Originally posted June 2 on my campaign site. I am closing down the campaign site.
Best seen on full screen
Yesterday was a lucky day for me. I was driving along Bedford Avenue and it was daylight and the end of the Jewish Sabbath and lots of Satmar Hasids wee out on the street of their turf in Bedford Stuyvesant and Williamsburg. It was near the end of their Sabbath and I guess they were walking to their synagogues of which there are a few in the area. There is a custom whereby Orthodox Jews traditionally evade the proscription against carrying things like keys and money and ID cards on the Sabbath outside their homes by creating a zone that is sort of an imaginary home for all of them who reside in a given district by tying a string around the area. That's called an eruv and from what I understand the Satmar oppose the notion of any eruv in an urban area and so I guess they are out there with their doors unlocked!?!?!?!?!? Who would have guessed? That has to be wrong, right?
Anyhow I hope you enjoy this video made with the cheapest cell phone camcorder there is on earth. I show the changes taking place in Williamsburg and I noticed that on street more or less named for Puerto Rico not all that long ago you don't see any Puerto Rican community any more. Now there is a myth that there is a "Puerto Rican look" when Puerto Rican people, who are to me the quintessential New Yorkers are of every hue and stature known to mankind yet it is plain in an "I know when I see them" sense that a neighborhood they once predominated in is no longer theirs. They seemingly have been mostly squeezed out by young generic white people from all over the world who are sometimes called hipsters, and Satmar Hasids.
Plebian and proletarian groups are being pushed out to who knows where all over the place. It has to stop.
