It was better when they only killed by accidentally driving into crowds.
I agree - I'm so glad that news organizations are finally picking up on this issue. How paranoid, racist, fearful and trigger-happy do you have to be, to mistake a skinny 5'8" kid looking for his family for a 6 foot tall adult man who is threatening your life? These assholes are getting older, scareder and more isolated by the day. I'm sorry that that young white woman was killed for turning in someone's driveway, but perhaps this will make people realize that it's not just POCs at risk -- their own children and grandchildren could end up dead at the hands of some moron standing his ground.
I sort of think it's still about cars as well as guns. These are people who never encounter strangers except on private property like a retail store -- they're never in public between destinations. So they're primed (by all the insane nonsense they consume on TV and the internet) to think of strangers as a physical threat, and they don't have day-to-day encounters with strangers that bring them back to reality.
I mean, the guns are the problem, but the cars are part of what makes people too unstable to handle gun ownership.
How many politicians have promulgated successful anti-fear political programs that did not depend on encouraging their followers to escalate the scope, severity and authorized dispensers of violence upon despised minorities? FDR? Churchill? And the fears that they opposed were not as personalized as "black and brown people are coming to your house."
These are people who never encounter strangers except on private property like a retail store These are people who never encounter strangers except on private property like a retail store
I basically agree, but I think you're underestimating the extent to which giant retail starts to feel like a mini-town, with streets and intersections and pedestrian traffic and interactions with strangers.
I will say that if I ever catch a bit of local news I come away fearful. The framing is generally such a shitshow.
I didn't mean exactly that people in retail establishments aren't perceived as strangers; more that the Fox-News-gun-owner population's opportunities to interact with strangers are very very limited.
I don't believe that guy hasn't had dozens of people mistakenly coming to his address in all the time he'd lived there. The street Yarl intended to go to ended in "Terrace" the one he went to ended in "Street" they were exactly the same otherwise. That neighborhood has the worst street naming conventions I've ever seen outside of Queens.
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TIL: "Minivets are not little sports cars, but they do fly fast. They are small, and often colorful cuckooshrikes."
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Yep. That's part of why I was never able to register the domain name. Originally it was held by a bird enthusiast, then a mobile veterinarian.
"Bird enthusiast" contains multitudinous potentialities, only a few ruinously perverse.
The whole thing about shooting people who come to the door worries me because I do canvassing.
I mean, I also worry about other people too.
My friend, my friend, can I interest you in a full suite of weapons systems of your own?
I keep reading the post title as "Ralph Yarl et arl".
That neighborhood has the worst street naming conventions I've ever seen outside of Queens.
Miami-Dade County is all like this: nearly all of it is on one grid with numbers in both directions. Incredibly easy to navigate when you understand the system, but the system is needlessly complexified by the presence of 3 possible street labels in each direction: Street, Drive, and Terrace run E-W, Road, Avenue, and Court run N-S. In general it's in a hierarchy (St & Rd are common, Dr & Ave are major through-roads*, and Terr & Ct typically don't "go through"; they're abbreviated by canals or large properties or just the vagaries of sprawl), but it's fundamentally arbitrary. I lived on SW 134th Terr, which is 1 block south of SW 134th St and 1 block north of 136th Dr. I don't know if SW 135th St exists anywhere, but I do know that 134th Terr only exists as 4 discontinuous blocks.
Tying the thread together, around the time we moved away the state was debating Open Carry. Both sides seemed to agree that this would be a return to the Wild West, but the two disagreed about whether that was desirable. Obviously we see who won.
*somewhat helpfully, N-S roads are major when they end in 2 or 7, while E-W roads are major when divisible by 4, although "major" is also inconsistent. But it does mean that, if you get on one of those, you can probably go pretty far without hitting a canal or other form of dead end
I took a look at Miami-Dade and the first thing that caught my eye was NW 36th St bending and then turning into NW 41st St, without any grid near it north or south.
It's right around Trump National Doral Miami that it gets bent.
I think the King County, WA grid is about as ambitious as Miami, although in names more than in griddiness. You can be way in the corner of the developed county, 10+ miles from the Seattle city limit, and find residential streets called 201st Ave NE and so forth, even though they're the postwar curvilinear kind.
I guess my mild PTSD from rural travel is justified -first being pulled over by cops after multiple reports of...me, driving through town.
Next getting a giant spotlight and threats of gun for getting lost and looking at the numbers on someone's house.
Not going to drive much in rural America now...not if I can help it.
18 sounds like a chip microarchitecture more than a city.
19: There's some sort of grid clash happening there--northeast of the airport, the street north of NW 36th St jumps from being NW 38th St to SE 14th St. But aside from that, 36th makes several northward swerves between the airport & Doral, so I guess they decided to only change the name once instead of stepping from 36th to 38th to 40th to 41st.
But yeah, the whole thing is weird because there are so many exceptions from canals and gated communities and large properties (plus the handful of off-grid highways & roads).
We were out in the Laurel Highlands yesterday for a summit hike (it was snowing; we had dressed for like 45º). Never got lost, but suddenly I was very aware of the potential consequences of turning around in someone's driveway.
It didn't happen in the Yarl case or the driveway one in New York, but one disturbing feature of some of these recent incidents is that the shooter pursued the victim even after they realized the mistake and withdrew. This happened with the cheerleaders who got into the wrong car and possibly another driveway incident with an Instacart driver. It suggests something very disturbing about what's motivating these shooters beyond just irrational fear.
OK, things are even goofier than I remember: look at the intersection of SW 77th Ave and SW 133rd St (a block or two NE of where I lived). You have a Terrace (E-W in theory) coming off of a Street (also E-W), 133rd St switching to 134th St when it crosses 77th, while 134th continues 1 block south of the 133rd bit. And that's not even all of it. Quite the microcosm of the madness that comes from trying to apply a rational grid to US postwar suburbia.
We keep it simple around here. Street names just start with K and go on indefinitely.
26: What do you think is going on there? Because it's terrifying but I also don't get it at all.
26: Yeah. It's horrible that these incidents all clustered together, but IMO it's useful for the discourse that kind of the entire range of possibilities was represented (other than someone shooting back, I guess). Not just about PoC, not just about houses, not just about instant reactions.
26: what's motivating these shooters beyond just irrational fear.
Something like vigilante fantasies they've harbored since junior high?
8: That neighborhood has the worst street naming conventions I've ever seen outside of Queens.
I see you've never encountered Atlanta and "Peachtree." Although calling that situation "naming conventions" might be too generous.
What do you think is going on there? Because it's terrifying but I also don't get it at all.
I think it shows that some of these guys actively want a confrontation where they can shoot someone with justification, and they're not willing to let go of the opportunity even if the justification is no longer there. Very scary.
I think 34 is right. Can't waste all that money and effort you spent preparing to protect yourself.
Where the cops went, they followed: once they've started shooting, they have a new reason to be afraid for their life unless they keep shooting their whole magazine.
Also, making sure you're the only person alive at the end has a certain practical advantage when testimony is collected.
Street names just start with K and go on indefinitely.
I used to live on Kapiolani Blvd, and later Kewalo Street.
In my city, we don't have numbered streets except for 93rd Street, which was named to spite the 93 people who signed a petition not to build that street.
38: Kahewai and Kaohinani, among others
Presumably they've gotten better, but I remember the GPS's really struggling with the pronunciation of Kuihelani.
39 is the most incredible city government story I've ever heard.
Yeah, that was in 1875. I guess things were different then.
Basically, the guy who wanted the street put up the sign to taunt the 93 people who were against, and the name stuck.
i've had folks in the luxury trade in all apparent sincerity argue to me that the la metro d line station under construction in bev hills will allow criminals to effect a quick get away. ?????? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 i'm like soooo when was the last time you caught an intraurban train??? doo di doo di do here i am waiting on the platform for my train casually slung over my shoulder is *all my sweet sweet rodeo dr loot* nothing to see here officer!
in conclusion i agree with lb that many folks are deranged as a direct result of the physical world we've built in post wwii us of a. fun times!
argue to me that the la metro d line station under construction in bev hills will allow criminals to effect a quick get away
And that's the reason Baltimore does not have a decent metro system. Wouldn't want to give criminals access to the suburbs!
45: Same hand-wringing in Atlanta, over which this sketch was produced.
yes of course this is every transit syx ever but there is a hilarious chasm between "omg poor people! crime in general! & the v v specific scenario of smash n grab hermes & then rely on the ... metro? ... for your getaway with all the sweet sweet fancy leather goods ( which aren't going to be on display in any significant quantities to snatch anyways i mean you have to spend big & long to even be allowed to buy a bag & those customers are not being served on the open to the public shop floor amenable to a smash n grab). (all of which these particular people know v v well.)
Wouldn't it make more sense to take the train somewhere and then steal a car?
nearly any alternative crime strategy would be an improvement,! perhaps not absconding by donkey
Never work with children or animals.
Except for getting a kid to show you the TikTok on how to steal a Hyundai.
48: I can honestly say that I've never encountered anyone in this country campaigning against public transport because it would allow criminals to commute into their areas. I've never even heard of such a thing.
We get people saying "don't build this railway/tram/whatever" because it's too expensive, or the tram line will block up the roads, or it will be environmentally damaging, but never "it will bring crime to the area". If you said to someone "we're building a Tube line that will make travel easier between your area and the rest of London and that's the only effect it will have" they would universally say "great!" Good public transport links increase your property value! Estate agents boast about them! "There's a station five minutes away", that sort of thing! A major regional political issue is that cities other than London don't have nearly enough public transport and want a lot more!
Increasingly you get people whining that the construction itself will be annoying, which is an important advance in the technology of nimbyism; it's literally true of any construction at all that it might involve noise, mud, and trucks. I was wondering if this wasn't actually imputed prejudice - what we think they're thinking - but I see Sissi has actually caught a live one.
32: senile disinhibition. Also 36.
The street Yarl intended to go to ended in "Terrace" the one he went to ended in "Street" they were exactly the same otherwise. That neighborhood has the worst street naming conventions I've ever seen outside of Queens.
This is pretty common in Heroinopolis. Within a few minutes of each other you have Trinity Grove, Trinity Road, East Trinity Road (which runs parallel with Trinity Road, but, as the name suggests, one block to the south), South Trinity Road, Trinity Way, Trinity Crescent, Trinity Mains, Trinity Court and Trinity Path.
The best thing is to follow the French and give your streets very long and historically opaque names like "the Street of the 17th of August" and change them regularly in response to the political climate. Best French street name: "Rue des Deux Rues" in Evreux in Normandy. The Street of the Two Streets.
I give you Wikipedia on a street in Atlanta:
While "Peachtree" alone almost always refers to Peachree Street or its continuations, there are 71 streets in Atlanta with a variant of "Peachtree" in their name.[9] Some include:
Peachtree Creek Road
Peachtree Lane
Peachtree Avenue
Peachtree Circle
Peachtree Place
Peachtree Drive
Peachtree Industrial Boulevard
Peachtree Plaza
Peachtree Way
Peachtree Memorial Drive
Peachtree Road
New Peachtree Road
Peachtree Walk
Peachtree Park Drive
Peachtree Parkway
Peachtree Valley Road
Peachtree Battle Avenue
Peachtree Dunwoody Road
Old Peachtree Road
West Peachtree Street
55.2 A lot of Arab cities have streets named like that, "December 18th Street" and similar.
56: far better to consolidate the whole lot into one megablock. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWB6O7xdH4g
55: My favorite example of French street naming comes from tourism in Paris about 10 years ago. If you look closely at Place de la République, you'll notice that among the 7 streets (8? Depends on how you count the intersection on the north) leading into it, there are Rue du Temple, Boulevard du Temple, and Rue de Faubourg du Temple.
I had a lot more thoughts about American car culture (I went to La Brea for the first time last week, and thought it was emblematic of all of Los Angeles: so car-oriented, tar comes out of the ground on its own!), but honestly, thought it was in poor taste given the OP. No offense to anyone who doesn't mind that, lord knows there's plenty of that around here, but cars aren't as big a problem as racism and guns.
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NMM to Harry Belafonte. A giant.
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His appearance on Colbert was the cutest thing.
I spent some time at a New Years Eve party once talking to an old guy who claimed to have grown up playing stickball with Belafonte in Harlem. I don't know if it was true, but if it wasn't, he had good taste in bullshitting.
He's a graduate of GW right near you in Washington Heights (where RWM sort of worked), so not completely implausible for someone the right age...
The lists of graduates of NYC high schools are always so wacky. Belfonte, Kissinger, Alan Greenspan, Manny Ramirez, Tiny Tim.
Also mathematician Persi Diaconis, who they somehow let graduate even though he dropped out of school at age 14 to become a magician. The famous story about him was that when he applied to Harvard for grad school he had a letter from beloved Scientific American columnist Martin Gardner that said "of the 10 best card tricks invented in the last 10 years, this kid invented two of them and maybe you should give him a break."
He's a graduate of GW right near you in Washington Heights
Known as Gee-Dubs to the student body. It's a gorgeous building, although not at this point a very good school.
66: Amusingly, this bio suggests the break being cut was not so much because of his lack of diploma as it was because his bachelor's was from CCNY.
68: Yeah, I was pronouncing it Gee-Dubs in my head, but wasn't able to figure out how to write that other than GW.
So, most Utah cities are generally on a grid. The origin is 0,0. Sometimes this coincides with the temple. From there, play battleship. 100 W 100N. That's the address. There is also a 100 N 100 W. House numbers will be 1623 S 2150 E or similar. If one grew up here this is normal. If one didn't, it's horrid, because 5992 James Way is easier to remember than 5992 S 1400 E.
In other words I'm surprised only that we aren't shooting people all the time for being on the wrong battleship.
But, when your levees break the air force will find it super easy to rescue you from your rooftops.
71: DC is similar. I think of DC as being easy to get around, but not as easy as it looks. You've got the Capitol at the center, with for quadrants around it: NW, NE, SE, SW. Streets that run east to west have letters, for example H Street; streets that run north to south have numbers, for example 8th Street. Simple enough.
The "not as easy as it looks" comes partly from the quadrants, which people often don't think about (this was a problem for a meetup once, if I remember correctly), and partly from all the random stuff. Avenues named after states generally are major streets that run diagonally to the grid, but not always; the simple naming convention only holds south of Florida Avenue, and north of it there are much more complicated rules or none at all; and even within the grid you've got side streets following no rules, one-way streets without warning, and no J street.
55: Yeah, other than the major roads of Milton Keynes, and even that's a stretch, I don't think I've ever been to a city in Knifecrime Island that had anything that could be called a naming convention. A business park or a new development might have a theme for street names, and most cities have lots of -gates leading out of them (or at least out of the old part), but that's about it.
Hyphengated Britons, pushed into sordid peripheral ghettos.
You know what, I take back 59.last, American car culture is worse than American gun or racial culture. I still feel a bit bad saying that because it's easier for me to say it than it would be for a black guy, but still, I just drove the kid to school for the first time in 2 weeks (vacation, plus I've been biking her to school) and was amazed how bad it was. A 2.6 mile round trip took 45 minutes and would have taken even longer if I hadn't skipped the block the school was actually on. The other lane of traffic on my route was a parking lot for three blocks. Someone behind me for a lot of that stretch honked half a dozen times, as if they couldn't see how bad things were for everyone or could see and thought it would help somehow. I can't count how many illegal u-turns and double parkers I see regularly. And this is in a city that's unusually good about non-car transportation; I can't imagine how bad it gets in a place like LA or San Antonio. Insanity.
I think of DC as being a nightmare! All those wagon wheels and spokes made no sense to me.
More to 74 than 77.
74: That was me -- I showed up at the NW counterpart of the correct address for the meetup.