New York City is for sellouts

For those of you who live in the United States or are familiar with its culture, imagine a place that starts with a political and social system that's identical to today's United States, but has a few significant differences.

In this place, most people speak more than one language. Almost no one owns a car, even the millionaires. Many people don't even knowsomeone who owns a car. There's no Wal-Mart, no Target, no Home Depot.

People regularly and willingly use mass transit to get around for the few things they can't approach on foot. Almost every neighborhood has the basic amenities in walking distance, like a hardware store or dry cleaner or drug store, and they're almost all mom-and-pop operations, not multinational chains.

The people in this place, in addition to being well-educated on average, are extremely friendly, showing a repeated willingness to talk to and greet strangers, and an eagerness to educate tourists or visitors on the customs and rituals of their home. Their cultures are an extremely varied mix of cultures, backgrounds and identities, pervaded with an astonishing level of tolerance and respect.

There's also a deep ethic of civic-mindedness. Average citizens are not just aware of, but actively engaged in efforts such as city planning and zoning laws and the design and preservation of public spaces. Architecture is valued and protected by well-organized, well-financed groups, often consisting of canny partnerships between public, private, and corporate concerns. New urbanism is an understood goal, not just a theoretical ideal.

And this society exists within an unparalleled environment of artistic and entrepreneurial innovation. Constant reinvention paired with startling new creations. Music, dance, theater, film, sculpture, writing, and any other manner of expression all functioning at levels unsurpasssed anywhere else in the world at almost any other point in history.

So this place? It's where I live, Manhattan. New York City. That's why I write about the city with such reverence, and why it exists as a living, breathing character in my life and in the lives of every New Yorker. It seemed like something I needed to remind people about, if they're interested in reading what I have to say.

I was recently asked what my site was about, and what I had originally intended for it to be about, and I replied that the first name for my site was "New York New Media New Funk" and that I was hoping to get back to that mandate. I've mostly moved the New Funk over to my Pop Lifesite on TypePad, so the focus for now is to try to articulate why, exactly, I love my city so much.

There's a tendency for any positive dialogue about New York to be seen as unseemly, the vain preening of a city already too obsessed with itself. This is mostly the opinion of people whose impression of New York City is stuck somewhere between 15 and 25 years ago, when subway cars were still covered in graffiti, and when city parks were dangerous instead of idyllic. I'm fine with people's outdated notions of New York, though; It keeps them from overcrowding the city with their tourism.

And it goes without mention that there are problems here, serious ones. Most of them we see as charming idiosyncrasies, the same way we see the failings of a curmudgeonly uncle. It's loud here, much of the time. There are, of course, Targets and Home Depots in the outer boroughs. Sometimes the power goes out. People resent the Yankees. Bill O'Reilly broadcasts from here.

But it's important to remember that New York isn't just peerless among modern cities, it is inarguably among the greatest cities that has ever been. The renovation of our public parks in the past 10 years alone seems poised to leave this city, even in the shadow of our still-aching wounds, on the brink of a renaissance to rival the Beaux Arts splendor that beautified the city 100 years ago.

I tend to have a status update on the top of this site, as a tagline. Right now, it says "New York Invented Xmas" but it's just as likely to say that New York Invented Hip Hop, and the beauty of being here is that I get a vivid reminder that both of those statements are true.

So thanks for indulging me in keeping New York as part of my site's title, even though I've never done an adequate job of explaining exactly why it gets such a significant role. If you've never been here, if you've never lived here, you might not ever understand. But maybe now you'll at least have a hint of why it matters so much to me.

There's a Home Depot in Brooklyn.

Tonight was another breakdown where I bum myself and the girlfriend out by contemplating publicly about having to move away.

x-post.

yeah, serves me right for not reading thoroughly enough.

http://www.screensavershot.com/sports/tyson.jpg

Mr. Tyson takes umbrage with your statement

their plants selection is pretty awesome as well (though i bought a venus flytrap there once for like $3 and it was the saddest venus flytrap ever, i had to force-feed it bugs)

"Ally (mlescau...), August 7th, 2003"

Apparently Ally can't read. I clearly state on my site (ON THE FRONT PAGE EVEN!!):

"One final detail. I work hard to put these images online for everyone to enjoy. Please respect my rights. Any photo contained in this website is (registered) copyright 1997/1998/1999/2000/2001/2002/2003 (and beyond!) Mr Steve, aka Stevem. You are welcome to view them here or save them for your own personal, non-commercial use. Feel free to refer your friends to the site if you'd like, but please *DO NOT* distribute, publish, transmit, retransmit, link to, or in any way duplicate these photos. "

I pay money every month to keep my colocated website up. I work hard taking the photos, editing them and putting them online. It's a time consuming process, but a passion of mine. When you make a direct link to one of my images, in direct violation of my stated restrictions, you are STEALING from me! You are using my bandwidth to serve your purposes and not paying me for it. Not only that, but you are depriving me of the credit I deserve for capturing the image in the first place. One of the things that make it worthwhile for me to put my efforts into my web site is the feedback that I get from visitors. Not much chance of feedback when I'm not getting a photo credit, now is there? I'm sure that many of the photographers whose work is being STOLEN on this site would share my feelings of being ticked off about this.

So whenever someone is stealing my images and at the same time stealing my bandwidth, I happily send them out a gigantic image, which deprives them of what they are trying to steal, as well as making sure their page downloads very slowwwwwww.

...which, uh, robs you of even more bandwidth.

You sure told her off. Uh-huh.

aka chook fucker

It's the principle of the matter. I clearly say I don't want to serve my images for other web sites or users. Ally has created a post that is attempting to steal from me.... I know you clever people on this thread are capable of wrapping your well developed minds around the concept of theft -- especially since so much of it is going on around here...

If someone removes the illegal and unauthorized link to my site, I'll happily go away. if the next time I happen to browse my web logs I see evidence of continued theft, I'll throw together a little perl script to collect a bunch of image tags from your various message threads and send email to the owners of those domains to be sure they are aware of the theft of bandwidth and possible copyright violations. The fact that many copyrighted images, including mine, have embedded comments indicating a copyright should make it easy to find some stolen images on your site...

I don't have a legal team, and I'm sure folks reading this don't have a legal team. I know Disney has a legal team. Have you ever seen how rabid Disney is about protecting their copyrights and trademarks? Got any pictures of Mickey Mouse around here? I'm sure you friendly message board types don't have assets worth going after, but what about those companies that make *this* message board possible?

Of course I would send a copy of any evidence of illegal activity on this board to the folks at keypoint (http://www.keypoint.com.au/) who so kindly provide your little message board a home. And let's not forget those nice people at Labyrinth Connections that host your DNS. They should be made aware of any potential legal liabilities arising from their apparent charitable hosting of this site. I'd somehow feel guilty if I didn't also look into who the upstream providers are for your netblock...

Yes, I'm a prick. Yes, I'm pissed off. and YES, what you guys are doing is WRONG. Make all the jokes you want, but remove the link to shooter.net

I don't have any illusions about how effective my actions may be, but I know that I wouldn't want some prick pointing out to everyone and anyone (especially those people nice enough to host my site) how I was breaking the law... I'd just take the fucking link down and be done with the matter...

Cheers,

Stevem

^ read dumbass

Funny that I mentioned Disney. A simple glance at the image tags on this page reveals:

a_tyson_i.jpg

it's from: http://espn-i.starwave.com

espn is a Disney company....

I'd suggest that you read:

http://disney.go.com/corporate/legal/terms.html

If you are smart, you'll simply shut up and remove the offending link from your site. You guys are in the wrong. Period.

Disney hasn't bothered with you because you haven't hit their radar. Yet. Your providers haven't been bothered by your rampant casual THEIVERY because it hasn't appeared on their radar. Yet. While you may or may not get shot down, I can make sure you show up on several radar screens like a freaking 747...