I’m in Orlando visiting my boyfriend’s family, so updating will be late and sparse for the next few days. Anna’s weekend picks should be coming at you some time this late afternoon, but for now I’ll leave you with a fluff post: a tipster spotted Susan Sarandon on Stockholm Street this week. That…that’s it. Later.

A film, silly — her Louise days are over. A tipster says he saw Susan Sarandon working on a film at Wyckoff Heights Hospital on Wyckoff Avenue and Stockholm Street here in Bushwick. Anyone got photos or more info?

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.

by shaftbean, from the BushwickBK.com flickr pool

Can’t we catch a break? Once again, Bushwick takes a number one on the shit list, this time for bedbug complaints. Again, I emphasize that this is bedbug complaints, not actual bedbug infestations. I was under the impression that Greenpoint is actually the epicenter of the bedbug “epidemic” (everything bad these days is an epidemic, right?). But since Greenpoint is heavy on the homeownership and Bushwick is decidedly not, Bushwick tops the complaints. Just a theory — if anyone has some harder facts, please post below.

Not to say Bushwick isn’t known lately for its bedbug problem. If I were to take a word association test right now, “McKibben” would have me blurting out “bedbugs!” in a half-second. There are apparently buildings being scarlet lettered to warn prospective tenants and shame landlords.

I can’t figure out from research whether or not the DDT ban really is to blame for the reemergence of bedbugs, but until someone comes up with a silver bullet, we’ll have to keep washing everything in hot water and rejecting cool curbside furniture finds.

According to 311, Bushwick is loud as shit, but not as loud as Williamsburg or Flatbush. The numbers are only based on complaints, of course, so Williamsburg could be a lot less rowdy than our part of town and still rank higher because of yuppies bitching about hipster antics, while us Bushwickers simply shrug among the blaring bass and howling visitors.

Though honestly, it’s been a lot quieter on my block over the last few months. What’s up with that?

I’m used to living in a city that’s #1 in a lot of stuff: my hometown of Miami was simultaneously the poorest city in the United States (and that’s averaging in multi-million-dollar mansions and penthouses) and that with the highest proportion of HIV diagnoses. Also, I think South Florida is the most likely region that you will get your car stolen, since the Port of Miami is the main way they leave the country, disguised in cereal containers on their way to a Haitian chop shop. Oh, don’t forget that Miami has always been the drug capital of the US.

So no surprise from me this morning when Hrag Vartanian sent me a link to a map on which the New York Times plotted the top 200 most violation-laden buildings in the city, and Bushwick shows up (with Bed-Stuy as a close second) as a pretty much solid sea of red. Almost as many violations plague Bushwick as all of the Bronx combined. Crown Heights and East New York are pretty bad, too.

You’d think those areas experienced some kind of riots or arson or decades of general neglect and purposeful destruction by landlords and tenants, and that now since there’s zero profit to be made on the worst buildings, there’s zero reason to fix them. You know, if you thought about it rationally. But I know it can be so fun, and probably quite satisfying, to just declare certain people to be saints and others to be evil, and stomp your feet in righteous indignation and wave big stuffed rats in the air and declare that you have the right to force someone else to house you.

photo courtesy of NY Times

How did I miss this: the NY Daily News featuring people actually complaining that unlike Manhattan and fancier parts of Brooklyn, Bushwick’s streets are not neutron bombed of all activity by the presence of blocks-long strips of bank branches. Some guy bitches that he has to ride his bike two miles to deposit his check at the nearest Citibank branch — what, don’t you ever go to the city for work or other errands? Everyone should have a branch of their bank within a 2-minute walk? He actually says it’s “disgusting”! Get a hold of yourself, man.

Honestly, I can’t imagine how this new, annoying trend of opening huge, deserted bank branches all over every city could possibly be profitable. Hopefully the phenomenon suffers a sharp correction before the idiocy hits places like Bushwick.

In today’s Daily News, Metro section columnist Albor Ruiz covers gentrification in Bushwick with some insights from Wednesday’s Make the Road by Walking rally. The article opinion piece doesn’t really delve into anything new, rather it just regurgitates the same old “gentrification is bad” statement. The one good point that Ruiz makes is that for all their anti-gentrification bluster, Make the Road by Walking does have suggestions for positive development. Unfortunately that jewel is lost between the vilification of landlords (sometimes deservedly so) and the overall simplification of the larger issue. Ruiz quotes 21-year-old José López, a Make the Road by Walking staffer, who says “no matter if these people come and say they want to better the community, they cannot do it because they don’t know anything about it and are not interested in the community input.”

Hi José. Nice to meet you. I didn’t know you were so clever. I mean, c’mon, you figured out my whole reasoning behind moving to Bushwick. Of course I say that I want to get involved with the community, but in reality all I want to do is make fun of poor people whilst sipping a cappuccino with my fellow white invaders at one of our ultra-exclusive, rich-people-only coffee shops. You totally get me!

Sarcasm aside, communication is a two-way street there, José. You can complain all you want about “these people” not really caring, but until you make the effort to actually include us in these discussions you are essentially nothing but an angry person full of empty rhetoric. If your intention was to make us feel unwelcome and thus scare us out of Bushwick, keep on keepin’ on brother.

A better tactic would be for Make the Road to host a “Welcome to Bushwick” event for new residents. Many of us who moved here have no desire to see our neighbors thrown out on the street, no matter how hard you try to typecast us. In fact, I plan on attending the next Community Board meeting in September to see what is going on with Bushwick. As much as it is our job to become involved in our community before we start complaining and judging, it is also the job of those who wish to preserve Bushwick’s identity to welcome us into the fold — keeping both sides segregated will only make things worse.

So, José, I’d like it if next time you made an attempt to get my opinion before judging me, because I have not done the same to you. Thanks. You can e-mail me. Or come visit — I’ll be holed up in Northeast Kingdom with the rest of the crafty crackers as we plot against you.

Nobody ever accused Bushwick of having quiet streets…but other than that, the Brooklyn Paper story about the dog-friendliness of our hood is spot on. Our writer Matt was interviewed and BushwickBK.com itself was mentioned in the article, which notes the threat of attack by “fighting dogs” and the problem of chicken bones all over the sidewalks. Also mentioned is Matt’s goal of getting a dog run installed at Maria Hernández Park, though not the planned Bushwick Dog Owner’s Association. After also interviewing a Morgantown resident about stray dogs threatened by trucks in the industrial area, the piece concludes, “this just isn’t a safe place for dogs.”

Trying to understand what exactly the hell happened last week in Bushwick when cops arrested 30 or so kids has been a bit difficult. Quick background: Donnell McFarland, 18, undeniably a gang member and possibly even leader (depending on the report), was shot dead by a rival gang member a few weeks ago. Last week, a group of his peers — friends and neighbors (according to some sources), fellow gang members (according to others) — gathered to either travel to his funeral or to make a show of strength (again depending on the source).

The New York Post of course starts out falling over itself to praise the cops as “outright heroes.” But then it does mention that at least one kid was walking on cars, and that the kids were arrested for their own good: they surely would have been targeted for attack by the rival gang, a view with which Councilwoman Diana Reyna sides. But then the far-left activist Drum Major Institute’s blog counters that the last thing these kids need is to be exposed to the criminal “justice” system — an opinion I share.

What is the right answer? Anyone have better info, sources, or opinions on this story?