Early Morning San Francisco Contretemps

I got into San Francisco late because, somewhere south of Bakersfield, I had accidentally left the Interstate and didn’t realize it for about 30 miles. Must have missed a split or something, and so ended up on a highway tacking northeast. I should have recognized it when the traffic lightened and the lanes narrowed, but it was night, and I had passed the excitement stage of the road trip and entered into a grim, 300-mile grind.

The San Joaquin Valley is flat and brown and looks basically the same from any point, if you’re not paying attention, especially at night.

I was on the old Highway 99-E. It’s what used to be the main north-south route on the West Coast. I couldn’t cut over back to the I-5 until after Bakersfield, through some town called Wasco, I think it was. The only other cars on the two-lane road were 18-wheelers, probably hauling produce or chickens. The air smelled of dirt and cow shit and early summer as it whistled through the window.

Anyway, so I rolled into San Francisco sometime around 3 a.m.  A friend was letting me crash on her coach. She lived in an apartment in North Beach and had left a key under the mat. She was already asleep. I didn’t see her at all.

I slept on her couch for three hours and woke up to move my car before the meters started. I didn’t have a ticket, and my car hadn’t been broken into, which was a relief because nearly all of my possessions were crammed into it.

It was clear morning. I could see Alcatraz in the middle of the bay, and a fog bank sitting out by the Golden Gate. I decided to get coffee and something to eat before I left.

As I was walking back to my car, I saw a homeless man sleeping in the alcove of a building. He was wrapped in a moldy brown blanket riddled with holes. He was barefoot, and his trousers were shredded up to mid-shin. He was splayed, stomach-down on the bare concrete under the blanket. He was one of the most destitute homeless people I’d seen in America, even San Francisco, which has a lot of homeless.

A middle-aged woman stopped in front of the homeless man and took out a small digital camera. She was wearing a visor and a sweatshirt tied around her waist—a tourist uniform. Maybe she wasn’t, but that’s what she looked like. Solid upper-middle class, short, graying hair and glasses with gentle, rounded frames. And she took a picture of the man in the alcove while he slept there, unaware.

A lot of things went through my head. Why was she taking the picture? What value did it have for her? Did she consider this a Kodak moment from her visit to San Francisco, one she wanted to remember?

“Go fuck yourself,” is what came out of my mouth as I walked past.

The woman wheeled on me without hesitation, like a dog startled out of a fighting dream . “Go fuck yourself,” she snarled.

I had thought I would throw her off-balance, but instead I was walking away with my jaw hanging. In an alternate universe, that woman is a third-world warlord or an outlaw biker (“Hell’s Librarians MC”).

I got to my car and drove 10 hours to a bar in Eugene, Oregon and ordered a pitcher of beer.

Quote of the Day: Charlie LeDuff’s Rules for Journalism

“There’s two rules to this whole game called journalism: Get it right; and don’t be boring. Because if you’re boring, you’re dead. I’ll say it this way: [The] press is written into the Constitution like the judiciary, the executive and the legislative, except they didn’t leave us any money. We have to find our own money to do it. So if people don’t want to purchase your product, you’re dead. So I like Borat; I like Jackass; I like Charles Kuralt; I like Colbert; I like60 Minutes. I like kitty cats and YouTube. Put them all together, shake it up, and give me something — give me something smart and give me something entertaining. That’s my mantra.”

– Charlie LeDuff in an NPR interview

Time to go appealin’: NYPD denies records request

Back in October, I filed a public records request for all the discharge reports filed by NYPD officers between January and September last year.

As you may remember, there was a shooting outside the Empire State Building last August. It was later reported that NYPD officers had wounded nine bystanders in a hail of gunfire intended to take down one gunman.

I became interested in doing an investigative piece on the accuracy of NYPD officers. This was not the first such incident. Are NYPD officers being properly trained? How much time do they spend at the range? Does the fact that their service pistols have heavier trigger springs than the standard factory models affect accuracy?

There have been a few previous investigative articles over the past decade on the subject, but the time seemed ripe for another look.

NYPD officers are required to file a firearms discharge report within 24 hours if they fire their service weapon. A more thorough report is filed 90 days later. The department releases annual statistics on the reports, but having the raw documents would be vital to doing the article well, I concluded. So I filed the public records request on Oct. 1. And then waited. On Jan. 11, I received this response:

In regard to your request, for all weapons discharge reports filled [sic] by officers between January 1, 2012 and September 26, 2012, I must deny access to these records on the basis of Public Officers Law section 87 (2)(g) and 87 (2)(e) as such records/information, if disclosed would reveal criminal investigative techniques or procedures, and or are intra-agency materials. Furthermore, these records are also exempt from disclosure as these records on the basis of Public Officers Law section 87 (2)(e) and Public Officers Law 87 (2)(a) in that such records consist of personell records of a Police Officer and are therefore exempt from disclosure under the provisions of Civil Rights Law section 50-a.

Now, let’s stop and consider this for a second. The NYPD is telling me the public interest of how, when and why its officers use deadly force against the citizens it’s sworn to protect is outweighed by the need to protect the privacy of those same officers. Not only that, the public interest is outweighed by the need to protect its investigative techniques.

This does not speak well of the department’s attitude toward public accountability. Worse, the denial of my request appears to contradict previous court rulings on these records.

You see, a New York Supreme Court Justice ruled two years ago that discharge reports are indeed subject to disclosure, do not violate officers’ privacy and do not compromise the department’s investigate techniques:

Justice Goodman rejected the department’s position that sharing the information would violate officers’ privacy rights, reveal investigative techniques or cause other harm. She ruled that the records be released, in part, “in order to promote open government and accountability.”

Yet, she also ruled that some items be redacted from the reports, including personal information about the officers (though not their names), the civilians they shot and any witnesses. Also to be redacted is information about disciplinary recommendations.

I’m left wondering why the NYPD would deny my request. Perhaps the NYPD Freedom Of Information Law Unit has a remarkably short memory, or it just wanted to be dickish. Maybe it figured I was a putz who wouldn’t have the faculty or resources to appeal a denial.

I regret to inform the NYPD F.O.I.L. Unit the latter is not the case.

This story is not going away anytime soon, either. One of the nine injured Empire State Building bystanders—whose hip socket was crushed by an errant NYPD bullet—just filed a lawsuit against the police department yesterday.

The Band That Wouldn’t Die

[Note: As part of my New Year housecleaning, I'm clearing out a backlog of stuff that I never got around to finishing and posting. This piece was written in early 2011, when I was living in San Diego.]

It’s easier than you’d think to accidentally end up at a Sublime tribute show. I know I was surprised.

But there I was at the Belly Up Tavern on Jan. 7, just north of San Diego, watching 40 Oz. To Freedom, a Sublime tribute act, along with about 200 hundred very excited and very drunk people.

A friend had texted me that night and asked if I wanted to go see her buddy’s band play. When she picked me up, she told me we were probably too late to catch the band. “Who else is playing?” I asked as we drove down the freeway.

“Oh, some reggae-kinda band, and then a Sublime cover band.”

I reached for the door handle. With a good tuck-and-roll and a little luck, I thought, I just might survive. It’s not that I hate the band’s music per se. It’s just that I’ve heard Sublime nearly every single fucking day of my life since I was 14-years old.

My high school band covered “Santeria.” Sublime was and remains on heavy rotation on alternative rock stations, even as format and tastes have changed. And I can’t count the number of dorms, apartments and houses that I walked into during my college years that proudly displayed a poster of the “40 Oz. to Freedom” album cover.

The cumulative effect of this has reduced the sound to something so meaningless and repetitive that Sublime has become the auditory equivalent of Chinese water torture to me.

And then I unwittingly found myself at the tribute show. I can report that, 15 years after lead singer Bradley Nowell’s death by heroin overdose, Sublime’s music is not only still popular but will pack the house. In fact, the crowd will demand an encore.

It all made me wonder what inspires such fanaticism, both in the audience and the tribute band, who have dedicated their lives and considerable talents to emulating Sublime. And it’s not just one tribute band. A quick search reveals at least two more Sublime tribute acts: Badfish and Wrong Way.

Understand that Sublime was talented. Its music was an almost perfect distillation of the Southern California soundscape – punk, reggae, dub, first and second-wave ska, dollops of hip-hop and Latin – all rolled into a catchy pop format.

A week after the tribute show, I went down to a local bar to meet a friend. There was a guy on stage, playing some reggae songs on his acoustic guitar. He wasn’t bad. I liked his cover of Jimmy Cliff’s “The Harder They Come.” But as I sat there, sipping my beer, I had the sinking realization that his voice sounded exactly like Nowell’s. It was at this moment that he launched into “Smoke Two Joints.”

Also understand that Nowell’s lyrics have two important things going for them. First, they tap into universal themes of peace, love and smoking a metric shit-ton of weed (something I call “the Marley effect”).

Second, his lyrics have a particular Springsteen-esque class-consciousness. But unlike The Boss, who invokes small-town, blue-collar pride, Nowell’s lyrics speak of California’s golden slackers, whose main aspirations are skating and/or surfing, jamming and getting ripped.

The same night of the acoustic balladeer, I went across the street to another bar where a rock band with a female vocalist who was doing her best Gwen Stefani (also a SoCal native and former friend of Nowell) was playing. I was turning to leave when I heard the familiar opening notes of “Santeria.”

By this time I was beginning to feel as if there was a vast conspiracy against me, like at any moment a bi-plane would come swooping down at me à la North by Northwest, but instead of machine gun fire, it would be blaring “What I Got.”

Finally, understand that Nowell, as often happens to artists who die young, has been elevated to something less than a prophet but more than an average musician. Both 40 Oz. To Freedom and the acoustic balladeer made reference to “keeping the spirit of Bradley alive.”

His spirit seems to mainly involve being chill and, well, not much else. There’s no political overtones, like Marley or Lennon. Here’s a quote from a young girl at a Badfish tribute show, via a 2007 feature in Spin: “There’s a piece of Brad in every joint smoked here today.”

But who needs tribute shows anymore? It turns out the surviving members of Sublime have regrouped and are touring with a new singer, 22-year old Rome Ramirez, who was born the same year the band originally formed. Ramirez, through a mutual acquaintance, started jamming with them. And here I’ll revert to his account: “After a while the guys were like, do you wanna do this for real and go on tour? I was like, whoa.”

Whoa indeed, sir. Now Sublime With Rome is selling out shows and spreading the gospel to yet another generation of kids whose THC-laden synapses will light up with associative bliss whenever they hear those songs.

And so just the other night, I was sitting in my favorite dive bar, and when “Wrong Way” came on the juke box, I resigned myself to the fact that this was going to be the way of things, so long as I lived in Southern California and so long as the Southern California that Nowell sang about persisted. The bartender, who had just returned from a “safety meeting” outside (which is parlance for getting high at work), was perched on the bar shouting the lyrics.

“Did I tell you about the Sublime tribute band I saw?” I asked her.

“No, was it 40 Oz. To Freedom? I love those guys!”

The Night Before Christmas by Raymond Chandler

It was the night before Christmas, when I first saw the red man. I was settled in my chair in the midst of a long bourbon nap, hand still clutching a highball glass of the stuff, when I heard a clatter, like a body tumbling down a flight of stairs.

I sat up in the chair to see what was the matter. The room was dark, save for the glow of Christmas lights on the tiny tree by the window. At first I thought it was nothing but a dream, when what to my wondering eyes should appear but the outline of a heavyset man creeping slowly out of the fireplace and into the room.

Then I thought about my gat, but it was in my suit coat, which was hanging by the doorway with care.

I sized him up as he moved closer. He was about six-foot-even, dressed from head to toe in a heavy red suit, like some two-bit hustler. His face was hidden under a thick, white beard. Under the suit I could see he was a big man. His belly jiggled like a bowl of jelly as he crept through the apartment. He moved quiet for his size and age. He had a big bag slung over his shoulder. I pegged him for a professional cat burglar or something.

He was halfway to the Christmas tree by the window when he spied me sitting in the chair. We had a nice, quiet moment where we considered each other’s presence.

“Expected me to be in the bedroom, I’m guessing,” I said. “What’s in the bag, Mac?”

He turned his head and laid his finger aside his nose with an impish grin. I stood up slowly from the chair and put the glass on the table.

“Okay, funny guy,” I said. “Okay.”

I went for the coat. He was on me as quick as a flash, awful fast for a big man. The bag clocked me in the back of the head as I reached the coat. Lights popped behind my eyes, and stars and sugar-plums and other silly things danced in front of them.

When I could see straight again, the red man was hoisting me to my feet. He spoke not a word, but went straight to work, planting one of his big, gloved mitts in my stomach, which doubled me over, and another on my chin to straighten me out. Then he tossed me, casually as he probably tossed that bag around, across the room.

“Merry Christmas, shamus,” the red man said real jolly like, throwing me a wrapped package from his bag as I sprawled on the floor. “Have a swell night.”

“How about next time just mail a card,” I said, rubbing my jaw.

He ignored that, walked over to the table, drank my bourbon, and walked out my door, leaving it swinging open.

The package was addressed to me from “St. Nick.” The name meant nothing to me. Inside was a new hat and an emptiness that only gift boxes on dark, solitary nights possess.

I put the tag in my pocket, the hat on a hook, closed the door, and poured another couple fingers of bourbon into the glass. Sat in the chair and waited for dawn or sleep, whichever found me first.

Quote of the Day: Henry James

 [F]reedom is a splendid privilege, and the first lesson of the young novelist is to learn to be worthy of it.

“Enjoy it as it deserves,” I should say to him; “take possession of it, explore it to its utmost extent, reveal it, rejoice in it. All life belongs to you, and don’t listen either to those who would shut you up into corners of it and tell you that it is only here and there that art inhabits, or to those who would persuade you that this heavenly messenger wings her way outside of life altogether, breathing a superfine air and turning away her head from the truth of things. There is no impression of life, no manner of seeing it and feeling it, to which the plan of the novelist may not offer a place; you have only to remember that talents so dissimilar as those of Alexandre Dumas and Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Gustave Flaubert, have worked in this field with equal glory. Don’t think too much about optimism and pessimism; try and catch the colour of life itself. [...] If you must indulge in conclusions let them have the taste of a wide knowledge. Remember that your first duty is to be as complete as possible-to make as perfect a work. Be generous and delicate, and then, in the vulgar phrase, go in!”

- Henry James, The Art of Fiction

Quote of the Day: Hemingway

[Hemingway] talked about the act of playing a fish as if it were an English sentence. “The way to do it, the style, is not just an idle concept. It is simply the way to get done what is supposed to be done; in this case it brings in the fish. The fact that the right way looks pretty or beautiful when it’s done is just incidental.”

From a 1965 Atlantic profile on Hemingway