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What's the Matter With Chicago?
and Seattle and New York and Boston...?
(Page 5 of 15)
Sex: 25 Tobacco: 2 Alcohol: 32 Guns: 23
Movement: 25 Drugs: 14 Gambling: 27 Food/Other: 7
26) PHILADELPHIA
In April, Democratic Mayor Michael Nutter signed five new gun laws that, among other things, banned certain “assault weapons,” limited handgun purchases to one per month, and authorized the forcible removal of licensed guns from “persons posing a risk of imminent personal injury” to anyone (including themselves). “Almost 232 years ago, a group of concerned Americans took matters in their own hands and did what they needed to do by declaring that the time had come for a change,” Nutter said in front of the historic City Hall, somehow equating the declaration of an armed rebellion by citizens against their government with a modern-day government’s decision to disarm its citizens. “We are going to make ourselves independent of the violence that’s been taking place in this city for far too long.” The only problem: As Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham told reporters a few days later, the new laws ran afoul of the Pennsylvania constitution. “If there are wholesale arrests which turn out to be illegal, this city is going to get its pants sued off them,” Abraham said. “I cannot, as a matter of law, arrest people for illegal possession of guns.”
—M.W.
Sex: 10 Tobacco: 21 Alcohol: 34 Guns: 25
Movement: 10 Drugs: 23 Gambling: 6 Food/Other: 25
25) LOS ANGELES
If there ever was a good excuse to further criminalize smoking in tobacco-intolerant California, the May 2007 Griffith Park fire was it. According to fire officials, a homeless man fell asleep in a bone-dry patch of brush on a park hillside while smoking a cigarette, setting off an 800-acre inferno that torched about one-fifth of the largest urban park in the United States, coming within singeing distance of homes in the city’s upscale Los Feliz neighborhood.
Three months later, to prevent the next Griffith Park fire, the Los Angeles City Council voted to prohibit smoking in municipal parks. That is, unless the smokers promise to fatten the city’s coffers.
The council carved out three interesting exceptions to the rule: actors shooting movies or TV shows whose producers have purchased a special permit, concertgoers attending shows in park venues (such as the Greek Theater, which came within inches of being burned in the Griffith Park fire), and golfers at city-owned courses. As an assistant general manager of the Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Department explained to the Los Angeles Times, “There is a tradition of golfers oftentimes smoking in specific areas of a golf course, and we don’t want to have any effects on our revenue.”
In memos written before the ordinance was passed, the parks department reminded the council that several city-owned golf shops sell cigars to their customers. So a city trying to ban smoking in the name of fire safety sells in its parks the very drug that set off one of the most devastating blazes in L.A. history.
I went to see for myself if I could buy a cigar from a city-owned golf shop in the fire-scorched Griffith Park. That hot August day, several city-erected notices reminded park visitors that the fire danger was beyond extreme, and that anyone caught smoking would pay a steep fine. So upon buying the cigar, I asked the golf shop clerk where I could legally smoke. The golf courses? No problem. Anywhere around the clubhouse was fine too, he said. But smoking anywhere else in the park would not be tolerated, he warned, as if a cigar lit by a nongolfer poses a unique danger.
—Paul Thornton
Sex: 12 Tobacco: 24 Alcohol: 8 Guns: 32
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Trackback| 12.18.09 @ 5:18AM
ny credit repair, on ny credit repair, links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Sally O'Boyle|9.10.10 @ 12:41AM|#
Would love an update on this article! We just moved back to the states from Costa Rica (because it's so frickin' expensive there) and are lookin' for liberty. In KY to start, then thinking of TX... Great article!
Sally