another uniformed thug, saving our streets for cars

Around 9:30 on Friday night, a bicyclist pedaling down Seventh Avenue veered to the left, trying to avoid hitting a police officer who was in the middle of the street.

But the officer, Patrick Pogan, took a few quick steps toward the biker, Christopher Long, braced himself and drove his upper body into Mr. Long.

Officer Pogan, an all-star football player in high school, hit Mr. Long as if he were a halfback running along the sidelines, and sent him flying.

As of Tuesday evening, a videotape of the encounter had been viewed about 400,000 times on YouTube. "I can't explain why it happened," Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said on Tuesday. "I have no understanding as to why that would happen."

These are the first short paragraphs of a longer Jim Dwyer piece, "When Official Truth Collides With Cheap Digital Technology", published on line by the NYTimes a few hours ago. The site conveniently supplies a side box, a history capsule of some recent arrests in New York City. It focuses on the dramatic discrepancies between police accounts and what was captured by cameras, and there are also links to texts and videos.

New York's bicyclists have seen the future of the city, and they are already a part of it. Unfortunately the NYPD is operating somewhere in the early twentieth century: They may be our "[girls and] boys in blue", but when there's a bicycle in sight they act like Brownshirts.

See video evidence from this past Friday of the latest violent assault in the NYPD's continuing illegal campaign against bikes here, and for more history, see this video report.

[bystander's video stills from the New York Post]

artists and curators, barkers and rubes hanging out on 27th Street yesterday afternoon

the purgatory section of Jacques Louis Ramon Vidal's sideshow/funhouse "The Gamble of Life",

Color Wheel performs in front of the Museum of Miniature Art's table

"Bobo's on 27th", installed inside Foxy Production, linked seamlessly to the street outside the door [image includes artist/co-curator Nick Payne, center, via iChat from Bobo's on 9th in Philadelphia]

Jade Townsend and William Powhida sold their own "lemonade n' shit" all afternoon

Little Cakes had an extremely focused bake sale benefit for the medical expenses of two abandoned and rescued turtles; these stand-in beauties were very, very tasty

I captured a few, too few, scenes yesterday at "NADA's County Affair". The good old hot time available on West 27th Street wasn't just the work of the weather: If every art fair exhibited the kind of creativity, energy and fun at large (and small) on those ancient paving stones yesterday, the organizers would have to ration the public's access with prepaid time slots.

The building was a very dignified mid-nineteenth-century Red Hook Brooklyn warehouse/factory built on the waterfront with local stone. The brick-surrounds of the old windows on the street side had later been filled in, some with the same cut stone used for the walls and others, much more recently, with cement blocks. When I saw them last week the blocks were painted a very gay bright blue; the stone-filled openings hadn't been touched. I have no idea what purpose the rusting wire had served, but their lines looked real nice.

There must be light and air coming into the building from other openings, as it appears to be in use today.