Whoa. Did this girl remove one of the column mosaics from the Morgan Avenue ‘L’ station — and post the carefully arranged evidence to an online, public photo album? I mean, it’s not exactly a Kanakaria mosaic but it’s still some pretty significant vandalism of a historic facility. …though it would be cool to have subway sign mosaics as a kitchen backsplash. Hmmm…

CORRECTION AND APOLOGY: It turns out that no, the photographer did NOT take this mosaic, but merely took a photo of a worker replacing an old one. In my rush to put up interesting content, I slandered an innocent person. I’m sorry.

Bushwick High, by A Guy in Brooklyn

I have been hard on Bushwick community organization Make the Road NY, and we do disagree on many important points. I think their point of view on certain economic issues is more characteristic of the beginning of last century than this one. That said, I appreciate their immigrant advocacy services — the idea of a person’s very existence in a particular place on earth being “illegal” offends me on a fundamental level. The other day I realized we have something else in common: opposition to the anti-child hate crime that is our heavily armed and armored public school system.

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Normally graffiti wouldn’t call much of my attention, but this is no ordinary doodle. In case you can’t see it well, it says “PARE EL DESPLAZAMIENTO” — Stop the Displacement. I don’t know what kind of spray paint can-wielding defacers you come across, but in my experience, there are few who tend to think about heavy subjects like urban demographic trends. What struck me even more was the idea that, even if they knew the word “displacement,” that they know how to spell it. Call me doubly surprised when they spell it flawlessly in Spanish. Now I’m having trouble believing this is a random youth tagging a building. This person is educated. This person is an activist.

This is a ridiculous attempt to sheath ivory tower ideas about what causes and constitutes gentrification in a veneer of organic, ground-up dissent. To me it’s offensive in its characterization — mockery, really — of the grass-roots in Bushwick as property-destroying rabble.

The choice of target is just as unbelievable: these mediocre two-families aren’t displacing anyone but the rats who lived on the empty lot. And they’re not exactly luxury homes, despite what the developer claims. Ultimately, they mitigate displacement by providing more housing. So now we just have an activist displaying his ignorance of basic housing economics. Embarrassing.

So the question remains: who, or what organization, is behind this?

Dear 10-20 people a day getting to this site by searching for “is Bushwick safe”: the internet does not answer questions like that with literal answers. So what you’re possibly searching for is crime stats: they indicate that Bushwick is not much more prone to crime than Chelsea and certainly not more dangerous than Alphabet City. So what that leaves is anecdotal evidence of crime for you to find. Which brings you to this site, the only online repository of all five or so assaults that had people in a froth a little while back. I wonder why we haven’t heard of any more since then.

I don’t know what to conclude for you, since everyone’s tolerance for the risk of crime is different, as well as their definition of “safe.” But here’s some advice: visit Bushwick. Walk the streets, pop into the shops, check out the subways, sit in a park, look at apartments. If the mere presence of a non-white or -Asian majority is enough to freak you out, it’s probably not for you. If you’re not unusually concerned about the possibility of being mugged in unpolished neighborhoods and a little grit doesn’t bother you, you might find Bushwick suitable or even ideal. But then if you didn’t worry more than average, you probably wouldn’t be the type to ask Google if Bushwick is safe. QED, etc.

Also, is Bushwick dangerous, Bushwick crime, Bushwick safety, etc.

Well I think it’s finally curtains for my sad little tree. It couldn’t cut it in Bushwick’s mean streets. I told myself as each branch was snapped over the past year that it was fine, the central branches would just grow that much taller. So finally someone who couldn’t stand to see something small survive finally snapped it right in half — they even took the top half with them.

If the mugger class thinks it’s won, I got some news. I will just get a bigger tree to put in. And I will not wait two years for the lumbering city bureaucracy to put it in for me, I am going to do it myself. And I will put a fence around the tons of fragile flowers I will plant come spring, so that thieving old ladies and little monster school children do not steal and stomp on them. Their acts of destruction — the pathetic throes of Bushwick’s fading anti-civilization — will result in even more of the beauty and cleanliness and greening that the thug culture hates. Then I and the rest of my decent neighbors will win.

To all my neighbors driven into hysterics over the handful of muggings in Bushwick lately, I’d like to remind you, once again, that the police are not here to help you, they are here to collect a check. And for those whom the check is not enough, they are here to SELL CRACK. Yes, on your streets. Under cover of the badge you so respect.

“Luis Batista, a 10-year veteran, was the second NYPD detective arrested in as many days on corruption charges.” … “an informant claimed he and the cop went to a Bushwick hotel where they had sex with a woman and watched others use drugs” … “Batista was passing confidential information to a drug dealer, Virgilio Hiciano, before he fled to the Dominican Republic…”

This is who drug prohibition benefits: the crooked and the violent, who can make big bucks flouting the law — especially when they are the ones entrusted to enforce it. What a racket they got! It’s not like this is a terribly isolated incident — it’s somewhat common knowledge to those who pay attention that various levels of government are involved in the drug trade, especially cops on the local end, and the CIA on the international end.

As easily as you can say that this guy is an anomaly by which I shouldn’t judge the entire force, I can say that the “I became a cop to help people” dude is just as rare. Most just want a job where they can bully people and from which they can’t be fired.

Last week I met a local landlord concerned about crime and drugs in the neighborhood. He said that on his block, around the corner from me, he’s seen 3 muggings since he installed cameras on his building. Not to get picky, but the other side of his block is the blank brick wall of a paper mill, and a seemingly deserted Verizon office. There’s almost no activity on the block. It’s the perfect spot to knock a skinny, flamboyantly white kid down and take his wallet.

Today he called me up to vent: a girl was mugged last night on his block. He pointed me to the BushwickBK forum, where there are two fresh threads about people getting mugged. One poster wants to know: “Is this a spike here? Or is it that now that we are paying attention, we are noticing it more?” more »

I guess it’s a NY Mag Tuesday: This guy is the ultimate hipster douche. He moved to Bushwick in search of a mock of 1970s Soho? Ugh. And then was shocked to learn that you need to be somewhat alert — take those ipod buds out — so that people don’t use surprise attacks to mug you? UGH. And then after being mugged moved back to allegedly crime-free San Francisco the next day?

Good riddance, tard. I notice you moved to New York TWENTY years ago, which means you’re probably at least pushing 40. 40-year-olds hold down jobs and have investments, they don’t live in shithole apartments in industrial districts.

Oh noos: the po-lice and associated eggheads can’t figure out why Northeast Brooklyn murders — that includes Bushwick — have gone up. Now, “up” is of course a relative notion: 212 in a borough of 2.5 million people. This New York Magazine article does little to dispel my assumption that probably 97% of the victims are also perps of some form. The remainder are their unfortunate neighbors. It’s why, when choosing a new neighborhood, it’s pointless to pay attention to the murder part of the crime stats — unless you’re planning on moving into a “Crips” floor at the Bushwick Houses.

Those whose agenda it serves of course have their own view of the problem: gentrification is to blame. The article mentions, as if to back up a comment about people pushed out of Bed-Stuy and into Bushwick, that in 2006, “Bushwick’s population jumped by more than 8,000.” I’m sure that’s true. But these people weren’t gentrified out of Bed-Stuy — they were gentrified out of the East Village and Williamsburg. Or they came from Mexico to work. Bushwick is not a catch basin for the poverty-mired of Brooklyn, it’s a magnet for the upwardly mobile who still have a long way to go.

The academics and cops of course mention the drug trade as the fuel for this murderous fire, but stops short of what makes selling drugs such a violent endeavor: it’s the drug war, stupid. From the 70s, throughout the crack epidemic, to now, the government has not changed its policy on dictating to Americans what they can put in their bodies. Since prohibition hardly dents demand, and no state anywhere, ever has yet found a way to crush the market signals for demand, there are people dedicated to making a living supplying that demand. Since the government has made punishment of the non-crime of drug selling so outrageously severe, the only people ballsy and reckless enough to sell drugs are those who have nearly nothing to lose, and rather impaired senses of the value of human life in general. You end up with the most violent elements having most of the money and weapons. Not a recipe for peace.

Drug prohibition created the problem of rampant crime in the United States. Drug prohibition helped keep New York a shithole for decades. Hell, drug prohibition has destroyed entire Central American countries and empowered vicious militias in Mexico and Colombia. It’s responsible for millions of deaths, holocaustian proportions.

End drug prohibition, and you will nearly end what little violence is left in New York. There will still be residual knuckleheads around because of the cultures incubated during the last 40 years, but that will eventually peter out with no drug industry to support it. Until then, stay clear of the projects and you won’t get shot. Not that anyone who doesn’t actually live there usually does.

It was 3am on the morning of Christmas Eve, when I woke up to the screech of a car speeding away. Normally I would have just gone back to sleep, but I had a weird, delirious feeling that it wasn’t the screeching that had actually waken me. I peeked out the window and saw no evidence of the crash my subconscious was swearing to me it heard. I called myself an idiot and got back into bed.

That morning at a normal hour, a housemate and I met my next-door neighbor out front to go to brunch. It was then that I realized that the screeching car jumped the curb near the corner, took out a street tree and a metal street sign, shedding pieces of itself as it went. It continued down the sidewalk, past my house — damaging nothing of mine — then curved back toward the street, running over my neighbor’s tree pit and nicking his tree, and then running over the final street tree on the block before presumably running the light and hurtling down Central.

A similar fate befell the tree in front of my house just days before we moved in. No wonder so many of the trees on this side of Bushwick are so small — they keep getting run over. Needless to say, the splintered trees and sign lay where they fell. I assume it will be years before someone decides to have new trees planted.