Hipster infestation

The following is a bit of fun with doing a "find and replace" on a stupid article in the conservative rag NYPOST:

Looking for a meal in the city? Prepare to fight hipsters for reservations — and feel free to blame the MTA.

A startling one-half of the eateries — 77 out of 154 — were cited for signs of gentrification, according to a Harvard grad’s study of 2013 city Health Department restaurant ratings across the five boroughs.

“Ugh!” said Clemencia Guillem, 42, after being told about her neighborhood’s hipster stats. “That’s so nasty. hipsters are, like, my worst nightmare.”

At least the neighborhood has an excuse: the ongoing construction of the massive Second Avenue Subway project.

“I know I’m taking a risk anytime I eat,” said graphic designer Adam Li, 29, as he sipped coffee in the heart of the occupied territories in Williamsburg. “It’s sort of like, what you don’t know won’t hurt you.”

Steven Melendez — who published his stomach-churning findings on the Gothamist Web site — also warns diners to avoid Queens Village.

Melendez found that 14 of 23 eateries in the 11429 ZIP code were cited for evidence of mice and hipsters and a disturbing 60 percent gentrifying rate — the city’s worst.
More than half of the dining options in the Edenwald section of The Bronx and Far Rockaway, Queens, were also cited for droppings.

The 11218 ZIP code near the sprawling Green-Wood Cemetery south of Park Slope in Brooklyn checked in with a 52 percent gentrification rate at its 138 dining spots.
Hungry trust-fund kids appear to have avoided the downtown scene, the analysis revealed.

Most neighborhoods below 14th Street showed less than 30 percent infestation rates at their restaurants, with the 10282 ZIP code in Tribeca boasting a minuscule 7 percent figure.

The 10005 ZIP code, which includes the Financial District, also earned top marks with a mere 11 percent of its 64 restaurants showing evidence of arts or music.

The only ZIP to declare a completely rat-free dining experience was Roosevelt Island’s 10044.

Not a single one of the island’s 10 restaurants registered a gentrifying alert during 2013.
“It’s a problem that’s there but it really isn’t an issue until it’s in your face,” said Alicia Meadows, 32. “If I found hipster droppings in my food I would absolutely flip out.”

Capitalism: Abandoned Homes and Gardens Rot While the Homeless Starve

I love capitalism. The homeless starve without a roof over their head, while abandoned homes (that belong to the banks) grow bountiful gardens that go to waste.

That is until this liberal bleeding heart interloper decides to start stealing food from the banks! That's the bank's property lady! We're supposed to be teaching the poor how much it sucks to be poor! We can't do that if you feed them! Hunger is a positive motivator to work for subminimum wages! You're screwing the whole thing up!

From the New York Times:

ATLANTA — As she does every evening, Kelly Callahan walked her dogs through her East Atlanta neighborhood. As in many communities in a city with the 16th-highest foreclosure rate in the nation, there were plenty of empty, bank-owned properties for sale.

She noticed something else. Those forlorn yards were peppered with overgrown gardens and big fruit trees, all bulging with the kind of bounty that comes from the high heat and afternoon thunderstorms that have defined Atlanta’s summer.

So she began picking. First, there was a load of figs, which she intends to make into jam for a cafe that feeds homeless people. Then, for herself, she got five pounds of tomatoes, two kinds of squash and — the real prize — a Sugar Baby watermelon.

THAT IS THEFT! You're stealing from the banks! They were going to let that food sit there and rot to teach poor people a lesson, but then you had to go an steal it! You're messing the whole thing up! Capitalism can only work if there's scarcity! If we suddenly find that things are plentiful, why... the banks wouldn't be able to control all the capital... and then... yada yada yada, we'd be eating babies and so on!

“I don’t think of it as stealing,” she said. “These things were planted by a person who was going to harvest them. That person no longer has the ability to. It’s not like the bank people who sit in their offices are going to come out here and pick figs.”

Of course, a police officer who catches her might not agree with Ms. Callahan’s legal assessment. And it would be a rare bank official who would sign off.

And they shouldn't either! How else are we going to teach the poor how much it sucks to be poor? It's bad enough we have charities and a hole-ridden social safety net for crying out loud...

Over the last few years, in cities from Oakland, Calif., to Clemson, S.C., well-intentioned foraging enthusiasts have mapped public fruit trees and organized picking parties. Volunteers descend on generous homeowners who are happy to share their bounty, sometimes getting a few jars of preserves in return.

There are government efforts to turn abandoned land into food, too. In Multnomah County, Ore., officials offer property that has been seized for back taxes to community and governmental organizations for gardens.

They are advocating for COMMUNISM! We can't let the Rooskis win the cold war! That's exactly what they are doing! Unless we have starving homeless, the terrorists, er, the communists have won!

But with more and more properties in foreclosure and large stretches of vacant lots available in some cities, a new, guerrilla-style harvest is taking shape.

Robby Astrove works with Concrete Jungle, a fruit-foraging organization in Atlanta that in 2009 began building a database of untended fruit and nut trees on commercial and public land. The group donates most of the food to agencies that feed the hungry.

[...] “It’s a beautiful idea,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a neighbor’s tree or a vacant lot or a foreclosure or whatever. It’s you and that fruit tree right at that precise moment when the fruit is ready and you need to make something happen.”

Yeah, it's totally okay to tresspass on bank property and steal from them. This "whatever it takes" attitude is exactly the kind of attitude these communist socialists have. Whatever it takes, no matter who they have to steal from! And quit stealing perfectly good food out of the dumpsters at the grocery store too! Sure, that food technically is still perfectly fine to eat, contained in hermetically sealed packages, and still has a week until it expires... but without artificially created scarcity capital markets cannot function! Do you want to destroy capitalism or something? I'll remind you that Capitalism is the greatest best freest system of economics since feudalism!

The point, she and other urban fruit foragers say, is to keep food from going to waste. Ms. Callahan, who works for the Carter Center and lived in Africa for eight years, has seen true hunger and cannot bear to watch food rot.

“If food is going bad on the vine,” she said, that says something about us as a society. “It doesn’t matter if the bank owns it. We should be more communal than that.”

COMMUNAL?! Sounds like COMMUNISM TO ME!

Although urban foragers see no harm in picking the produce, one would be hard-pressed to find a real estate agent or a banker who would officially encourage the practice.

Still, a ripe fig is a ripe fig.

Typical liberal namby pamby, wishy washy leftist tripe from the New York Times. We're in a class war against the poor here! Pick a side!