Ninja Vandals in Williamsburg?
From the mailbag:
I wanted to see if you had heard anything about another vigilante attack on N 6th St last night (Sat 4/17) between Bedford and Berry. I live on the block, and my friends and roommate reported seeing a “Ninja looking” crew dressed in all black run down the street from Bedford to Berry along the road and smash the drivers side window of every car on the block. I confirmed when I returned home later that night, drunk and stumbling and saw patches of glass all the way down N 6th. Apparently they scrambled at the intersection of N 6th and Berry as cop cars came from every direction and were even reversing back up N 6th st towards the intersection. With the American Apparell attack on our street a month or two ago, I’m starting to wonder WTF is going on
If you have any information or pictures, let us know in comments. [image via]
UPDATE: Here’s another version of events from Williamsburger Stephanie Palumbo:
I heard it from my apt and then my boyfriend called me from outside on the street. He saw it happen.. said the kids were stopping cars and harassing people in them. They turned over all of the garbage cans on the street and then one of the kids grabbed one of the garbage cans and smashed it into the window at the tea house on the corner of N 8th and Bedford. Then they smashed a car window and kept running down the street (toward N 7th). They were screaming, “Take back the night!” which makes no sense – it’s an anti-rape slogan but those protests are nonviolent and totally different.
We suspect it has something to do with the Anarchist Book Fair that was going on in the city and also the police raid a few days earlier on an anarchist art collective in Bushwick. My boyfriend said they were all young and white and looked like bored rich kids. They seemed to be just playing dress up or something and had absolutely no coherent message
A couple of pix [thanks Stephanie] after the jump.
I work at Tacu Tacu and saw it a split second after it happened. And nooo, the cops didnt do much. They were more interested in the smashed cars than actually trying to catch the guys. I saw the cop car just pull onto the block and stop, going in the wrong direction of where they guys were running.
but anyway. who the fuck is that retarded to just go on a rampage and wake up one morning saying “hey lets all dress like ninjas and smash some car windows today”
Also, smashing the windows of an american app is one (fairly stupid and pointless) thing, but smashing your neighbors’ car windows? Damn the man, save the autobody store? Kinda re-re, dudes.
I think these same ninjas may have hit Saint’s Alp Teahouse on the corner of Bedford and N 8th. Their windows were smashed on Saturday night and they were closed on Sunday. I work at a shop across the street and we had police detectives coming in all Sunday morning asking questions.
Just when you thought you heard everything- now anarchists ninjas running amuck in the burg
I have photos – who should I send them to?
Also, they were obviously not ninjas. A bunch of young anarchist kids. The whole thing was totally sad.
They’re not dressing like Ninjas. They were in “Black Bloc”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_bloc
First off, it is incorrect to imply that it was all “guys”. The protesters were carrying signs with slogans such as “We’ll show you Crazy Bitch”. The women and their male comrades are taking a stand and showing how fed-up they are with the regime of sexual violence that is maintained and ignored by the great majority of our society. They are angry, and choose to express their anger openly instead of hiding behind some false pretense of non-violence in the face of the brutality of sexual violence. As a friend of mine who witnessed the whole thing said to me in her disbelief at some of the immediate reaction she heard: “How can someone possibly care more about some broken glass than the dehumanization of half the world’s population?”
“They are angry, and choose to express their anger openly …”
so basically a young left tea party?
also, how can you tell if you’re an anarchist?
your clothes are all black and your friends are all white
Re: Semyon’s comment:
There’s a really big disconnect between those words and the actions taken by the kids on Saturday night. Targeting independently owned businesses and random cars on the street has actual consequences for people that should be your “comrades” – the car window that was smashed could have belonged to a struggling single mom working two jobs, you know?
This was a really odd choice for direct action, and I don’t see any end result beyond some innocent people being forced to put out money to pay for their car windows and sanitation workers having to pick up the garbage you overturned.
I just find your comment and the whole thing very bizarre and disconnected from reality. I was involved in the anti-globalization protests in the late 90′s/early 00′s, and I have a strong interest in radical politics. But this whole thing in Wburg is depressing and alienating. I wish I could articulate it better. Maybe I shouldn’t be taking it so seriously. But it strikes me as really sad.
I don’t know – me and my friends just watched the Charlize Theron movie about the WTO protests and we got carried away.
LOLz.
I willing to bet those “outfits” were bought, at least in part, at that American Apparel.
Re: Semyon; what a lame reason to do some extremely lame shit. Maybe when I get an opinion on something you don’t care about I’ll come and break some of your shit I’m sure you’ll understand since your opinions are no more valid than mine?
So, the logic is…
To express your protest over the inherently diffuse and complex nature of “violence” between gender, class and race – You’re going to put on masks and throw a garbage can at the window of a tea house run by ethnic minorities in a primarily working class section of Brooklyn, NY. You will also break random windows of random cars without any regard for who owns them.
This is ridiculous.
Yeah, I saw it . I was right behind them, and the guy who smashed the trashcan through the window of the tea shop. Before that, they overturned the trashcans on each corner and threw them in the street (then the one dude picked up the last one and threw it through the window. Must have been scary for the patrons seated right there). It was a bizarre 30 second walk the rest of the way to the train. More lame than the New School protestors last year. They looked the same. Way to get your point across! Cunts
re. Semyon.
yea, that’s the best way to solve society’s woes. indiscriminately destroy other peoples’ property.
I find a lot wrong w/ the factory farming industry, I guess you wouldn’t mind if I came and set you house on fire b/c it?
Wow, all these witnesses and no one called the cops? Ohh…that would be lame right. Hey “P” did you give the cops a description or point them in the direction that they fled?
@taco taco
So this event that was only barely blogworhy was really worth the protest?
And in a neighborhood where, if this really was about sexual violence, most everyone would wholeheartedly agree with them?
Sorry. Anarchy begets anarchy. If that was their motive behind it all, they r doin it wrong.
i am just glad they switched to attacking vacant condos by the time they got to n9th. my car was spared.
Awww, what’s the matter, a bunch of pasty and pampered hipster-yuppie suburban transplants are angry because Williamsburg has gotten even too pasty and pampered for their own tastes? Well ain’t that a shame.
I just hope that the inbred cul-de-sac ninjas from Pennsyltucky only damaged property that belonged to their fellow yup transplants as opposed to real working Brooklynites.
@seymon, 2:05 pm
So wait, now you’re telling me that these were some fashion concious, anarchists busting out their hip *european* protest outfits?
The people who work at Saint Alps are some of the kindest, friendliest people in town. It’s totally sick and twisted that these so-called ninjas would target this sweet restaurant for vandalization.
My friends and I ordered extra stuff on Sunday after this happened. In your face, you bums.
I almost wish I was there to see these hipster “protesters.” The bums probably never worked a day in their lives, unlike the people at Saint Alps or the owners of all of those cars.
To say that this rampage has anything to do with activism or protests is absurd, regardless of these idiot-kids intent. All they’re doing is giving cops more reason to raid local lofts and hassle people on the streets.
Trying to disguise this as a “cause” is just some half-assed attempt to justify immaturity and a severe lack of intelligence.
I’m broke, live off the grid, make art, and work in Williamsburg – and I HATE these losers. Go get a real education, you fucks.
if i saw a bunch of skinny idiots breaking car windows, i’d fuck them up with a bat instead of standing idly by and blogging about it afterwards. bunch of pussies around here. this is what happens when the sense of neighborhood is lost.
anyone who has or car or defends not blowing them all up is a dickwad.
@idjots, 6:33pm
A dickwad? You mean all of the musicians and bands in the neighborhood who need a car/van to get to gigs and tour with? I bet every single anarchist band you listen to has a vehicle to travel with, and if they don’t then they borrow mom’s. Every time you smash a window you take a few hundred dollars out of someone’s broke-ass pockets while I try to struggle and pay rent, playing $30 gigs to put food on the table.
If you have any balls and conviction at all, why don’t you go to Park Avenue in the 60s and try smashing some windows there. And please pick only cars worth over $50,000 or you will be taking money from the underpaid maids, nannys, and janitors of the wealthy. You will get written up in the New York Times and can feel all full of yourself as you jack off dreaming of Henry Rollins fucking your pussy-ass.
dear brooklynjj,
we don’t even care that your music sucks. we’re talking about something a tiny bit bigger than your little musical journey that you already missed the boat on.
And I’m talking about working-class people who barely make enough to survive. Your choice to hurt them rather than rapacious bankers who certainly don’t live in Brooklyn, shows your ignorance and lack of respect for people who might actually share some of your views about the state of the world.
if these kids claim to be “anarchists”, then they’re doing it wrong. anarchists who can tell their head from their asshole wouldn’t be vandalizing a place at the teahouse… i doubt they’re associated with the book fair.
Old Brooklyn (10 years ago and prior)- You witness someone breaking yours or your neighbors car windows or any windows you go out and throw him a beating or atleast chase them away.
New Brooklyn- You run to your Macbook and blog or comment about it on a pro-hipster website. Fucking pathetic hipster pieces of shit.
Back in the day these pussies woulda just been shot. Or at least lumped the fuck up nicely by the neighborhood. WTF NYC?? Oh yeah, and breaking shit just creates more consumerism, manufacturing, pollution, etc, whatever the fuck they were protesting cause now 40 people are gonna buy new windows. Or did you think you would make someone actually rethink their transportation choices and ride a lame fixed gear bike from now on thanks to you?
haha. fuck you williamsburg.
fuck hipster neighborhoods. fuck yuppie neighborhoods.
you think you are cool but you are just the layer of scum floating on top of our society, your pathetic lives the result of the masses of wealth stolen from around the world.
go back to where-ever you came from you fucking idiots. go back there and try to tell all the redneck truckers and meth-heads how “cool” you are because of some bullshit t-shirt you bought off the internet.
blow your head off with a post-modern shotgun losers.
Woo hoo. No one gives a shit about your “art”. What happened that night in Williamsburg was more beautiful than any self-obsessed art-installation you did at Grad school. Yuppie losers.
Seeing the shards of glass glittering in the gutter the next morning was heart-stopping. Learn to love it, hipsters!
what the fuck is an anarchist? that’s stupid
you rich gentrifiers got trashcan trolled! your confusion comes from the blind spot created by privilege. wage slaves aren’t confused one bit.
fucking magnets, how do they work???
all the flyers they were throwing were from the TAKE BACK THE NIGHT organization. This is what the scrreaming as they were running down n6th.
http://www.takebackthenight.org/
damn anti-rape militants!
wait, wha?
Fuck hipsters, fuck gentrification.
I feel bad for the person whose car got smashed, if that person was an actual resident of Brooklyn and not some parasitic “cooler-than-thou” white boy.
Tho, I can’t stand hipsters, but yeah I’d rather be attacking capital. But if class war means attacking gentrification, then I’m all for it!
We’ll Show You Crazy Bitches: Take Back the Night
Dressed in matching black skirts and masks, dozens of women gathered on Saturday evening for an anti-capitalist Take Back the Night march, stopping traffic on Bedford Avenue, overturning trashcans, and breaking windows. Tired of tamely shouting slogans on campus sidewalks, we took the night back by taking it, refusing the structural mechanisms that create rapists and their victims.
Although in recent years Take Back the Night has been co-opted by liberal feminists, it has its roots in the widespread unrest of Italy in the late seventies. In 1976, a seventeen-year-old was gang-raped in Rome. A year later, when her case went to trial, she was gang-raped again by the same men: and this time, her whole body was slashed with razors in an attempt to keep her silent. Within hours, fifteen thousand women mobilized, uniformly dressed like the sex workers common to the district; “NO MORE MOTHERS, WIVES AND DAUGHTERS: LET’S DESTROY THE FAMILIES!” was the cry heard in the street. They came just short of burning the neighborhood to the ground.
Forty years later, we marched again, to refuse the violence that continues to force us to be housewives and fuck-toys and mothers and daddy’s girls, to refuse to understand women’s oppression in the private sphere as a simple cultural or ideological matter. We address capitalism and patriarchy as one intrinsically interconnected system. We are not asking for rights: we are demanding something else entirely.
A woman on the street stopped and attempted to begin an argument: “Why are you doing this?” A swift reply: “Because we have grown tired of rape and makeup.” The woman responds: “Just get drunk and get laid – deal with it.” But this is no longer enough for us. We are not asking for a right to the streets, we are taking them; we are not asking for advertisements that do not objectify women, we’re destroying the commercial mechanisms that objectify women; we are not appealing to male power for an end to rape, but threatening: “If you touch me, I will fucking kill you.”
For once, the mechanisms that create and maintain identities of womanhood were refused, and our desires were our own, our bodies were our own, and our violence was our own.
I’m glad that I’ve found your http://www.freewilliamsburg.com website.
You sure can write and teach and inspire. Keep writing – I’ll keep reading.