5.13.2005

If You See Something, Say Something Part 2

Listen up, y'all . . .



This is bizarre.

You would think that, in a city as advanced and worldly as New York proper, we would be technologically advanced in our means of obtaining information and crimefighting.

Three days ago, the weather became warm and pleasant. The sun shines and there is a light breeze. I have had my windows open to allow fresh air to pass through the narrow 600 square feet of property I call home. With this clean air comes all the elements of the life four stories down: whining cab horns, people chasing happy hours at the pub, the bray and clop of horse-drawn carriages. It seems so cosmopolitan and lovely.

But then, the sound of a voice over megaphone bleating a grim message interrupts the din.

"If you have any information about the explosives that were detonated outside the British Consulate on May 5, 2005, please contact authorities immediately. You can remain anonymous."

That has continued periodically over the past three days. Someone, I can never seem to see the vehicle from my window, drives around the Midtown Manhattan area and repeats this message over a megaphone out onto the streets.

The last time I had this experience was September 11. That September 11th. I lived in a predominantly Dominican and Puerto Rican neighborhood in Brooklyn. Someone drove around in a van and announced the news en espanol about what was happening in our skline. I was standing on my roof watching two lines of grey smoulder.

Aside from it seeming impossibly elementary to try and get information by yelling a message randomly out to the streets, there is something unsettling about anything announced over a crackly megaphone. Something ethereally troubling about a disconnected voice desperately seeking answers.