Extra, Extra

#28

the trend of keeping tags or stickers on caps started with people keeping price tags on them to show how expensive their "fitted" was.. then that got gawdy...so new era created the 5950 brand and the accompanying golden sticker* that then became stylish to leave on. that has kind of died out as well, but you'll still see kids keeping the hologram sticker on the underside of the brim, again just ot show that the hat is legit and not some canal street bootleg...its all about the money, mang. when you're paying 40+ dollars on a cap, sometimes you want people to know!

*not pictured... the hat the kid is wearing is cheaper.. see? the sticker says a lot!

Incidentally, since we have "the spelling conversation" every week here in the Gothamist comments section, I've been paying more attention to NYTimes.com's quality level. At least recently, in the middle of the dog days of summer (when lots of staff may be on vacation) articles are going live with some pretty bad errors in them. (Usually missing words.) And the web headlines get re-written on an hourly basis, often with dramatic changes in emphasis. So, put that in your bong and smoke it.

to #12--

thanks. on a shitty monday like today, your comment assured me that somewhere in this city there are still real, honest, insightful, intelligent, and socially conscious people out there. wish you the best.

#23,

I thought the same thing. When I read the NYT headline that "Indians" were expanding their interest in lacrosse, my first reaction was, "maybe 'cause it's similar to cricket or something." Only until I read into the third sentence of the full article did I get what they were talking about.

I can't imagine why they'd use that term, even if it's no longer considered offensive to Native Americans it's confusing as hell.

if you look at the pic attached to this article you'll notice a kid wearing a baseball cap with the sticker still on it. i see this a lot! i see people wearing baseball caps with tags and store stickers still on them. why is this stylish? what is the origin and meaning of this particular style? it makes no sense to me.

thanks.

Sorry, I meant my message to be directed to [#12], not [#23].

See how easy it is to make a mistake.

[#23] Geez, Gothamist isn't the Reuters news feed. It's a news BLOG!

Writing for Gothamist is an avocation, not vocation for its contributors. Most of these writers are also holding down full-time jobs, so it wouldn't hurt to throw them some slack from time to time. (However, it would still be okay (and fun) to point out their spelling mistakes.)

With regard to standards, it would be nice to have some for the COMMENTERS. And I'm not just talking about the horrendous spelling and grammatical mistakes exhibited by more than a few commenters. (Are these people really the products of the NYC public school system?!) Comments that are blatantly racist, use profanity, or constitute a vicious personal attack should not be permitted. (Quite frankly, I think a lot of pre-teens may be commenting due to the level of maturity being displayed.)

Since I don't usually read the Post or watch the TV news, Gothamist fills that niche in the news for me. I read Gothamist every day for the local news/events I might otherwise miss. Thanks, Gothamist!

[23] I remember thinking the same thing a few months ago when I read native Americans referred to as Indians in the Times. I figured it must have been a careless slip, but checked the paper's archives. Apparently, the Times style guide reverted to the use of "Indian" a few years ago. I'm not sure how the paper distinguishes native Americans from residents of India. I can only hope that they don't start referring to Asians as Orientals anytime in the near future.

Yeah, I thought they replaced it with "Injuns"

To change the subject from criticizing Gothamist to criticizing the Grey Lady - does the NYT article really use the word "Indians" in the headline? Didn't we stop using that word for Native Americans a while ago?

#12 should start his own nit-picky self-righteous blog.
he also owes al sharpton an apology.

can i write to you too, jen

more kitty cats and panda developments. less hipster stuff. more food reviews, real nitty gritty food reviews, not the hipster lounge. something like that guy Midtown Lunch.

it's interesting to see which posts gets the most comments and which one's are ignored entirely.

i don't understand jen...

you say that certain comments (the ones criticizing you usually) shouldn't necessarily be discussed openly in the comments section.

how come you don't write this sort of thing when people make really vicious attacks on minorities and gays and jews ....

I agree with #12! But I have to say I read Gothamist just because it’s fun to read. I don’t take it very seriously because it’s just a brief re-cap of news stories from other websites and/or newspapers. Although Gothamist does do some reporting of their own it's mostly lightweight. Gothamist is really just a guilty pleasure as far as I’m concerned. You can’t hold Gothamist to the same standards as the New York Times for example. Can you imagine if the New York Times suddenly made as many mistakes (typos, misspellings, poor grammar, sentences that don’t make sense, names spelled wrong and just sometimes wrong info) on a daily basis as Gothamist? It would be a laughingstock. Gothamist is much more casual.

As far as other issues #12 has I actually agree with him on most points especially about Columbia grads. They are like this cult of status-hungry mostly (not all of course)middle class folk who form these cliquey social circles. They also tend to be on the "soft" side.

"We appreciate your comments about an errors or typos."

The mischievous Jen strikes again! Surely that was intentional.

But you guys should realize that #12 is obviously more frustrated with commenters than Gothamist staff.

Commenter [12], let me extend an invitation for you to discuss your various issues and suggestions with me by emailing me at jen(at)gothamist(dot)com.

I'm not sure how long you've been reading the site (for instance, we've certainly mentioned other schools, besides NYU and Columbia - but NYU and Columbia enter the debate more often because they are private institutions who are some of the biggest landholders in the city - and their development plans affect huge swaths of neighborhoods) or how you're basing some of your assumptions (as the child of immigrants, I definitely don't view them as a group to be ignored or belittled and we have covered the issue of immigration extensively), but the comments area isn't necessarily the place to discuss all of them.

We appreciate your comments about an errors or typos.

man... the people here sure are antsy over a few small errors on a *blog*

maybe it was a good thing that I left the east coast and moved to alaska....

well said #12, well said.

man.. comment #12 + light grey type = sore eyes.

good points though.. will they be addressed? of course not.

[12] You're obviously upset with some things on the site. I can't reasonably hash those issues out with an anonymous commenter. If you'd like to email me privately, my address is daveh[at]gothamist.com. Thank you for your comments and interest in gothamist.com.

I'm no. 4. I didn't take smarmy pills. And while I applaud the fact that the post now says 'Rye Playland', I still note that it says that the entire PARK is closing. It isn't.

I happen to be a native NYCer. I come from a working-class family and am now a struggling middle-class person. I think there is often some real good in this blog, and I appreciate that people here are very dedicated. However, calling attention to sloppiness is not being 'smarmy', which is defined as:

* buttery: unpleasantly and excessively suave or ingratiating in manner or speech; "buttery praise"; "gave him a fulsome introduction"; "an oily sycophantic press agent"; "oleaginous hypocrisy"; "smarmy self-importance"; "the unctuous Uriah Heep"; "soapy compliments"

wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/web...

Like Jen Carlson and some of the other editors, I also have a top education. I went to school in Manhattan, both for high school and grad school. But I don't think my particular celebrated high school, or my particular grad school, need to be mentioned on a daily basis when talking with people; and if I mention them, I try to make sure I leave people with a good impression of them. When people have poor reporting skills (skills that in this case only involve re-reporting news items) but constantly work 'Columbia University' into the conversation, I have to wonder why, since the writing and editing skills I see here reflect badly on one of our top universities. I also have to wonder why NYU gets mentioned so much, when this city is full of colleges- the entire CUNY system, Fordham, St. John's, and a bunch of others. And even those schools don't make up all of New York life. To those of us who live in or grew up in the outer boroughs, the foods and smells of those places don't exist to simply be interesting food stops for yuppies. They are where people live out their lives, whether they were born here or grew up somewhere else.

I do not assume that everyone who isn't a native is ignorant. Nor do I assume that every native-born New Yorker is a fount of knowledge and a saint to boot. But as a former high school teacher in some of the city's toughest schools, I feel sick every time I see the kinds of nasty dirt that many people here fling at those people they call 'bridge and tunnel', by assuming that they are all 'trash' or 'ghetto' or poor (as if poverty was a crime) just because they are not upper middle class white or Asian, like most of the people mentioned in a favorable, non-patronizing light in the articles here. The wealthy, born here or not, may have financed this city, but the city itself was built off the sweat of immigrants- African slaves, poor European immigrants going back to the Dutch days, and poor people from Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Caribbean- and Native Americans, like the Mohawks who helped put up the skyscrapers. People who are recent arrivals from upstate, the Midwest and South are more than welcome here- but too many of them treat the city like a fairground that only contains Williamsburg, Park Slope and the Lower East Side.

I do know people whose mommies and daddies cover their rent. Not all of them are bad people, and they are certainly not all white. I've met plenty of arrogant and ignorant upper-class Asians and blacks in my time, too. Some of them actually want to learn about New York City- but too many of them look down on anyone who speak English with an accent, including a Brooklyn accent. And unfortunately, too many of those ugly types make comments in this forum. Asking where Al Sharpton is for every post that involves violence or people of color is stupid- Al Sharpton is a pimple on the city's ass. He has no real power to speak of, and using him as a stalking horse when there are racists and buffoons who have real power and have either shot or beaten people to death or sentenced whole cities to their doom bespeaks of a cynicism and willful idiocy that borders on the brain-damaged.

I am here for the long haul. I'm old enough to remember when the city almost went bankrupt, and when Times Square and Tompkins Square Park were both hell-holes. All native New Yorkers are not moving anywhere. Most of them can't afford to move. They are as likely to consist of the Pakistani guy who sells you coffee or the loud-mouthed Dominican girls on the IRT as they are of the investment bankers from Staten Island or the schoolteachers from Harlem. I run into native New Yorkers all the time. Just because the media (I include Gothamist in this, since it seems to aspire to journalism) has pushed those people to the wayside doesn't mean they've moved anywhere. That Alex could even say that means that he must either be living in a fantasy-world, or he doesn't take public transportation very often. The day the Hudson Valley is awash in Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, old white Irish guys, Italian grandmas and kids from Hollis is the day when you can expect to see pork on the hoof nesting in the trees of Central Park. None of those people have trust fund daddies or five roommates either, and they manage to live here just fine, by scrimping, saving when they can and not shopping at places like Fairway or Whole Foods.

Those people have some of the most interesting stories and could teach a lot of us how to survive in New York City on a budget. The threat to Coney Island is an insult to many of those people, who still use that beach. So were the ad hominem attacks last week on the cheaper entertainments like stickball- both rich and poor kids grew up playing that game, and many of us have a fierce native pride in how we grew up learning how to make playgrounds out of stoops and fireplugs. To fault such people for growing up poor (since when has it become a sin to not grow up in a suburb, or to not live in a neighborhood with a decent playground?)or to call them trashy for knowing how to make their own fun instead of being reliant on entertainment toys, bad xerox art and faux-dive bars is tragic, classist and shows a lack of understanding of what real urban life is all about.

No. 10- my hat's off to you. It sounds like you and your girlfriend will turn into fine New Yorkers. We appreciate people like you more than you may ever know. Welcome to the family.

OK, I'll add in the outsiders from the most, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania.

this is from my survey of living all my life in NYC, I call this the assholio survey.

I bet most of your friends are white. You be careful out there, it's hot hot hot.

Actually, I'm from Ohio and I came here to teach High School Special Education for a while. I make enough to afford rent (split with my girlfriend who is also from Ohio and makes enough in the advertising field). Be careful how quick you are to generalize. I have plenty of friends here originally from out of state who work hard to pay rent and I can honestly say I don't know anyone who's "daddy" pays it for them.

Oh and I wasn't "well off" before I moved here. I think I had like 200 bucks to my name and plenty of debt.

I can look outside my window and find a hotter girl than "miss ny".

One thing is true the native new yorkers are all moving to the Hudson Valley or just out of the state altogether.

jeez, #4, did you take an overdose of smarmy pills this morning?

I've noticed that too. the only people who could afford to work in NYC nowadays are those who are already well off. sure they live 4 to an apartment but most have a daddy with money.

How else can one survive in the entertainment or publishing field in a entry level position? they're not known for high starting salaries.

these are your white homogeneous guy or girl from a suburb of michigan or ohio. there wasn't a riot during the last blackout because there aren't any native ny'ers left.

Hear, hear!

The kids here are trying to do something, what it is I still don't know. The bloggers try and analyze NYC events, but through the prism of probably very sheltered lives.

Trustafarians usually rule blogs, which don't pay squat for the time and effort put into them.

Native Americans in the Northeast are not 'getting involved' in lacrosse. They've always played lacrosse and never gave up doing so. The article title says that they are expanding their interest in youth (league) lacrosse. By the way, the Native version of the game is much tougher and rougher than the better-known league version, in the same way that rugby is a much tougher and rougher game than American-style football and soccer.

To put an even finer point on it, lacrosse is an East Coast Native game. Saying 'Native Americans' are playing lacrosse is like saying 'Asians' like nasi goreng for breakfast (it's an Indonesian/Dutch dish), or that 'Africans' fought the British in colonial South Africa (those were the Zulu), or even more ridiculously, that 'Europeans' eat crepes on a regular basis (sorry, that would be the French and some of the Belgians). In other words, all Native Americans are not the same, and there is no such thing as a unified and uniform Native American culture, except so far as ignorant non-Natives are concerned. A Hopi is not a Mohawk or a Narragansett.

By the way- not to be offensive, but if you have daily posts criticizing the sloppiness of the editing and writing here, you might take that as a sign that something needs to be done. I perceive more time and interest given to hobbyhorses like The Splasher and transient bands that only a few people in Williamsburg have heard about, than to the actual people who live and work in New York City while making this town what it is. I also see a great deal of tolerance for racist and gratuitously offensive comments of all kinds. Race and class-baiting are not covered by the First Amendment. As a Supreme Court justice so famously said, free speech does not give people the right to call 'fire' in a crowded theatre for fun. If you have any doubts about this, you might want to check the Bill of Rights- you can find it on numerous websites, including Wikipedia.

This blog's getting real sloppy lately.

Blog-ism 101 - get it right the first time.

You may want to re-check what you said about Rye Playland: A local amusement park ride with a dangerous history may never re-open.

Not the entire park.

Er, that would be Rye PLAYLAND, and the story (picked up from LoHud.com, by the way) is that a single ride there may never reopen. The ride has had two fatal accidents. The park carries on.