Session: 123456789101112131415161718         Page 237238239240241242243244245246247248249249a250251252253254255256257258259260261262263 of 617

it really so terrible?” It's not terrible if it's the life style of people -- for example, in Harlem or the Barrio in Spanish Harlem. That might be acceptable. I don't know that it is. I know that it takes place up there. I'm just going to assume for a moment that people are not offended. But I do know that in a middle class white area, in a public park, people are offended by crap games and shell games and that kind of behavior. And on occasion they block the whole sidewalk in a particular pedestrian area; it's very unpleasant.

I complain because we've had this over the years, problems in Washington Square Park, and we've worked it out that the 6th Precinct would keep a car parked at Thompson Street and Washington Square South as a sort of a mobile headquarters, and cops would walk through the park. But they stopped it; they don't do it anymore on a couple of occasions when there were just no cops in the park and it was intimidatory... on one occasion I walked through (this is all within the last/three or four months) and suddenly some black lady, very unusual looking, a turban and rather strange clothes, and she was saying to anybody who walked by, “Loose bags and joints -- loose bags and joints.” That means heroin and marijuana. Or maybe it's “bags and loose joints,” I can't remember which because I'm not into the argot. I'm really offended by this. I mean: what the hell's happened to Washington Square Park? It's now the center of drug traffic?

So I go to a phone at the corner of Washington Place and