Grave-Dancers Union Grave-Dancers Union Last September, officials at ...
Last September, officials at Brooklyn's famous Green-Wood Cemetery raised a few eyebrows by announcing they would be hosting a film series right there at the graveyard's chapel. Then the series was scrapped after only a few weeks. According to a cemetery spokesperson, the films were cancelled because of low attendance. No surprise there, given that they were showing Disney films and musicals instead of Night of the Living Dead. Who the hell wants to go to a cemetery to watch Yankee Doodle Dandy?
There's another side to the story, though. Some people blamed the cancellation not on low attendance, but on pressure put on the cemetery by protestors, most of whom had family members buried there.
As one protestor, who we're assuming doesn't get invited to a lot of parties, told NY1 last week, "A cemetery is a cemetery. It is not a place for entertainment? Entertainment is unbefitting and it's immoral. It's absolutely immoral."
The thing is, it wasn't just movies at Green-Wood. They've also hosted dance recitals, musical performances, lectures and art exhibits, all in order to raise money to restore and maintain hundreds of the cemetery's historic monuments. That pissed off the protestors, too, who didn't much care for the idea of some stranger dancing on their father's grave. So they started a petition and collected 1000 signatures in an effort to force Green-Wood to put an end to "entertainment" of any kind on the cemetery grounds.
The petition ended up in the hands of Assemblywoman Joan Millman, who has since drafted a bill that she will formally introduce to the state legislature in January. The bill, if passed, would ban any entertainment from taking place in any cemetery.
Assemblywoman Millman has fought for some very good things in the past?from repealing the Rockefeller laws to cleaning up the Gowanus?but it must be said: This is just stupid. And for being a former schoolteacher, she certainly doesn't know her history very well.
It wasn't that long ago that cemeteries were considered parks like any other. In the 19th and into the early part of the 20th century, cemeteries regularly hosted musical performances and small theatrical productions. Sunday picnics in the cemetery were commonplace for thousands of families. None of this was considered "immoral" or "disgraceful" (as Millman called it). The thinking at the time was that cemeteries, while being places where the dead were stored, were at heart places for the living. Then came a shift in public mores, and those Sunday picnics disappeared around the same time memorial photography did.
"Entertainment has no place with grief," that same killjoy protestor said. And most Americans might agree with her. But you can still find traditional, lively funeral marches in New Orleans, while traditional Irish wakes are held elsewhere around the country. Different people, different cultures, deal with death in their own ways, and there's nothing wrong with bringing a little life into Green-Wood.
As the cemetery's president put it in a statement responding to the hubbub: "By welcoming and introducing the community, young and old, to the cemetery, we hope to show them that this is a place of history, dignity and respect, where we honor the lives of all those who have gone before us."
With luck, next year the film series will be back. With a little more luck, they'll think better of trying to draw in the crowds with Matilda and My Fair Lady.
In Defense of Newsracks
In August 2002, Mayor Bloomberg announced that the New York City Council and his administration shared the same goal in passing legislation that regulates the placement, installation and maintenance of newsracks on the sidewalks of New York. The city's Department of Transportation was handed the responsibility of governing the placement and maintenance of newsracks, with the Environmental Control Board (ECB) handling enforcement.
Although the newsrack owners fought the legislation prior to its passage, pressure from well-heeled community groups ensured passage of the bill, as sponsored by Council member Eva Moskowitz.
In the months leading up to the start of the enforcement period, newsrack owners came together in an historic coalition, bringing competitors together to develop a plan to comply with the new law. The rack owners recognized that there were problems with the placement of many newsracks, and were determined to demonstrate a good-faith effort to be good corporate citizens. They met regularly and dedicated significant resources toward compliance with the new regulations. A website was created where they could register their rack locations, be notified of racks not in compliance and email a private vendor to conduct the necessary repairs or fix positioning. A private company was contracted to assist with the repair and maintenance of the racks.
Nonetheless, by late May racks throughout the city were plastered with "notices of correction." The New York Press Association (the trade association for community newspapers throughout the state) was besieged with phone calls from publishers exasperated by the barrage of tickets being issued by the ECB. They complained that the stated goal of the legislation was to ensure "the safe and orderly use of the sidewalks we all share," yet the vast majority of tickets were issued for "dirty" boxes, graffiti or not bearing proper identification.
"We are the victims of vandalism," one outraged publisher noted. "People are plastering our racks with stickers or covering them with graffiti and we're being fined. The perpetrators aren't being punished?the publishers are."
Then there are the placement issues. Rack owners who receive a notice for a placement issue may take corrective action, only to find out later that a street cleaner, storeowner or pedestrian has moved it?a new violation for the same rack.
More than 2200 notices have been issued thus far. Because no mechanism exists to enable rack owners to notify the DOT that a correction has been made?or that a notice was issued in error?owners must respond to every violation. And because the ECB is not equipped to handle the high volume of notices, the hearing calendar is in disarray. Publishers prepare for hearings, appear with supporting documentation, paid counsel and staff, only to learn that hearings have not been scheduled or that representatives from the ECB have not appeared.
Exacerbating the problem are the ever-vigilant community-group members, marching through the tony uptown neighborhoods, clipboards in hand, documenting the offending newsracks, creating lists of complaints to send to the DOT. Their mission, it seems, is to save New York by removing newsracks from the sidewalks.
Perhaps the community groups will be proud of their efforts when there are fewer local newspapers creating a sense of community within New York's neighborhoods. Their well-organized and misguided campaign may ultimately eliminate the only vehicles that provide neighborhood news, coverage of the arts, government news, community calendars, while promoting commerce through advertising and pushing payroll dollars into the community.
Council members and local community groups should instead focus their time and resources on New York City's real problems: our crumbling schools, increasing homelessness and a dismal downtown economy. We urge the anti-newsrack crusaders to be careful what they wish for, lest they find themselves without one of the most vital parts of this city: a vibrant community press.
You'd think, for instance, that going to a dance party would be a fun, lighthearted thing to do. That's certainly what 22-year-old Dominiaz Blanchard thought when he went to a dance at a Bronx community center on the 16th. It apparently turned out to be one of those weird voodoo trance parties, because it was only after he took a cab home and started getting ready for bed that Blanchard noticed, much to his surprise, that he'd been stabbed three times?twice in the chest and once in the arm.
That same night, that same borough, a 35-year-old emotionally disturbed man suffered some ominous chest pains of his own. Jason Rowland, who suffered from a number of medical problems along with the emotional ones, started swinging on his father at their home Sunday night. Police were called, slapped the cuffs on an uncooperative Rowland, and removed him from the house on a stretcher.
The cuffs came off once he calmed down, and the cops delivered him to a nearby hospital?where he had a seizure and died.
Another emotionally disturbed man is still alive today after holding a nurse hostage for 30 minutes on Nov. 19. Abdul-Rasheem Muhammed, a patient at Long Island College Hospital, grabbed the nurse and put what was described as a "small scissors" to her throat in order to more clearly express his dissatisfaction with the hospital food.
A policeman convinced the patient to release the nurse (perhaps offering him a Twinkie in exchange), then arrested him. Muhammed's being charged with all sorts of things.
When the body of 23-year-old Sherwin Henry was found on the rooftop of a Brooklyn housing complex, police were stymied. Then they learned that Henry was a dealer. He didn't deal crack or heroin, though?he dealt nicotine. He'd go out to the Indian reservations on Long Island, load up on the tax-free smokes, then bring them back to the city and sell them on the street. Police now believe that Henry was shot in the head by a customer who wanted to grab both his money and his cigarettes. But we know who really killed him, don't we?
It's been an especially rough semester for city college students. If they aren't jumping off balconies, getting gunned down or dying of mysterious unknown causes, someone is sneaking into their dorm rooms at night to fondle them.
That's what happened to an NYU freshman last weekend. She was in her room at 3:30 a.m. when three men?at least one of them a student?strolled through her unlocked door. As one of the creeps grabbed her butt, another, identified as 18-year-old Solomon Evan, "fondled her head and hair" before fleeing.
Although the whereabouts of the other two is unknown, Evan was evicted from his dorm and is now facing burglary and sexual- abuse charges. No word on the condition of the victim's hairdo.