funkatron

#hypermedia #rest #api #designpatterns #antipatterns

#hypermedia #rest #api

After World War I, Germany was deprived of its right to construct airships. The ban was in force until 1925. So, in fall 1928 their new airship LZ-127 made its first flight.

The infamous “Don’t Touch Yourself” sticky note.

Joey, from Trinidad, was on a busy corner panhandling. A month ago he was kicked out of his house by his fiance after a period of heavy drinking brought on by job loss and family problems. He was staying briefly in a Manhattan homeless shelter but was "beat up, robbed, and messed up while sleeping" by two other residents. Released by Bellvue hospital two days ago he has "nothing and nobody." He will not go back to a shelter.

In New York City everyone, including undocumented immigrants, have the right to a shelter. Many, like Jaime prefer the streets, viewing it as the safer option.

I bought him a sandwich and he asked me to post this picture in the hope that his fiance sees it.

Maribel approached me and my friend Nina, looking for fifty cents. I asked her if I could take her picture and listen to her story. She replied, "If I tell you my story, I´ll make you cry, but I wanna do the before and after, and I promise a year from today you are gonna take my picture again and I´m gonna be bloomin."

An addict (mostly crack), Maribel is the mother of five children. Her five-month old and her husband were killed in a car accident when she was just 19 years old. A year ago she lost her baby boy, James Alexander, to the courts and since then has been in a downward spiral, her health is failing and she is back into drugs. With tears in her eyes she said "You know how heartbreaking that is? I had five children and never had one been removed."

When I asked her about prostitution she said, she used to, but "now I get in the guys cars but I don't do nothing. I rob them, honest to God." When I told her I was going to write that she said, "I know who I am, I know where I stand, and I know where I´m heading. I can always hold my head up high."

Despite the weather, Lisa was in front of her house, looking for customers in the evening warehouse shift-change. She was cold and high. Her eyes shifted with each passing car, her feet stamping to stay warm.

Addicted to crack early, she turrned to prostitution. 'I only use it now and then. I'm no longer an addict.' She is the mother of eight children, the first born when she was fifteen.

I asked her how she wanted to be described. She said 'I am conflicted, complex. I ain't bad. I got many things going on. People are not simple.'

I ran into Jackie, twenty-eight, and Natalie after midnight. They were getting snacks and dollar bottle shots of liqour. Jackie became addicted to heroin and crack at an early age, and lost her four children to the state. "I was a young mother fucked up on drugs. I neglected them." She is homeless and has been living wherever, rooftops, abandoned buildings, empty lots, for the last eight years, and is now in the methadone clinic in Hunts Point. "You live on the streets as a girl, you get raped. It just is."

When I asked her what her dream is, she said with a big smile "I want to get my GED, become a nurse, and get my kids back. I just want my kids."

Nicky, from Baltimore, is now homeless and a heroin addict. She was standing on the same busy street corner as her two friends Vanessa and Mary Alice, waiting for the guys buying liqour on the way home from work.

Prostitution gets the attention, but most of these women are driven by their addiction. I have found almost every one of the heroin addicts to be thoughtful, empathetic, and too trusting, holding huge emotional pain they are looking to numb.

Nicky, when asked how she wanted to be described said, "don't judge me till you get to know me! That holds for all of us girls out here."

This weekend was very cold, nights in the teens. The police were involved in a city-wide crackdown on prostitution, called "Operation Losing Proposition," so Hunts Point was relatively quiet. I did run into Prince, looking for scrap metal.

Over a few cigarettes we talked. He asked me for advice. I suggested rehab, but he explained how he had two outstanding warrants, issued for failure to appear in court, so he could not check himself in. One citation was for being in a playground without a child (it's where he sleeps), the other for public urination. "That's how they keep us down, small tickets. They know we won't be able to show up."

It was well after midnight when I ran into Michael, dressed this time as Shelley. The last time we spoke it was before he had changed and was still simply Michael.

The police were out in large numbers, vans rounding up prostitutes, addicts, and dealers. Shelley told me it was not surprising as it was the "first of the month. They want to make quota." He himself was not arrested, although he has been "156 times, and I am counting." Prostitution makes up the bulk of his arrests, although he has also been in for drugs, possession of paraphernalia, and credit card fraud.

If he can clear thirty bucks in a night then he gets himself a room; more than that, a room and some heroin. One shot for the morning, two for the night. Otherwise he will stay out all night and sleep wherever he can.

Chris Bishop was drinking in front of a liquor store when we met. A resident in the local homeless shelter he told me the following.

At the age of thirteen, Chris killed his father, stabbing him with a knife after a childhood of abuse. He spent the next eighteen years in correctional facilities. 'When he was drunk and mad he would hold me out the apartment window and threaten to drop me to the street, eight floors below. He beat me and my mother all the time. I have been drinking ever since. To forget.'

When I asked how he wanted to be described, his eyes teared up and he said "I am human, like everyone else."

Sonia, forty-six years old and the mother of five, is a crack addict who "sells her body for drugs." Smart, polite, and well-spoken she told me and my friend Nina of her life-long battle with her addiction. She started when she was twenty-two, an overwhelmed single mother of three children working two jobs. She got into prostitution, becoming "a five dollar whore," trading sex for drugs with neighborhood dealers.

When we asked her how much money she needs a day for the drugs she said "as much as I can. I can't stop. I get some money, go and buy it, smoke crack, relax for thirty minutes. I have to get some more. It's non-stop. Until I keep walking back and forth and nothing nothing nothing gives, that's when I will say, 'God says go home.'" She has a "significant other," a wonderful man who's been with her for seventeen years. He does not drink, smoke, or do any drugs.

She has been clean before, something she says can only come from her. She started crying telling us of the eight-year period when she was clean. "I went to a program, mothers and children, everything was great, I came out, got a job, felt good, had money." She fell back four years ago.

When I asked her how she wanted to be described she responded, "I am good person with a very bad disease. If I had all the money in the world I would own all the crack in the world."

Vanessa, thirty-five, had three children with an abusive husband. She "lost her mind, started doing heroin," after losing the children, who were taken away and given to her mother. The drugs led to homelessness and prostitution. She grew up on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, but now spends her time in Hunts Point, "trying to survive everyday. Just doing whatever it takes."

She was standing on the cold street corner looking for business, wearing only flip flops and smoking with her two friends. When I asked her how she wanted to be described, Mary Alice jumped in and said "She's the sweetest woman I know. She will give you the shirt off her back, if she has one on."

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