He attends her gymnastics meets and weaves shells into her hair and scrubs her calloused feet with discarded steel wool he finds behind restaurants. Really, he just speaks her language. Still, though, she tried with Lord Sebastian. She puttered her leather and tin jalopy up to a music concert that he'd invited her to, excited and scared. Sebastian, for his part, had discussed the matter of Rags with his closest confidant, Fauntleroy. Fauntleroy believed Rags to be an endearing lass,... MORE >>
How Will Health Care Get Screwed Up?
You know what? The House Democrats' Health Care reform bill is... pretty ok! We have no serious problems with it, besides its not just being goddamn single-payer. But there are so many ways for things to still go seriously wrong! Because, you know, congress is dysfunctional. The system is broken. Democracy doesn't work. Etc. Let us count the ways we will end up with no health care reform, shitty health care reform, or decent health care reform followed by a backlash that leads to the collapse of the state apparatus, anarchy, a military coup, and internment camps, or whatever. Bipartisanship In Roll Call today we learn that the Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus is still working around the clock to reach consensus... not with moderate and liberal Democrats, but with the four Republicans negotiating on behalf of their colleagues. Those negotiators are led by noted sexter Chuck Grassley, and the "consensus" they are looking to reach is no health care reform. The Republican party is opposed to fixing health care. Including them in negotiations is not only useless—most of them will vote against it, no matter what it looks like, and they have said as much—it is destructive, as it makes it a worse bill that does less and it could lead to Democrats (who, remember, are in the majority) voting against it. Ahem: Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) alluded to the Republicans' unity on Tuesday when asked what guidance he has given the GOP negotiators. "Well, I think everyone understands the direction Republicans would like to take," he said. "No government plan, no tax on small business and a genuine bipartisan effort. As long as we are simply being called upon to take 60 or 70 percent of something we don't like, we don't really think that's meeting in the middle." Right. The thing is, you guys are only 40% of the Senate, and that 40% represents an even smaller portion of the national populace, because the Senate is an undemocratic institution, so you should probably be happy with whatever portion of what you don't like that you get. But Max Baucus and Harry Reid will probably still find ways to try to "meet in the middle," because being collegial and politically nice is more important than implementing good policy. Taking Too Much Time Right now, with the House bill having been released, and Obama finally beginning a major push, the momentum is for reformers. It's looking almost inevitable that something will happen by the end of the year. But! In three weeks, the Senate goes on recess, halting all the work. Meanwhile, the economy continues to suck, and it will only get worse, and that economy is very gradually dragging down Obama's poll numbers. Obama remains pretty damn popular, but if things continue to get worse, Obama will look weaker, and congress will not feel quite so empowered to actually do anything. Delaying shit is actually part of the Republican strategy, too—pretend to be almost willing to compromise, then retreat, then... MORE >>
Michael Jackson's Famous Hair Fire: The Video
Oh, holy god. Remember when Michael Jackson's hair caught on fire while filming a Pepsi commercial in 1984? Well Us Weekly got the harrowing footage and claims the injury spurred his terrible painkiller addiction. His head just... catches on fire. The video clearly shows Jackson doing a few pyrotechnics takes safely and then, on the sixth, everything goes disastrously wrong and his hair is set ablaze. It almost looks as though Jackson doesn't notice it at first, until some guy runs on and just sprays him in the fucking face with a fire extinguisher. MORE >>
Dash Snow's Basquiat-ization
Dash Snow is already being branded an "icon." The downtown sperm-and-whatever-else artist died Monday night of a heroin overdose at the age of 27. And you can already spot the outlines of a Basquiat-esque art world canonization starting to form. As the memorials appear, Dash's legend is growing. The Independent calls him "the mythical hero of an artistic underworld." The Guardian says he was a "mythical figurehead," and compares him to James Dean, Jimi Hendrix, and Sylvia Plath. Vulture spoke to Dash's art dealer: "I wouldn't say he didn't love living, but living for him was difficult," says Peres, who adds that to his knowledge Snow was alone at the Lafayette House, a hotel in Lower Manhattan, on Monday night. "To simply say he overdosed on drugs is insufficient, because it wasn't that simple. He died and there were drugs involved. He was complex and astute. He was very sensitive. Although he was only 27, he felt the pain of someone who'd lived a long life." Terrence Koh is dedicating tonight's four-hour performance art piece, in which he "lies on the floor in a shirt made from crushed pearls, his face and feet covered in powder," to Dash. Koh will change his tune to "Cheree" by the synth-punk band Suicide. As Koh explained in an e-mail message, "It is for one of my best friend's Dash and that is our favorite song together and we used to dance to it together." Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes says Dash changed his life: When I used to run around with a camera and a notepad following Irak and documenting as much of their lives as I could, he said something that changed my life forever. He said, "Why are you always reporting on shit and reviewing other people's shit? Why don't you do your own shit?" I couldn't get it out of my head. I still can't. And you shouldn't either. There's no denying that dying young—while always a tragedy—can do wonders for an artist's legacy. Dash Snow was not the artist that Basquiat was, but their stories do have some strong parallels: graffiti writers who moved into the gallery world, were dismissed as clowns and lightweights, and died drug-related deaths in their 20s. Today, Basquiat is regarded as a major artist of his era, and his cool factor is untarnished; his contemporary Julian Schnabel, who was right there with him, didn't die from drugs, and today is regarded as a bit of a sellout, directing Hollywood films and pouring his time into huge pink apartment buildings for the rich in Manhattan. Dash Snow was, in fact, more famed and respected for his lifestyle than for his works of art. But death can change that. His don't-give-a-fuck attitude now has a tragic ending; but his art—which ranged from legitimately good but not brilliant to outright corny (in my worthless opinion)—will now begin to be re-evaluated in light of his newfound status a martyr to the fast life. In ten or twenty years, who knows? Condemnations of Dash Snow as a hipster fuck-off are bound to fade away, leaving only... MORE >>
New York Post to Debbie Rowe: So Sue Us
Yesterday, Debbie Rowe's lawyer demanded that the New York Post retract its claim that she sold her kids to Katherine Jackson for $4 million. Today the Post dug in. Calling Rowe "devious Debbie" and a "human incubator," the Post's Kate Sheehy picked up e-mails purportedly from Rowe, first reported yesterday by ExtraTV.com, indicating that she doesn't want custody of Paris and Prince Michael Jackson. "Do I want the kids?" the e-mail, to Rowe's "confidant" Rebecca White, reads. "Hell no. Does it look good for me to ask for them? Absolutely." The paper also repeated its charge that Rowe had sold her parental rights for $4 million, quoting a "Jackson family member": "Don't believe what Debbie says. She is getting Mother's money — that's what she wanted all along." "Mother" is Katharine Jackson, which narrows down the lists of suspects for that leak. Rowe's emails to White make no mention of Rowe seeking any money from the Jackson clan, but White told Extra that she thinks Rowe's "motivation is money." Rowe's attorney Eric George sent notice to reporters yesterday that he had demanded that White retract her statements "in order to avoid a legal action." So we've got a friend of Rowe's saying she thinks Rowe wants money, and waving emails showing that Rowe didn't seem to want custody of the kids. And you've got the Post saying she has already done the deal and sold her rights. And you've got Rowe's attorney saying Rowe will not give up her rights, and will accept no money from the Jackson clan beyond what she got in a settlement several years ago. And making very distinct noises about a libel lawsuit. There's one wiggly area—George's letter demanding a retraction said Rowe "has not and will not give up her parental rights," but given her history with Jackson, it's not clear that she has any parental rights to give up; she could merely accept payment in exchange for not seeking to have those rights restored. So that statement isn't necessarily inconsistent with the Post's report. But aside from that, there seems to be a clear dispute over whether Debbie has been paid or sought to be paid, and a fairly clear indication that George will sue if he doesn't get a retraction. He's no ambulance-chaser—he went to Georgetown Law and served as counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee. So this could get interesting. MORE >>
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