Spotted At 984 Manhattan Avenue: WPIX

Today yours truly decided to take it easy and knock around the Garden Spot. You can imagine my surprise when I spied a television crew on Manhattan Avenue between Huron Street and India Street. It was Greg Mocker from Channel 11, and yes, he was interviewing people regarding the “beeping” fliers yours truly wrote about yesterday. For shits and giggles I decided to hang around and watch him at work. Hilarity ensued. (TEASER: Those of you who are fans of our Community Board’s Public Safety Chair— and you know who you are—  will be pleased to know he makes a cameo appearance at the very end!)

Here’s the deal, folks:

1. Aside from flat-out lying to a chap he was interviewing about the provenance of the story he was “reporting” I find it rather sad that this is the kind of “new item” that apparently merits the professional media’s attention nowadays. There a lot of great stories to be found in Greenpoint. This is not one of them. So much for the media being the “watch dogs” for the people.

2. Those of you who live in the area know (as I do) that the gentleman he is interviewing is not normal. He is very nice, to be certain but I do not know if he is merely learning disabled, has a speech impediment or is struggling with addiction (as many people hereabouts are)— or all of the above. For this reason I find it utterly reprehensible that Mr. Mocker would consider subjecting this man to media attention (and therefore ridicule). This chap cannot help being what god made him. Therefore, it would seem to me that the responsibility falls on Mr. Mocker— as a human being— not to exploit this gentleman’s shortcomings. But this seems to be what he was up to and as such he is putting a “face” on this community that is not only highly inaccurate, but quite frankly also insulting. We come in all shapes and stripes here.

UPDATE, 10:24 p.m.: I have word from my buddy Kevin over at Forgotten-NY that yours truly was given props (albeit as “thatgreenpointblog”) from Mr. Mocker himself! In addition our Public Safety Chair makes a rather amusing appearance. See for yourself:

As you can imagine I am very pleased by these developments. However:

1. I doubt I would have been credited had the above exchange not taken place.

2. I would be really, truly grateful if Mr. Mocker would cover more substantive issues in my community moving forward. And believe you there are plenty of those to be found!

Miss Heather