So former Philadelphia Police lieutenant Jonathan Josey is found not guilty of simple assault in striking an unarmed woman to the ground during the Puerto Rican Day Parade last year. Apparently, the incident being captured on video and shown to the world was enough to convince the judge that Josey was innocent and has now left the the ex-cop the right to petition for his job back.
Other than steal money from City Hall or shoot his or her superiors, what does a Philly cop have to do to get convicted in Philadelphia?
On a lighter note that was a snazzy suit Josey was wearing out of the courtroom, definitely not something he got off the rack at Macy's. I need to find out who his tailor is and see if I can afford him without taking out a second mortgage.
In all honesty, this post was going to be some sort of commentary on civility and anonymity on the internet or the lack thereof but I'm still not sure how I'm going to write it. I'm having one of my Hemingway moments where I'd much prefer to drink and distract myself from doing anything really positive.
PNBR 2012 rounding round Rittenhouse Sq.
Too bad I don't really drink, or at least not as much as the rest of the family, I might have something really interesting to say. So fuck it before I really do Hemingway thing, the gunshot barrel to the head and not the talent part, I will go to the old stand-by which I thought I'd never do again and present to you the 4th annual Philly Naked Bike Ride which happened about 2 weeks ago...and yes I chickened out again this year so don't ask.
Having fun at the Philly Naked Bike Ride
One of the spectators strips and seems to want get into the action
Risky Business?
Some preferred an even more traditional mode of transportation
Damn, Angela Davis civil-rights activist and icon of the 70's was at the Occupy Philly protests over the weekend and I wasn't.
Now I know this is 2011 and not 1968, which was probably the watershed year or the benchmark for all protests, but still Angela Davis was there and I didn't know. I was busy being domesticated, comfortable and warm. When did I become so old and sedate?
There would have been a time when just mention that anyone was shouting something against someone and I would have been there. I might not have been on the right side, or any side, but I would have been there witnessing people standing up for what they believed were their needs, their wants, their rights. But those days I guess maybe slowly drifting away as I become more and more settled, middle-class and bougie.
Anyway, I was at the protests in Philadelphia about 4 weeks ago when they first started. I was trying to figure out what they were about and why it was that I could no longer find the nerve or the energy to fight "the man" with them. I remember standing behind one of the placards that the protestors would hold up now and again when someone pulled out his camera and motioned me to lift up my arm, maybe Black Panther style, and show my defiance for authority. I just laughed and walked away. I had my own pictures to take. Plus if I was going to get a beat down by the police like they do in other cities, I'd prefer to get it done in New York where the money from the law-suit would be a hell of a lot more.
Police Commissioner Ramsey looks on at the protestors
I had always heard that once you got a bunch of gays or lesbians in large group there will always be some sort of trouble breaking out, but I had never seen it. I thought that was just one of those urban myths that hear about like the existence of Big Foot, or alligators living on the sewers of New York City, or Herman Cain having a chance in hell of becoming President.
You can imagine my surprise when at the Philly Outfest this year not only did I witness gang loads of police rushing into places that I was unable to follow them into, but I saw fights break out between girls on a day that was supposed to celebrating peace and love for all.
The whole purpose of National Coming Out Day is more than an excuse to shake your money maker in public and show those who are lesbian gay bi-sexual trans-gender people, but that the LGBT community is one that consists of people that you know, that you do business with, that are members of your own family. It's a recognition that they are us and that we are you.
October 11th was chosen for NCOD because that was the date of the second demonstration and march in Washington DC in 1986 for lesbian and gay rights which really is a misnomer because those rights are really no different form the rights that many non-gays and lesbians already have.
Anyway, in Philadelphia this day is celebrated as the Philly Outfest, a block party that is always held on the Sunday closest to the 11th in what is known as the Gayborhood. They say that it's the largest event of this kind in the world and that close to 40,000 people attended this year. But you know what people say and what things really are can be two different things.
Here now are some pictures from last Sunday's events.
There are some people alive still who can say what it was they were doing or thinking or how they felt when they heard about President Kennedy being shot or the attack on Pearl Harbor or Roosevelt dying, Franklin that is not Teddy. Even though if you are one of the ones who can remember when Teddy Roosevelt died then God bless you and I hope you have many more years. I however, will be one of those who will always remember 911, although perhaps not with the same intensity that I thought I would have.
I remember that Tuesday being one of those ordinary days where the sky was clear and blue with small puffy white clouds. The air was clean and the temperature pleasant. It was the kind of day that you wish you always had but take for granted when you do by just going about your business. I had dropped off the Ex at the bus station in Mount laurel to catch the 7 o’clock to New York. He was working a show in New York and had to get back to do that week’s performances. I went on to Philadelphia and work and what was to be a missed afternoon dental appointment and perhaps not such an ordinary day.
It was shortly after 9am when my sister called me from my parent’s home in Tampa and told me that one of the towers at the World Trade Center had been struck by a jet plane.” Tragic” I thought and I was sure that a lot of people would have been hurt but I had work to do and why was she calling me? She called me again about 15 minutes later and told me that the second tower had been hit. “Terrorism” I thought to myself. Yeah there’s a stroke of genius, but I didn’t say anything to her other than to thank her and then hang up.
Getting up from my desk, I walked over to windows by my supervisor’s desk to see if she was listening to her radio. From the 15th floor if you look towards Jersey you can see the Federal court buildings as they sit on Independence Mall. If you look south, you can see Philadelphia International Airport about 4 or 5 miles away and see the planes take off and land. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary except for my supervisor who was running about with a frazzled look with hands waving in the air asking, “Is this End of Days?” I hoped it wasn’t since knowing that she was a Christian there would probably be a special place in Hell reserved for her and with my luck I’d be sitting right beside her.
I went back to my desk and there was a voicemail from the Ex. He said that something was going on and that he might need my help. I called his cell phone back, several times, but the lines were busy or down or something. I couldn’t reach him. “How do I fix this?” I thought.
Minutes passed and my sister called me again and said that the one of the towers had collapsed. “You’re insane!” I almost screamed. It was getting to me. Everyone knew that the World Trade Center and many other buildings were built to withstand plane crashes. My God, I knew the World Trade Center; I had worked for Spear Leeds across the street from it. Each tower was almost as wide as a city block. But she said that she had seen it on the TV. How could I really argue with her? She could either believe me or her lying eyes. I really didn’t have anything to stand on.
I got up again and walked over to the windows and stared out. Everything still looked clear and beautiful, but people started to talk about the Pentagon being hit behind me. The pentagon? Don’t they have tanks or anti-aircraft artillery defending that place? My brain was being torn apart. I went back to my desk. There was another voicemail from the Ex. His bus had been turned around prevented from entering Manhattan and he needed me to pick him up. Pick him up from where Hoboken, Mount Laurel or was he coming into Philly? Why couldn’t he call me on my cell? Why couldn’t he leave a message that was worth a damn? I called him again, but I still couldn’t get through. I called mutual friends of ours in Philly but no one had heard from him. I knew he was safe, just as I knew I was safe and would continue to be so. But I was starting to worry.
My sister called again and said that the second tower had fallen and that was all the news she could give me since she was getting ready to catch her flight to Philly. “I don’t know where you think you’re flying to but it won’t be Philadelphia. The airport has been shut down. ” I said. She said she would call the airlines and see what was up. After the nationwide shutdown of all aviation she was able to get a flight booked on the upcoming Saturday which of course was cancelled due Hurricane Gabrielle landing in Florida. I don’t think she was able to get back north until the following Wednesday.
At about 11:00, 11:30, the directors and the assistant vice-presidents started to run around our floor. The buzz now was that some place in the middle of Pennsylvania that no one had ever heard of before had been attacked and the question was when were they going to strike Philadelphia and which buildings? “What were they going to do?” someone asked, maybe it was me maybe it wasn’t. “Hem,” and then a little bit of, “Haw,” was the answer. Just then someone from security came up and said that the Mayor’s Office had declared that the city was being closed and that the building management had decided to evacuate the all 31 floors of the building. I didn’t have to hear that twice or listen for confirmation from the bosses. I think I was down on the street in less than 3 minutes. “Where to now?” I thought.
I crossed the street turned the block and went to the Greyhound station to see if the Ex was there, but all I saw was a crowded mass of faceless people acting frustrated and scared. He wasn’t there. Maybe he was at the store of a friend of ours over on Sansome Street I thought and started to walk over in that direction. “This is silly…think clearly!” I thought after getting half way there. I turned around walked to the train station through streets that seemed to be eerily void of traffic for that time of day.
At the station no one slid their tickets through the turnstiles as police ushered everyone freely through the gates in an orderly manner. And once I found a seat on the train I noticed a man pointing out from the news paper that it was World Peace Day or something. Funny, in a kind of a French existentialist way.
Suffice it to say, I got back to Jersey and drove to Mount Laurel and picked up the Ex. He had been waiting there about an hour he said. We didn’t hug or kiss or thank God because… that’s just not my way. Like the old Sure commercial says, “Never let them see you sweat,” has always been motto. Instead we just drove to my house watched the news together for a bit and then I went to sleep by myself. I always go to sleep when something troubles me. I suppose my body must assume that when I wake up everything will be alright.
It’s strange how I don’t really remember how I spent my birthday less than 2 weeks ago, but I do remember almost every detail of that day in September 10 years ago, except for the fear and the confusion and the uncertainty that I kept to myself that I thought that I would never lose. However, I did lose them, just like I lost the Ex and the other people in my life and the other things that I came to know.
I guess Forrest's momma was right, “Life is like a box of chocolates...”
*For more accounts of this day and its consequences, please visit The Neon Lounge for a list of bloggers who have dedicated their time and efforts in recounting their stories.
I swear, I swear, next year I'm going to ride...But that would mean I would have to buy a bike and that would seem a little silly to pay whatever they cost, just ride one day out of the year and maybe even chicken out at the last minute. That's what the guy in the picture did, well he obviously didn't chicken out but then again he has some balls on him... I don't. That is to say in the emotional, spiritual way I don't have those kind of balls and not the physical way. Although if we had to measure up, I might not have the; but I'm beginning to digress.
The point is, next year watch out Philly the old man is coming through.
“Maury Povich has done more for the black family than the Democratic Party has ever done,” was the only line that I remember from the Tea Party rally that I went to last weekend. That was said by some guy at the podium who said that health care, or "Obamacare" as he called it, was a privilege and not a right and that the President was socialist who was going to take the country into the abyss if we weren’t careful.
I was disappointed at not seeing any Birthers at the rally, you know, the ones who swear that the President was born in Kenya and that he is some sort of modern day Manchurian Candidate. But what are you going to do? I did overhear one guy say that the President was a Muslim and so therefore wrong for the country, but no one else.
I listened to all 10 speakers on the stage who said basically the same thing that the Tea Party was not racist. It was the Democrats and the Congressional Black Caucus and the NAACP who were the racists and who were irresponsible to a crowd that was organized and seemed to be very friendly. As I bowed my head in prayer for one of the speakers and held hands with a stranger to the left of me I thought to myself that everyone and therefore wrong for the country, seemed to be really nice. But then again, they probably thought the same thing in Berlin during the 1920’s and, “how fetching they look in their brown shirts.”
Andrew Breitbart
The real reason that I went to the rally was because I read that Andrew Breitbart, the man who brought down the Acorn organization with videos of pimps and whores getting tax advice, was going to be on Independence Mall in Philadelphia. I thought that maybe he would explain how or why he had slandered Shirley Sherrod who was forced to resign from the Agriculture Department for being a racist. He didn’t of course. What he did do before going to his book signing was find a way of saying that he was being made the victim by the Main Stream Media and the Democrats and so on and so forth without actually saying that he was a victim or mentioning anything that had happened in the past few weeks. “Poor me” he was saying.
I wish I could do that. I wish could say shit without saying shit and walk away the hero of an event and perhaps a little richer in the process. Instead, I would find a way of putting one foot in my mouth by saying what I’m thinking and then figure out a way of putting the other foot in at the same time.
I remember taking a political science class for an elective once that I dropped out of a long time ago. It wasn’t that it was difficult or that I was doing really badly. It was because I was getting C’s and worse than that, I was bored. I see now that if I had stayed in class I might have found out that there really isn’t anything scientific about politics. It should really be called a Political Art; the art of the flim flam.
Paris is one of Philadelphia’s sister cities. I’m not sure what that means other than it has the Rodin Museum which has the largest public collection of artwork produced by August Rodin outside of Paris and that it has an excuse to do quirky little things that represent that bond.
One of those things is to do a re-enactment of the storming of the Bastille which was a castle turned prison where they kept a few people behind bars. The prison was overrun by the people in Paris back at the start of the French Revolution, the prisoners were released and the building torn down. Philadelphia relives this event by having actors invade, the now defunct, Eastern State Penitentiary on the weekend before or after Bastille Day.
Eastern State, if you remember is the first state penitentiary in the United States and is the one during the 30’s that kept gangster Al Capone for a few months and bank robber "Slick" Willie Sutton for 11 years not including the time that he spent on the outside after he tunneled his way to escape. But he was gone for only about 30 or 40 minutes so it doesn’t really count. Willie is also the one incorrectly known as the man who said when asked why he robbed banks, “Because that’s where the money is.”
Anyway during this year’s re-enactment of the Bastille, they had an actress on top of the ramparts of the prison play the role of the Marie Antoinette. From there she tossed free Tastykakes to the crowd below apparently referencing the “Let them eat cake” quote that the queen is supposed to have made when told that the people didn’t have bread to eat.
I didn’t attend this year’s performance because it was raining all day and plus I think it’s kind or corny. What I should have done instead was to rent or maybe even have bought a copy of my favorite movie Casablanca to celebrate Bastille Day. There is nothing that makes you feel more alive and free and maybe even want to fight Nazi tyranny than when Rick allows a resounding rendition of the Marsellaise to be played in his club, unless of course you happen to be female, Arabic and have a certain religious penchant about clothing. But then again which country is it that you know that doesn’t have flaws somewhere?
Apparently there’s a movement going on and I know nothing about it. Oh God I feel old. You can tell when you are getting old and the whole world seems to drift by you and you don’t even have the ability to be a spectator let alone be a part of it.
I was in Rittenhouse Sq. the other weekend at the Spring Festival in Philadelphia. Spring Festival is a euphemism for saying we celebrate May Day but we aren’t Socialists. Anyway I took a picture of this man, well actually there were a bunch more people in the photograph but I cropped them out, they weren’t the ones that I was interested in. He, like the others, was carrying a sign that said “Free Hugs” and I wanted to get my hug. There are some days when you are in need of little love and affection and you will get it anyway you can. But this day wasn’t going to be one of those days for me.
From a distance he seemed like he would be taller than me and I hate to be dominated physically by anyone so that would defeat the purpose of getting hugged. Plus even though my first instinct was that straight black men don’t hug other men. I had seen him hug other men but with that bearhug type mentality thing where he would wrap his arms around someone, lift them off the ground while squeezing their chest against his and whispering….I’m starting to digress. I think I need a moment here.
So, I think what I was trying to say was that whatever motives I had for getting a hug were probably not the motives that this young man and the group had for giving a hug.
I posted a black and white version of this picture on Facebook and a friend of mine had said that he had seen a group of people doing the exact same thing in Union Sq. in New York but he had thought that it was some sort of joke. That made me do a little research on the net and sure enough there is a website dedicated to free hugs that explains how the idea came about and was created by Juan Mann and that’s it’s really nothing other than being able to share empathy with another human being.
Could there be a movement traveling the entire world that I was blithely unaware of?
The important and responsible thing for me to do would be say something about the huge amount of lives lost in Haiti from the recent earthquake and the possible further hardships that state will face, I should but I won't. I had wanted to write something about communication and the late night NBC TV debacle here in the States. In fact I've written about half of it but I think it needs to be heavily edited and taken in a different direction even before it's finished. Instead I will write about neither one of them because Philadelphia's own Teddy is gone.
It's not that the life of Teddy Pendergrass will ever be considered that important in the grand scheme of things but I've written about him before because it was Teddy that I fell in love with. I'm not talking about a physical love that you have with someone, although I'm sure that for a lot of people that wouldn't have been a bad thing; I'm talking about that scary stalker kind of love where I didn't want to have Teddy Pendergrass, I wanted to be Teddy Pendergrass. I wanted to be drop dead gorgeous and have women who would drop their draws and feel moist between their legs at the first sound of my voice like they did for him. I wanted to have the same animal power and attraction that he had that would make other men walk away with their manhoods cheapened and shrunken, or engorged and maybe wanting to drop their draws too depending on their needs, because he was more man than they were. I wanted to look like him, I wanted to be him.
Truth be told, I was in North Jersey when I really became aware of Teddy Pendergrass. For just a short time from when he sang the duet with East Orange's Whitney Houston who everybody said was gay, and the car accident that would cripple him at 32 for the rest of his life, I took notice of him and realized that he used to be the lead singer of Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes, he was the sexy one with the voice. And now he's gone.
I guess that's the way of all things. Eventually everything and everyone will die if only to make room for others. With all the things that are going on in the world it's probably not that important that Teddy is no longer here except in that Disney "Circle of Life" kind of way but I'm glad I was a around for just a brief part of his career and his life after it because...because he brought me joy.
I guess I have to set this up for a lot of people to understand this, but there used to be this British actress with the name of Googie Withers. She may have been big around the 40's or 50's, I'm not sure, but I came to know her in the 70's when she did a TV show called Prisoners of Cell Block H or something like that. You know, the type of show that was popular around that time. A show about life in a woman's prison where they show all the dirt and the power struggles and the latent lesbianism of those who have turned to the other side of the law.
Anyway, there were two comedians who were telling a joke and one of them said, something something, blah blah blah, Googie Withers. I remember the second one asked, "Who's Googie Withers?" The first comedian, turned and looked at him and replied, "Mine does when there's a cold wind." I bring that up because this Labor Day weekend was Philadelphia's first Naked Bike Ride.
Apparently the World Naked Bike Ride is an organization that has set up bike rides in many cities around the world in an effort to bring awareness to safety issues concerning the bike riding community and also the over indulgence in fossil fuel consumption and the environmental damages caused by it and by the use the combustion engine. And as everyone knows, sex sells, so what better way is there to make a point than by doing it nude? But since I'm really not that much of an exhibitionist, I only get nude when everyone else is nude, and since it is September with a slight chill in the air, I didn't want to see my googie wither. So here are some pictures of about a thousand braver souls than me.
There would have been a time when just mention that anyone was shouting something against someone and I would have been there. I might not have been on the right side, or any side, but I would have been there witnessing people standing up for what they believed were their needs, their wants, their rights. But those days I guess maybe slowly drifting away as I become more and more settled, middle-class and bougie.
I had always heard that once you got a bunch of gays or lesbians in large group there will always be some sort of trouble breaking out, but I had never seen it. I thought that was just one of those urban myths that hear about like the existence of Big Foot, or alligators living on the sewers of New York City, or Herman Cain having a chance in hell of becoming President.
There are some people alive still who can say what it was they were doing or thinking or how they felt when they heard about President Kennedy being shot or the attack on Pearl Harbor or Roosevelt dying, Franklin that is not Teddy. Even though if you are one of the ones who can remember when Teddy Roosevelt died then God bless you and I hope you have many more years. I however, will be one of those who will always remember 911, although perhaps not with the same intensity that I thought I would have. 
I went back to my desk and there was a voicemail from the Ex. He said that something was going on and that he might need my help. I called his cell phone back, several times, but the lines were busy or down or something. I couldn’t reach him. “How do I fix this?” I thought. 
“Maury Povich has done more for the black family than the Democratic Party has ever done,” was the only line that I remember from the Tea Party rally that I went to last weekend. That was said by some guy at the podium who said that health care, or "Obamacare" as he called it, was a privilege and not a right and that the President was socialist who was going to take the country into the abyss if we weren’t careful.
One of those things is to do a re-enactment of the storming of the Bastille which was a castle turned prison where they kept a few people behind bars. The prison was overrun by the people in Paris back at the start of the French Revolution, the prisoners were released and the building torn down. Philadelphia relives this event by having actors invade, the now defunct, Eastern State Penitentiary on the weekend before or after Bastille Day.
The important and responsible thing for me to do would be say something about the huge amount of lives lost in Haiti from the recent earthquake and the possible further hardships that state will face, I should but I won't. I had wanted to write something about communication and the late night NBC TV debacle here in the States. In fact I've written about half of it but I think it needs to be heavily edited and taken in a different direction even before it's finished. Instead I will write about neither one of them because Philadelphia's own Teddy is gone.
, or engorged and maybe wanting to drop their draws too depending on their needs, because he was more man than they were. I wanted to look like him, I wanted to be him.
