Queens New York Tourist Report
December 12th, 2007
Give us your tired, your poor, your weak and your hungry… and we’ll lower our standards of living to make room for them. Home of the politically correct now uses terms like “underdeveloped” or “developing” to describe nations of lower socio-economic maturity. “Third world” was too derogatory a term for such nations since after all, we don’t call our children and teenagers Third Humans.
But I think “Third World” still has a place in our lexicon, it’s far too colorful of a phrase to just throw out. I feel it’s best used to describe the flip side of a society’s progress; it’s decay and degradation.
Having lived several years in an underdeveloped country, I can say that Jackson Heights Queens New York is uber Third World. It’s a minimum security prison without walls. A police state with prison guards, ehhm, cops, on ever corner, proudly there to harass and fine, er ehhm, protect and serve. It’s the kind of place described as a “community” throughout local evening newscasts concerning the latest acts of bloodshed.
I stayed there for 3 nights with a pedantic friend who swore I’d go to jail if I was caught walking the sidewalks with a beer. I didn’t believe him. He was right.
I had a can of beer at some quick pizza joint one evening, took the last sip as I hit the sidewalk looking for a garbage can to toss it out. I checked both directions before walking out onto the sidewalk and even used my signals. I must have walked for 2 or 3 blocks, one foot in front of the other, while seeking a garbage can to toss my empty. After passing several tattooed trogledites and thugs, I began to sigh at my friend’s predictable exaggeration that walking with a beer could be an offense in such a beat neighborhood as this.
Just then I had 3 cops on me, loud speakers and all.. “Sir, set the can down and step to the side”. ”I repeat, set the can down and step away from the can”. There might have even been a police helicopter with a spotlight on me if I recall correctly.
I thought to myself.. this is going to be funny when they realize it’s empty. It wasn’t. They don’t care about minor things like… the law. Despite being a good citizen and 100% un-confrontational with them, playing the role of a pleasant but ignorant tourist , they started writing me a ticket.
Then I said hey umm, wait a minute, can we discuss this?, there’s nothing in the can, I’m just looking for a garbage to throw it out. They didn’t believe me. Actually, this was very first thing I told the first arresting officer at the scene before the other 2 arrived, but he didn’t believe me then also. After repeating this plea several more times, the one cop checks it out and verifies it’s empty, then tosses it in the street gutter.
They had this attitude like, well, we already started writing the ticket and we need the money anyhow. That’s when I got a little attitude of my own and went into a 20 minute diatribe about how their actions are destroying the nation’s fabric, and a demand that the littering cop gets fined also. I’d say I almost ended up in jail on no less than 3 occasions.
Apparently, you aren’t allowed to walk around Jackson Heights Queens with an empty can of beer either. Maybe one day if I go back, like when ice crystal stalactites start forming in hell, I’ll walk around with a can of coke and have BEER written down the side in black marker, see what happens then.
Honestly, I don’t know why the “community” isn’t in uproar against this, come on people, start posting YouTube clips of these kind of stupid violations of your personal freedoms. Oh wait, what was that? There IS no community? Riiiiight, that explains it.
Two cops on every street corner babysitting, watching everyone’s slightest move. Freedom? Liberty? Community? Is this the same land of the free, home of the brave I grew up in? The only freedom I had was to remain silent, the only bravery displayed that evening was to be the only white guy with a computer programmers physique walking around alone at night in Queens, understandably misdemeanor of stupidity material.
A society that caters to the lowest common denominator and treats it’s good, decent, honest, well-to-do folks like an ordinary trash thug criminals just to keep Papi Chuloz at bay is a criminal act in and of itself and deserving of the label Third World.
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