A salvaged shipping container may seem an unpromising showcase for cutting-edge style. But not to Hekima Hapa, who set up shop in one of the rectangular spaces scattered throughout the Dekalb Market in Brooklyn on Saturday.

She deftly exploited her cramped quarters as an intimate backdrop for her African-themed, Brooklyn-sewn designs. Ms. Hapa and her retail partner, Alicia Piller, a jewelry designer, were participating in the Afrika21 Mixtape Project, part of the market conceived as a platform for emerging African artists of every stripe.

“All things African are high trend right now,” Ms. Hapa maintained. At one time, people who picked up African objects on their travels treated them as collectibles, she said. “They didn’t wear them. But they’re wearing them now.”

Her vibrant fashions were a hit with visitors strolling this sprawling parking-lot bazaar at Flatbush Avenue and Willoughby Street. Some, like Nomsa Mazwai, a South African pop star, festooned themselves in Ms. Piller’s jewelry. Delphine Fawundu piled tribal bangles atop colorful leg warmers she had repurposed as elbow-length gloves. Izetta Henderson, a fashion buyer and designer, said it was refreshing to see so much enterprise in the shadow of Forest City, the monolithic apartment towers. “This,” she said of the thrumming market, “is what Brooklyn used to be about.”

source

Related posts:

1. Historic!? Playboy’s first actual African playmate of the year. *video*

A stray-bullet victim says she was held prisoner for five days at a Brooklyn police station because detectives didn’t believe her story about the shooting, the Daily News has learned.

Takesha Griffin, 35, said she was handcuffed to a bench in the squad room or locked in a filthy holding cell at the 73rd Precinct stationhouse during a spirit-shattering stretch last month. Cops asked her repeatedly if she was ready to cough up the real story.

“They wanted me to lie,” said Griffin, whose lawyer filed a notice of claim on Tuesday. “It was like ‘The Twilight Zone.’ ”

During her lengthy confinement, Griffin said she urinated on herself when no one was available to escort her to the bathroom. She was also denied a sanitary napkin.

The single mother of a 9-year-old boy said she was given a McDonald’s hamburger each day and ridiculed when she complained about the food. One cop sarcastically pointed out that she could order salmon or lasagna from a menu posted on the squad room wall.

“Who treats people this way?” Griffin wondered. “It’s inhumane.”

On her second day in the Brownsville stationhouse, cops continued to give her grief, she said.

“A police officer saw me still sitting there and said, ‘Did your story change yet? I guess you like it here,’ ” she said.

The NYPD’s chief spokesman, Paul Browne, did not respond to messages seeking comment. Arrestees are supposed to be brought before a judge within 24 hours.

Lawyer Sanford Rubenstein said Griffin was victimized twice – first as a crime victim and then by cops trying to coerce her into changing her story so the case could be closed.

“This is something that would happen in a fascist state, not in America,” Rubenstein said.

Griffin’s alleged ordeal began Sept. 3 as she was getting out of a male friend’s Ford pickup truck around 4 a.m. near her apartment in Brownsville.

She heard a “slap” and then felt a burning sensation on her right thigh where her tights appeared to be squeezed into a hole. Pulling the bunched-up fabric, she saw a bullet pop out, followed by spurting blood.

Griffin’s friend drove her to Brookdale University Hospital. Hospital staff saw the wound and called the cops.

A computer check showed Griffin had failed to appear in court for a disorderly conduct summons in 2009 and a warrant had been issued. Griffin was handcuffed to the gurney, and after the wound was bandaged, taken to the 73rd Precinct stationhouse still wearing hospital scrubs.

She said detectives insisted she had been shot during a lovers’ quarrel.

“They were trying to get me to say it was my friend who shot me,” recalled Griffin, who is seeking $5 million from the city.

“He never had a gun,” she said. “I told them he was gay; we had gone to a gay club the night before.”

The friend offered to take a lie detector test and submit to a gunshot residue test on his hands, she said. He was released that morning; she was held.

Griffin’s mother brought her fresh clothes, a turkey sandwich, a newspaper, soap and a toothbrush on Sept. 7.

Criminal Court was in session the entire weekend, but Griffin was not taken to Central Booking until the afternoon of Sept. 8.

Griffin insisted she answered the summons and it was supposed to be dismissed. She was right. There had been a clerical error.

Finally, she was free to go.

source

Related posts:

1. Don Imus Really Hates Blacks

A high school basketball star was shot dead inside a Manhattan housing project Sunday in a slaying her family believes was a tragic case of mistaken identity.

Tayshana (Chicken) Murphy, 18, one of the top-rated basketball players in the country, was killed in Harlem’s Grant Houses around 4:10 a.m., police said.

She was trying to outrun a gunman in the fourth-floor hallway of her building, witnesses said.

“She was pleading for her life,” said friend Teka Taylor, 22. “She was saying, ‘No, please, I don’t have nothing to do with it.’”

Murphy had just started her senior year at Murry Bergtraum High School for Business Careers. Several colleges were actively recruiting her.

“She said, ‘Mom, I’m going to get you out of the projects,’ ” said Murphy’s mother, Tephanie Holston, whose shirt was stained with blood after she tried to save her daughter before emergency workers arrived. “She loved basketball, she lived and breathed basketball,” Holston said.

Witnesses believe Murphy, who was partying with friends from the project and was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, was mistaken for a boy from the group who had fought with young men from a nearby housing project.

She died at the scene after being chased into the building by her shooter.

Murphy’s mother kissed the body bag as it was loaded into a medical examiner van.

“No, no, no. I can’t believe this,” Murphy’s sister howled as she banged on the van with both her hands.
Murphy had a brush with violence last year, when she left Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School under threat of suspension after an altercation with a 15-year-old girl.

She transferred to St. Michael’s Academy in Manhattan, then started at Murry Bergtraum last September after St. Michael’s shut down.

Murphy was ecstatic to be returning to the court this fall after being sidelined last year with a knee injury. “She wanted in the worst way to play,” said Ed Grezinsky, her coach at Bergtraum. “She definitely would have been the leader of the team.”

She never lost sight of her dream of becoming a WNBA star. “That’s my goal,” she told the Daily News last year. “I want to be great.”

Police are investigating the killing. No arrests have been made.

No related posts.

Leon was the driver for Ladder Company 118 in Brooklyn, on September 11, 2001, and one of 343 New York City firefighters to die while responding to the World Trade Center attacks.

“In Leon’s company there were eight firefighters that got killed,” Smith said. “They found the remains of six of them. They have never found my son. I have a tombstone on an empty grave. One of these days I’ll have them, and I’ll bury him. I’ll never give up.”

When the towers crumbled, Smith became part of a tragic sorority of mothers whose boys grew up to be firefighters who died as heroes. But she is also part of another circle of women, a much smaller group whose story of loss on 9/11 mirrors that of the entire FDNY family, but one often forgotten or buried in the heaps of pain.

Leon Smith was one of 12 black firefighters to lose his life that day. Their stories have gone largely untold, their faces rarely shown in the photo exhibits or memorial projects dedicated to the fallen firefighters.

The FDNY received widespread public support and good will after the attack. But the department has long struggled to recruit and retain firefighters of color. The city’s fire department, boasting about 14,000 members, is overwhelmingly white. Only about 3 percent of the force’s firefighters are black, roughly the same proportion that served during the attacks and in recent decades. (In an eerie coincidence, the 12 black firefighters who were killed on 9/11 represent just about 3 percent of the FDNY’s total deaths.)

Smith says Leon was harassed often in his early days in the Fire Department of New York. “They gave Leon a hard time,” she recalled. “They put oil in his boots, took the truck and ran over his boots. They tried to destroy Leon’s spirit. But he was a strong-willed young man.”

Black firefighters and critics of the FDNY say that racism and discrimination have long run rampant in the fire department. Shortly after 9/11, the Vulcan Society, an organization for New York’s black firefighters, sent out fliers announcing a memorial ceremony for the 12 who had been killed. Shortly after, several of the fliers were defaced. Someone wrote “Lick me” on one, and “What about the white guys?” on another. On a flier, someone scrawled over the guest list, which included Al Sharpton and former New York City mayor David Dinkins, replacing their names with those of rap stars.

In recent years, courts have found that the FDNY engaged in discriminatory hiring practices, which a federal judge has sought to remedy.

“If they were drug dealers, everybody would know who they were,” said Craig Kelly, a retired firefighter and grief counselor who worked with their families. Kelly helped to bring their stories to light in “All Our Sons,” a little-known documentary released in 2004 that chronicled the aftermath of the 12 black firefighters’ deaths.

“When I started watching, I saw people coming out of the window, and that was scary,” Laurel Jackson said in the movie of the television coverage that morning. She was the mother of Tarel Coleman, who was with Squad 252 in Brooklyn. “And believe me, at that time I wanted to reach out and tell my son, ‘Don’t go.’”

Ruth Powell expressed similar feelings about that day. “I knew for sure, the latter part of the evening, when we were calling the firehouse to see if he had returned,” she said. She was looking for her son Shawn E. Powell, who worked at Brooklyn’s Engine Company 207. “And they reported that his truck had not returned.”

At that time, Paul Washington was president of the Vulcan Society. He helped recruit and train Powell, and when he learned that Powell had been killed, it was the realization of his worst fears.

“That was always something that would be my worst nightmares, that one of the guys I helped bring on the job would die on the job,” Washington said. “I remember calling his mother a day or two after 9/11. The first words that came out of her mouth were, ‘I know you recruited my son.’ But she wasn’t mad.”

Since then, Ruth Powell and a few of the other mothers have passed away, and the young children of those firefighters have started high school or gone off to college. The parents who are still alive say they have not moved on, but they have moved forward.

“Each day I have a different feeling about 9/11,” said Smith. “Each day I am a different type of person,” she said. “Some days I’m fine, some days I get very emotional.”

“Leon didn’t die,” she added. “Leon was murdered on 9/11. My son didn’t close his eyes and just die. He was murdered.”

Irene Smith got the city to co-name the family’s block in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn as Firefighter Leon W. Smith, Jr. Way. Each year her church gives college scholarships in Leon’s name. To date, they have given over $50,000 to college students from the neighborhood.

“Leon’s memory will always, always be around,” Smith said. “Nobody will ever forget about my son as long as I have breath in my lungs to speak his name.”

Smith and other mothers, both black and white, lean on each other for support. Once a month, the mothers of Ladder Company 118 have a conference call where they share the latest goings-on. They meet occasionally for lunch and run into each other at events, especially around the anniversary of the attacks.

“We are all walking in the same shoes,” she said. “We are family now. No way you can break the bond we have.”

source

Related posts:

1. Another black football player is shot dead: Steve McNair killed

(212) 242-7580

Lafayette French Bakery, a pastry shop in New York’s Greenwich Village, started selling “Drunken Negro Face” cookies on Martin Luther King Day in ‘honor’ of President Obama.

One customer told My Fox NY that store owner Ted Kefalinos said to her, “Would you like some drunken negro heads to go with your coffee? They’re in honor of our new president. He’s following in the same path of Abraham Lincoln; he will get his.”

Kefalinos spoke with Gothamist, and denied suggesting that Obama would be assassinated. However, he saw nothing wrong with the cookies themselves.

Later, he apologized to the New York Daily News.

“I’m sorry that people were offended by the cookie. We were just trying to make a large number of people happy, and instead we made a large number of people confused and angry.”

In a followup interview with My Fox NY, Kefalinos said he had been getting death threats over the cookies. Watch:

Source

***UPDATE***
It appears that this racist pig has had so many threats from people that his phone is ringing off the hook. Instead of that arogant smirk he had in the previous clip, he now has a look of fear on his face because he knows his much beloved bakery will be out of buisness within in month. See this is why I love New Yorkers. They do not fu*k around. I love being liberal, I love NYC, and I love my white brothers and sisters who live there who always keeps it real!

Watch this sorry sack of dough attempt a real apology this time.

No related posts.

“Red Hook High” may be the antidote to all that. Instead of stick-thin blondes toting $3,500 Hermes bags, there are black boys toting bags of drugs. Instead of postcard-perfect mansions and cityscapes, there are cramped apartments and construction zones. Part drama, part documentary, “Red Hook High,” a new pilot that premiered at the New York Television Festival (NYTVF) this week, shows a high school experience few network and cable series touch on, one that unfolds in a gritty Brooklyn community among teens with the odds stacked against them. Forget prom queens and valedictorians. “Red Hook High’s” stars include a budding drug dealer, an emerging gay crusader and a possibly pregnant teen.

“It’s the opposite of ‘Gossip Girl,’” said director Trac Minh Vu. “It’s not a glossy Hollywood fashion show. There are probably people who actually live lives like what is portrayed on ‘Gossip Girl’ and ‘The OC.’ But they’re fantasy shows. They’re about showcasing high fashion and the small population of people who can live like that.”

“But my own high school experience is not at all reflected in the current crop of teen dramas,” he continued. “Part of this is trying to show that the teen experience is far wider than what’s portrayed on TV, especially for kids of color.” Vu came to the United State from Vietnam at age 2. By day, he’s a video producer for an investment bank. Nights and weekends, he works on independent projects: Last year, his teen drama about the Upper East Side’s wannabe Ivy Leaguers, “Dear Harvard,” picked up three major awards from the NYTVF, which showcases independent pilots (those not backed by an established studio).

This year, Vu channeled his experience as a nonwhite student in an Oregon Catholic school, his time working as a teaching artist at South Brooklyn Community High Schoo and his affinity for classic coming-of-age dramas like “My So Called Life,” “Dawson’s Creek” and “Felicity,” into a pilot portraying teen life on the other side of the East River.

Beyond a basic story outline, Vu left the dialogue and development of “Red Hook High” up to his actors, students from Brooklyn high schools with an interest in performing arts. They rehearsed over the course of seven weeks and shot the pilot in four days, on a sub-$20,000 budget financed out of Vu’s pocket, pennies compared to the average $3 million budget networks allot for pilot production. For many of the stars, their story lines mirrored their real-life drama.

“They told us to write down what kind of characters we wanted to be. I said, I just want to be gay because it’s just going to be like, stupid if I’m trying to be straight,” said Michael Maldonado, who’s openly gay and plays a teen coming to terms with his homosexuality.

Read The Entire Story

No related posts.

As with his last design, he explains that he’s “selling an idea” that will one day hang “in the greatest museums and galleries in the city.” He also wants you all to know how he really feels about Obama, in case it wasn’t clear…click HERE to see the whole story…..

The Apollo Braun is scary enough, but this guy needs lots of therapy

Related posts:

1. Black Nazi Preacher Calls Obama a pimp for white hookers.
2. Funny clip of the day

It is a fairly common crime in New York. But this was no common criminal.

Johnson has been arrested a staggering 53 times — the majority for allegedly groping women on subway trains.

In his latest arrest, Johnson was being followed by plainclothes officers who recognized him from police photos. He was charged with persistent sexual abuse, and if convicted this time he could be sent away for life.

But the fact that Johnson was roaming the subways in the first place has raised questions about how the state deals with the problem of repeat sex offenders. His case even drew the scorn of a recent newspaper editorial that labeled him the “Subway Rat.”

His attorney, Afsi Khot, had no comment on the case.

Johnson, 49, has been convicted at least twice of persistent sexual abuse within the last decade. And he has a lengthy rap sheet, with 30 arrests on charges of sex abuse, 13 on jostling accusations and two grand larceny charges.

Prosecutors say they aren’t sure whether Johnson chose his subway targets before boarding trains, or if he would randomly pick out a woman after he was on a train. In his latest arrest, the undercover transit officers said it appeared that he chose the woman at random, district attorney’s spokeswoman Jennifer Kushner said Monday.

In a jail interview with the Daily News of New York, Johnson said he never touched that woman. However, prosecutors have he was carrying a messenger bag over the front of his torso, slid it to the back to illegally rub up against the woman, and then moved the bag back to the front to avoid being caught.

He was released from prison March 25 after serving four years for persistent sexual abuse. The state attorney general’s office had argued that he should be confined under the state’s civil commitment law for sex offenders, which went into effect last year, because he was at risk for repeat offenses.

A judge disagreed and instead placed Johnson on strict court-ordered supervision and electronic monitoring. Under the mental health laws governing his situation, officials generally can’t comment on details of his supervision.

Whether he should have been confined speaks to a larger issue about what authorities should do with criminals who aren’t violent offenders.

Gropers often avoid prosecution because they usually strike in crowded public places so they can easily escape. It is believed around half are repeat offenders, among the highest of all the sex-related crimes, but there isn’t much crossover into more egregious acts like rape or assault, said Elizabeth Jeglic, a professor of treatment and rehabilitation of offenders at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

“The behavior is disturbing, there is no question,” Jeglic said. “But in the larger scheme you want to commit the people who are grabbing kids off the street, or the rapist in Central Park,” Jeglic said.

Johnson was quoted as telling the Daily News that plenty of men try to grope women on subways, and admitted he’s been doing it for more than 25 years since he saw another man rub against a woman on a train and dash away unpunished.

The goal of the state’s Sex Offender Management and Treatment Act that went into effect last April is to protect society by keeping the most dangerous sex offenders off the streets, and provide long-term specialized treatment to see that they don’t repeat their crimes. To qualify, a criminal must have a “mental abnormality,” and be “predisposed” to repeat the offense, prosecutors said.

Out of 1,299 sex offenders initially referred to the program in New York, 163 have been recommended for civil commitment under the law, according to a report earlier this year by the state Office of Mental Health. Under the program, sex offenders are committed, treated, monitored and eventually discharged.

While it’s painful for the victim no matter the crime, the system doesn’t have room to deal with all offenders.

Currently, 10 percent of sex abuse cases are referred as possibilities for the program, on par with other states that have similar laws, the health department report said. It costs more than $100,000 per person per year to confine them. And there is currently bed space for 181 offenders at three facilities around the state. The development of 150 beds is under way, but it’s obvious there will be shortfalls unless long-term projects are developed. Only 5 percent of those committed to the 19 other state programs in the country have been released.

But Johnson may end up behind bars for good if he’s convicted in the latest incident, because prosecutors say they will push for more serious punishment given his rap sheet. That means he could get up to life in prison.

A survey released last summer by the Manhattan borough president’s office on sexual harassment in the subways found that 63 percent of those responding reported they were harassed in some way, whether it was random groping, lewd comments or unwanted advances. The report was compiled from 1,790 responses collected from New York City straphangers in all five boroughs.

 I feel bad for this moron’s mother. What a freaking mess he is!!–Stacy Dee

No related posts.