Gawker
Fort Greene is not gentrifying fast enough! At least that's the experience of cultural critic and dude about town Touré. The single-named author was living right across from a crackhouse on South Oxford street in Fort Greene, only a block away South Portland, Time Out New York's most desirable place to live in 2006. But even with a sushi place on the next corner, there was still a crack house across from his apartment. After a bout of black liberal guilt, Touré tried to get the po-po to clear the streets, but they ignored his calls. We don't judge Touré's conflicted anti-neighborhood crack house stance—since the advent of Google Maps, Mole Edition, we are all snitches now. [NYT]
Touré Has Lost Any Possible Street Cred
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2:46 PM on Mon Mar 24 2008
By rebecca
1,892 views
16 comments
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I never had a safer parking spot than when I lived on West End and 95th and made friends with the lookout for a local drug house. I must have been the only old white guy who was ever nice to him. He saved my spot for me and once stopped me from backing up over a broken bottle. I suppose that knowledge of how to get along with all kinds has been lost.
Sushi and Crack do make for a wonderful friday evening, though.
That's no crack house, it's just a D-I-Y bakery.
This place was named after Nick: [maps.google.com],-87.639838&sspn=0.007312,0.009409&layer=c&ie=UTF8&ll=41.834654,-87.618284&spn=0.000914,0.001176&t=h&z=14&cbll=41.823576,-87.612676&cbp=1,199.40719903119276,,0,9.87593428679919&source=embed
He should just be happy he doesn't live across the street from a Google Maps House.
damn! ignore that link. I found a street called Denton Place but it doesn't link, sorry.
Though I do understand his dilemma, I'd probably opt to leave the crackheads alone. Especially if I were moving blocks away.
Even as a black female, I'd leave it to the inevitable white population boom to eradicate the problem.
When the crack houses are gone, where will the white gentry get their crack?
And don't tell me New Rochelle.
This could have been a lot shorter.
"Wow! A cute l'il crackhouse! But is not so great, actually. Should I call The Man and complain? The cops are the opposition because I'm black! But wait. I pay taxes and don't deal crack so they're not my opposition. I'll call. But I won't help them solve the problem because the criminals are black like me. It's called Being Passive Agressive To The Man Because I'm Moving Out And It's Not My Problem. And when I get stabbed by a frothing crackhead by the sushi place, I'll just sue the city for zillions, because they knew."
Has anybody visited "Sobro" yet? The big bad Bronx is the new frontier. @miss_msry:
I chuckled my way through the article. The cops didn't know already? Yeah.
@BettyCrocker: Except that helping the cops pick up useless crackheads by letting them do surveilance from your roof can end in death.
@andheartss: It can. But! This guy was a renter with plausible deniability. Not that one can reason with a murdery crackhead, but it reads more like he didn't want to get involved than that he was afraid of retaliation.
Sweet...this warms my heart. Fort Greene was my Brooklyn 'hood; and I always relished the way its unwavering blackness kept the true, full-on gentrification from happening, even after "Connecticut Muffin" moved onto Myrtle. I can't wait to take my daughter for a visit to the neighborhood in which she was conceived. (Too much?)
I think Toure's real name is Douglas Niblet.
That's all I have to say....going to go get an eightball with Gov. Patterson.
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