Showing posts with label gangs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gangs. Show all posts

Saturday, May 5, 2012

You've been served! Phil Mushnick calls the bluff of a rich celeb who profits off of crude imagery & bombast and ups-the-ante on sports going over to the crass side, and Jay-Z fans and sports media apologists can't handle the criticism of hypocrisy

New York Post
Don’t rely on media to evaluate bad behavior
By Phil Mushnick
Last Updated: 6:02 AM, May 4, 2012, 
Posted: 12:52 AM, May 4, 2012
http://www.nypost.com/p/sports/knicks/double_standard_TFPqqilUHif01I9BKkQSkN


Could there possibly be a better and more delicious headline for an American newspaper column in the year 2012 than the one in this now controversial Phil Mushnick column? No!
It's pitch perfect.


Were that it was one plastered on the New York Times editorial page, esp. if it was the title above a remorseful column about why their own reporters can't seem to harness their own bias in reporting on news stories, despite constant complaints from readers and editors about it, yet constantly want to write about the horse race aspects of elections large and small, instead of exploring issues, as readers have overwhelmingly stated in poll after poll when they're actually asked what THEY want to see more of.
Meanwhile, Beltway reporters continue to ignore that fact and treat it like all the other inconvenient facts they choose to ignore. 
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/opinion/sunday/a-hard-look-at-the-president.html


I saw ESPN's usually-innocuous "Around the Horn" program late Friday afternoon while waiting for some returned phone calls from some folks in the area who'd promised me some details about the ins-and-outs of some upcoming political races around the region, local and otherwise.
You may know watching "Around the Horn" better in your own part of the world as 'killing time.'


To say that it was entirely predictable that all four assembled "writers" -and that's being VERY generous in describing what they actually do- had a problem with what Phil Mushnick wrote in his NY Post column is an understatement.
To say that they seemed strangely ignorant of the larger point he was making in exposing the rapper's rank hypocrisy in pretending he and his team don't know anything at all about what black & white logos have come to be associated with, goes without saying.


Yes, it's almost as if they had never seen or read any of the dozens and dozens of news accounts of the crime angle re gangs and sports logos, ones that even non-sportwriter you have already heard about many times, and that I recount thru the upcoming links for those who somehow haven't, perhaps because they live overseas. 
(Sort of like their collective ignorance of having nearly six-month old video, from November 16th, queued up as the most recent video of their show on their ESPN website.)


The assembled writers showed much the same sort of dumbfounded look that many visitors have shown me in this town the past few years when they'd drive-up at night to Hallandale Beach City Hall, just off of U.S.-1, because they just naturally assumed the low-slung building with the very dark parking lot was actually a hotel, because there was no sign identifying it otherwise. (Until a month ago.)


I know this because I have twice been the person stopped in the parking lot on my way to my car after a HB City Commission meeting, and asked where the "hotel office" was.
(And the second time it happened, the very attractive thirty-something woman behind the wheel asking for directions was a dead ringer for Erin Andrews, which is why it stays so fresh in my mind.)

Yes, it was as if they had somehow never read what had come from the mouth of the Mother Ship itself, which you can still find on its website.

ESPN The Magazine
Capology 
Raising the lid on the darker side of fan fashion 
Andrew O'Reilly
Updated: March 10, 2011, 1:25 PM ET


So what's the part you don't get?


Read this from the North Carolina Gang Investigators Association and take an aspirin:
http://www.ncgangcops.org/archives/Team%20Logos.pdf
You're welcome.


Starving for self-esteem?
Buy a black & white cap! 
Yes, that's the ticket!

In 2008, in Season 4, Episode 7 of TNT's The Closer, in an episode titled "Sudden Death," the younger brother of Det. Julio Sanchez is killed on the sidewalk near his home while his older brother is off-duty, busy working on his car in the driveway. 
We quickly learn that the younger brother had been killed while talking to a girl for the simple crime of wearing a ball cap with colors of a rival gang. 
A ball cap given to him by his older brother for his birthday, to Det. Sanchez's everlasting sorrow.
Video of Brenda's interrogation at: http://youtu.be/rK_lVXoh84k


This is by far one of the best episodes of this great TNT series I never miss, whose final six episodes air this summer, starting July 6th.


But this sort of fictional treatment of countless real episodes apparently doesn't compute in the minds of the apologists for the rapper-turned-sports owner.
They don't want to acknowledge what we already know.
I guess it just hurts their feelings that they're on the wrong side of the slippery slope, but then given how much sycophantic coverage this rapper gets from the mainstream media, it's not so surprising.


Yes, it's not your imagination, you really haven't seen anything on Entertainment Tonight about the conscious decision by him and his team to use that color scheme because ET wants to remain a "talent-friendly" venue for celebs, the publicist's friend, not one where actual public criticism of entertainers is ever given, unless it's of one celeb against another, in which case it's golden.


After all, if they did ever entertain the thought of actually asking him to explain why they made that choice, then the more-mainstream Beyonce wouldn't be available to them, so they just keep their blinders on so they don't have that become a possibility.


Which, of course, is why Phil was correct in saying, "I plan to continue to argue against the negative racial and ethnic stereotyping and the promotion of mindless violence, especially to the young and most vulnerable.


I remember over twenty years ago when I first had to explain the reality of this phenomena of criminal gangs and sports logos to my mother while I was down here one year from D.C. for the Christmas holidays, before the Marlins ever existed.

She was driving me in her car thru the Coconut Grove area -where my family had spent so many sunny summer weekends when I was younger in the '70's, usually over at Peacock Park-  and we were talking about things that used to be there when she suddenly turned to me and said she couldn't figure out why so many African-American kids in Miami would be wearing black & white LA Raiders and Chicago White Sox caps.

Me having been such a huge sports fan while growing-up, it was not at all surprising that she recognized the caps when she saw them, but I was actually laughing after she asked because I thought it was common knowledge what the reason was, and everything else being equal, my mother was usually much better-informed than the average person, so this struck me as very 
incongruous.


When I began explaining it to her, she actually thought I was exaggerating, despite how many examples I could give her, esp. via the gang use of the Georgetown Hoyas' "G" in places very far from D.C., like Chicago.
Something I knew from actually living there in the mid-1980's, as it happens, for a year, next to the offices of Inside Sports magazine near downtown Evanston.

The sort of writing device that Mushnick employs here is regularly employed by many non-sports columnists around the country, particularly among liberal columnists, but they seem to think it's okay when they do it, not so much when the shoe is on the other foot.

In South Florida, upping-the-ante or deliberately using over-exaggeration or gross generalization to zing someone or some group they oppose -usually because unlike them, it's solidly supported by a majority of local, state or national citizenry, or clearly in the ascendency while their own P.O.V. is on the slippry slope of an argument- is regularly employed by the Herald's Fred Grimm and their editorial board, to say nothing of its use by the Herald columnist who doesn't actually live in Florida, but which is, of course, never publicly acknowledged by the Herald
They call him Mr. Pitts.

It's not unlike the way that State Rep. Joe Gibbons NOT actually permanently living here in his district in Broward County, while his wife and kids live up in the Jacksonville area, is never publicly acknowledged by other Broward public officials who know it's true, like Elaine Schwartz or Perry Thurston or... well, all of them, and instead it's treated like a perpetual case of instant amnesia.
Despite the fact that Gibbons illegal charade has never worked, but as I'm always saying here, curiously, he never ever gets charged for violating state eligibility rules.  

(Now that Florida House District 100 extends well into Miami-Dade County, I wonder if Gibbons has filed docs with the M-D Election Supervisor listing that fake home address of his? When is a house a 'beard'? Hmm-m...)

In the case of Grimm and Pitts, this device of over-exaggerating to make a point, or its cousin, connecting one unrelated thing to another to stand for what hundreds or thousands of people you disagree with might actually say or do or think, is something they do seemingly every other week, if not every other column.

For those of you living far from where I am, this particular parlor trick was regularly employed by the two of them in the Herald in their absurd and untruthful depictions of Tea Party supporters calling for greater government funding scrutiny and transparency issues in the weeks and months prior to the 2010 Congressional elections that kicked Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party out of the driver's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, and meant Obama didn't have both parts of Congress on his side.
That election was very much a great surprise to them I hardly need mention, given their continuing myopia and rose-colored glasses about the reality around them.

You continue to see it today in their biased columns about the state's Stand Your Ground Law, which was not adopted against the wishes of the populace, but rather far longer after it'd have done some real good, esp. in South Florida.
But then that's the lot of columnists like Grimm and Pitts, always having to miss both the trees and the forest if they are to peddle their wares.
Always forgetting to mention all the hundreds of senseless killings in this state of genuinely innocent people by criminals who knew they had the means to end any conversation.
Unarmed innocent people -the way that the Sunshine State's army of criminals prefer them.

Funny how Grimm and Pitts and their like-minded friends at other Florida media organizations never think to take a visit to one of our many fine prisons and jails in this state full of captured criminals -as opposed to the ones who got away because they killed the witnesesses, huh?- to ask the convicts the most obvious question there could be.
The question they and the rest of the Sunshine State's MSM never actually deigns to ask.
If they had to do it all over again, if they knew there was a good chance that someone they were menacing would fire first and ask questions later, what would they do?
Well, Grimm and Pitts don't visit and don't ask that question for obvious reasons.
Criminals don't want anything close to a fair fight in an encounter that decreases their odds of succeeding.

Oh, and in case you're either too young or too distant from the sports equipment and gang affiliation connection to simply take my word for it, I've got a piece that was written 22 years ago by professionals who studied it, perhaps to death, who tell the truth.
So what's changed? 
Nothing.

In the Dept. of Common Sense and civic society labeled "Symbols of Gangs and Gang Membership," this still connects-the-dots pretty well
http://www.chucksconnection.com/articles/your-sneakers-or-your-life.html


Chicago Crime Commission's 2012 Gang Book:

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Regulating signage & advertising during a bad economy? Oh, so that's the ticket to economic recovery in Hallandale Beach

Above and below, where we set our tale today: Hallandale Beach, FL, looking south-bound on U.S.-1 & Hallandale Beach Blvd., home of one of the city's two red-light cameras that made it infamous in South Florida.
Go ahead and ignore all the gang graffiti you see on all these signs and posts on the main roads in town - HB City Hall already does.
September 23, 2011 photos by South Beach Hoosier.


Somewhat out-of-the-blue Tuesday night, I found myself discovering that one of the other things that will be going down at Wednesday afternoon's HB Planning & Zoning Board meeting at 1:30 p.m., besides the previously-mentioned attempt by Mayor Cooper & Co. to thwart the will of the majority of the homeowners in Golden Isles, is, of all things, regulating signage and advertising.

Yes, signage, one of my longstanding bête noires in the poorly-managed Broward city on the ocean that is as dysfunctional as any city in South Florida.

The same city that on its own electronic message board, across the street from Gulfstream Park Race Track & Casino, off U.S.-1 & SE 3rd Street, was running the wrong meeting time for its second City Commission get-together of the month for many months AFTER I'd already told the head of the city's IT Dept. about the problem, AFTER first mentioning it publicly minutes before during Public Comments of a City Commission meeting in which I focused on the city's inability to see extant problems right in front of their own face, but which everyone else can see.
The sign is less than a block from City Hall, but somehow, we're supposed to believe that over many months, nobody but me noticed?
Even I don't believe that.



It's hard not to get the impression right now that this effort on Wednesday is a solution in search of a problem, when there already are longstanding problems -including lack of appropriate and sufficient signage- the city is NOT handling competently, efficiently or with any degree of smarts.
Problems that have existed for many years...


The very city that, as mentioned here more than a few times in the past, DOESN'T have a single directional sign anywhere within its borders indicating exactly where City Hall is, or the Police Dept. HQ, or the Fire/Rescue HQ or... even a sign on busy U.S.-1 for the municipal swimming pool just three blocks away.
The city swimming pool that even many usually well-informed residents don't even know exists.
Yes, that city.

Across the street from the main U.S.-1 entrance to Gulfstream Park, one block north of HB City Hall and the HB Police Dept., gangs use Gulfstream Park signs as Post-Its to let everyone know who did it. There's no mystery folks. September 23, 2011 photo by South Beach Hoosier.


.

Meanwhile, HTC shows who's really boss across the street from The Village at Gulfstream Park, one block south of HB City Hall and the HB Police Dept. HQ., and in front of the U.S. Post Office.
September 23, 2011 photo by South Beach Hoosier.

Per Analysis item #12 below, will that include Gulfstream Race Track & Casino, the Village at Gulfstream Park retail complex and the Mardi Gras Casino, all of whom are currently using LED signs that appear to my eyes to currently be illegal based on what the city is now proposing, per "animated, flashing or moving lights are prohibited."
That's exactly what they do all right.

You know, the large monument signs on U.S.-1/Federal Highway and on Hallandale Beach Blvd. that not only weren't up in time before the racing season actually started two years ago -despite plenty of time to put them up- but which weren't even constructed in time for them to be used for Thanksgiving/Christmas promotional purposes by the few retail shops that were then up.


Above and below, the eastern monument sign for the Mardi Gras Casino on U.S.-1 & Atlantic Shores Blvd., and the not-so-grand eastern entrance to it. That's why they call it blight!
If you weren't paying attention before, you can see that this area is AQ!
September 23, 2011 photos by South Beach Hoosier.


Above and below, the signs on U.S.-1 and HBB. September 23, photos by South Beach Hoosier.


Yes, the same Gulfstream Park/Forest City geniuses who used their Aventura sign on U.S.-1 recently for weeks in a way that caused even me to think they had reached a new nadir.
The only words that appeared there? "It's all here."
Really.

Above and below, heading north-bound on U.S.-1/Biscayne Blvd. at NE 213th Street thru the last two blocks of Aventura and Miami-Dade County before hitting Hallandale Beach. Gulfstream Park sign on your right. September 23, photos by South Beach Hoosier.

THAT message in black letters on a purple background that's hard to read for drivers passing by on the road. Real genius!

Seriously, given the City's of Hallandale Beach self-evident terrible job of public safety as well as properly maintaining its own signage and lighting, and keeping them either un-obstructed or working or both, or even contacting FDOT, FP&L, or Broward County Traffic & Engineering to alert them to street lighting that is out for months or YEARS at a time, even including in front, near and adjacent to HB City Hall, the Police Dept. HQ, the Fire/Rescue HQ, and other city properties, the idea of the city deciding during a bad economy to create new rules for signage and advertising is rich.
But that's how it goes here.

Can you tell what color that traffic signal on the right is? No, not the one on the left that is red. Yes, the one obstructed by the tree branches on west-bound Atlantic Shores Blvd. & Diplomat Parkway.
You can tell what color it is once you almost pass the tree and are almost IN the middle of the intersection. There are dozens and dozens of similar situations like this all throughout HB and Hollywood, but nobody from either city ever notices. Nope. September 23, 2011 photo by South Beach Hoosier.

--------

PLANNING AND ZONING BOARD AGENDA

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2011 1:30 PM

1. CALL TO ORDER


2. ROLL CALL


3. APPROVAL OF MINUTES

A. Approval of Draft Minutes from August 24, 2011 (Supporting Docs)


4. OLD BUSINESS

A. An Ordinance of the City of Hallandale Beach, Florida, amending Chapter 32, Article III of the City of Hallandale Beach Code of Ordinances, the "Zoning and Land Development Code", by amending Section 32-151, RS-5 Single-Family District and by creating Section 32-181, entitled Golden Isles Neighborhood Overlay District, providing supplemental standards relative to permitted uses, site development standards, signage and notice requirements. Providing for conflicts; providing for severability; providing for an effective date. (City of Hallandale Beach Application # 02-11-TC) (Staff Report, Supporting Docs)


5. NEW BUSINESS

A. Application # 04-10-P by Alan Waserstein Requesting Approval of the "Waserstein Gulfstream Plat" in Accordance with Article II, Division 2 of the Zoning and Land Development Code at the Property Located at 900 South Federal Highway. (Staff Report, Supporting Docs)

B. An Ordinance of the City of Hallandale Beach, Florida Amending Chapter 32, the Zoning and Land Development Code, Article IV Division 17, Signs, Relative to Prohibited Signs, Permitted Signs, and Nonconforming Signs, Providing for Conflict, Providing an Effective Date. (City of Hallandale Beach Application # 67-10-TC) (Staff Report, Supporting Docs)


6. SCHEDULING NEXT MEETING

A. November 23, 2011


7. OTHER


8. DIRECTOR'S REPORT


9. ADJOURNMENT

Interested parties may appear at the aforesaid time and place and be heard with respect to the above. The agenda and related cases may be inspected as of Wednesday, August 17, 2011 at the Development Services Department, 400 South Federal Highway, Hallandale Beach, Florida during normal business hours, and Monday through Friday.





DATE: October 17, 2011

TO: The Planning and Zoning Board

FROM: Christy Dominguez, Director of Planning and Zoning

THRU: Thomas J. Vageline, Director of Development Services

SUBJECT: Application #67-10-TC – Sign Code Amendment

CAD #022/03


PURPOSE:

To amend Chapter 32, Article IV Division 17 of the Zoning and Land Development Code regarding the City’s sign requirements.


BACKGROUND:

The City Commission requested staff review studies related to digital sign technology (LED) to determine its safety and whether the City should consider amending the sign code to permit such signage. Staff has also received many inquiries from business owners regarding the use of LED signs. Based on the increased demand for LED signs and research conducted on the topic, staff concluded the City should consider amending its sign code to permit the use of LED signs and provide regulations for size, light intensity and display duration for those signs.


In addition, the City has recently experienced an influx of human signs, particularly along Hallandale Beach Blvd. The term “human sign” is typically used to describe any type of signage that is held or worn by a person advertising a business or activity and usually involves someone standing in the right-of-way holding a large sign. Not only can this type of attention-seeking signage be unsightly, it can also be extremely dangerous as the intent is to distract a driver’s attention.


On May 12, 2011, staff reviewed the current sign code with the Code and Permitting Advisory Board and discussed possible amendments to the Code related to digital signage and human signs. The Board was in agreement with staff’s proposal and supported moving forward with the draft Ordinance.

On June 7, 2011, staff attended a webinar with the City Attorney on drafting regulations for signage which discussed regulations for both digital signage and human signs. Staff was able to incorporate similar regulations from other municipalities into the attached draft Ordinance.


DISCUSSION:

Staff conducted research on the use of digital sign technology (LED), particularly regarding the safety of such signs. In 2009, a report was issued for the National Cooperative Highway research program which evaluated the safety impacts of digital technology in outdoor signs. The report summarized multiple studies which analyzed various factors that distract a driver’s attention. Although the report concluded that there may be a correlation between digital sign technology and the occurrence of automobile accidents, there was no conclusive evidence that a digital sign is any more distracting to a driver than any other type of sign. As such, staff proposes to incorporate several new regulations for LED signs into the attached ordinance with the goal of achieving a balance between the safety and aesthetics of the community while maintaining a business-friendly attitude.


In addition, the increased number of attention-seeking or human signs has become a major concern for Hallandale Beach residents. Further, regulating human signs has become a challenge for staff to enforce. Although the current Code prohibits off-premise signs and movable or portable signs, it does not specifically address human signs. Staff has reviewed other municipalities’ codes and while some cities do permit human signs subject to strict regulations, most cities such as Dania Beach, Aventura, Coral Gables, and Boca Raton outright prohibit them. Staff also proposes to prohibit the use of human signs for both safety and aesthetic reasons.


Other revisions to the sign code are also proposed such as allowing accessory restaurants with more than 100 seats in multifamily zoned districts to have a wall sign, which was a recommendation of the Citywide Master Plan for the Oceanfront Neighborhood (S. Ocean Drive).


ANALYSIS:

Based upon the research conducted by staff, the following is a summary of the proposed amendments in the attached draft Ordinance:

  1. Adds definitions for Changeable Message Signs, Human Signs and LED signs.
  2. Expands the wall sign definition to include LED signs.
  3. Adds human signs to the list of prohibited signs.
  4. Expands language permitting signs at churches or synagogues to also include other houses of worship.
  5. Adds the RM-HD-2 zoning district to the list of multi-family districts.
  6. Allows restaurant uses in multi-family residential districts with more than 100 seats to have 1 wall sign, not exceeding 20 square feet. In addition, properties with an existing freestanding sign identifying a permitted residential use may be permitted an additional 8 square to identify the restaurant.
  7. Clarifies that commercial properties are permitted 1 temporary real estate and 1 construction sign per street frontage, instead of per establishment
  8. Reduces the permitted height of freestanding signs at service stations from 18 feet to 8 feet, which is consistent with maximum permitted height for other commercial freestanding signs.
  9. Eliminates awning and window sign size restrictions for properties with nonconforming pole signs, as the majority of pole signs within the City have been removed.
  10. Single-use properties with at least 200 linear feet of frontage may utilize LED technology for two LED wall signs, provided only one LED wall sign shall be permitted per wall face and be no greater than 25 square feet. This restriction provides a limited use of LED signs with the intent of preserving the character of Hallandale Beach.
  11. Shopping centers on Hallandale Beach Blvd. or U.S. 1 having more than 3 acres and a main street frontage of 500 linear feet may utilize LED technology for one of the permitted monument signs on the property.
  12. Staff has included several regulations regarding the use of LED signs in the City. In addition to strict distance requirements from residentially zoned property, there are maximum brightness levels, minimum display length requirements, a default mechanism to freeze the screen in the event of a malfunction, and animated, flashing or moving lights are prohibited. These safety measures are consistent with provisions in other municipalities’ sign codes.
  13. Permits temporary banner signs no greater than 10 square feet for businesses adversely impacted by construction due to exterior renovations or improvements.


RECOMMENDATION:

The Planning and Zoning Board recommend approval of the attached ordinance. The Ordinance will subsequently be presented to the City Commission for First and Second Readings.

Prepared By: _________________

Sarah Suarez, AICP

Senior Planner