Broken but not Gone
Sunday, January 29th, 2006
Ludlow Street, Lower East Side. View Large
Live Chickens – Delancey Street
Sunday, January 29th, 2006
Shot through the filthy glass of the live chicken store, underneath the Williamsburg Bridge on Delancey Street, Lower East Side. I smelled them before I saw them. View Large
Lunar New Year in Chinatown
Sunday, January 29th, 2006
It’s the year of the dog. Lion Dancers in front of the famous Wo Hop’s restaurant on Mott Street. View Large
Mott Street, Chinatown, Manhattan. View Large
In 1997, New York City’s Mayor Giuliani banned firecrackers for the Chinese New Year, without any understanding of their ritual necessity. This centralized display in Chatham Square is a pale shadow of the noisy chaos surrounding the lion dancers prior to ’97. Walking anywhere in Chinatown during the New Year’s celebration back then, you were likely to be dodging firecrackers at your feet. These days compressed air confetti cannons supply the closest thing to chaos you will find.
Lin Zexu Statue in Chatham Square designed by artist, T.C. Ho. The plaque says “Pioneer in the war against drugs.”“In November 1997, Chinatown welcomed the addition of a new statue memorializing Lin Zexu, a Qing dynasty commissioner celebrated for his efforts in the Opium War. The height of Lin’s career peaked after he managed to successfully confiscate and destroy three million pounds of raw opium from European drug lords.” View Large
Tompkins Freed Slaves in NY
Sunday, January 29th, 2006From, SLAVERY IN NEW YORK (the publication of the current New York Historical Society exhibition):
“New York remained committed to slavery. The majority of New York’s Founding Fathers–signatories of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution–held slaves…. At first, slavery hardly budged. New York’s lawmakers took some small steps–loosening the rules for manumission, for example–but no act of emancipation emerged from the legislative deliberations immediately following the war…. In some parts of New York, the number of slaves, and even the proportion of black people enslaved, increased.
“The Gradual Emancipation law freed not a single New York slave. It promised to free their children, but not until after they had served a long apprenticeship, until age twenty-eight for men and twenty-five for women…. No slave needed to be freed under the law until well into the third decade of the nineteenth century, and slavery–in the person of those who were slaves in 1799–could conceivably survive until the brink of the twentieth century. Moreover, as the law went into effect, slaveholders developed new subterfuges to retain black men and women in bondage….
“The 1799 law, in short, did not end slavery but rather initiated a new struggle for freedom . . . in 1817, at the urging of Governor Daniel Tompkins, the legislature agreed that on July 4, 1827, all those promised freedom by the Gradual Emancipation Law would be free. Still, those black men and women not covered by the 1799 law remained in bondage, and slavery survived in New York for another two decades . . . until 1850, nearly three quarters of a century after the Declaration of Independence declared equality the common condition of mankind.”
Tompkins Park in the East Village is named after this governor.
Via: Peri Hupsous
Ask a Republican
Saturday, January 28th, 2006
Ask a Republican by Richard Martin (R-Ohio)
“Hello! I often get asked questions about Republican policy by greasy-haired liberal hippies. Seattle was no exception in Sept of 2005. It was teeming with them. May God bless you and America.”
Very funny Quicktime movies.
Stikman on Mercer Street
Saturday, January 28th, 2006
Spring Bowery Tower
Saturday, January 28th, 2006
Another Downtown patch of sky is gone. View Large
