Tuesday, September 18, 2007

News Casualty

This is a rather sharp article I wrote which didn't make the cut for my newspaper. It might be a little old now, but really, it's timeless.

Violent Protest – 9.11.07
by Ed Weinberg

Twenty minutes before a September 10th anti-casino protest is scheduled to occur, pro-development advocates are already at the site of the proposed SugarHouse casino, preparing for a battle with light conversation and laughter. The group, FACT (Fishtown Action), holds mass-produced signs reading "No Delay, Build Today," and wears matching white t-shirts with the SugarHouse logo. They talk with excitement about the revitalization of the area, and a picnic the casino threw two days earlier.

Across the six lanes of Delaware Avenue, on a traffic island at its intersection with Frankford, a group of rival protesters calling themselves FAST (Fishtown Against Sugarhouse Takeover) hand out colorful signs and shout their own slogans. There's no dress code for this side, and their styles range from blue-collar to shorts and loud t-shirts. The demographic skews noticeably younger, with a handful of toddlers holding signs which read "casiNO!" About the only thing the two groups have in common is talk about the revitalization of the area and the picnic, albeit with a markedly different slant.

Where FACT supporters ask, "Why should Atlantic City get all the business?" FAST responds, "We don't want what's happened to the city of Atlantic City to happen to Philadelphia."

And where FACT sees the picnic as a sign of SugarHouse's generosity and future benefits, FAST tends to focus on one ugly incident in its closing hours.

The incident, in the details everyone can agree on, consisted of FAST supporter Ed Verrall arriving at Penn Treaty Park late in the afternoon, when the cleanup was on and the last of the attendees were leaving. He'd come on bicycle, by himself. He took some pictures. He got into a shouting match with FACT member Donna Tomlinson. Some other attendees approached the two with contentious motives. Verrall was punched, and went down. The police didn't take any names.

Tomlinson says of the incident, "He threw the first punch, and he threw it at a woman."

Daniel Hunter, an organizer with Casino-Free Philadelphia, claims, "His arms never left his side" – although he wasn't present for the altercation.

Mary Ann Worthington, a FACT Board member who witnessed the incident, says, "He was arguing and cursing at Donna, saying that we're paid off, saying nasty things about the Catholic Church."

Verrall says, "I didn't go there to talk to anyone."

If you split the accounts along political lines, the story starts to fill out, and gains more contradictions on final analysis. In FACT's reconstruction, Ed Verrall came to picnic late in the day, taking pictures of the dwindling crowd to simulate a failed event. When approached by Tomlinson, Verrall started yelling things like, "You're ruining our neighborhood!" More people came over. Worthington thinks the skirmish started with Verrall pushing his bike into a woman she knows by first name only, Jerri. John Flanagan, one of the men who came to intercede, says the bike didn't play a part. Tomlinson says he lunged at a woman named Dolores, then one of the men stepped in and it became a shoving match. Worthington says the woman's husband punched him once, and he went down.

This they all agree on. The fight wasn't much of a fight at all.

It came to an appropriate conclusion, Tomlinson says, when the cops came and didn't take any names. "They said, 'Listen buddy, it's common.' Then he started screaming at them!"

The FAST version differs in small but crucial ways. Verrall, a 52-year-old teamster turned activist, face still colored by the remnants of a black eye, says he was taking pictures of six city trucks at the picnic, disturbed by their presence. Tomlinson picked a fight with him, and called other people over. A man – not a woman – grabbed his bike, he grabbed it back, "they punched me from behind and I went down. They said I punched a woman."

Verrall says that other descriptions of the event had inconsistencies, and the police let these witnesses walk away. "They took me back to the station and had me look through pictures. But of course I didn't find anything – these guys aren't criminals."

Hunter has more to say about the ramifications of the incident. He thinks that the casino may have hired thugs, since Verrall – who lives across the street from the SugarHouse site – didn't recognize any of his assailants. He's also disturbed by the lack of police reaction. Though he doesn't say it explicitly, he's clearly concerned that the fight could get uglier.

Hunter says, "This is the first time they've been involved in politically-motivated violence. These are scare tactics. We want SugarHouse to say they don't condone violence – we've said this in the past. But their aim is to divide Fishtown, and this is the way they do it."

One thing stands out in Hunter's conjectures as fact: The casino is dividing Fishtown. Whether this is an intentional maneuver or a side-effect of a controversial issue, the SugarHouse plans have become a polarizing issue.

Late in the protest, after the sun, sloganeering and constant roar of rush-hour traffic have taken their toll, the tension comes to a head. Moon Mullen, a large man with a booming voice and a FACT Board member, says, "It's nice to see Society Hill here."

The man he addressed, Casino-Free Philadelphia lawyer Paul Boni, says, "It's nice to be here."

Mullen asks, "Do you know where this is?" stomping the pavement. "This is Fishtown!" he yells, "Fishtown!"

A man standing next to Boni responds, "I know, I live here!"

Mullen yells, "This is Fishtown!" one more time, and walks away.

When the dust settles, SugarHouse PR man Ken Snyder walks over from the side Mullen had been standing on and shakes Boni's hand. He says, "No hard feelings, I love this guy. We have season tickets together."

Daniel Hunter, Ed Verrall + John Domlen (l. to r.) in front of Sugarhouse site

General George Patton's 6 Past Lives

[From The Book of Lists, Wallechinsky, Wallace and Wallace, 1977 edition]

Patton had "subconscious memories" of these previous incarnations:

1. A prehistoric warrior who "battled for fresh mammoth" and "warred for pastures new."
2. A Greek hoplite who fought the Persians of King Cyrus.
3. A soldier of Alexander the Great at the siege of Tyre.
4. A legionnaire with Julius Caesar in northern Gaul.
5. An English knight at the battle of Crécy during the Hundred Years' War.
6. A Napoleonic marshal at a time "when one laughed at death and numbers, trusting in the emperor's star."

–Farago, Ladislas, Patton: Ordeal and Triumph (New York: I. Obolensky, 1964).

Frieze in Belgrade, "the most bombed city in the history of the world"

Grace Paley says...

"Two ears, one for literature, one for home, are useful for writers."

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Illadelphia

I moved in to a new place (a new, new place for anyone who knows how I've been living) Sunday and it might be the nicest one yet. At least, after I flea bomb my room (a half-hour ago) and Rug Doctor some of the darker traces of the cat who used to chill there, affectionately known as Mr. Shittypants.

On my initial sweep, I found a dead bug in one of the corners. I checked for it today, intending to pick it up, and found I'd already done it. This is something I likely wouldn't have done in the past – I would have seen it and, having no paper towel handy, I would have left it for later. I would have forgotten it and found it again. But I didn't. For some reason, this strikes me as significant.

I live with three guys, all seem very nice. Me, two roomies and a couple other people had some drinks last night. Fun times. Just like my travels, hanging with a Hungarian (roommate), French from France (roommate), German and American. No girls however, very unlike my travels.

Vince (French guy) and I played a French card game this morning with an oversized deck. This is called Tarot, but if it told a fortune I don't want to hear it – I lost. Just really relaxing, chill times, reminiscent of my dear departed Montreal, and the future looks equally dope. I've been killing as a reporter for the Spirit, a community newspaper in NE Philly – my editor tells me to "keep writing the hell out of those articles." I might have a job as a part-time waiter for a service that caters banquets at the Kimmel Center, Perelman Center, The Academy of the Arts, The Free Library, etc. Things are looking up.

So yeah, this is a pic of my neighborhood, Powelton Village, an old hippie enclave. Apparently, it's famously the home of a radical black group that got firebombed in the '80s (Ed. did a little research, my undoing, and found out the group had actually moved to West Philly (my former area!) after a blockade had cut their Powelton food supplies in 1978). My Dad told me the area's okay, just stay away from that house. So of course I won't.



Saturday, September 8, 2007

Mr. Pyramid, Zahi Hawass

Zahi Hawass, world-famous Egyptologist and Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities – the last word on pyramids – was speaking at UPenn on Thursday, I had the date circled on my calendar and was looking forward to going. I felt like this was the thing that would get me writing again, a little kick in the ass from a volatile genius. It seemed like a chemical equation – put me and Zahi in one room and watch the sparks fly.

Something came up, and I got there late. I had heard stories about the man, stories which conjured a bigger image than the white-haired Egyptian I watched sign books. The man was squat and heavy like a brick, well dressed in gray wool, a smile of deliberate joy fighting the accustomed frown.

The man had condemned the Bosnian pyramid project I volunteered on as "ludicrous," and refused to investigate further. Everyone had something to say about him. He loomed like God over the project. Semir Osmanagic, his crazy Bosnian equivalent, claimed that Zahi protected his interests by not acknowledging the possibility of pyramids. Amir Moustafa, a student journalist studying in Zahi's Egypt, told me he thought it was a larger issue – he protected the interests of orthodox science by not traveling to the fringes. Nancy Gallou, a tough archaeologist and dear buddy, told me about the Egyptian consulate's unaffiliated mission to Bosnia with a black humor characteristic of the time: "This Ali Barakat came here and told everybody lies. Boy, was Zahi not pleased!"

More evocatively, the Boston University-employed geologist Robert Schoch told me a story. He had actually met the man once. He had gravity, Schoch said. One time, he was having a disagreement with another scientist – the story goes – he threw him onto the ground, stepped on his neck and asked him to reconsider. The man did.

I watched him from the cluster of photographers in front of the signing table and its line, my camera out for camouflage. I got nothing from this, his wavering between smiling and serious, posing for pictures, head bowed in signing. I wanted to ask him my question, not really a question but more of a platform, a test. "Why didn't he deal with the Bosnian pyramids more decisively? Despite his one-time condemnation, they still soaked up scientific funding, etc." Looking at him talking with his fans, signing the same Indiana Jones hats Semir had worn, the anxious crowd waiting for their moment, I decided my timing was off and my question that wasn't really a question got put away forever. At least until I ran into Josh Bernstein outside, host of History Channel's Digging for the Truth.

I asked him my question, hungry for some sort of confrontation with an emissary of popular science. He had never heard of pyramids in Bosnia, he said, but it sounded like a tourism stunt. It was, I told him, but worse. It took money intended for science. Grasping at straws, I asked him if he thought this was wrong.

He said, "It's an impoverished country and I guess they have to do whatever they can to get tourism. In Afghanistan they sell opium..."

"Alright, thanks, see ya," I called over my shoulder, unsatisfied.


Monday, August 27, 2007

Mtl 4eva

While I do another late-month scramble for an apartment in Philly, sometimes my arrow slips onto the Montreal CL pages. Then I see some $100/month apartment – and you can be sure it's not as dangerous as Rittenhouse Square (my 93-year-old told me about a mugging there) – and my heart breaks all over again.

So, why is Montreal the best place in the world? This is a question scientists have been asking for at least 8 years. Their answers will rock you.

1. Smoked meat, bagels, poutine and shockingly good health

2. L'hockey

3. Les filles du roi – the "king's daughters" that were sent to Quebec to make babies in the early settlement days and contribute to a heritage of loose morals

4. The art scenes, which are all interrelated and pretty easy to infiltrate. It's really a kind of small town

4 1/2. Autodistroboto, the cigarette vending machines repurposed to sell pack-sized art items

5. Sweet memories of Miami

6. Montreal summer – the best summer I've ever spent

7. Halloween, 2003

8. King Heroin

9. Montreal really listens when you talk shit

10. The lead sentence of a Berlin music column I read in 2006, "Now that Montreal is more New York than New York..."

Kisses to you, ma chere fleure

Friday, August 17, 2007