• [stock-market-ticker symbols="AAPL;MSFT;GOOG;HPQ;^SPX;^DJI;LSE:BAG" stockExchange="NYSENasdaq" width"100%" palette="financial-light"]

    NYC's Upper East Side Was Looted As I Watched

    June 2, 2020
    22 Comments

    To each his suff'rings: all are men,
    Condemn'd alike to groan,
    The tender for another's pain;
    Th' unfeeling for his own.
    Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
    Since sorrow never comes too late,
    And happiness too swiftly flies.
    Thought would destroy their paradise.
    No more; where ignorance is bliss,
    'Tis folly to be wise.

    --Thomas Gray
    Image by author.

    I got the notice that the Upper East Side was under attack on my "Citizen" app. It's a crowdsource crime app, sort of an Instagram of misdeeds. I thought it might be helpful when I installed it 2 years ago: it alerts you to crime in the vicinity as reported by other users. At first it was fun: a glimpse into what's quietly transpiring around you at all times.

    After awhile, it began to feel like a doomsday device. Over time, knowing about all the crime--some of it fake or erroneously reported--warps your sense of reality. Rapes, fistfights, petty theft, 24/7: are people really this awful?

    Screenshot: Citizen app

    Like British poet Thomas Gray first said in 1768, and echoed more recently by Cypher in The Matrix: sometimes, ignorance is bliss.

    But I kept the app out of FONK: fear of not knowing (and the fear I'd blame myself for being ignorant if something awful happened). I envisioned scenarios, so farfetched then, when I might miss out on an event that might harm me or those I love because I'd deleted Citizen, or simply turned off the notifications. Our addiction to technology is real and prevalent. No one under lockdown these past months needs that reminder.

    Last night, my phone buzzed, and I checked it eagerly. After all, the night before, bands of thugs ravaged the SoHo neighborhood, snatching whatever they could while the NYPD--the best trained and equipped police force in the country--largely stood down on the orders of our feckless mayor, Bill De Blasio.

    Yesterday, I made my way down to SoHo. It had been mostly cleaned up, here are a few images from last night's turmoil.

    The news: a "large group" was marching up 5th Ave. I pulled on shoes, grabbed a face mask (in part because, ridiculously, they're mandatory in my building's lobby and elevators). I walked toward 5th, but stopped short at Madison. There was already ample activity. Broken glass all over the sidewalk, mannequins askew.

    Police cruisers were staged every two blocks on the avenue, lights on, sirens off. A simulacrum of safety: I could flag one down if need be, and I did once, more on that in a moment. The overall air was one of a storm having just passed. One urge was to chase it, to see more damage done, to stare at the thing. The wiser impulse prevailed: here was a shop with a broken window and no one to protect it.

    A masked woman wielding a hammer told me the crowd of hoodlums had already moved North. I stared at her hammer. She understood my unstated accusation and said, "No, not me! I'm putting up boards!" Sure enough, behind her, a window-covering installation of plywood was underway, covering the storefront of Kate Spade, the eponymous fashion starlet who allegedly committed suicide by hanging herself from a doorknob with a red scarf.

    These are shops I've walked past for years, seemingly inviolable spaces of wealth and snootiness. Had I ever thought, "Screw these pompous assholes" in passing, coldly measuring their customers, the ladies-who-lunch crowd? Of course. But to see the facade broken, the human-shaped forms wearing designs of European tailors on the dog-piss sidewalk, was jarring.

    Image by author.

    Are the store owners idiots for not removing everything of value after yesterday's SoHo smash-and-grabfest? Yes. They are idiots. But that's taking the line that American humans aren't decent enough to consider the established social custom of paying for things you want. You know, capitalism: the economic system that has lifted more people out of poverty than any other.

    It may be gaudy at times, but it's a workhorse. It deserves its flamboyance. Capitalism is king for a reason.

    The showroom windows of several surrounding stores on Madison had also been broken, but I decided to stick with this one tree for fear of losing it for the forest. The shop, J. Mendel, is an old furrier, established in 1875. Of course fur was one of the earliest currencies in North America, the closest rival to gold in methods by which settlers got rich in the New World.

    The shop, but a bauble. A vestigial remnant of a once proud, nation-building trade. Why was the window broken? So many possible lefty triggers: because it represents wealth? Animal cruelty? Or because it's owned by Jews?

    I stood there in front of the store, arms crossed, increasingly resolute to stay. I felt vaguely responsible. The window was broken, dresses and furs still lined the shelves. I imagined the vandals who had broken the window, "just a few minutes ago," according to the Kate Spade window-boarding duo, were either frightened away by police or the shattering noise. I'd like to think it a moment of shame at the callous audacity of their criminal act in the midst of a pandemic, in the very city that was recently its epicenter.

    The first to interact with me were a group of black teens in an sedan. They pulled up to the red light and leaned out the windows. "Ooooh!" they sang in unison. "They busted that shit!" Noticing me, they hollered various phrases, laughing. Their tone wasn't angry, it was more of a probe: what's this guy going to do if we try to go in there? Is he an employee?

    "There's some real furs up in there, huh player?" I just stood there, knowing anything I said would be fuel on the fire. "Oh he a thug!" [derisive laughter]. "No man, we just watching."

    The light turned green. They drove off. I was keenly aware of the officers in their cruisers two blocks away, within my line of sight.

    The next visitor was a man in a small SUV crossover. I apologize for the poor image quality. He crept up the street, surveying the damage, till he reached J. Mendel, staring at the broken window and the wares still inside. He stopped and put it in park. I took a photo of his license plate, then of him. It's perfectly legal to take a photo or video of anyone, by the way. Don't listen to low-info idiots on this score.

    Image by author.

    Am I a male Karen? Maybe. I'm fine with that label under these circumstances. While taking the pictures, he asked what I was doing.

    "I'm taking photos of everything about this crime scene. I'm going to write about it later," I said.
    "You can't take my picture," he said.
    "Hey, I'm photographing all of this, everything."
    "You can't do that."
    "Yeah, I can. I have your license plate too."
    "You're stupid," he repeated. "You know that? You're stupid."

    He stayed, as did I. Furs at Mendel go for thousands, even tens of thousands of dollars. It was a weird moment. I did feel, to use my new friend's word, stupid. For risking my wellbeing in protection of some multimillionaire's wares on one hand, and like a societal placeholder on the other. Why weren't more people taking to the streets and trying to stop mayhem? It's not a Karen moment, it's no pedantic quibble. This is destruction of property. Looting.

    It's one thing in Los Angeles. You expect it there. New York, for all its flaws, is still our largest city, and one of our oldest. It's the American standard as far as cities go. Its history, its architecture, its glories and tragedies--all of it is inescapably American. Love it or hate it (or both), New York is ours, warts and all.

    A group of three black teenage girls approached, all likely 14 to 18. They clocked me dismissively. The guy in the SUV glanced at them and me, then returned to tapping away at a text.

    "Damn," one said, peeking into the store.
    "They stuff in there."
    They glaced down the avenue at the waiting cruisers, then back to the furs and dresses.
    "No," I said.
    "What you say?" she replied.
    "No."
    "We ain't doing nothing."

    I just looked at her. It was awkward. I'm a white man, she and her friends, black teenagers. Nevertheless, I was still angry after watching the videos of teenagers like these three looting Target stores, CVS pharmacies, and more immediately, the shops in SoHo, three miles south, the night before, just 24 hours prior. I stepped into the street and flagged a police SUV. It slowly pulled forward, never breaking 15 miles per hour for two short city blocks, about 200 yards. Finally it reached me.

    "Hello officer thanks, but you've got a situation here. The window is broken and there's thousands of dollars worth of furs in--"
    "Yep, we're aware."
    "OK, thanks, jut wanted you to know, this--"
    [CB noises]

    Long story short, he pulled away. All the cruisers began to advance up the avenue in what appeared to be a containment pattern, slowly advancing behind the crowd that had caused the damage, but never reaching them.

    I looked back down the block. A group of teens had come around the corner, maybe 12 of them. A few carried long objects, they looked like lengths of pipe. The three teen girls had disappeared. It seemed like a good time to leave. Masked mobs? What the hell was I thinking, being out alone and without a firearm? Which would be illegal in NYC anyway. Giving a damn here is a Catch-22.

    It's one thing to follow the reporter's instinct. It's another to take it personally, to live out some savior fantasy. Live action role play with nothing more than a pocketknife? That's stupid. I felt ashamed. I am responsible to others, not merely myself. How would I judge my actions if I saw someone doing the same thing in a video online?

    I watch liveleak.com on occasion, I know what happens when some dude tries to confront a mob. As for the furrier, my inner narrative changed quickly. "If they don't have insurance, that's their problem," I reasoned. "They should've emptied their shelves like so many others did." After all, I don't know the actual owners of the shops.

    But I do care about my neighborhood. Civic pride is fertile patriotic soil. If one's city is one's home, one's state is one's yard, and one's country is one's town. Would that we all saw America that way.

    I walked home. I called an old friend who said his great grandparents had lived here long ago. He shared a story about angry rioters soaking porous stones in kerosene, lighting and hurling them through the windows of 5th Avenue mansions. Residents had to scramble to extinguish the flames before they spread.

    The story sounds at once apocryphal and plausible. This embarrassing war grinds on, between those who want to enjoy what they've worked for and those envious and angry over their station in life.

    No matter how much a black person achieves, there's the unescapable question of whether it was earned or given.

    One can subscribe to any number of sociological theories and economic models for why things are as they are. "Institutional racism" is too hocus-pocus for me, it's a boogeyman to which one can ascribe any number of ills. It's a convenient catchall, it's soft science.

    To deny that there is a racial problem is equally fatuous. To simply point to IQ is simplistic. Studies have shown that IQ increases in all humans with the proper stimulation and steady home environment. And this leads back to my North Star on matters of race.

    Welfare emasculates the black man in America. Great Society legislation championed by Lyndon Baines Johnson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan was the undoing of the black American family. Before 1964, single parent black families held steadily at 20--24 percent.

    The number today is 77% and rising.

    Three of four black children you meet on any riotous May morning were raised without a father, and that is directly attributable to the party of racism.

    Not that calling people racist matters anymore. The word has lost its meaning through spittle-flecked overuse by leftists too lazy to dig deeper for its cause than new wave identitarian blather.

    So I don't mind being called a racist. I know in my heart that I want for blacks what I want for everyone: a clean, legal shot at the American dream. Achieving it is meaningless, indeed impossible, with greased rails, a leg up, undeserved admittance, a dual standard on crime, and a grandstanding, falsely aggrieved public reaction to every injustice, followed by debauched looting while the left looks the other way, not so much forgiving as not expecting anything better. Accepting the ugly end of the welfare-for-votes bargain: sometimes ya gotta let 'em blow off steam and steal. Remember, they're oppressed, and this is their cry of anger!

    I agree that blacks are angry, but I think deep down they're angry that the game is rigged in their favor. No matter how much a black person achieves, there's the unescapable question of whether it was earned or given. The sword cuts both ways.

    On our honeymoon, my wife and I went to Kenya and the Seychelles. It was my first trip to Africa. We did all the usual safari stuff and then had some beach time. It was amazing, etcetera. Upon being driven back to the airport in Nairobi in a hotel-owned Land Cruiser at 6:00 a.m., bleary in the dawn light, I noticed groups of men standing and huddling in the median of the highway. Dressed in simple sheet-like garments, they were dirty and thin. I guessed that they were manual laborers, waiting for someone with an odd job to pick them up.

    At a stop light, I stared at yet another group of them, maybe 40 feet away. One of the men met my gaze and narrowed his eyes. I didn't look away. He raised his middle finger defiantly. I was made aware of the stark situation. Here was I in an expensive, air conditioned automobile with the name of a resort emblazoned on the door, and there he stood, on the side of a dirty highway, in rags, flipping me off.

    So I flipped him off too. And he broke into laughter and began to clap. We smiled at one another as the light turned green and our vehicle pulled away.

    Treat a man honestly. Don't apologize for him or design all sorts of elaborate safeguards for him, those are insults cunningly sold as insurance. They make the giver feel good while slighting the recipient. Worse, once he has internalized the notion that he gets things for free, he will come to expect more every time he is aggrieved.

    There's a reason progressive cities are looted. Rioting is not the "language of the unheard." It's payback for supporting the hashtags like #ICantBreathe and #BLM, but treating blacks like children. Payback for not meeting their stare and treating them fairly. When they say "fuck you," it's important to reply in kind and say "fuck you too."

    SHARE THIS ARTICLE
                               

    Author

    Court Anderson

  • Subscribe
    Notify of
    guest

    22 Comments
    Inline Feedbacks
    View all comments
    America The Great

    My father taped how my hamster hatefucked the life and soul out of our little guinea pig without intervening. One of the most violent and heart-wrenching scenes I've ever been forced to witness.

    Sandy

    Sandwiches are the shit, don't ever apologize because you like sandwiches. When the boss takes everybody out for lunch they all order large paninis or bowls of salad... but not me. I'll gladly order the largest sandwich they've got, and despite Alice from Accounts shooting glares across the banquet table at me, I will eat it proudly whilst they nibble on their rabbit food and inferior toasted concoctions. Nothing makes a person feel better than a quick pastrami on rye. Truck broke down again in the middle of the freeway? Pickle and onion. Stubbed your toe on that new workbench? Beef and tomato. Wife left you for your brother? Whip up a ham and cheese. Sandwiches are a gift we all are lucky to be able to enjoy.

    Gerald

    I think you missed the big picture here.
    The death of George Floyd has, once again, brought police brutality to the attention of the world, not just in America.
    Black men are being killed by police officers. It's a fact that cannot be denied.
    A young, black, Christian law-abiding man named Botham Shem Jean was shot and killed in his own apartment when a white police officer wrongfully entered his home. This needs to end in America. This is what people are protesting and angry about.
    Do you shoot middle-aged white men just because they are statistically more likely to be serial killers? no.

    Combine the obvious death of black men by police offices, with an ever larger gap in wealth, and this is what you get. This is what people have been saying would happen since Charlottesville. This is what happens when your president is fanning the flames of racial tension. As a canadian, it's scary and sickening to watch how America has fallen in the last two years. You guys need to get your act together and vote someone in who is socially and morally competent.

    Gerald

    Also, what the fuck is up with that first comment?

    Tom

    @"America The Great" - Seriously, WTF.
    @Sandy - Yes, they are great.
    @Gerald - Our president is a moron, we already know that. His claim to “dominate the streets,” or the U.S. military would step in to “quickly solve the problem" is a exactly what is wrong with him. I'm not saying Obama or Biden would have been any better, but we need a president with compassion and he has absolutely zero and we as a nation have become complacent. Here's how I think about it.

    * If a fully loaded 747 Jet crashed, and everyone died. People would say "that's really sad"
    * If two fully loaded 747 Jets collided and crashed, and everyone died. People would say "holy shit that's tragic"
    * if 12 fully loaded, 747 jets crashed, every day for 7 seven days, people would be screaming "DO SOMETHING!!!"

    We've had the equivalent of twelve 747 jets crash every day, for two months straight. What does our president say? nothing. What does he do? Nothing. We need a true christian with compassion and he has proven to not be it.

    Columbia Grad

    "I agree that blacks are angry, but I think deep down they’re angry that the game is rigged in their favor. No matter how much a black person achieves, there’s the unescapable question of whether it was earned or given."
    - this... coming from a white guy who attended Columbia to be a writer. You clearly have no idea what racism is.

    Let me explain with a little anecdote: At the beginning of my relationship, my gf would always spontaneously sprinkle in these little acts of affection -physical and non-physical- throughout the day. Even when telling me to bring down the garbage or rinse the rim of the toilet bowl again, she'd add a cute 'honey' and a tender, knowing smile to the end of her remarks. In the evening, when we sat in front of the TV, her hand would always rest in my boxers, her fingers playing with the long curls of my pubic hair. There wasn't anything sexual about it, necessarily, it was just constant unfeigned care and attentiveness...

    You know the end is near when all of that ceases: every interaction becomes work, disheartening even; leaving you frustrated instead of energized. Sexual interactions become raw, primitive, transactional and impersonal. Handjobs become fleshlight-jobs become electric toothbrush-jobs from a distance... Now she doesn't even look at me anymore during, just holds up the rusty bucket for me to cum into while she browses Pinterest.

    GetBackToWriting

    Court, 49, from New York lives a secret life. To his wife and his friends and his mother and his father and his first daughter and his second daughter and his brother-in-law and his brother-in-law’s wife and his cousins and his granddad and his nanna and his dog and his neighbour next door and his neighbour across the street and his boss and his boss’s boss and his co-workers and his old college buddies and his old high school pals and his accountant and his accountant’s assistant and his gardener and his gardener’s illegal immigrant friend and his window cleaner and his window cleaner’s illegal immigrant friend and his maid and his illegitimate son by his maid and his guy who fixed the problem with the maid and his mechanic and his travel agent and his butcher and his street cleaner and his bookie and his dealer and his fellow football rec-league players and his high school teachers, he is simply just ‘Court’.

    To everyone else in the world though, he is regular old ‘xXxpussy_slayInG_gOd_xXx’, connoisseur of hardcore, and questionably legal, pornography.

    […] NYC’s Upper East Side Was Looted As I Watched […]

    […] NYC’s Upper East Side Was Looted As I Watched […]

    […] NYC’s Upper East Side Was Looted As I Watched […]

    […] post NYC’s Upper East Side Was Looted As I Watched appeared first on CD […]

    dnabes

    I thought your article was spot on. LBJ and the democrat policies enacted during that time intentionally destroyed the black community. They knew exactly what they were doing. Go back and read LBJ's own words if you don't believe me. Something about having someone vote democrat for the next 200 years....look it up. You take away a man's sense of self worth, and you have a ruined man. Do that to an entire class of people, and you have a ruined nation. Like all men, Trump is imperfect, but this did not happen on his watch.

    Gerald

    @dnabes - Actually, it did happen on his watch, along with the pandemic, and record unemployment, and civil unrest. It all happened while he was president and therefor, on his watch.

    FNA

    People won't riot when they have good jobs and money in their pockets, access to good healthcare and the police protect the innocent people instead of murdering them. This isn't about the riot, it's about the broken system.

    Patrick

    To Gerald:

    Go to the source of our crime statistics.
    https://crime-data-explorer.fr.cloud.gov/explorer/national/united-states/crime

    You cannot find statistics that show systemic racial bias against blacks. No one can provide direct statistically valid data in support of such a conclusion. Not even close.

    However, if you look at the inferences that can be drawn from the data that we do have, it doesn't paint a redeeming image of the "victims."

    The racial proportions of perpetrators are overwhelming in one direction. Black on White Crime is staggering in terms of proportions. White on black crime? Not even close.

    To date there is no evidence of a racial component in the current matter driving the chaos. Systemic racial oppression by police against blacks.

    That is not the same thing as evidence that may show callous indifference to human life or at least criminal negligence—which very likely did happen here.

    However, what threat response or posture do you expect a cop to employ when confronted with a convicted violent criminal with an extensive history of violence and convictions, as had our current "hero/victim?"

    We may find an actual history between cop and the deceased that also informs this situation. Of course, nothing would justify a "killing." It also affects the subjects behavioral response in this situation.

    This elevates the situation before contact is ever made. Do you expect the police to ignore a very real threat as they approach to make contact? I have a hunch that it wasn’t just passing a fake $20 that caused him to resist and the officers to persist. I suspect additional crimes were in process and the cops were aware of this.

    Generally speaking:
    If police are making contact with suspected criminals engaged in criminal activity, and are required to do so disproportionately in regards to a specific subset of the population, would you not expect the resulting escalations to be reflected directly?
    Total Contacts with suspects is your denominator.
    Total Contacts by race is your numerator.
    Look it up.

    Investigating police use of force is a totally legitimate pursuit. Included in that, is whether the force is applied justly and without racial bias. But race is not the overwhelming factor in determining the risk of a negative contact.

    And, even more important, is the demeaning and “racist” removal of any personal accountability from the legally assigned victims to conduct themselves in a reasonable manner when interacting with police. What better way to increase the negative outcomes?

    I am your standard white guy, and I am uncomfortable and maybe fearful when I have contact with police. It's called self-preservation, respect for authority and for that police officer's life, and a realization that I have responsibility to do everything I can to keep the situation from escalating.

    The overwhelming theme is personal accountability.
    The cop and his cohort are facing theirs. If we demanded personal accountability and stopped excusing criminal and malfeasant activity, we would have less negative but natural consequences all around. I’m sure I won’t be popular for this.

    Patrick

    p.s

    Databases like the Washington Post don't include data on whether the police acted within the law, in defense of themselves or others, etc.

    Surely, you would agree the list of confounding variables in the data renders those lists useless in assigning "blame" or responsibility.

    It should be a wake call to everyone that there is a problem or many problems. Isolating race of the victim is not the determining factor for bad outcomes.
    Statistically, it points to a higher probability. Shouldn't ALL parties take that into account in their analysis?

    Vetmike

    If you condone this, in any or fashion, you are as guilty as the looters. Statistics provided by the FBI show a larger percentage of blacks killing whites than vice versa. In 2007 245 blacks were killed by whites and in 2008 500 whites were killed by blacks. These numbers represent only about 49% of all homicides. The remainder either were not classified by race or the case was never solved. Police deaths are also skewed towards whites.. As of March 30 2020; 221 civilians have been killed by police, only 31 were black. Yes, the number of LEOs murdered is low (22 as of 2 June 2020) but I could find no data as to which race the assailant was. Of the 22, two were black, one American Indian, one Hispanic and one Hawaiian.

    […] NYC’s Upper East Side Was Looted As I Watched […]

    Bill O'Reilly

    I can't help but think that that teen age black girl looked savagely beautiful in that stolen mink coat as Rhaseed slowly lowered it off her shoulders and the moon shone through the ghetto flat's dirty window onto her brown body, glistening with african american sweat in the muggy night of Harlem. He touched her on her most private part and she sighed as she melted against his long basketball player's frame as the coat fell to the floor and their black bodies came together in the unison of lust, and for a moment, white privilege was forgotten as the sound of their passion echoed through the New York night.

    […] NYC’s Upper East Side Was Looted As I Watched […]

    Tom Fox

    I have to agree with the former Defense Secretary Mattis who said:

    "We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values — our values as people and our values as a nation."

    "Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people— does not even pretend to try.
    Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership."

    FOLLOW US

  • Subscribe to our evening newsletter to stay informed during these challenging times!!

    ×