Volume 43 - Issue 2

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Publishers Samantha Ellner, Tim Shriver

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Managing Editors Max Ehrenfreund, Jacque Feldman, Bob Jeffery

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Editors-in-Chief Haley Cohen, Kate Selker

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Photo & Design Editors Brianne Bowen, Jane Long, Susannah Shattuck

Senior Editors Eleanor Kenyon, Sarah Mich, Sarah Nutman, Maya Seidler

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Copy Editors Heeseung Kim, Victor Zapana

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Business Director Helena Malchione

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Associate Editors Laura Blake, Julia Fisher, Helen Knight · Online Editors Bay Gross, Jimmy Murphy

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Members and Directors Emily Bazelon, Roger Cohn, Peter B. Cooper, Jonathan Dach, Tom Griggs, Brooks Kelley, Kathrin Lassila, Jennifer Pitts, Henry Schwab, Elizabeth Sledge, Jim Sleeper, Fred Strebeigh, Thomas Strong Advisors Richard Bradley, Jay Carney, Joshua Civin, Richard Conniff, Ruth Conniff, Elisha Cooper, Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, Julia Preston, Lauren Rabin, David Slifka, John Swansburg, Steven Weisman, Daniel Yergin Friends Michael Addison, Austin Family Fund, Steve Ballou, J. Neela Banerjee, Margaret Bauer, Anson M. Beard, Jr., Blaire Bennett, Richard Bradley, Martha Brant, Susan Braudy, Daniel Brook, Hilary Callahan, Jay Carney, Daphne Chu, Josh Civin, Jonathan M. Clark, Constance Clement, Andy Court, Masi Denison, bert J. Fox, Mrs. Howard Fox, David Freeman, Geoffrey Fried, Sherwin Goldman, David Greenberg, Stephen Hellman, Laura Heymann, Gerald Hwang, Walter Jacob, Jane Karnensky, Tina Kelley, Roger Kirwood, Jonathan Lear, Lewis E. Lehrman, Jim Lowe, E. Nobles Lowe, Daniel Murphy, Martha E. Neil, Peter Neil, Howard H. Newman, Sean O'Brien, Laura Pappano, Julie Peters, Lewis and Joan Platt, Josh Plaut, Julia Preston, Lauren Rabin, Fairfax C. Randal, Robert Randolph, Stuart Rohrer Arleen and Arthur Sager, Richard Shields, W. Hampton Sides, Lisa Silverman, Scott Simpson, Adina Proposco and David Sulsman, Thomas Strong, Margarita Whiteleather, Blake Wilson, Daniel Yergin and Angela Stent Yergin

Image Credit: Brianne Bowen, cover, 22-23, 26-27 Andrew Nelson, p 4, 6, 31 Jacque Feldman, p. 34-37 Jane Long, p.8, 28 Sanjena Sathian, p 11 Kamaria Greenfield, p 20 Susannah Shattuck, p 11, 14, 26-27

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Vol. 43, No. 2 October 2010

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The magaz ine about Yale

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and New Haven

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HURTING ENOUGH .

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A tattoo artist natned Duck helps one Yalie confront · his fear of needles.

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by Cory Finley

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SEPARATING THE MEN FROM THE BOYS

A look at a WGSS class on what it means to be a n1an.•

by Emily Rappaport .

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PLEDGING ALLEGIANCE •

Gangs, drugs, violence, and the youth of New Haven. · •

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by Ali "Weiner •

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POINTS OF DEPARTURE SNAPSHOT

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One Mans Trash

by Aliyya Swaby

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PROFILE

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Paul Hammer

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by Sanjena Sathian

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SHOTS IN THE DARK

Yale Men Circa 1943

by BrianrJe Bowen & Susannah Shattuck

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PERSONAL ESSAY •

Night Drive · •

by jacque Feldman •

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ENDNOTE

by Bay Gross

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The New Journal is published five times during the academic year by The New Journal at Yale, Inc., P.O. Box 203432 Yale Station, New Haven, cr 06520. Oftice 305 Crown AD 2006 by The New Journal at Yale, InC. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction either in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher and editor in chief is While !llllpZillle is p llbli b d

by Yale College students. Yale University is not responsible for its contents. Seventy-five hundred copies of each issue are distributed free to members of the Yale and New H.aYm mmmunjtia. are awilable to those outside the area. Rates: One year, $18. Two years. $32. The New Journal is printed by Turley Publication s, Palmer, MA; bookkecpins and sa vices are ptotided by Colma New Haven. The New Journal encourages letters to the editor and comments on Yale and New Haven issues. Write to Editorials, 203432 Yale Station, New H.nm, cr 06520. AD fix IDIMt address and signature. We reserve the right to edit all letters for publication.

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ars line both sides of -....the road in front of New Haven's Edgerton Park. A jogger slows down, removes his headphones, and peers over the wall to see what's going on. I look with him. We see the top of a red inflatable slide, just visible arnong the canopy of maple trees. We hear the giggles of children melting into a faint ensemble of trumpets and oboes playing in the distance.

"Sunday in the Park" takes place annually in Edgerton Park, a 22acre site given to the city in 1965.

The grounds were first home to Eli Whitney and later to industrialist Frederick Brewster, who replaced Whitney's mansion with a Tudorstyle house he called "Edgerton," for its location on the edge of town. Brewster commissioned the grounds to be redesigned in the •

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fashion of 18th century-English landscape gardens. After the death of Brewster and his wife, the grounds were gifted to the city of New Haven and they've stayed in its possession ever since.

In 1987, local volunteers created the fair that has since become a New Haven tradition, occurring one Sunday in mid-September every year. They bring to town live music and attractions, such as chess, wagon rides, moonwalk, and Hula Hoops in an endeavor to create a welcoming fair, where fa rnilies relax and friends mingle in the early days of fall.

Standing arnid farnilies arnbling by with baby carriages and unicyclists circling around in clown outfits, I make my way to a wagon half-full with passengers · and climb on. Sitting on my left is . .

a young girl with short blonde curls and pink cheeks. She is waving to an imaginary crowd as the wagon pulls off with a creak.

The ponies gently trot the wagon around a white fountain whose recent renovation was made possible by the $19,000 raised at last year's fair. The pale marble is now bathed in the morning sun and emits a faint glow, like a giant halo.

A turn of the wagon reveals a greenhouse on my left. Behind the frosted glass, blurred figures move among clouds· 'of green, red, and yellow. Edgerton Park Conservancy ' is offering introductory tours of tropical plants to elementary school students. The simulation rainforest allows children to experience rare plants first-hand, and even take home their favorite kinds. A boy THE NEw JouRNAL

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marches out of the greenhouse carrying an exotic potted plant.

My little neighbor gasps, clutches her mother's arm, and squirms on the seat. I can tell she wants one too.

As the wagon makes its way along a narrowing path that disappears behind a hill, we enter a quieter area. Entertainment booths, from a chess stand to a petting zoo, sprinkle both sides of the road, all requiring pre-purchased tickets.

Next to a desk behind the "Yale Peabody Muse.u m" banner, a bespectacled woman bows over a boy of six or seven in a Superman T-shirt. She puts a small wooden ring on his head and tries to balance a giant shallow ba •nboo basket on top of it.

"This is how people in the Philippines carry bananas," she •

explain~~,·

"Isn't -rhat fascinating." The boy's mother nods and pushes on her son's shoulders. "C'mon now, see if you can walk!"

His face covered by the shadow of the basket, the boy stumbles forward several steps and falls onto his knees. The basket roBs off onto the grass and his mother chuckles, retrieving the basket from its landing spot.

Once distant, screa•ns and cheers have grown louder as our wagon winds through the booths and veers toward the front of the hill.

The girl next to me suddenly sits up straight, and her eyes widen as she cries, "Look! Bungee jump!"

The wagon comes to a halt but the eager little bodies inside keep fidgeting. The children throw themselves over -the rails, land awkwardly on their sides, climb up, and rush ahead, their parents OCTOBER 2010

trailing behind with backpacks and calling out their natnes.

When her mother finally catches her, my new friend is already in line for the bungee jump.

"Amelie there."

Her mother squeezes a ticket into her fist, while Amelie eyes the boy ahead of her. He is already standing on the giant tra•npoline, putting his legs through loops of a safety strap with a volunteer's help. )) "We come h ere every year, Amelie's mother says as she shakes her head. "She never gets enough of it."

Amelie hands her $2 ticket to the volunteer and races toward the trampoline. She knows she's about to soar and flip in the sky.

A list of attractions in the park continues to spill out from the·· loudspeaker above my head. "It's Sunday in the Park." The voice repeats, "Sunday in the Park!"

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Join the distinguished ranks ofTNJ alutns: Neela Banerjee Nezu York Tirnes

En1ily Bazelon, senior editor, Sltzte Magtzzine

Jan1es Bennet, editor- in -chief, Atlantic Monthly Richard Bradley, editor in chief~ Worth lv!ttgazinc Jay Carney, Washington Bureau Chie( Tinze Magtlzine

I)aniel Kurtz- Phelan, senior editor, Foreion A'.JJ11-tz irs

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Steven Weis1nan, Netu Vork Jlnzes

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l)aniel Yergin Pultizer Prize \Vinner Andv• Court producer, 60 lv!inutes

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thene\vjournal@ginail.

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By Victoria Sanchez n 1793, Ebenezer Brackett larnented:

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Yet scarce are mentiona in the historic page .

Thy mother Britain's best-deserving sons, .

Who, fled from fate, and second Charles's rage, Resorted hither here reposa their bones.

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In 2010, New Haven native Nathaniel Zelinsky'13 suggests Brackett's concerns about the preservation of this historical record were unfounded. The legend of Britain's best deserving sons lauded by Brackett in his "A Poem Commemorative of Goffe," Whaley and Dixwell is, according to Zelinsky, "a New Haven . story that· everyone knows. I don't remember not knowing about it." And indeed, it is a staple tale of the city's elementary school curriculum~ . . .

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The year is 1648.'1he location of our tale, England.

The country has been devastated by two decades of civil war, and Oliver Cromwell's government has found the former King, Charles I, guilty of "High Treason and other high Crymes," a sentence that calls for beheading. Among the ·54 men who sign the death · warrant are John Dixwell, Edward Whalley, and his son-in-law Willian1 Goffe. After sbme legal hullabaloo, King Charles dies theatrically on Jan. 30, 1649, declaring, "I am the martyr of the people." His head is severed with a single blow. '

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· The legend known to today's New Haven schoolchildren is simple: The judges fled . to Massachusetts and then to New Haven, where they hid from the king's agents. "It would really stink if they got caught and killed, but I've always .a ssumed that they survived," says Zelinsky. His indoctrination into the myth went no further. A brief foray into the marble walls of the Beinecke (or on the Internet), however, illuminates the rest of the history.

· Unfortunately for our, heroes, the English Restoration of 1660 brings King Charles II into power with a vengeance. Here then, the story starts in earnest; the death warrant that Whalley, Goffe, and Diwell signed condemning Charles I now serves as their own death warrant. They are not safe in England. Whalley and Goffe flee over 3,000 miles to colonial Carnbridge, Mass., where Gov. Endicott welcomes them warmly in late July of 1660. While the historical record is unclear, Dixwell presumably makes his way to America as well.

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Whalley and · Goffe live handsomely in Ca rnbridge, where the town members admire not only their past actions but their piety and bravery. Regrettably, it's less than a year before word of their •

The Green is still a gravryard, and John Davenport) New Haven~ founder, is the leader of the local church. The townsfolk still believe in magic and witche~ and East Rock) though less than five miles awqy) is a . wild child of Mother Nature. '

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whereabouts reaches the English crown, and they flee to avoid arrest. Whalley and · Goffe arrive in New Haven, America's first planned city, in March 1661. The town consists of only nine squares and SOil);~ outlying farmland. The Green i~ still a graveyard, and John Davenport, New Haven's founder, is the leader of the local church.

The townsfolk still believe in magic and witches, and East Rock, though less than five miles away, is a wild child of Mother Nature.

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Yet Whalley and Goffe's reprieve is short-lived. The king of England renews the orders for their capture, and Massachusetts issues another warrant for their arrest. "Kirk and Kelland, two zealous royalists" (as Brackett describes them in his poem) leave Boston to ferret the two fugitives out. Whalley and Goffe lay a false trail to Milford and return to New Haven to hide in the Rev. John Davenport's house.

Aware of the increasingly severe threats to Davenport, Whalley and Goffe nobly ·resolve to turn themselves in and then settle on another plan of action: gypsy life.

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With the help of one Mr. Jones, the former pair bounce from a barn, to a mill, to the woods (reportedly, they hide under a bridge as their pursuers crossed on horseback), before arriving at the modern-day historical site of Judges' Cave here in -New Haven. While Kirk and Kellond are ·u tterly hoodwinked and travel to the Dutch colony of New Amsterdarn (now New York City) before returning to Boston, Native American hunters discover our heroes' humble dwelling at the remote West Rock location and report the two beleaguered rebels in 1664.

From there, Whalley and Gaffe flee Judges' Cave to Hadley, Mass., where they are briefly reunited with Dixwell. He eventually parts ·· for New Haven, where he takes the name of John Davis, marries, and has two children. Whalley and Goffe, unknown to the majority of the Hadley's residents, remain in the minister's house for the next 15 or 16 years. Whalley dies first, and Gaffe perhaps travels south afterward (some swear he was seen in Hartford). Their resting places are unknown.

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Though he didn't know this mysterious end to the story, Zelinsky's relationship to . the three judges took on its own legendary spin this summer when he interned at Parlia anent. While on a palace tour, he encountered Charles' death warrant in the Queen's Robing Room, displayed on an old piece of parchment. The 54 signautres on the docurnent include Whalley's, Goffe's, and Dixwell's. "Whalley is actually very early on and you notice it when you look at the death warrant."

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He is fourth, to be precise, right under Cromwell, his name, like the others, accompanied by a seal of red wax.

An ocean . away and centuries later, it is green and white paint, and metal poles that bear the heroes' na rnes our industrial tribute to a revolutionary past.

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Alterations Draperies Tailoring {iur Storage SlipCovers Dry (~leaning I Shirts and Laundry

SAM.E DAY SERVICE: IN BY to AM, OUT BY 4 PM

51 Broad\vay (Next to theYale Bookstore) (203) 7'/'J-2546 llours: 1\lon-I~ri 7-6; Sat S..s

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s I hoisted :myself into the umpster, I could tell by the bulging garbage bags inside that we were in luck. My guides for the night, tWo Yalies who live off-ca rnpus, were already tearing the bags apart in search of food to restock their refrigerator.

At first, everything looked inedible, but when I began sorting through the bags, I quickly learried how to pick out the gems.

Unbroken packaged items are usually safe. Meat is only good "in winter, when it's frozen," according to one of my guides. There is no such thing as too many eggs just throw out the broken ones. Apples, tomatoes, and other produce items with skins are okay, depending on the level of darnage. Sushi is debatable.

When we finished with oiie bag, we tossed it to the side and plunged into another. We packed our finds •

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into milk crates brought for this purpose. The excursion ended after half an hour, when there was no room left in the car for both us and the food.

The night's yield included two whole . red peppers, five bagged salads Cobb and Greek two almond pies, a bag of avocados, two loaves · of wheat bread, a sack of potatoes, a handful of tomatoes, nine containers of unexpired tofu, and more than 4 dozen eggs.

Du rnpster diving sometimes referred to by diving devotees as "du rnpstering" is generally associated with those who don't have enough money to buy the items they take from the trash. But for some people, dumpster diving is an ideological and political lifestyle choice. The practice is associated with freeganism, a term combining "free" and "veganism" that was born in the '90s from

the environmental and antiglobalization movements.

Freegans scavenge waste of consumers to avoid participating in the capitalist system. More simply put they eat other people's garbage. But as any freegan can tell you, garbage is a relative term.

I discovered a community of Yale students who dumpster dive, scattered across five or six different off-catnpus houses at Yale. Some go once in a while seeking a novel adventure, but several go once or twice a week as an alternative to grocery shopping for their households. Lacking meal plans, these students use the food as a primary or significant portion of their overall food supply.

In this group, dumpster diving is a social activity it's "more fun than shopping" and can turn into "a little bit of an obsession," said "Frank," a Yale senior who THE NEw

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For some people, dumpster- diving is an ideological and political li estyle choice .

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requested anonymity. The best spots to dumpster dive are out of walking distance, and unlike grocery shopping, there is no guarantee that there will be any food. This fosters ~n atmosphere of sharing students from different houses will carpool to get to a · site_or share their food with one another after a successful run.

Cris Shirley '1 0, said the relationships he built around dumpster diving at Yale were more important to him than the food itsel£ As a Yale student, he noticed that in many off-caanpus houses, ' traditiq~al grocery shopping was often a-source of tension.

Though the dumpstering reduces these students' financial burden, it is not generally a necessity. "If I wasn't dumpster diving, I wouldn't starve. That's for sure," Frank acknowledged.

Rather, these students share an interest in frugality and keeping • • • consumensm to a mtntmum.

Some would call their politics extreme-dumpster diving is only one activity that reflects their collectivist ideologies. Frank said he and friends are planning a clothing swap on ca rnpus, where students will trade clothing they don't want for someone else's discarded items.

He added that he personally hasn't bought a brand-new item in years.

Shirley and fellow dumpsterdiver Hans Schoenburg '1 0 helped found the website GiftFlow.org, which Shirley described as an OCTOBER 2010

"online .community of gifting."

Members exchange goods and services to promote an "alternative economy'' based on trust and a non-monetary value system. The pair are now hosting a "couch surfer" from Germany in return for his service doing repair work on their house. CouchSurfing.org is a worldwide network that connects travelers with free accommodation.

Though state or local laws may differ, rummaging through public dumpsters, at least in New Haven; is legal. Trash, when deposited on the curb or in a public disposal •

At 1rst, everything Looked inedible, but when I began sorting through the bags, I quickly learned how to pick out the gems. area, is public property, as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in California v. Greenwood in 1988.

"Once it's thrown away, it's considered public, even if it's in a dumpster," said Nancy DeJesus, the communications supervisor for the New Haven Police Depa r onent. ''Anyone can take it."

Divers run into problems, only when they dive in private dumpsters on private property that belongs to food retailers or

distribution centers. In these cases, dumpster diving's illegality is a matter of trespassing, not stealing.

Shirley has been stopped by police three times in the past few years. In two of these encounters, the police took down the na ane·s of the people in his group and let them off with a warning. The third time, the officers made Shirley put back the food he had taken · from the dumpster and leave the premises. The officials' relatively lax approach follows from dumpster diving's muddy legal status. On the one hand, the discarded food would not have beeri eaten . otherwise. On the other, regardless of the trespasser's intentions, his activities are still against the law.

"If it were advantageous for [the police] to do something about me, they would," Shirley explained.

"They're trying to keep both parties happy."

Why does food end up in the trash?

Grocery stores have standards for items they can sell in stores.

Retailers must discard food from their shelves when it reaches the sell-by date, or if it has been darnaged. A few bruised apples?

Throw the entire bag away. A broken egg? Dump the carton.

"The funny thing is, when you're dtJrnpster diving, eve ing comes in packs of eleven," Frank noted.

His most impressive find was a box corttaining 11 jugs of quality maple syrup--one jug of the dozen had 9

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. ·~·...dncluded two ,, whole red peppers, 1ve bagged · sa.fads Cobb · and .Greek two ·>almond pies, a ,.; ··bag o avoca'

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wheat bread, "".:, ;:;.,_;-.a sack · o po: . tatoes, a handul o tomatoes, · nine containers o unexpired to u, and .more ·than· 4 dozen eggs.

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broken during shipping.

For their part, consumers bring food home and forget about it in their refrigerators, .and restaurants throw out uneaten portions of meals. Unsurprisingly, the majority of food wasted is produce and dairy, which . spoil quickly.

One 1987 University of Oregon study showed that most household food is thrown out because of misconceptions about perishable foods. Many people do not realize that milk .and other dairy products, unless obviously sour, can still be consumed after their expiration dates.

Because of this, good food often goes to waste. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, in 1995, almost 96 billion pounds of food27 percent of the year's edible food supply were lost at the farm, retail and consumer levels . .

Although some was diseased or spoiled, a .significant percentage of food lost at the retail level was fit for distribution.

Dumpster divers have no trouble finding food from all levels of the food pyra rnid, including meat, fresh produce, and dairy products.

The food is often minimally da rnaged and needs only to be washed before being eaten. Shirley said he has never gotten sick from salvaged food. .

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If only five percent of the 96 billion pounds of food wasted in 1995 were recovered, the arnount would adequately feed 4 million people for one day. Food recovery prograrns across the country seek to rectify this problem by redistributing leftover food, while businesses and restaurants have been implementing prograrns to reduce food waste for economic reasons. There are other stores, like Attic us in New Haven, that leave out their edible waste for the public to take .

Many Yale students eagerly participate in events ~such as Spring Salvage or Eli Exchange, in which students trade clothing and other used items, but would never climb into a dumpster for the sarne items. Potential legal and health risks combined with personal standards for food intake may give many pause, but for those without those qualms, the choice is logical.

As Frank explained: "I eat food. I know a place where I can get food that is free. It's going to be wasted otherwise. As long as [grocery stores] are being wasteful, I feel totally justified in taking advantage of their waste."

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OcTOBER 2010

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e're pulling onto the main road. My driver carefully looks over his right shoulder to check for traffic. A minivan passes, and the middleaged, portly driver visibly snaps his neck around, craning to get a better look at us. The next driver does the sa rne. When the street is finally clear, we slip into the traffic headed down Orange Street, and we're off.

I wish we were moving a little faster, because at . this pace it's hard to escape the stares of pedestrians . and drivers alike. Riding in a pedicab is more ·conspicuous than I had anticipated in the everyday · street scene of New Haven.

My driver has no such worries. He grins widely at each of our spectators, calling out, "You set the fare! We'll take you almost anywhere!" This is an exhibition for him, a chance to perform as much as advertise. As we maneuver through the thick Friday afternoon traffic, he gets almost as many waves as befuddled stares.

"You seem to know a lot of faces," I comment.

"Well they know me," he laughs. *** .

It has only been two weeks since Paul Harnmer launched his new pedicab company, but he's already made his mark. His signature helmet can be spotted from blocks away it's bright purple, with a multicolored mini-umbrella attached to the top. He explains that the helmet, like many parts· of his life, melds his two great loves: bicycling and dra rna.

"With a side order of social justice and activism," he adds, breaking into a grin, his mustache bristles curving upwards. · The eccentric headgear may be one reason so many people recognize Ha rnmer on our ride, but it's certainly not the only one; he identifies some of the folks waving as being acquaintances from New Haven's art world and volunteer scene. Harnmer wears many hats (not all of them purple) in this city, but beneath them all is the sa rne jovial smile, the san1e clipped bristly mustache, and the san1e • • • energetic ctttzen.

Harnmer is not just a pedicab driver. He is the founder of a nonprofit that puts kids on bikes, a playwright, an active participant in community theater, and a volunteer at numerous community service groups across the city, from the Integrated Refugee Immigrant Services (IRIS) to the National Association of Mental Illness. Ha nuner seems to be everywhere a staple of the community.

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Looking at Hammer's resume, it's easy to forget that, for him, service is as much personal therapy as it is a fight on behalf of local refugees or underprivileged kids. Years ago, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and in 2004, he tells me, "I made the cover of the New Haven Register." A pause. "By jumping off of East Rock."

The attention his suicide attempt garnered forced Hatnmer to grapple with his bipolar disorder. And six years later, though he is still in recovery from ·brain injuries sustained from his fall, he can smile a watery grin and joke about starting a support group, "The Bi-Polar Bears." . "My commitment to working with others ...

That is definitely a difference in my focus since · God spared my life." And he remains grateful. As he considers the incident six years ago, his eyes are tinged with red, and he tears up. "I than,t<: God every •

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day that I'm alive. I always wear my helmet." *** Harnmer can remember his first bike ride he's glad he was wearing a helmet, then, too. His first time riding, as a child in New York City, Ha rnmer drove straight through a sprinkler. He went flying over the bicycle seat and was soaked through.

Undeterred, however, he bounced back and spent much of his childhood biking around Central Park, taking in the puppeteers and Shakespeare in the Park and the zoo. .At 14, Harnmer embarked on his first cycling tour around the northeast, pedaling between youth hostels, where he met people from all over the world.

"I'd never experienced that," he explains.

"Bicycling takes you places literally." *** Today, we ride past the Green, Old Carnpus just visible across the way. Ha rnmer has known and loved these streets since he moved to the city years ago. After graduating from Wesleyan University, Harnmer picked New Haven as his next residence because it was near both Boston and New York, where many of his Wesleyan classmates were headed.

As he immersed himself in the local community theater scene, worked in the Yale Law School coding investigations, and volunteered at a senior citizen ··· theater company, Ha rnmer stumbled upon the Yale • School of Management.

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with a laugh. "I thought I'd stick around for a Hammer dabble in his own egalitarian universe of month or so write a spoof on business school but equal-opportunity-bicycling. then I fell in love with the place."

But theater, Hammer tells me, is the arena where Enrolling in business school seems incongruous he taps into his most extreme passions. He recalls with Hammer's ideals what was a communityone of the several·musical revues he has composed: organizing, anti-capitalist, biking-playwright doing "The Touring Bicycle Repair Clinic Theater." The as an MBA candidate? · production toured vaudeville-style he and the "People asked me what's a socialist democrat like . actors traveled from one town green to another, you doing in business school?" he laughed. "But it . bringing mechanics with them to fix the audience's really is a school of management." bicycles while the actors performed.

Even after Ha tnmer graduated, he stuck around Hammer breaks into one of the songs 'from the New Haven. Calling it the cultural capital of the show. The original composition, inspired by Pierre state, Hatnmer says there's nowhere he'd rather live Lallement, who is often credited with inventing the bicycle in the 1860's, tells the story of a man who builds a flying bicycle that eventually soars over the Peo le asked me what~ a social- English Channel. In Ha •nmer's plot line, the man tests the contraption by flying it around the New Haven Green. ness school?

Harnmer sings: · "Though twas said could not be done by expert and work than here. From the Schubert and the Yale panels Repertory Theater, to the nearby (bike-accessible!)

A bicycle jle,w oJer the English Channel. .. kayaking spots, New Haven is an ideal location for Harnmer. And as a community activist, it's also ... SoJ if we take our cue from Leonardo the gospel of cycling and perfect. -for him to spread Think about the future hard now . his belief in democratic socialism.

Fight to win a place for bikes in the world ofour . children As we turn onto Crown Street, Hatnmer begins Where its not a pain to take them on the train to chatter excitedly about his hopes for the new And bike lanes and bike paths separate us from the pedicab company. In addition to working morning trollies and afternoon rush hours, and orchestrating pickups Andfrom the few automobiles remaining and drop-offs from the State Street train station, Hatnmer wants to ·start a service for the Crown On the way weJll win a few Street club scene on weekends. Though he quickly And lose some too and when we do wlll know adds that he's aware bicycles won't create world That weJre not throughJ the myopia ofa few peace, it's impossible to ignore Hatnmer's ever~ Wont keep us from our bicycle utopia present idealism, his hope that even a little bit of Wont keep us from our bicycle utopiaJJ good, clean business on Crown might help diminish *** . the drunken brawls that occur there.

As we ride down Crown Street, I wonder if I can "I see bicycling like a lot of other things in catch a glimpse of East Rock Park from the Green. society," he says, his eyes lighting up for a moment.

I think of how Ha truner's moment of crisis is at the "It should be available to everyone." center of his idealism, how the realities of violence The business Ha truner founded, called BEEEP! and crime and streets without bike lanes encroach (Bicycle Education, Entrepreneurship and on his utopian vision of the city he loves.

Enrichment Prograans) is the fruit of his idealism.

From the top of East Rock, however, with the The business's for-profit wing manages the pedicab city stretching out in perfect miniature, you might rides. The nonprofit side hosts cycling tours for New imagine that a flying bicycle could sail over the spin~s Haven youth, sets up tandem rides for the blind, of New Haven, uninhibited by gravity and that, if and runs an adaptive biking progra an that allows you fell, an urnbrella atop a bicycle helmet would be paraplegics to use their hands to bike. BEEEP! lets .... enough to help you glide safely to the ground . .-.

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Always have. The goriest shoot'em-up movies and the grisliest burn-victim photos don't faze me, but I shudder at the mere thought of any · implement that pierces, pricks, rends, or tears. And the idea of people subjecting themselves to said implements willingly has always occupied a special place in the pantheon ofThings That Freak Me Ot.it. Back in fourth grade art class, documentary videos on Mrican scarification sent me staggering to the restroom; selfinjury presentations in high school filled my head with dizzying colored lights. The assembly · on genital mutilation my sophomore year forget it.

I spent those forty-five minutes with my hands so firmly cupped on my eyes that I thought they might stick.

When I . got a blood test last summer, I nearly fainted in the chair. And as I sat in the waiting rootn afterwards, white as a sh~et, munching feebly on a stale cupcake, some switch must have flipped in my brain: enough.

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just out of good old-fashioned masochism I plunged into the belly of the beast, a place where needles abound and voluntary pain is the order of the day, every day: a tattoo .parlor. Granted, I'm not talking about just any parlor; I'm talking ·abotit Excalibur Tattoo in Shelton, Conn., a place I knew was different as soon as I caught sight of its ducks. '

· icole) stoic but lostries not to inch as _ uck leans in) careo

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Yes, that's right: In a foyer packed with bizarre objects jostling for attention: (medieval sword mounted on wall, slideshow of nipple piercings and tattooed

private parts running on loop) ; perhaps the most ~ye-catching is a bulky crate overflowing with squishy foarn ducks: Each duck's chest reads, "I GOT PRICKED @ EXCALIBUR." Every client who gets tattooed takes one home, and they seJ;Ve a double purpose: On the one hand, as keepsakes, and on the other, as yielding ·objects for those clients to squeeze with all their might as the store's owner, using a tiny machine powered by electromagnetic coils, drives a set of pins into their skin at a rate of 120-140 penetrations per second.

Most of these ducks, I'm told, end up decapitated.

Most tattoo parlors don't have crates of duck toys ,in their lobbies.

But again, Excalibur is not your typical parlor. Mo,s t tattoo parlors have racks of pre-designed images, or "flash," hanging in their main rooms; Excalibur offers only custom designs. Most tattoo parlors have dim heavy-metal· music leaking from the speakers in the corner; Excalibur has, depending on the day and mqod, a soundtrack .of old-timey jazz, or classic rock, or bagpipe -music. Most tattoo parlors have a , staff of cranky skater dudes trudging around with '

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antisocial hair and rings ,, through their noses; Excalibur has only Charles "Duck'' Unitas. Duck is the owner and sole proprietor ("Head chef, dishwasher, and all that," as he puts it), a gregarious middlc;!-aged man . with a vaguely avuncular grey beard, a passion for wildly-patterned short-sleeve button-downs, and an uncanny knack for putting his customers at ease. .

Duck recognizes, with a hint of pride, that he's not what you'd expect in a tattoo artist, and since I'm, without a ·doubt, the opposite of the typical tat-parlor patron, we make a pretty nice pair. He's a born storyteller, and I spend hours listening to him spin out his personal history as he reclines in his adjustable tattooing chair, his cowboy-booted feet perched on a high stool, one arm playing with hJs earring, the other flapping about~_.. expressively as his voice jumps-between registers.

Duck, who says. he picked up crayons as a toddler and never put them down, is a lifelong artist, but he got into tattooing late.

For most of his life, he thought only convicts and burnout~ · had tattoos. In high school, while the stoners who haunted the local auto • shop were getting inked, Duck •

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was listening to B~ry Manilow and hanging out with his fellow "squares" those wayward souls not athletic eno.ugh to run with the jocks, nor intellectual enough to converse with the geeks, nor

chemically-inclined enough to toke with the hippies. Du.ting his four-year stint in the Navy, an organization famously · populated by tattooed sea dogs, Duck took · the road less traveled and hitched· up with some fellow shipmen who worked as clowns. He continued his clown act as a civilian, gigging at birthday parties. In his most popular act, he'd walk around with a big foatn hatnmer and offer kids "free headaches," which he'd deliver with a playful bang on the noggin. After a few exasperating years pursuing an art degree at Southern Connecticut State and a whole slew of odd jobs, Duck found steady work in a profession that once again had him offering up pain to willing customers. ·· Even today, after more than a decade in the business, he has just one tattoo, a simple bit of Celtic knot-work looping around his left wrist. He did it himself, and got it mostly so that he could experience what his clients were going through.

As a Manilow-loving high-school square, Duck would have been shocked to learn that one day he'd have even that single small tattoo.

See, he stumbled into the profession almost entirely by accident. In fact, it took an unlikely chain of events involving an eager brother with six hundred bucks to burn; a rundown, possibly mob-connected storefront in Long Island; and a near-fatal explosion of packing popcorn in a Volkswagen Passatto get a needle in his hand. When he finally found himself pressing that needle tentatively into his brother's arm to draw the first line of a Mortal Kombat dragon, Duck still couldn't quite believe he was •

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actually doing it. He had no idea how deep to push. Does that feel about right, he asked? "Nah," said his brother. "It doesn't hurt enough." .

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How much does it hurt?

In retrospect, that may have been the question that brought me to Excalibur.

The question of pain the one that inevitably follows the image of toy ducks squeezed

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the headless, one every nervous customer asks himself on the threshold of Excalibur's doors is the persistent elephant in tattooing's proverbial room. Among tattoo artists and tattooees, there's little consensus on the answer. "It's like a tickle and a sunburn at the sa tne time," one of Duck's frequent customers tells me. (Then again, this is coming from a man who pierced his own lip with a sharpened nail while still in middle school.) "It just feels like a scratch," says another. On the other hand, one female tat-enthusiast writes in Self magazine that a couple of flowers on her left ankle hurt more than her Caesarean section.

Duck tells me that he's seen an even wider spectrum of reactions in his

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chair. Some weep. Others drift · the actual getting. "The mind is off to · sleep. Still others enjoy it. very powerful," Duck says, "and The · subcutaneous vibrations of you'd be surprised what it can. and Duck's needle actually brought one can't do."

• female client to orgasm during the process with her boyfriend in the It should come as no shock, then, that when I drive to Shelton one sunny Thursday morning to watch my first-ever tattooing, I grip the steering wheel a bit too tightly. . I breathe a little heavily as I • · .every oznt o contact . accompany Duck on his customary trip to t~e Dunkin' Qonuts down the street, where the employees . the sheets .with ain ul know him so well that they often sensitivi I couldn't have his large coffee ready to go by the time he walks through the doors. Today, Duck makes a miniature performance of putting .. change in their tip cup, (shaking uncovered inch. the cup in mock-indignation: "What's this?.

It's empty!

I'm just . room .. (Apparently, said boyfriend gonna have to fill it for ya!"). . was weirded out but totally into At 11 a.m., a guy natned Ron it).

Several clients often the with a build like a defensive tackle toughest-looking · guys have and arms sheathed in ink walks . passed out in the chair. through the front door of the shop.

As I listen to Duck talk, there's He and Duck joke like old.friends: little doubt in my mind that I'd fall Ron -worked at Excalibur a while into that last category. I tell him back as a piercer and ~pprentice about my chronic squea rnishness, tattoo artist. He's here now to get and rather than judge me for some work on his arms finished it, Duck nods knowingly. Our before he ships off to Iraq in late minds, he says, can't tell the Novembe,r, and he's brought his difference between reality and fiancee, a 19 year-old ballerina fantasy on their own. It takes na tned Nicole. information from the five senses This is a special occasion: to confirm the distinction. So Ron and Nicole, the soonwhen the mind signals the body to-be-newlyweds, are getting to generate tons of chemicals in matching puzzle-piece tattoos. · response to, or anticipation of, It's about Ron's millionth something horrible, and then that tattoo, but it's Nicole's first, horrible something really just feels and so Ron's dad Randy and like, say, a ticklish sunburn, those their fa rnily friend Elaine unused chemicals go haywire. show up a few minutes later to That's when a tattooee passes out, witness the important event. or when I start to feellightheaded. All the other folks in the room, Chemically speaking, imagining excluding myself, have at least one getting a tattoo can be worse than of Duck's tattoos on their bodies, •

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and they're here to see a loved one join their ranks.

As faanilial chatter fills the room, Duck goes through his prep work. He sets a paper plate on the counter, smears it with a thin strip of Vaseline, a,nd sticks two tiny caps onto it. He fills these caps with ink, which he stores in rows ofbottles that look like transparent cafeteria ketchup containers one pure black, the other watered down for gray shading. Then, delivering a well-rehearsed speech, he shows Nicole her needle, removes it from its factory packaging, and slides it through a disposable plastic tube, which acts as a guide a1;1d a handle and attaches to the machine· itself. . .

Each needle is actually a thin metal rod connected to a duster ·of one to twelve tiny pins more pins for a thicker stroke. The butt end of the rod attaches to a spring-loaded bar on the machine, which sits over a series of electromagnetic coils. A long black wire carries an electrical '

current from the power source to these coils, and 120 times per ~econd, the electricity charges the magnets, the bar is pulled, and the

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needle enters the skin.

Nicole has chosen to place the puzzle-piece on her foot she's used to going en pointe for ballet, and so assumes she has a high degree of pedal pain tolerance.

Duck rubs her foot with a Speed Stick to provide a sticky coating for the stencil, then transfers the handdrawn design onto her skin. He can tell she's tense and he loosens her up by cracking a couple jokes.

Ron's here to comfort her, so Nicole doesn't need too much loosening. I'll later see customers that walk into · Excalibur as if to · face the guillotine real bundles of nerves and watch Duck pull out a new tactic for each one. ''Are you nervous?" he'll ask, before putting on an agitated, nebbishy voice.

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hand and presses a pedal on the gathered up and concentrated in floor with the ball of his foot. The the tiny space where needle breaks needle lets off a sl?.arp buzz; like an through flesh.

As the process arnplified bee. Nicole, stoic but goes on, her body stiffens and she losing color by the second, tries ·goes silent. Her fingers straighten not to flinch as . Duck leans in, . out and she places them over her carefully, firmly, a kind of peaceful mouth. Nicole is accessing what cqncentration transforming his · some would call ·a very primitive expressive feature.s, a craftsman experience: She's moving more setting to work... and more fully into a purely and This is where I get queasy. This urgently physical world. is where the sight of needle tearing up ·s kin like sandpap~r tightens my *** grip on the latte Duck bought me ..

8,000-year This is where I see blood rising up . · Throughout the in little thin clouds moments after history of tattooing, · the ritual the needle passes, where I clench moment of pain has often been my leg muscles, as I learned to ·do as important as the completed in those high school assemblies, tattoo itself. On Bellona, one and try to -think about the finer of the Solomon Islands, priests points of my recent computer- hand-poked tattoos in time with •

_/GET "Well dbn't be nervous. You'll make me nervous, my hands will get all sweaty, the needle will slip ... " Or he'll spin a client around in the chair over and over again until she finally stops scrunching up her shoulders. Or he'll put a hand on a customer's back and say, ''Are you alright?" then raise his voice, look around the room, and repeat, ''Are you alright?" then throw his arms into dra rnatic full extension ·and mock-shout, as if on the deck of a sinking ship, "Is everybody alright?"

His years of practice at clowning, maritime and otherwise, clearly pay off. At the craft of tattooing, Duck is a pro, but at the art of placating a nervous customer, he's an absolute virtuoso.

No diversion tactic can take the anxious sting out of the next moment, though~ when he picks up the machine with a latex-gloved

_EASY...

programming lecture rather than rhythmic singing and drumming: the buzzing of the needle and the The sensation of pain was drawn slow, gentle rending of the skin. out and segmented, an end in itself.

Eventually the nausea passes. I In Hawaii, tattoo artists colored take a deep breath and a good hard . the tips of women's tongues as part look at the really very mild gore, of a mourning ceremony for a dead and my mind finally falls into chief just as the ink becarne a synch with my senses. And then I permanent memorial mark, so also notice something interesting. the tongue-pricking accomplished , As soon as the tattooing began, a kind of corporeal mortification. · something When the art first reached changed. almost imperceptibly in the room. The America with the addition of the banter now continues as before, Tattooed Man to the freak show · the radio still plays, the DVD line-up, the grotesque allure of screens still display a fish tank pain was central in its populist video Duck bought at Bed Bath appeal: P.T. Barnum advertised & Beyond. But something about his inunensely profitable freak the quality of Nicole's presence in Prince Constantine, a middlethe space has shifted. Ron and aged Grecian inked head to toe, Elaine talk to her as Duck works, as a white man captured by island and she responds, laughing at savages and forcibly tattooed. their jokes, quipping back at their Crowds flocked to Constantine's digs. Yet she's distracted. A pat t booth to hear lurid stories of of her isn't there. A part of her is agony and swelling as much as •

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to admire any kind of beauty or . anything but an ordeal. But the pain is inescapable. And to try to vvor~aJlship. .

Margo DeMello's imposing escape it in the first place would Ency(lopedia. of Body Adornment-- be, in a way, cheating or at perhaps the only encyclopedia least missing out on a part of the of any kind with pictures of experience. When you get a tattoo, subdermal implants on its cover- "the memory of it gets locked into devotes a whole section, between your emotional psyche," Duck said "Pacific Northwest Indians" and to me once. "Every time the needle "Penis Pierciog," to "Pain." Writes hits, your mind is interlocked with · DeMello, "Pain .is seen as tool for the emotion."

That's why .Duck doesn't like · self--rr~nsformation, . arid . . many body modification. practitioners · flash, and why he refuses to tattoo follow_the 'no pain, no gain' motto customers with designs that are in an effort to use pain in order to just plain stupid· ·(although he • achieve gro~h." Tattooing's first made one generous exception for and m.o st dedicated devotees in a young gentleman who wanted the modern Western world were "lOOo/o U.S. PRIME.BEEF" across a tough crowd men to whom overcoming physical hardship et she j distracted. vvas an · attractive ·notion. Back art o ·her isn't there. then, even for decades after the binh .of ·the electric machine in art o her is .

1891, many artists poked by hand. A customer would descend into a cramped .shop somewhere concentrated in the in New York ·or Boston, a slimy den with sketches plastering the vvalls, . and sit · backwards in a chair while a grizzled geezer with s the rocess goes on) cigarette in mouth made hundreds of tiny, inky incisions, pausing occasionally to mop the blood vvith a rag summoned up from a ' murky bucket. There are whole boo~ filled with pictures of early his buttocks). When a figure is tattoo customers, many of them etched into your back or your vvind-beaten sailors: not a lot of ankle or your arm, when you can literally feel its every contour being smiles to be found.

Duck's studio, where every imprinted on your person, it takes hand is gloved, every spray bottle on a heightened significance.

Randy, Ron's dad, has a stunning pla5tic-baggied, and every needle formally goodbyed en route to the gorilla-head tattoo spanning his sharps container, is a far cry from formidable bicep. Duck designed the . abodes of Charlie Wagner, it. Multiple psychic readings have Professor Ted, or Lew-the-Jew. identified the gorilla as Randy's Du~k's rigorous safety speeches and power animal, a fact further goof}'.playacting ensure that getting attested by a second Duck-made "PRICKED @ EXCAI.IBUR" is tattoo on his calf, showing his •

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own screa rning face merging, like the Batman villain Two-Face, with that of the ape. Whether or not the silverback and its accompanying symbolism had any real import in Randy's life before the tattoo is irrelevant: Once he's felt each hair and muscle pricked into his arm, that ape acquires a primal meaning .

One of the many images on Ron's labyrinthine ink-cratnmed arm is a Calvin and Hobbes design in memory of Elaine's son, a close friend who died young.

Ron wouldn't have wanted that particular tattoo harmlessly stuck on his body; as with the tonguemutilating Hawaiian - mourners, suffering- gives physical . shape to mental anguish: The needle makes .intangible pain concrete, engraving it on flesh, claiming and • • commemorating tt.

I learn about these two men's tattoos while Duck is still at work on Nicole's foot. And by the time the completed· puzzle piece sits on her skin atop an angry cloud of swelling, and tiny red drops · begin to ooze around its edges like condensation, I don't feel the lightheadedness that I know I should be feeling. That is, I don't feel it until Ron, leaning in gently to take a look, suddenly slaps the finished design hard. Nicole jolts up and tries to hit him as he runs away, and the whole room laughs (except for one horrified Yale student who nearly spills the remainder of his latte). Ron says he did it to "set the ink," but Duck tells me that he's really carrying on a hallowed tradition: Whenever someone gets his or her first tattoo, someone else in the room who's already been through the process offers a little mild abuse to the -tender area. Well, not always mild: .

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Ron claims that ·for his own first tattoo in Duck's studio, a whole host of people employees, friends, passers-by were invited one by one to attack his raw arm.

"They were beating me with twoby-fours," he jokes.

Finally, Nicole is finished. ''Alrighty m'dear," says Duck, lowering the pneumatic chair.

"Let's bring you back down to earth."

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like, I can just stick a pin in your arm." Immediately I started feeling woozy and decided there was no way I could man up enough to do it the issue became moot.

But then, watching Duck complete a progression of increasingly involved tattoos (including one, in neon green; on a particularly copious bleeder whose girlfriend kept opening his inkand-blood-soaked paper towels and asking him to read them like Rorschach blots), I built up a level of squeam-tolerance I'd never thought possible. I floated the idea to my mother one more time during a late-night phone call. She raised a point I'd largely forgotten in all my focus on the gory aspects: Whatever design I got would be there forever. · I tried to think of something that I'd want engraved permanently onto my body.

A Celtic cross? No, I'd been to church twice in as many years, and I consider myself Irish only for about a one-hour period every Saint Patrick's Day. Something writerly? Pen and ink or some such? Naw, I haven't really decided on a career, and how stupid would that crap look in law school?

A pretty tree or a bird would look nice, but not nice enough to justify the sidelong glances from potential bosses and mothers-in-law.

That night, I found myself tossing and turning in bed, my squeamishness back in full force.

My bare skin felt electric and I registered every point of contact between my body and the -sheets with painful sensitivity. I couldn't stop imagining needles gliding over every uncovered inch.

Before I finally drifted off, I

had a wild tho'ught~ . , Maybe. ~y rejuvenated fear wasn't about sharp objects, wasn't connected tofragile skin and oozing. drops ~( blood.

Maybe 1t was a more fund'a ment;u worry, a writer's fear:- the sense . that given pen and ink and· the most precious ' canvas of all~ I . would have nothing · wort~while ·to say.

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Just before I met Duck, I'd been thinking in the most distant, hypothetical way about getting a tattoo mysel£ Before then I'd never considered doing so any more than I'd considered throwing myself at a brick wall or going at my leg with a staple gun. But some little thrill-hungry imp over my shoulder got the notion that submitting to the needle would . make a perfect finale for this piece: Squea rnish young academic finally gets inked! I brought up the idea on a fa•nily reunion · in Virginia, and was met with a earful of disapproval. "Oooh," said my mother, making a face and trying to think of a constructive way to fra•ne her extrel!le disgust with the suggestion. My sister chimed in: "If you want to see what it feels

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is personal. Saltarelli came out as gay about a mo~th into · his freshman 'year. His parents, he says, This is The American ·Heritage are each from different generat_ions Dictionarys exa•I1ple sentence (his father is .older); and they had for the word "masculine." It's the different ideas about raising a kind of s.e ntence that's intended son. His mother· was "loving and to elucidate, to enlighten. It's the sheltering," indulging his whimskind your high school .English like when he just had to have that teacher makes you write on tests to pair of jelly shoes- in preschool, or prove, beyond a shadow of doubt, when he wanted to be the . Pink that you know the meaning of the Power Ranger for Halloween.

His father "envisioned it in a word. Masculine equals handsome more '50s sort of way'' than his plus robust~ Outstandingly so. : Does America really define mothec He wanted his son to go · fishing, or throw a football around, masculinity this way? Does Yale? _E very Wednesday afternoon, in . or "get really into basketball." a well-lit basement classroom in L?-ughing, Saltarelli tells ·me ·that Rosenkranz Hall, 20 Yalies and a he didn't .quite fit the mold. His professor, Graeme Reid, attempt . . to answer these questions and " a gay male, you more. The course, offered by the come up aga.iJtst a.· Women's, Gender, and Sexuality tension en Studies department, is "Men, Manhood, and Masculinity." The yo11r sexual identi .

13 women and seven men enrolled :were · chosen from · some . 100 aJld.your gender on ' applicants. . . a daily basi~." .

They have their wo.r k cut out • for them. A national conversation ' has emerged, one that suggests childhood was marked by a series masculinity is in . crisis.

The . of botched attempts at Little · Atlantic ran a cover _story . called League. Then there was "a brief "The End of Men," citing the new basketball• thing. Literally one female majority in the workforce practice." MaX. puts on a gruff voice as a defining shift. In October~ to imitate his father.- "He should Newsweek featured a piece called be outside playing football!" The " · UP! The Traditional Male imitation is lighthearted, . but he is an Endangered Species. It's Time does remember feeling "kind of to Re~hink Masculinity." And now, sad." Did his mother care that he Yale is offering a course on what it didn't play sports? "Not at all."

Unlike some of his classmates, nieans to be a man.

Max Saltarelli '13 saw the course Saltarelli wants to be there not description and thought, "Men, because he has thought so much manhood, masculinity?

That about the issues the course sOunds really cool! I'm a male! So addresses but rather he feels he maybe I would_ know a thing or hasn't thought about them enough.

In any case, he "semi-took it on a two about men!" ~' His interest in the course w him .

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· For his part, John Yi '12 wanted to take something different. He had taken 24 credits in his first two years, all in the math, economics, and music departments. When he· saw "Men, Manhood, and Masculinity" in the Blue Book, he thought, "Those are the sarne questions that I think about every d ay. " Yi lights up when he talks about his three sisters one's his twin, and the others are a couple of years older. They "happen to be the most beautiful, talented, . . amazing, empowenng women he knows. ("One of them went to Wellesley she like, wanted to go to Wellesley.") Growing up, John and his sisters were inseparable.

They took gymnastics and dance classes together he even joined them at the salon for haircuts.

They were best friends. He says he never realized that "there really is a power dyna 1nic between boys and girls" in much of society. His mother owned a small business; she was the breadwinner and head of the household. "It was always 'Ma•na Yi and her four kids,"' he chuckles. When Yi ca 1ne to Yale, the combination of living with m·e n for the first time and coming out as gay made him ask, "Holy s--t, what is masculinity? What does it mean to be a guy?"

As the students of WGSS 304 have discovered, the answer varies from place to place and across conununities. Harry VanDusen ~ 14 is from Lynnfield, Mass., a · small town settled in 1638. He describes the idea of masculinity there as "traditional." Back home, a man was expected to be "tough, a tough guy" stoic, physically and emotionally. When I ask if there were any openly gay rnen in •

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his community, he rocks forward · always encouraged him to be and almost spits out his drink. whom he wanted to be, "without "Oh God no. Oh no. That was not really any expectations for what good. It was very traditional. in that was." Today Ramirez, who is . . that way, like that's not acceptable. gay, finds that "femininity, or the It's predominantly white, Catholic, idea of what it is to be feminine, Italian. I'm none of those things." is definitely more available for He pauses. "Well, I'm white." me just because it's all I've been VanDusen is straight, but he's around, for the most part." into the arts and musical theater, which made him unusual in For the most part. Ra rnirez went Lynnfield. "It was like, 'You should . to an all-boys Catholic school in be playing a sport."' But VanDusen . ~hicago. Though he's not religious now, he and his highschool friends didn't feel the need to conform .

"I am what I a rn" and, with the did go through a "spiritual" phase, support of his parents (he calls his in which "religion and being a good mother "strong" and his father person were just really important "chivalrous"); he did what he and what we were -about." Still, wanted and gave it his all. Now he he had always noticed that performs, swims, and wants to be "[Catholicism] revolves around a doctor. VanDusen, who didn't men being in power." Unlike his conform to his town's masculine Yale friends, Rarnirez's high school ideal, . wanted to learn how other friends were mostly athletes. And communities interpreted the at his parochial school, there was concept of masculinity. a general compulsion to, "act hard Like VanDusen, Emmanuel and tough." · Ramirez '12 · says he didn't feel That compulsion is everywhere parental pressure to become any in the virtual world of "Halo," the specific ·type of boy. He grew up online shoot-em-up gan1e that is as an only child; living with his a favorite of George .Norberg '11. mother and grandmother, who About 98 percent of Halo players, •

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Enrrnanuel Rantirez '12 22

Max Saltarelli '13

Norberg reports, are men aged 16 to 25. There may be some "chill" guys with whom to become friends with. Two of his online friends just started a business together, but there's a lot of testosterone. "If you win," he writes in an e:-mail, "you feel like you've proven your masculinity. If you lose, you feel like you aren't good enough."

If you kill an enemy, there's a sexualized "tea-bagging" custom in which you "crouch on [the corpse] repeatedly." A lot of the players, he adds, call each other "gay" or "fag," Norberg, who is straight, sees this belittling as an attempt to affirm their own masculinity. ~ In addition to video games, Norberg likes public health and sex. He is on the board of directors of Sex Week at Yale. He also has a radio show on C called "Sex Talk," the purpose of which is selfexplanatory. But because there's no such thing as too much sex talk, Norberg signed up for this class.

For Jake Conway '11, the class also provides talk but talk will only get him so far: "The class isn't going to answer my internal '

George Norberg '11 THE NEw JouRNAL

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John Yi '12

Jake Conway '11

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strugg1e. '' It 's not a course t h at "teaches you how to live or be a man." Jake is the founder of "Q," a magazine slated to launch next month that will explore LG BTQrelated issues, and he _answers my questions as if he's said it all before. ''As a ,g ay male," he says, "you come up against a tension between your sexual identity and your gender on a daily basis. It's something that's inevitable because of the historic association between gay men and effeminacy." Jake is far from effeminate. · He has a more forceful presence on- the phone than most people have in person.

He's big and tall, he works out a lot, and he played sports in high school. At gay bars, people ask him if he's straight. He's "one hundred percent gay,"he reassures me.

There's no single aspect of his romantic, home, or academic life that has defined Jake's experience of masculinity. "It's not like I can say, 'Oh, my dad told me that this was the way I had to be a man, ~d he told me once, and that's how I a rn. "' His experiences at home and at Yale have had an impact, but "it's not like one thing did the trick."

More broadly, Conway explains that there's no single trope of masculinity at Yale "there's no such thing as a 'Yale Man."' Although definitions ofmasculinity vary widely among a diverse student body, Conway still notices an ideal of hegemonic, white, and heterosexual masculinity that affects "all of our social interrelationships and how we perceive ourselves." Yale's atmosphere, he comments, remains "elitist and takes as its sort of archetype the white elite." Conway says he agrees with Judith Butler, a 20th centuryAmerican philosopher who posited that gender archetypal or otherwise is "performative."

VanDusen has certainly noticed a certain performance of masculinity at Yale. A freshman, he has spent the last six weeks meeting and greeting. He says many guys he meets "will totally let you know what they're good at, what they're great at, what they've accomplished, in a much more forward way than I'm used to." People didn't brag so much where he's from. Here, "it's very in your face the kind of backhanded, 'Yeah, it's difficult for ~

me to be in this French class 'cause, you know, I speak so fluently and a lot of them can't converse with me.'" He sounds fed up. "These are conversations I've actually had."

He thinks the bragging is an expression of masculinity. And he also seems to think it's a form of overcompensation: "The people who don't talk about what they've done. Once you pry a little, they're the most impressive ones." This view is aligned with what VanDusen identifies as a theme of the course: if you fall short with respect to one aspect of your masculinity, you tend to "exert it by showing off other accomplishments."

At Saltarelli's high school, in Orange County, Calif. ("notable for its many sex scandals!"), masculinity is another "ridiculous performance" what Saltarelli calls the "performative bro thing." .

The popular guys were "really athletic, kind of outrageous and funny, kind of douchey." Like VanDusen, when Saltarelli carne to Yale, he was able to realize about his hometown that "it's not like that everywhere." But most places he goes, Saltarelli sti 1 notices a •

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seated, unpacked, and chatting.

By the time he gets to the front of the room, the class' attention is on him. Reid is small, with silver hair and a tastefully trimmed beard. This afternoon, he's wearing black, pinstriped pants, a light blue button down with a few buttons open, and dress shoes. He enunciates every word and waves his hands as he speaks. The accent of his English is falniliar, but I can't put my finger on the place of origin. Not the UK, not Australia...

South Mrica. Growing up there, Reid explains, he faced "fairly rigid ideas about masculinity," and had . the experience of "completely not fitting within those norms." After getting his doctorate in queer studies from . the University of Amsterda 1n, Reid returned to South Mrica to . conduct field research.

There, in the rural areas where he researched queer identities, "people think of themselves as ladies or gents," regardless of their biological gender. . Gay .m en are like ladies, "gay l-adies" so hyper-masculine straight men, who often have wives or girlfriends, have sex with them and "don't see it as contradictory to their heterosexual identity." These kinds of discoveries made Reid think about not only what it means to be gay or straight, but also what it means simply to be a man.

Maleness as a scholarly subject is fairly novel. Reid's course is the only one about masculinity in his department, which began as Women's Studies, and then broadened, becoming first Women's and Gender Studies and finally Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, reflecting the *** evolution of the field. Women's When Reid walks into class one studies departments at universities Wednesday, everyone is already were born from the feminist

quality of performance in the actions of males.

And at Yale, there are a lot of performers. When I ask him to define masculinity within his ·improv comedy group, the Viola Question, Saltarelli describes a quality of affability: "the ability to behave respectfully and amicably with all kinds of people." Funnily enough, this kind of masculinity doesn't seem gender-specific at all.

Ramirez, also active in the theater community, sees masculinity in his crowd as a way of "acting, and carrying yourself" either showy or nonchalant. "The more laidback ones," like Ramirez, hang out backstage. "The more out-there people," he says, "are the ones who perform. There are a lot of really out-there people who do really crazy things. Everyone loves it. A lot of them are my friends. They're just silly, all the time." Is that really an expression . of . masculinity? . 1y. " · "v .tes," h e says. "D efi nlte Rarnirez has observed that his classmates also display their masculinity in different ways: · "There are guys that are really flarnboyant and others that are extremely chill, really laid-back, just like, 'I don't care."'

"Sometimes," Ramirez says, "I just want to be laid back, and not really care about what I look like."

Today he's wearing corduroys, checkered Vans, and a pullover· hoodie. It's chill. But, he says, "sometimes I care a lot, and I'll go crazy and dress up." He pauses.

"Sometimes I just feel like dressing up. " •

movement, in which masculinity was thought of as "the problem and the enemy," Reid says. But as he writes in the syllabus, multiple factors, including the "sociological enquiry into the changing nature of work and farnily," have yielded an intense new focus on the changing roles of men and masculinity in • SOCiety.

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"If you fall short with respect to one aspect of your . masculinity, you tend · to "exert it by · -~ showin.g off other accomplishments.''

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There's no doubt that oldfashioned masculinity is still kicking. At the beginning of Wednesday's class, Yi gives a presentation on Tucker Max, author of "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell."

"Tucker Max," he reads from his opening slide "Hegemonic Male or General Douchebag? Or both?" (Yi likes to think Max is a combination of the two.) At first, the class is a rnused as Yi lists notable events in the life of the self-described "raging dickhead," who "gets excessively drunk at inappropriate times" and "sleeps with more women than is safe or reasonable." By the time Yi reveals that, in 2009, American popular ·· vote placed Tucker Max 24th of Tjme Magazine's candidates for . the world's 100 Most Important THE NEw JouRNAL •

People ahead of both the Pope and the Dalai Lama arnusement has turned to stunned silence.

Weekly, 7 Yale men and 13 Yale women puzzle out what masculinity means. For Reid, the definition . is necessarily elusive.

But when more than 1 million people view Tucker Max's blog each month, it's hard to see how far the impact of their discussion will reach.

So perhaps it's a good thing, then, that there are many ways to define masculinity.

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by Ali Weiner

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two. years. Despite or perhaps 1 Vanessa West , a heavyset because of this, West is a Blood.

The New Haven Police IS-year-old from New Haven's Newhallville neighborhood, has Department sits on Union Avenue ..strings woven into her black in the Hill, the neighborhood that cornrows. The strings are red, the forms the city's southern border. color of the Bloods, a national drug It is surrounded on three sides, by gang with roots in California and the Church Street South public members all over the country . housing projects, a train station, including many in New Haven. and highways that lead out of the West wears a red and black plastic city. The projects used to be like belt, a red necklace, and two plastic fortresses for gangs, says Det. Ricky buttons on her shirt, each with a Pelletier. "Once you were inside, picture of a young black man, and you could hide in there pretty the words "Rest in Peace" in neon easy. With the close proximity to letters. West has lost six friends to routes of travel out of the city ... gang-related shootings in the past "Well, certain places in the city are inherently good for dealing drugs," 1. Last names of minors in this "'VT ' 1n • one o f t h em." h e says. were article have been changed to protect Inside the Hill, the area their identities.

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immediately around the police station is known as the Jungle. It was once run by the Latin Kings, a national gang of mostly Latinos and Italians that began in the 1940s.

But by the late 1980s, a gang called the Jungle Boys, who lived in the Church Street South projects, had taken hold. "We'd come out for lineup in the morning and hear gunshots," Pelletier remembers.

Pelletier has always been fascinated with New Haven's gangs. He is a tough guy and looks it. He is hefty, well over 6 feet tall, with a blonde buzz cut and a small, thick blonde mustache that would make him look menacing if he didn't chuckle so often. He joined the NHPD in 1988. After THE NEw JouRNAL

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working briefly in patrol ("Not enough action") and .the firearms and narcotics units ("I was dealing with the gangs on a regular basis"), he became the NHPD's de facto expert on the city's gangs and neighborhood rivalries. · Last year, the department finally created an official Gang Intelligence Unit, a collaboration among city, state, and federal police, as well as national government agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). The new unit is part of NHPD's attempt to keep abreast .of the changing nature of gang violence in the city; Pelletier and his partner, Det. Mike Novella, were put in charge.

They are aided in large part by their leadership the city's new chief o£ police Frank Limon is a 30year veteran of the Chicago police force, in which he supervised 600 people in the Organized Crime Unit's efforts to combat guns, drugs, and gangs in that city.

Within days of taking office this past April, Limon _rolled but Operation Corridor, an effort to flood the city's most gang-ridden streets with enough police officers to stop the gunfire. But twenty years of gang 'history, and a city divided by rivalries that may run deeper than the gangs themselves, means that he has his work cut out for him. '

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Looking Ba~k Outside the five or so square blocks that make l!P Yale's central ca rnpus, New Haven is divided into rival neighborhoods that date OCTOBER 2010

back half a century. the most part, it's the same story all North of the university, over town. Kids just have different says Pelletier, the Newhallville colored bandanas ("flags") hanging neighborhood known as "the . out their back pockets to show Ville," is effectively run by . where they're from and who they're Bloods and Crips, two of the fighting for. most infa rnous national gangs.

Almost everyone is fighting In the past year or so, it has also for something. In the late 1980s, become home to R2, also known when Pelletier joined _the NHPD, as R2 BWE (Beef with Everybody) New Haven ranked arnong Black Flag, a gang that was linked Ca rnden, N.J. and South Central to a spate of recent homicides Los Angeles as the most dangerous and assaults. On the eastern edge cities in America. "Traditionally, of the city, a housing complex most of the crime was in the known as "the Island" overlooks housing projects," Pelletier the Quinnipiac River. It's the turf explains. "When I carne on in '88, of the Island Brothers, a gang it was the Island Brothers, KSI, whose glory days, says Pelletier, the Latin Kings, and the Jungle have come and gone but who are Boys that were running the show.

They were mostly based out of the The daily ghts and .. projects." During the late 1980s and early 1990s, drugs and the shootings in the city gangs that formed to deal them were over drug tur ~· i exploded on the city streets. · Up · until about 1995, the you werent a ungle housing projects were insulated Boy and you tried to crime dens, a labyrinthine network of apattments within apartments, sell drugs around the which could be taken over by a ungle~ you were asking particular gang and used as a home base to stash guns and sell drugs. to get shot.

Gang members from other cities:the Latin Kings of New York, the still very much a presence on the Crips from Chicago-could drive streets near the river. Northwest of into the city and disappear into Yale's ca rnpus, the Tribe is nestled their respective fortresses to drop between the Ville to the north and off drugs or hide from police. The the Tre to the west. The Tre is home daily fights and shootings in the to Kensington Street International city were over drug turf; if you (KSI), one of the tougher gangs weren't a Jungle Boy and you tried from New Haven's worst days. to sell drugs around the Jungle, Recently the Tre has also become you were asking to get shot. home to Bloods and Crips from When the projects were New York and New Jersey who redeveloped in the mid-1990s, have moved in to recruit new they were remodeled into regular apartment-style buildings, getting members.

Each neighborhood has its own rid of the rooms-within-roomsflavor and its own rivalries, but for within-rooms · layout that had "

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previously made them such good · generation of kids who had grown safe havens. This, along with a up watching every adult they knew series of major investigations by fight to represent "rep" their • police and federal ageq.ts; forced gang on the streets. The city's kids drug gangs to other parts of New took the lesson to heart: you fight Haven. for what you stand for. And, in The Corridor, from which the temporary absence of strong Operation Corridor takes its gangs to stand for, they stood for name, became New Haven's next the only thing they had left: their hot spot. Known on city maps as neighborhoods.

Orchard Street, it cuts diagonally A gang, says Pelletier, doesn't need across the western part of the city, .to be national or even particularly through the Tre and the Tribe. It's . powerful. Legally, gangs are the center of crime in New Haven, defined as three or .more people the scene of most drug sales and involved in ·ongoing criminal shootings since the mid 1990s. activity with a common sign or Along the Corridor, . different symbol. Hood alliances often show gangs claim houses, but in recent similar attributes: shootings in the years, there's been less fighting over Shaun~ the Blood who which gang sells drugs on which corner. "The kids got smart that we shot his Crip brother; were using undercover cops to bust must have· been ollowing them on street corners," Pelleteir Rule #20: 'Wo playing explains. "So instead of standing on a corner and continuing to be with the enem~ meaning a target, they would give a client • z you see an enemy, tear a phone number and say, 'Call me up, I'll get you .what you need.' his -ace o . '' They'd set a meeting spot, drive to a dark place to make the exchange." na rne of the hood, hand signals or Because of this, it is now easier, and colors to signify membership. For arguably safer, than ever before to exa rnple, members of the Crips deal drugs in New Haven without and residents of the Ville both getting arrested or jumped by a identify themselves with the color competing dealer. There's no need blue.

Kathleen Edwards, the to fight for tur£ So why are kids still shooting supervisory prosecutor of the Juvenile Court in New Haven, each other? says that just a few years ago, kids repped neighborhoods more Just kid stniP. often than they repped gangs. The The need for allegiance dies juvenile offenders she prosecuted hard. When the national gangs of told her they identified themselves the 1980s and 1990s were shut by where they lived in the citydown by the New Haven Gang the Tre, the Tribe, the Ville. "The Task Force, many of the major kids give themselves na rnes, maybe adult players in New Haven's crime have a handshake or a symbol scene were taken off the streets and they identify with, but they're incarcerated. They left behind a mostly identifying with their •

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neighborhood," she explains.

Now, the city's gangs are gaining national affiliation yet again. Over the last 18 months or so, says Pelletier, small sets with national reach have exploded across the city. "We do still have smaller street gangs, but everyone even those have taken on national affiliations." Most common are the sets of the Bloods, Crips, Latin Kings, and the Black Gangster Disciples, a national group with a heavy presence in Chicago. .

In addition to the shift from street-corner drug deals to Orchard Street rendezvous, Pelletier ~redits technelogy with the change. "Before, kids might have wanted to call themselves the Bloods or the Crips but not really . understood what that meant.

Now, they're picking up on the philosophy," says Pelletier. "We see it in interviews with kids. They can use the Internet, can Google the gang's philosophy, can connect with .an actual Grape Street Crip or a Blood from California. It's easier to pick up."

In concert with these means of technological enlistment, adult Bloods from New York and New Jersey have moved to the Ville and the Tre, and are actively recruiting young new members.

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West is one of the gang's new charges. She calls herself a "fivefifty," just half a Blood. "We called five-fifties 'cause five is the fivepointed star [a national Blood symbol], and fifty 'cause we only half down," she explains. Half down? "It means you rock wit' all Bloods and not Crips, but if your Bloods gonna jump somebody, or THE NEw JouRNAL •

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they gettin' ready to bang [fight], you can decide either 'yeah, I'm down,' or 'nah, I'll pass."'

Jasmine Williarns, a 12-year-old from the Hill, explains that the difference between Bloods and Crips is especially important for girls. To become a Crip, she says, a girl has to "be sexualed" with every man in the local group, or "set."

It's not rape, the girls insist; it's just what you do to get in. Only boys must go through initiation rites to be a Blood, Williarns explains. .

They're "banged" beaten by other Bloods for a minute and thirty-one seconds. (The ntnnbers zero, three, and one are significant to the Bloods, where the telephone area code is 31 0.) -Girls, explains Willia rns, do not have to go through initiation rites to be a OCTOBER 2010

with gang territory.

Blood. "If you a girl, you can be a Blood if you wanna be a Blood," she says. "The only reason why I'm a Blood is 'cause every boy I know is a Blood."

West corrects her. "You ain't a Blood, you a five-fifty too." Jasmine acknowledges her overstatement it's true, she's only half a Blood.

"Well, I wasn't gonna even be a five-fifty, but I started askin' all the boys on my street: Are you a Blood or a Crip?" she says. "Every single boy I roll with is a Blood or a fivefifty. So I wanted to be a five-fifty, because it means I can rock with them whenever I want, and they protect me."

Protection is important in the Hill, a neighborhood where, Willia rns says, there aren't many Crips besides her brothers. "I got

14 brothers and 14 sisters," she says. (Volunteers at Your Place, an afterschool youth center founded

by Jane Jeuland DIY. '09, confirm Vanessa's claim.) "Half my brothers is Bloods, and the other half is Crips. All they do is fight all the titne we gotta rotate in and out of foster care and my mommy's house, so my siblings ain't all in the house together at the sarne time.

Yesterday, Shaun he's a Bloodshot DayDay, 'cause DayDay's a Crip and looked at him the wrong way. Shaun missed, but we all had to get out the house."

The Rules Shaun, 26, was likely just following the .rules. In a recent raid carried out by Pelletier and 31

Novella, NHPD seized two Blood has lost to gang violence, she handbooks, used to indoctrinate absent-mindedly doodles their new members of the gang. The na rnes in red and black, the colors documents include an oath of the Bloods: "RIP · my fallen ("Blooding is about respecting angels," she writes around pictures your farnily and doing what you of five-pointed stars. "Nonnie, could"), a prayer ("Will I ride, Yes Brillhead, Moe-Milly, Lil Larry, . I'll ride, cause I bang with pride, Tank, Cornell." The letter "C" in .·.when I die bury me 5 feet up with "Cornell" is drawn with a slash red on me"), a pledge ("I pledge through it, a visual disrespect to allegiance to he Blood flag and all the Crips. The '.'B" in Brillhead is my mill as in this nation"), and the . ·drawn bigger than any other letter rules of Stoney Face Milia, a subset on the page, meant to symbolize of Bloods from the Ville. The rules form a code of conduct. Pelletier and the five-fifties say new Bloods To become a Crip, she have to memorize everything in the says, a girl has to "be handbook so that they understand sexitalid" with every the philosophy of the fa rnily they are joining. The · consequences man in the local group_, of breaking the rules is stated or ''set. " 1Tts' not rape, t.he dearly; "Rule No. 21: All 20 rules girls insist; it's just what must Be enforced and followed, if .you do to get in. caught Breaking any of these rules, you will Be terminated on site." · · Terminated, explains Williarns, Blood dominance.

These means shot. handwriting .trends are standard in Some of the rules seem practical: Blood personal writings and graffiti "Rule No. 4: No nastiness, across America; the same habits meaning shower at least once a are visible in the handwritten Blood codes seized by NHPD. d ay."

"Rule No. 2: No treason, When Williams and West speak, meaning no backbiting and no they use Blood code words that are translated in the handbooks. divi~e and conquer.''

"Rule No. 9: Exercise, meaning Despite their half-status, these girls work out your body, mind, and have absorbed too much of the soul spiritually." national philosophy and dogma to Some are more threatening. be brushed aside as wannabes.

Shaun, the Blood who shot his Crip "Will it Ever Go Away?" brother, must have been following Rule No. 20: "No playing with the enemy, meaning if you see an Whether Bloods are enemy, tear his face off." fighting Crips, or kids from the Tre Even Williarns and West, the are fighting kids from the Hill, the two girls who call themselves fact remains that kids believe it is half-Bloods, seem intimately more dangerous not to have a crew fa rniliar with the rules, prayers, than to join a gang or rep a hood. and symbols of the gang. While Without backup, it can be hard West talks about the friends she to walk through other parts of the •

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city. "Ifyou walkin' in a place where you don't know people, the people from that hood gonna check you," says C.J. Pike, a scrawny' .13-yearold-boy from the Ville. "They gonna surround you, ask you where you from, what you doin' in their hood, how long you gonna be there for." The kids who claim that hoods are likely to defend it against an outsider without a pack of friends alongside him. "If you don't say you gonna leave real soon, they make you leave." Two of Pike's friends got shot in broad daylight this year for walking in a hood that wasn't their own. Last year, Maurice '!ank'' Wilson, a collegebound 17-year-old, was shot in the middle of winter, usually a calmer time. Wilson was lucky the shot wasn't fatal. · Even with luck, however, it's hard to avoid the system ofviolence. Kids are especially susceptible to gang affiliations if their blood relatives remain active. "I got a friend whose parents are both Crips, and her three older brothers are Crips," says Willia1ns. "She's an honors student." But she isn't a Crip, so "she had to move out the house, because her parents don't want nothin' to do with her." West and Willia 1ns both seem to understand that if parents show their children love and affection at an early age, the kids are more likely to stay off the streets. "The kids that got beaten when they was young, they the ones who's in the streets now," says Willia 1ns solemnly. "Give them respect instead of beating them. Take them out somewhere so they don't get bored and hang out with bad kids on the streets. ' Show them love. Then they'll stay out the hood."

For streets to be safe for Willia1ns THE NEw JouRNAL

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and her friends, the city needs to prevent the next generation of youth from stepping up and re-populating the major gangs.

Community centers such as Jeuland's Your Place · and afterschool education programs such as Youth Rights Media, a nonprofit that teaches kids to make documentary films, may be getting closer to effective gang prevention. Your Place meets weekday afternoons from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m., the idle hours between school and curfew during which kids are most likely to commit crimes. The progra rn schedules activities to occupy kids during the prime hours of criminal activity, and gives kids creative outlets for emotions that might otherwise turn ugly. In addition to the counselors, school tutors, career specialists, and religious mentors. that Your Place provides, Jeuland schedules "superVised free time" -activities like karaoke and painting-for kids to express themselves in a way that adults can positively reinforce.

"That might seem like it has nothing to do with gang violence, but every single one of 9ur kids has either seen a shooting, run away from a shooting, or lived their lives in fear ofgetting shot," says Jeuland.

"Kids who have been traumatized like this, they're expecting people to give up on them, to tell them they're bad kids. To get up and sing in front of friends, and have adults cheer them on - it makes a world of difference. We've seen it."

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The schools are stepping up, too.

This year, two middle schools .Ln New Haven creat~d branches Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.RE.A.T.), a national education progra an in which police officers OcTOBER 2010

teach kids about the dangers of joining gangs. Will G.R.E.A.T. be successful? Sgt. Ricardo.. Rodriguez ofNHPD, the officer who teaches · the progra rn, is enthusiastic. "We. won't know for sure for years, until we see whether or not these · kids have stayed out of gangs, but they've responded really well so far. " Can the city actually keep its kids from shooting each other?

Pike, for one, thinks the violence will extinguish itself if he just waits it out. "Probably by the time I'm 24, there will be no more Bloods or Crips," he says. Why 24? "They'll all be in jail or dead by then."

West disagrees. "Lockin' people up ain't gonna stop it," she says.

"It will just get worse inside the

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"Probably by the time Im 2~ there will be no more Bloods or Crips~ n says Pike~ 13. ccThey~ll all be in jail or dead by then. n jails. You can't lock all the people up that's involved in this gang violence; its too many."

And Pelletier plays the realist when discussing violence in New Haven. "Will it ever go away? I been working here for 20 years. I don't think you can ever stop it," he says. Of the violence, and the guns and drugs that come with it, he says, "It's like trash it never stops coming~ it's just a matter of taking it out. But if you don't. take out the trash, it's gonna pile up and be bad for everybody."

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make their . way along Arizona's roads

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thing to do in my home, town, if it was a weekend and you weren't old enough to drive, was a movie at the local mall.

You might grab a slice of pizza first; but in any case, you needed a ride.

Usually, the responsibility for my friends and me fell to Julia's dad, a quiet guy with a moustache and thick glasses. Over the course of many 10-minute drives, he became privy to all the conspiracy theories and crushes that plague 14-year-old girls. It never occurred to us that he could hear from the front seat.

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Three years later, if anyone's dad had suggested driving us to prom, we would have been mortified. There were times and places for our dads and their cars and far fewer of them, as soon as we learned how to drive ourselves.

Then, we could come and go as we pleased. I kept the garage-door opener for my dad's house in the console of my car, its shape distinctive enough to find by fishing in the pile of loose receipts and CDs. Now, travel, by car or otherwise, with either parent leaves me nostalgic. This sutnmer, when I flew to

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Arizona for a week of hiking with my dad, he held my boarding pass as he had when I was 10. When it was time to return from Grand Canyon National Park to the airport in Phoenix, he drove us across the state in a rental car whose cupholders we filled with trail mix.

I put my feet up on the dash and napped. Later in the summer, as we took out our boots for a hike, my dad would turn to me and say, · that's Grand Canyon dust.

Because its terrain varies so much in elevation, Arizona is home to at least six biomes. My dad and I THE NEw JouRNAL

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drove through desert scrub, where Saguaro cactuses stand like traffic cops. We drove through charparral, long plains studded with low bushes and houses visible miles before we reached them. Higher up, we drove through forests of fir and pine. It was like driving across the world.

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I inherit two things from my dad: driving, and insomnia. On my 16th birthday, he surprised me by pulling around the car after breakfast and telling me to get in.

I was terrified. He made me drive to a nearby parking lot and back.

That year, before I was ready to try my mother's manual-transmission car, teaching me to drive was my dad's job. We made time for lessons when I was at his place. Our long Sunday drives traced tree-shaded roads in rural western Connecti. cut, qut past the spot on the river where-people go tubing.

"Lots of stupid and untalented people make perfectly good drivers," my dad reassured me, when I despaired of ever learning how to drive. "Anyone can drive." When I attempted parallel parking, he'd recite Woody Allen: "Ies OK, I can walk to the curb from here."

Now, both of us can drive, but neither of us has ever been able to sleep. I stay up too late, and my dad wakes up too early. When I was 12 and my parents separated, my dad wouldn't give me the basement room at his house, because it was two flights ofrstairs away from his, and he didn't want me to be lonely to have trouble falling asleep.

When I was very young, my dad would wrap me in coats and put me in the car and drive me all over town until the rhythm of wheels •

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OcTOBER 2010

on road put me to sleep. The year I time for stories. My dad, being my was six and afraid of fireworks, he dad, knows everything about me, did this on the fourth of July, being but I hadn't known why he didn't careful to avoid the routes closest . serve in Vietna rn (his December birthday was late in the lottery) or to the shows' noise. the five American cities he would In Arizona, my dad and I drove all day and night into Flagstaff, "World's · First International Dark Sky City''; out of Flagstaff, down a stretch of highway adopted by the Flagstaff Optimists' Club, and another by the Baha'i · Faith. We drove in the direction of the San Francisco choose to show a tourist (Seattle Peaks. Massive, white-capped, the made his list). My dad believes range would be celebrated in any that Oreos and oranges are the other state, but in Grand Canyon best snacks for hiking, and that country, it's given short shrift. We Gatorade is important. My dad's drove into Sedona at sunset, when ex-girlfriend was not a good travel its red rocks glow like heat lamps. companion, too fussy, but my "Crystal Castles Metaphysical De- dad told me I arn good to travel partment Store," said a sign there. with, because I'm always garne.

My dad and I were still an hour Late, we saw signs for a river called Big Bug Creek and a town na rned . out of Phoenix when we saw six Bumble Bee. javelinas, hairy Southwestern pigs, In the middle of nowhere, be- in the light of our headlarnps. By this time of night, long stretches of highway were empty except for the pigs. We waited for them to nose their way across the road 0 and then pulled off for gas. Besides Coke and cigarettes, the convenience store sold antiques, marijuana paraphernalia, and a broad array of magazines. Outside, a sign on the door reads, "IOOs OF · •

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KNIVES." fore we got to Phoenix, my dad pulled off the road. "I'm going to close my eyes for just a minute," he said. "And when I awake, you can remind me to tell you the story of the Death Valley real estate opportunity." On the road there was

Let's stop and poke around, I suggested. Why not, said my dad, resigned, laughing. It was so late already. Together, we peered at the weirdest merchandise. Behind the counter stood a greasy-haired teenage boy and, next to him, some35

thing labeled "Fully Functional Umbrella/Sword $36.99."

We paid for our drinks and got back in the car. We were flying out of Phoenix the next day, very early.

We were going to use our hotel room there for four, maybe five,

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Best value for your dollar!

Visit us at www.facebook.com/

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hours of sleep. "If I was your age," my dad told me, "I would just sleep in the car. Cancel the hotel room. " "Let's do it!" I said, but he shook his head and drove on. There was a difference between being 20 and your daughter being 20. He wasn't about to let me sleep on the side of the road.

When we got to the hotel in Phoenix, the desert night was still warm. It took us a few minutes to find parking desperate minutes: we couldn't believe that after such a long drive, there was going to be no parking at the end. Toti~g duffel bags, we spilled into the fluorescent lobby, where there were two men dressed business-casual with two women whose short skirts, high heels, and makeup were all wrong. I had never seen prostitutes before. We went upstairs to our room, and I spent some time on the balcony, green light drifting up from the hotel pool, as my 36

dad inside tried to sleep. The next morning, we turned in the rental and flew home.

Back home, late in the summer, my dad and I were in the car again, and he remembers the story of the thousand frogs. He had never told me this story before. One night when I was two, he was driving me down an empty road in New Harnpshire, after a rainstorm. He was trying to help me fall asleep .

The road was wet and slick, and the frogs were out because of the weather. There were thousands of them, _my dad told me, hopping all over the road. He must have crushed dozens of frogs as I slept in the passenger seat,·· the roa<:f ribboned beneath us, and he drove · me, smoothly, on and on into the night.

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THE NEw JouRNAL

14 MILES PER HOUR

The authors father stands in the middle of the road at a stop along Route 66 O cTOBER 2010

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How to Succeed at Craigslist - 0$ OBO (New Haven, Yale)

by Bay Gross .

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Date: 2010-10-15, 2:25PM EDT Reply to: sale-jzx6m-20 10927296@craigslist.org [Errorswhenreplyingtoads?]

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~- - ·· ' ·· ' ················· • · • ·········· = - :: , e;:

........ ;.. ..:::; .-: .:: .::c . :.::::: .. :::: .s:: ... ; . .. ..: .:::::::::::::;::c;:tu:.:::::::::z:::::s:e::s;;.:;:::un;se::e:::::e:.::::::e:::::.:::u,:. ::::::m .:::e;:: .. ;n:c::::e ... : .... :;.: .o.: .. :. :u::::.:::: ,,, e: .. : .;::::e::., ... _; ,,, ; .ss: .::: . :::u .;u ... :;:: . ;; .:e::.:: .::!;Jie.::: .. ;;;:

n::::::::::: .::a.:e:;:::: .::.c .. :: . :::::;:: . ::: .: .... u;;; .::c:: :

·A 'been-there' guide for the cash-strapped interior decorator: -

There are some great things about shopping in traditional stores: the consistency of selection and pricing; the choice to pay by cash, .

credit, check, or coupon; that warm sense of security you get approaching the register, confident in a safe transaction.

You know the

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feeling, you've walked those aisles. But especially for broke college kids, getting a good deal trumps all safety standards and concerns about

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comfort. Enter Craigslist.

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Yes, the Craigslist. That seedy bounty of the Internet. That cornucopia of all things cheap and/ or stolen. It is the perfect r~source for today's frugal consumer

the ideal alternative when Salvo's selection turns up too chic.

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For the uninitiated, Craigslist is an online classifieds database, started by Craig Newberg in 1995, that now ranks among the top ten most visited sites in America. The model is genius: a unique intersection between commerce and gambling where the rush of eBay meets the creep of ChatRoullete. Where every purchase is weighed against the probability of being swindled, and "cash only" payments .

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. sometimes mean organs too. Where men and women, minors and geriatrics come together to buy, sell, defraud, and bamboozle . .

My own foray into the mysterious world of Craigslist took me on tour of the Connecticut underground, and exposed me to a teeming •

economy, sheltered behind the anonymity oflnternet pseudonym. First, there was Frank the 'bike dealer' in East Haven, whose one-room .

apartment offered an unusually diverse assortment of Cannondale bicycles for suspiciously low rates. Fearing criminal consequences, I instead turned to Dave, who seemed slightly more legal when we met at 6 a.m. on Crown Street. Soon to follow was Liza, a lovely little chain-smoker from Branford &om whom I bought a $30 sofa. In introducing the couch to my common room, I suspect I may have also introduced invasive parasites into the larger Davenport community. When all was said and done, however, I emerged with a great bike, .

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a comfortable couch, and both of my kidneys. Not a bad deal.

Takeaway Points: -A lot of ads will say "no e-mails"... Nobody likes a paper trail.

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-Leather is almost never leather.

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-Delivery is pretty much impossible.

-Bedbugs can make a grown man tremble.

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Location: New Haven; Yale It's NOT OK to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests .

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THE NEw JoURNAL

â&#x20AC;¢

OCTOBER 2010

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