The American Dream
This is my downstairs neighbor standing on what used to be his patio deck. The property owner next door decided to squeeze a few more rental dollars out of his 3-story building by lowering the level of his back yard ten feet and adding a fourth apartment in the basement. Construction has been slow: he did the digging a year ago and never shored up the excavated pit with concrete, as the city required him to do. Consequently my neighbor's yard is slowly sliding into the hole.
Here's another view: you can see the lake of water from a recent rain through the gap under the fence. It's amazing the fence is still standing.
And here's the view of the fence on the other side of the pit, two doors over from our building. Isn't America great? It's a place where you're free to be a business failure and there are always others to take up the slack--that's how much we value entrepreneurship. It wasn't always thus: in days of yore a posse of strong men from the neighborhood would have paid a visit on Mr. Budding Capitalist and stood there with arms folded till he filled in the hole with his own labor. But that would be fascistic, so we rely on the court system to do...nothing.
That is the most compelling and well reasoned argument for mob-rule vigilante violence I have ever heard. Lets fire up our torches and go get the bastard (you first, we'll be right behind you).
You know, come to think of it, that mob in Frankenstein always got a bad rap. If my neighbor was reanimating the dead from bits of scraps from the local cemetery I might want to go give him a call too. Imagine if your husband had just died and two weeks later you see his left arm sewn onto the side of a child eating monster.
Does an angry mob have chants like protesters do? "Hey hey, ho ho, child eating monster has got to go!"
So I take it you're in favor of having the adjacent properties collapse because this man "had a dream of makin' it on his own"?
I just sold my copy of Rolling Vengance at our stoop sale. In Rolling Vengance a bike gang kills a man's entire family and the cops do NOTHING. So he goes out and gets himself a moster truck and puts the biggest assed drill bit onto the front of it and has at 'em.
Have you though of doing that?
What if you put your garbage back there? Oops! Fell through the hole!
JOE
Maybe you're offended by the part about making the man fill in the hole himself. What if the neighbors got together and filled in the hole to help the adjacent landowners, like an Amish barn raising? Then would you stop comparing me to Charles Bronson?
Charles Bronson? You should be so lucky! More like Moe when there's an angry mob on the Simpsons.
But you're a psudo lawyer can't you steal some letterhead from work and scare the willies out of him with some legalese? Use words like "aforementioned, heretofore and accusitatory" (I may have made up that last one) and that hole will be full by nightfall.
And what's more American than combining the angry mob mentality with the court system?
Yeah, legal coercion is still coercion. My landlord has lawyered up and also gotten the city inspectors in the loop. It could potentially take years for anything to be resolved: if the guy's broke threats mean nothing to him. None of this is actually my problem, because I'm a renter and don't have access to the patio anyway--except to the extent I have to look outside my window and be appalled by this crap. In fact, a posse of my neighbors (including me, by letter--I had to work) did go before the City Historic Commission to stop an earlier development scheme by this genius: he originally wanted to extend the back of his building so that it no longer had a back yard. The man is a dangerous schlemiel and you should be sympathizing with the plight of all who live near him instead of calling out my (actually rather reasonable) revenge fantasies.
You're probably right. Take away a man's revenge fantasies and what does he have left?
if you do grievous bodily harm, id go with the sopranos defense. after all, its jersey fuckin' city, yo. vigilantism is encouraged if not expected, im told.
You woke up this morning
Got yourself a gun.....
and dont rule out the perverse pleasures available to the saboteur.
We need to get the city to get this guy in touch with the new owner of the building next to mine, who has excavated his basement and put all of the dirt in his backyard. Let them make a reasonable transfer -- big pile of dirt into big hole. If only it could be this simple.
My guy hired a squad of day laborers to carry his backyard dirt through the building and into the dumpster on the street--one bucket at a time. It was like something out of The Shawshank Redemption. Then, I think, he ran out of money to pay another squad to shore up the hole. Your guy and my guy might be cousins.
I think your guy and my guy might actually be the same jerk.
If Lou Manzo is claiming to stand up to the big developers if he's elected mayor do you think he do anything about these guys. They're really the people bringing down the quality of life around here.
"You're probably right. Take away a man's revenge fantasies and what does he have left?"
In case readers haven't guessed, joester belongs to an evolved but vanishing species, the SNAG (sensitive new age guy).
Aaron: big developers inspire little developers to perform feats of larceny and ineptitude. I've been watching with amusement and horror the slow transformation of the area around the former Morris Canal. They're planning a high rise over next to the Turnpike with associated development that will front on the south side of the canal/ditch. Two slight little "political" problems: the area is designated "wetlands" and there is a sewage "outfall" that dumps fecal waste into the canal whenever the sewage treatment plant runs over capacity. Somehow I doubt either will be an impediment to the march of progress.
I have corrected the above reference to joester--the comment as originally written said he was a SNAG (sensitive new age male); of course that would be a SNAM--I meant sensitive new age guy.
I was sure he was only a concern troll. Thanks for clarifying that.
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The American Dream
This is my downstairs neighbor standing on what used to be his patio deck. The property owner next door decided to squeeze a few more rental dollars out of his 3-story building by lowering the level of his back yard ten feet and adding a fourth apartment in the basement. Construction has been slow: he did the digging a year ago and never shored up the excavated pit with concrete, as the city required him to do. Consequently my neighbor's yard is slowly sliding into the hole.
Here's another view: you can see the lake of water from a recent rain through the gap under the fence. It's amazing the fence is still standing.
And here's the view of the fence on the other side of the pit, two doors over from our building. Isn't America great? It's a place where you're free to be a business failure and there are always others to take up the slack--that's how much we value entrepreneurship. It wasn't always thus: in days of yore a posse of strong men from the neighborhood would have paid a visit on Mr. Budding Capitalist and stood there with arms folded till he filled in the hole with his own labor. But that would be fascistic, so we rely on the court system to do...nothing.
- tom moody 9-09-2004 8:56 am
That is the most compelling and well reasoned argument for mob-rule vigilante violence I have ever heard. Lets fire up our torches and go get the bastard (you first, we'll be right behind you).
You know, come to think of it, that mob in Frankenstein always got a bad rap. If my neighbor was reanimating the dead from bits of scraps from the local cemetery I might want to go give him a call too. Imagine if your husband had just died and two weeks later you see his left arm sewn onto the side of a child eating monster.
Does an angry mob have chants like protesters do? "Hey hey, ho ho, child eating monster has got to go!"
- joester 9-10-2004 12:34 am
So I take it you're in favor of having the adjacent properties collapse because this man "had a dream of makin' it on his own"?
- tom moody 9-10-2004 1:28 am
I just sold my copy of Rolling Vengance at our stoop sale. In Rolling Vengance a bike gang kills a man's entire family and the cops do NOTHING. So he goes out and gets himself a moster truck and puts the biggest assed drill bit onto the front of it and has at 'em.
Have you though of doing that?
What if you put your garbage back there? Oops! Fell through the hole!
JOE
- joester 9-10-2004 1:35 am
Maybe you're offended by the part about making the man fill in the hole himself. What if the neighbors got together and filled in the hole to help the adjacent landowners, like an Amish barn raising? Then would you stop comparing me to Charles Bronson?
- tom moody 9-10-2004 1:42 am
Charles Bronson? You should be so lucky! More like Moe when there's an angry mob on the Simpsons.
But you're a psudo lawyer can't you steal some letterhead from work and scare the willies out of him with some legalese? Use words like "aforementioned, heretofore and accusitatory" (I may have made up that last one) and that hole will be full by nightfall.
And what's more American than combining the angry mob mentality with the court system?
- joester 9-10-2004 2:12 am
Yeah, legal coercion is still coercion. My landlord has lawyered up and also gotten the city inspectors in the loop. It could potentially take years for anything to be resolved: if the guy's broke threats mean nothing to him. None of this is actually my problem, because I'm a renter and don't have access to the patio anyway--except to the extent I have to look outside my window and be appalled by this crap. In fact, a posse of my neighbors (including me, by letter--I had to work) did go before the City Historic Commission to stop an earlier development scheme by this genius: he originally wanted to extend the back of his building so that it no longer had a back yard. The man is a dangerous schlemiel and you should be sympathizing with the plight of all who live near him instead of calling out my (actually rather reasonable) revenge fantasies.
- tom moody 9-10-2004 3:27 am
You're probably right. Take away a man's revenge fantasies and what does he have left?
- joester 9-10-2004 3:41 am
if you do grievous bodily harm, id go with the sopranos defense. after all, its jersey fuckin' city, yo. vigilantism is encouraged if not expected, im told.
You woke up this morning
Got yourself a gun.....
and dont rule out the perverse pleasures available to the saboteur.
- dave 9-10-2004 4:05 am
We need to get the city to get this guy in touch with the new owner of the building next to mine, who has excavated his basement and put all of the dirt in his backyard. Let them make a reasonable transfer -- big pile of dirt into big hole. If only it could be this simple.
- Aaron Yassin (guest) 9-12-2004 4:00 pm
My guy hired a squad of day laborers to carry his backyard dirt through the building and into the dumpster on the street--one bucket at a time. It was like something out of The Shawshank Redemption. Then, I think, he ran out of money to pay another squad to shore up the hole. Your guy and my guy might be cousins.
- tom moody 9-12-2004 5:31 pm
I think your guy and my guy might actually be the same jerk.
If Lou Manzo is claiming to stand up to the big developers if he's elected mayor do you think he do anything about these guys. They're really the people bringing down the quality of life around here.
- Aaron Yassin (guest) 9-25-2004 6:12 am
"You're probably right. Take away a man's revenge fantasies and what does he have left?"
In case readers haven't guessed, joester belongs to an evolved but vanishing species, the SNAG (sensitive new age guy).
Aaron: big developers inspire little developers to perform feats of larceny and ineptitude. I've been watching with amusement and horror the slow transformation of the area around the former Morris Canal. They're planning a high rise over next to the Turnpike with associated development that will front on the south side of the canal/ditch. Two slight little "political" problems: the area is designated "wetlands" and there is a sewage "outfall" that dumps fecal waste into the canal whenever the sewage treatment plant runs over capacity. Somehow I doubt either will be an impediment to the march of progress.
- tom moody 9-30-2004 7:50 pm
I have corrected the above reference to joester--the comment as originally written said he was a SNAG (sensitive new age male); of course that would be a SNAM--I meant sensitive new age guy.
- tom moody 11-21-2004 12:43 pm
I was sure he was only a concern troll. Thanks for clarifying that.
- Robert Huffmann (guest) 11-18-2006 7:18 pm