A Warped POV by A. Dacosta Brathway

Yeah, yeah... I know. I haven't been here since early April. I was in new York City catching up on my life and getting re-aquainted with "from wence I came." I had forgotten how spontaneous life can be (if you let it) until I was standing on the corner of 5th Ave and 45th St., when from out of nowhere a crowd gathered and a breakdance broke out! I stood there and watched and thought, "You know, I would never see a bunch of naive tourists willfully be conned out of their money by a group of breakdancers in Maryland!" Their moves were choreographed and set to music blaring from a boom box! Then there was the fire truck that t-boned a car that killed a young woman in Queens and the juryless trial, that ended in the aquittal of three detectives that killed an unarmed, young, and intoxicated black man at his bacholar party in a hail of bullets!It was a boring trip to say the least, not to mention the argument I had with my 80+ year old mother who claimed that Marilyn Monroe had absolutely nothing to do with Playboy because she saw MM's life story in a movie and they made no mention of it. (However, they did mention how she didn't like to bathe and didn't like to wear panties when she went to a formal affair!) Go figure! It was very cool and rainy the whole time I was there and I had no warm clothes. I slept on a futon that was a foot too short and I had minimal money. (Okay, so I donated some to the breakdancers' fund! Sue me.) All in all I had a good time. It was good to get my blood pumping again and I will always have the lasting image of watching the Black folks file out of the old Brooklyn neighborhoods, like lemmings, because of gentrification issues. "New York, New York, the BIG APPLE!"