Search Results for: Village voice

‘Quebrado’: The Life and Death of a Young Activist

Illustration by Kjell Reigstad

Jeff Sharlet | Sweet Heaven When I Die, W. W. Norton & Company | Aug 2011 | 37 minutes (9,133 words)

 

Our latest Longreads Member Pick is “Quebrado,” by Jeff Sharlet, a professor at Dartmouth, contributing editor for Rolling Stone and bestselling author. The story was first published in Rolling Stone in 2008 and is featured in Sharlet’s book Sweet Heaven When I Die. Thanks to Sharlet for sharing it with the Longreads community. Read more…

Steven Thrasher has been named the 2012 National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association journalist of the year. After gay marriage was legalized in New York last year, he followed two same-sex couples who finally earned the right to consider whether or not they wanted to get married:

‘We never did this saying, “We’re going to go out and marry right away,” ‘ Howard says. ‘We won the right. Now, we have the choice.’

Besides: ‘I was waiting for Kevin to bring it up.’

Kevin hears this and replies, ‘Really? That’s interesting,’ without adding more.

It turns out that although same-sex couples now have 1,324 new legal benefits in New York State, there are actually some big economic incentives for Kevin and Howard not to wed. Kevin receives state insurance for his disabilities, and marrying Howard would end that. While it would allow Kevin to go onto Howard’s insurance plan, the co-payments for the drugs and procedures he needs could be prohibitive.

This is exactly the kind of conundrum cohabitating straight couples of certain means have had to face from time to time.

“Maybe I Do And Maybe I Don’t.” — Steven Thrasher, Village Voice

More from Thrasher

Top 5 Longreads of the Week: Stories from Guernica, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Village Voice, and Mother Jones, plus fiction from Joyland and a guest pick from writer John Fram.

Who is “Gary Jones”? An investigation into how a hacker may have stolen nude photos for a “revenge porn” site:

Is it really so easy to hack a Gmail account? See for yourself: Go to the Gmail login screen and click on the frequently ignored link underneath the sign-in menu, ‘Can’t access your account?’ Three options appear; choose ‘I forgot my password.’ Type in a Gmail address—any active Gmail address—and if there’s a phone number associated with the account, you’re given three more options, one of which is ‘Get a verification code on my phone.’ You don’t even need to know the phone number. Just hit ‘continue’ and an unrelated six-digit code will appear in a text to the account owner’s phone. Type in that verification code—a number easily obtained by a masquerading e-impostor—and you’re in. The first thing you’re prompted to do is immediately change your password, thereby blocking out the original owner.

In other words, if a hacker knows only your Gmail address and can figure out how to access your phone, he’s already most of the way into your shit.

“‘Gary Jones’ Wants Your Nudes.” — Camille Dodero, The Village Voice

More #longreads from Dodero

How officers in the 81st Precinct in Brooklyn were “juking the stats” to improve crime statistics in their area. The NYPD called it an isolated incident, but critics point to a culture of data-obsession that leads police to ignore, discard or downgrade complaints from victims:

These weren’t minor incidents. The victims included a Chinese-food delivery man robbed and beaten bloody, a man robbed at gunpoint, a cab driver robbed at gunpoint, a woman assaulted and beaten black and blue, a woman beaten by her spouse, and a woman burgled by men who forced their way into her apartment.

“When viewed in their totality, a disturbing pattern is prevalent and gives credence to the allegation that crimes are being improperly reported in order to avoid index-crime classifications,” investigators concluded. “This trend is indicative of a concerted effort to deliberately underreport crime in the 81st Precinct.”

“The NYPD Tapes Confirmed.” — Graham Rayman, Village Voice

See also: “Boss Kelly.” — Geoffrey Gray, New York magazine, May 16, 2010

Featured: E.’s #longreads page. See his story picks from The Village Voice, The Atlantic, Deadspin, plus more.

Featured: Patrick LaForge, editor, news presentation, at The New York Times. See his story picks from The Village Voice, The American Scholar, Founders Fund plus more on his #longreads page.

Featured Longreader: Peter Axtman, public relations associate. See his story picks from Gizmodo, ESPN, The Village Voice, plus more on his #longreads page.

Featured Longreader: Jacqueline Frances’s #Longreads page. See her story picks from Vogue, The Village Voice, The Brooklyn Rail, plus more.

A trip through the “bike-crime underbelly”—and the futility of new technology when it comes to preventing it:

The purpose of stealing a bike, after all, is to sell it. SFPD’s McCloskey estimated that 90 percent of bike thieves are drug addicts. In America’s rough streets, there are four forms of currency—cash, sex, drugs, and bicycles. Of those, only one is routinely left outside unattended. So the story of bike thieves would not be complete without a trip through the second half of the transaction—the recycling of cycles.

Stolen bikes suffer many fates. In the Bay Area, they are often sold at flea markets, particularly in Alameda, just south of Oakland. In Portland, within hours of being taken, a few will appear at pawn shops just outside city limits, where documentation rules are lax. But just as they do in New York City, which shut down most ad hoc bike dealers years ago, the majority end up online, either on eBay or on Craigslist, the black hole of bicycles.

“Who Pinched My Ride?” — Patrick Symmes, Outside

See also: “Anatomy of a Greenpoint Bike Accident.” — Camille Dodero, Village Voice, Aug. 17, 2011