My Morning in Gravesend

On the way out of my house this morning, I walked passed the old Asian woman that regularly comes into my driveway to look for cans and bottles in my recycling bin. I don’t think she has much luck usually because, as far as I know, everyone that lives in the house returns their bottles and cans for the 5-cent deposit that the State holds hostage.

I continued down my block to the corner 7-11 to buy a cup of coffee before my ride into work. I passed several neighbors that were also heading to their cars on their way to work. In the 7-11, a working class man in front of me in line asked the clerk for a tin of apple flavored chewing tobacco. The clerk informed him that the City has banned the sale of all flavored tobacco products (not completely accurate- they still allow menthol flavored cigarettes!) Needless to say, he was not happy and made some disparaging comments about the Mayor and stormed out.

As I approached my car with cup of coffee in hand, I see a man standing near the tree in front of my car acting suspiciously. The woman in the car behind me had a baffled look on her face and began walking away quickly as I approached. I gave the man by the tree a closer look and saw that his pants were open and he was urinating on the tree in front of my car on the corner of Avenue U and West 8th Street!

Being the polite person that I am I waited for him to finish up before going to have a chat with him. Before I could open my mouth I heard another neighbor’s voice saying “Hey Russ, what the f@#$ is this guy doing?” So we asked him in a very Brooklyn-esque way what he was thinking and he frantically apologized. That was probably a good idea on his part.

The man that came to my aid is somewhat of a friend of mine. I'm not going to name names, but he is also one of the stars in a new show on Spike TV called “Scrappers” (http://www.spike.com/show/38515). It airs every Tuesday night at 10 PM. I don’t know his political persuasion, but I do know that he is as Brooklyn as it gets and he did the right thing this morning.

Our Mayor and local elected officials are busy banning aluminum baseball bats and flavored tobacco while our streets revert back to the way they were pre-Giuliani. I live in a relatively safe neighborhood, but quality of life issues/crimes are increasingly making life uncomfortable here.

Where are the police? I see traffic enforcement agents and sanitation supervisors issuing out tickets every morning and throughout the day to hardworking residents while they are powerless to stop graffiti taggers and public urinating dirt bags.

President John Adams once said “Liberty once lost is lost forever.” Our government at all levels has gotten into the business of taking liberty from the working class while turning a blind eye toward street hoodlums and other special interest groups. When will it stop? Just because the Mayor doesn’t like tobacco, trans fat, or salt and Councilman Jimmy Oddo doesn’t like aluminum baseball bats doesn’t mean that they should use their government power lent to them by the people to ban them.

Wake up my brothers and sisters. Elect people that believe in our republican form of government and will also protect us by cleaning up our streets before it is too late.