Micro #15: Those Damn Antennas
My almost 3-year old walked up to me holding this car and asked, “What’s this?” He was pointing to the antenna knob on the left side of the driver’s seat. I said,”That is the antenna?” He waited a second, contemplating my answer, and then said, “I can hurt my testicles on that?”
I guess you could, but I think that would be more a choice than an accident.
Chan Ho Park’s Beard & Behavior
During the World Series, my wife saw Chan Ho Park with a fully-manicured beard. She expressed that she was not used to seeing an Asian man with facial hair. Honey, have you seen me lately? Of course, she is used to seeing me get my Don Johnson on, but, I am half-Japanese, and I think she was surprisingly struck by seeing a 100% Asian man with facial hair. Talking percentages, as a teen, I used to say, rather shamefully, that I am “only .5 Asian” in order to accentuate my Irish or Caucasian background. Oy!!
A twitterer named Cgawker is struck by a seemingly dehumanized hirsute entity warming up in the bullpen:
Another twitterer, comedian Ted Alexandro, cannot believe an Asian man has a beard and thinks it’s fake:
At The Fightins, a video is shown of Chan Ho Park spraying champagne from the top of the Phillies dugout after they clinched the NL pennant. The blog poster is surprised by his celebratory behavior.
I fully understand if a journeyman MLBer who has finally reached the World Series after 16 seasons of coming up short wants to go a little overboard in the celebration, but for some reason, I didn’t really expect that type of behavior out of Chan Ho Park.
The hairy Asian jock is not a mainstream Asian image in America. It makes people notice when they see it. As for the behavior, Americans are used to the Japanese baseball player quietly answering questions with their interpreter. An emotional Asian in not portrayed in the mainstream media. We are portrayed as cold meticulous machines.
Way to go Chan Ho!
Is Frizzante Ever Going To Open?
Inside Frizzante
Back in February, I reported on the tire shop closing and rumors that an Italian restaurant was opening in the space. Since then, we have watched Frizzante move closer to completion as eager residents salivate for a good family restaurant in the neighborhood. On more days that not, I walk by and no one is working in the restaurant. If you look in the windows, there are tables, a wine rack on the wall, and a bar area giving the semblance of a restaurant, but it remains unfinished. The one good sign – there is wine in the wine rack.
Goofy Old Asian Man Follow-Up
In a previous post, I talked about a Yahoo ad where the portrayal of an Asian older man was a stereotype. It shows a smiling older Asian man in a goofy golf get up. Here is another photo from the same campaign – an athletic black man on a skateboard. At least it’s not a black man with a basketball.
Why not an athletic and buff Asian man and the black man in a goofy golf get-up? Maybe the black man in a golf get-up would be too loaded for Yahoo – probably because it wouldn’t ring true. Tiger Woods didn’t do a lot for the country club set. The Asian stereotypes, on the other hand, are less loaded because Asian Americans have acclimated and assimilated, gotten a pass because of white skin, been duped to believe they are the “model minority,” and, therefore, historically, have not been engaged and active participants and advocates in their Asian American experience. It’s safe to stereotype Asians because of their historic silence about race.
Plenty of Asians play golf because they have the money and skin color to get in, but they don’t look goofy. “Goofy Asian” is a stereotypical mainstream media choice by Yahoo.
Ninja Assassin: Just Another Media Stereotype
Ninja Assassin, the new movie from Warner Brothers, is about a ninja who “turns his back on an orphanage that raised him, leading to a confrontation with a fellow ninja from the clan.” What an original plot! Produced by the Wachowski Brothers of Matrix fame, this movie will have all the stunning visual martial art sequences, which I like from time to time. But, that said, I’m sick and tired of the plethora of martial arts movies that continue to depict Asians as foreigners, villians, and silent martial arts experts.
As an Asian American of Japanese descent born and raised in New York, I cannot name a single movie that portrays the Asian American experience I lived. I grew up with no mainstream media role models. Do you know how many times throughout my teen years I was called “Long Duk Dong” or “Mr. Miyagi?” Even with my amazing Asian maths skills, there are too many incidents to count.
Ninja Assassin will fuel mock karate chops and ceremonial bows towards the next generation of Asian American kids.
Horny Perverted Asian Guy
Vincent Masuka, the Asian character on Dexter, is portrayed as horny and perverted – that’s nothing new. Why not a more complex character with a love interest? Everyone else on the show seems to get one.
Victim of My Preconceived Notions
ZPP commenter:
Well, ZPP, I’m glad your assessment includes the entire city as maybe not being the best place to raise kids. As an African American who has lived for many years in some of NYC’s “best “neighborhoods,( i.e. Battery Park City, where a taxi driver was murdered outside my building, and Greenwich Village/Washington Square, peopled by late-night heroin addicts and scene of a spring throat-slitting murder,) I’d hate to think you are just the victim of your preconceived notions about what goes on in Black, Latino or “transitional” neighborhoods. By the way, I agree that if you are constantly looking for stuff, you will see that stuff. Personally, I’m loving this vibrant neighborhood. Then again, I’m not afraid of the people who were here before me.
I am not afraid of the people here before me. I only report what I see. Yes, violent crimes happen in other parts of the city, but I live in Harlem. As for preconceived notions, I have plenty of them that I try to understand and confront everyday.
Here is a microagression that I committed towards another person. Recently, I was talking to a Latino person about recommending people for a job opening. I prefaced it by saying “They have to be Master’s level” – as if none of the people this person knew would be “Master’s level.” I cringe at this unconscious moment. But I share this because we are all susceptible to unconscious thoughts and “preconceived notions” that can hurt others. I have learned from this experience about my own racial baggage and what I need to challenge and confront.
As I always say, unlearning systemic racism is a process.
Dairy Barn/Sand Pits/Kindergarten
Dairy Barn always fascinated me as a kid. It looked like a barn. It had the recognizable red silo that a kid recognizes in the boredom of the backseat. I asked my mother if there was really grain in the silo and I was disappointed to learn that it was fake.
My mom would stop to get milk, a loaf of bread, and sometimes eggs. She would order, the cashier would quickly get the items from the frig, ring them up, and call out the price – “that will be $4.65.” My mother would then say “out of five.” The cashier would return with 35 cents and the bag of groceries. My sister and I would always beg for the junk food stacked inches from our backseat window – Ringdings, Twinkies, Devil Dogs, Potato Chips, Oreos. Occasionally, my mother would give into are incessant whining and my sister and I would divvy out spoils as we drove home.
The cashiers were usually high school kids from Schreiber High school and on Friday nights, when the drinking age was still 18, seniors would pull up in their cars and buy cases of beer. My friends and I would find the empty beer cans at the school yard, under the bleachers, in the woods behind the high school, and sometimes behind the barbed-wire fence of the sandpits on Woodlawn Avenue.
The sandpits was an off-limits place for us kids, which only increased our desire to climb the fence and stand at the top of the cliffs overlooking the gutted land and the beaches of Hempstead Harbor and Bar Beach. Back at the turn of the century there were mountains of sand, but as Port Washington sand-mining companies provided sand to New York City and it’s developing skyline, 100 million tons of sand was shipped between 1870 and 1930. The sand-mining industry was booming and laborers from Italy, Ireland, Germany, Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Norway, and Sweden would work for a dollar a day. Working conditions were horrible as laborers worked my hand in the early days. They would use wheelbarrows to transport the sand to waiting schooners, which would ship the sand by water to New York City. Later, steam engines were used to move the tons of sand, but, men slaving in the pits all day would be covered in the heavy black soot from the steam. On any given day there would be news of a “cave-in” and many laborers were buried alive by the soft unpredictable sand of the pits.
Many of the laborers lived in Port Washington in boarding houses supplied by the mining companies. Laborers with families spent a lot of time in the pits and a school was set up by the Port Washington School district in the pits. Children and young adolescence from the Park Section, would walk down the cliffs and swim in ponds created by the scalloped earth. During World War 2, Fort Totten staged mock battles for training purposes.
In the 1970’s, my childhood, the sand industry was starting to decline. The Green Monster washer building was still in use, but the 1200 acre sand pits was coming to end like many derelict rock quarries where kids swim and drink on Friday nights. Old wooden barges that were once used to ship 50 tons of sand a day to New York City now rotted in marsh near Bar Beach. A new industry was taking shape in the sand pits – Garbage.
From the cliffs, you could see the worker-ant movement of garbage trucks dumping millions of tons of waste onto a new landfill. When Flower Hill School closed in 1982 because the population of Port Washington was decreasing, I was transferred to Salem School, which was in earshot of the landfill. During recess, the rotten-egg smell of rotting, decomposing trash wafted over the barbed-wire fence to the schoolyard where hundreds of children played everyday. It became a big environmental issues when dangerous levels of methane were measured by environmental groups. Residents from Salem North had to have methane detectors in their houses which, would go off when levels reached dangerous levels. Some residents started getting diagnosed with different cancers. One teacher who lived in North Salem died.
I went to Flower Hill Elementary School from kindergarten through 3rd grade. Flower Hill Elementary School is connected to Carrie Palmer Weber Junior High School. Flower Hill was originally Port Washington High School. In the 1920’s, before Paul D. Schreiber High School was built, there were just open fields going up to the sandpits.
The high school students would hold prep rallies with bonfires.
Flower Hill Elementary School was on Port Washington Boulevard between Bogart Avenue and Campus Drive. It was across from Bohack’s and Dairy Barn. I was a student from 1975 to 1979.
The kindergarten was right off of campus drive across from the Baptist Church. There was a tunnel that connected to a sequestered playground where I would play on recess. A stone plaque with a shining sun and “Kindergarten” still welcomes people to the tunnel, but the tunnel is no longer in use. As a child, I remember running down the cool dark tunnel racing my friends to get the good swing. Today, the door is locked and if you look through the grated window, it looks like a storage room. One time in my college years, a friend and I, drinking beers near-by and feeling nostalgic, climbed the stone wall to peer into playground. The old swings, metal seesaw, and stone tube were replaced by plastic, primary-colored equipment to maximize safety and minimize lawsuits.
The original Flower Hill School that was designed with such a beautiful grand entrance from Port Washington Boulevard is now obscured by temporary classrooms. The school was closed in 1979 and became space for high school classes, administrative offices, adult ed classes, etc. – a hodge-podge of uses that made all the beauty and function of the building vestigal. Change brings the ugly transition of clashing eras, as once beautiful buildings get added to – air conditioners, heating systems, wheelchair ramps, parking, bricked-over windows, building extensions, slapped on, spackled, nailed, cemented, soldered….Harmony is lost in favor of practicality.
My kindergarten teacher told my mother, “He is just here to play.” It is perhaps one of the most prophetic statements ever said to describe me. My teacher was concerned that I had ADD. My mother brought me to my pediatrician who reassured my mother that I was a healthy excited little boy. My mom should have listened to my teacher.
During lunchtime recess, the students would line up lunchboxes along the fence outside of the kindergarten. Superman, SWAT, Welcome Back Kotter, Happy Days, Peanuts lunchboxes lined up for fifty yards along the fence. When recess was over there would be a mad rush to find our lunchbox and return to class. One time an Italian kid named Joe and his cousin Angelo jumped on every single lunchbox to dent-in the soft metal. They were quickly ushered to the principal’s office and we did not see them for the rest of the day. After school, I saw Joe’s mother picking him up and he was sniffling uncontrollably as if he had been crying since lunchtime. When we tried to ask Joe what happened his mother said, “Joe cannot talk to you he is in a lot of trouble.”
Childhood tragedies come and go because the next day Joe was back in class tougher than ever bragging that he stood up to the principal and denied that he was ever crying.
For or Against Circumcision?
New York Magazine offers “a comprehensive investigation into the pros, cons, and controversies of circumcision.” Are you “for or against” circumcision?
Shalom Auslander, author of Foreskin’s Lament, gives a hilarious take on the Jewish bris:
I found myself … sitting across the way from Patricia, a formerly Orthodox, currently Buddhist, macrobiotic, pro-Palestinian, animal-rights-activist art director. “I can’t believe you’re even considering it,” she said “Why don’t you just cut off his finger or slice off his nose? Stab him—knife him—for God” … I was beginning to feel a bit like a foreskin myself. “Why don’t you just punch him in the face?” she suggested”… Wait eight days, invite the family over, put out some wine and kugel, and just punch him in the fucking face.
On a serious note, our second son was born in May and he had medical complications after his bris. The experience has made me wonder about the ancient ritual? Circumcision reminds of Shirley Jackson’s short story The Lottery.
“ASIAN” On Twitter
When you type “Asian” into the Find People search bar on Twitter you mostly get stuff like this. The stereotype of the docile obedient Asian woman ready to meet all your sexual needs.
From Racial Microagressions and the Asian American Experience:
Vampires For Kids
My son always see this poster advertised in the subway station and comments on the scary eyes. He asks, “Those are vampires, Daddy?” The poster advertises the haunted house show called Nightmare: Vampires To be honest, haunted houses were just never my thing. I once went on a haunted train ride at Coney Island when I was kid with my parents and never really recovered. Well, this Saturday they are doing Kids’ Day at the haunted house. This is more my speed except for the Count Dracula part and the series of galleries that give an overview of vampire history. I’ll be sure to eat a dozen garlic knots and a carbonated drink beforehand.
Kids’ Day at Nightmare: Vampires
For the first time, the producers of New York City’s largest haunted house are doing a children’s version. No big scary monsters or surprises here, just candy, balloon shows, and a tour led by Count Dracula through a series of galleries that give an overview of vampire history.
When: Sat., 10/24, 10am-3pm, $15 per person. (Up to age 10)
Where: 623 B’way (enter at Mercer)
Gang Rumors A Halloween Urban Myth?
A ZPP commenter directed me to snopes.com where the gang initiation rumor is addressed and declared “FALSE.”
2008 Press Conference: “Police Deny Halloween Gang Violence”
On Halloween, rumors abound – remember razor blades in the candy. Snopes debuncts poison candy myths as well.
Liberty Or Bust
It is not like we are moving to paradise when we leave Harlem. We are moving to Liberty, NY, which until recently has been a town and area in economic decline. There is a revitalization project to draw businesses and people to the area, but Liberty continues to showcase vacant storefronts, poverty, and slow economic development. Dropout Nation reports low graduation rates at the local high school.
Liberty, in the heart of the Catskills resort area, hopes to revitalize its once flourishing resort industry through preservation of its historic resources. The village has one of the most intact downtowns in Sullivan County, and is working to develop its downtown as a heritage tourism destination through its 2002 Main Street Revitalization Plan, which seeks to save and capitalize on its historic commercial architecture.
In its heyday, Liberty was home to Grossinger’s, the famous Catskills resort that closed in 1986. In the forties and fifties, Grossinger’s attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors a year. Main Street was booming.
Here is a 4 part series called “Memories of the Catskills” that captures Grossingers in its heyday:
Here is footage of Grossinger’s in 2008 (First Video 4 Parts):
The reason we picked Liberty is because we see great potential. Housing prices are quite affordable. Rental space on Main Street is dirty cheap compared to New York City. The historic district has beautiful old buildings and homes that are waiting to be occupied. For those that are creative, think outside the box, and have a pioneering and entrepreneurial spirit, Liberty has potential.
Some New York City transplants decided to give it a go and opened this wonderful country store on the outskirts of Liberty.
There is a vacant old movie theater that could be restored. My wife and I see a sprinkling of art galleries, bake shops, and antique dealers. The Shortline bus from Port Authority stops in Liberty daily. HSBC has set up a location in town. Liberty has a fringy spirit to it, that I hope is not lost if near-by Monticello builds casinos.
Main Street Today
Krugs Stationary – Photo by J. Schumacher
Vacant Liberty Movie Theater – Photo by J Schumacher
Liberty Press – Photo by J Schumacher
Gang Initiation Rumor
Heard from a neighbor that Harlem gangs are doing gang initiations this week where a prospective gang member has to slash a woman in front of a witness. Has anybody heard this rumor?
Rescue Me Filming In Harlem
Posted on Frederick Douglass Boulevard
Posted on Frederick Douglass Boulevard
Fox Network’s firehouse series Rescue Me is filming in Harlem on Monday October 19th. I’ll see if I can get a couple of pics of Leary.
Goofy Old Asian Man Is Safe For Yahoo
New York City Telephone Booth
This goofy image of the older Asian man is safe for the mainstream media in America. You can almost imagine that this older Asian man will have a thick Asian accent and laugh and bow subserviently to anything you say. Why not portray him in a stylish power suit doing business on his cellphone? Asian men cannot be portrayed as cool and in control – it is too threatening to mainstream America. Keeping the Asian man “foreign” is a safe bet for any media campaign.
Many Question Marks At 2220 Freddie D Boulevard
At 2220 Frederick Douglass Boulevard there are many questions marks about a vacant space where some work seems to be happening. I could not find work permits though. Alhalemi Grocery opened up next store a couple of months back.
Online Impersonation
In regards to my post about a person impersonating me online in blog comments, here are a couple of links about the problem and some tips for managing your comments. It can be illegal and people are starting to prosecute such cases, but it is a long process.
From Security Focus
As a recipient, you should check the sender’s email address to make sure it really is from the person you expected. Do not assume that the sender is using a new email address unless they told you about it ahead of time.
Here is an exchange between a reformed imposter and a law website:
A recent story on statesmen.com
Being impersonated is quite an unsettling feeling.
ZPP Imposter Comments on HarlemCondoLife
I took a visit over to HarlemCondoLife and noticed that someone is using my name to make comments. Notice the flavor and tone. If you know my blog and my comments, I would never write such a rant. I have emailed Harlemgal and asked her to remove the comments. I have my suspicions on who did this.
Akira Ohiso // October 9, 2009 at 00:48
No offense to you guys, but this article is a day late and a dollar short: I reported on this months ago and broke the story with pictured a few days ago. You are going to have to move faster than that!
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harlemgal // October 9, 2009 at 02:12
Ohiso-san,
Thanks for reading our blog. And congrats to breaking a story.
As for us, we were tipped off by a reader who responded to a post we did about this space back in January. That was our motivation to share the good news with our readers. In our view, there should be no shortage in spreading good news – no matter where it comes from. Good news benefits us all in Harlem.
And PS we take no offense on insightful comments! Thanks for checking in! Cheers!
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Akira Ohiso // October 9, 2009 at 15:46
What you all did is called plagiarism. It is infringing upon my intellectual property rights and a source of my income.
I am having my attorney draft a request that you either (1) properly credit and cite my blog article about this story, or (2) remove the article in its entirety from your web site.
Thank you.
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harlemgal // October 9, 2009 at 16:47
Ohiso-san,
Thank you for your follow up comments.
HCL knows of more than one blog that has written/posted about this topic. If this news is owned by one individual or entity and it’s legally proven, and if Best Yet can confirm they gave exclusive rights to one organization, we will participate. At this time our due diligence shows you have not left this threating tone on other blog sites and that more than one blog has posted about it.
Our sincere apologies for the way you feel about ownership. We have posted many unique stories, such as the story on Bazaar Magazine in Harlem, and we know of two other blogs that took our story ran with it. Our approach was a bit different than yours. I guess you can say we are more of the embracing type.
Have a great weekend!
