Nebraska vs. Beal:
Yippie Dana Beal said he’s feeling pretty confident about Nov. 8 when a decision will be issued on his arrest for transporting 150 pounds of pot in duffle bags through Nebraska in a van last October. Beal was charged with felony possession of marijuana with intent to deliver. Beal told us back in June that he and his two co-passengers in the van were, in fact, carrying a load of medical marijuana that Beal picked up in California where he had been at a conference of NORML, the marijuana law reform group. Calling himself an “angel,” bringing medicine to the needy, Beal readily admits he supplies pot to informal medical marijuana buyers’ clubs in New York City. He and the club members say marijuana helps AIDS patients maintain their appetites and also helps M.S. sufferers deal with their pain, among other health benefits. Beal put his odds at beating the rap at “80/20,” though said he didn’t want to be overconfident. He inferred that the Nebraska authorities’ search of the van was illegal. As for Governor-elect Andrew Cuomo’s recent statement that he doesn’t support medical marijuana in New York, Beal said it hardly registered a blip. Meanwhile, last week saw a major two-day conference in Midtown Manhattan on medical marijuana geared toward entrepreneurs — and all the participants could see was green — as in dollar signs, Beal said. As for “Yippie Detective” Beal’s theory on who planted the C-4 explosive that was found in the New York City Marble Collegiate Cemetery on E. Second St. last month, he said police don’t seem to be following up on it — or at least they haven’t asked to speak to him about it. He said the officers who showed up at his place two weeks ago only seemed interested in “trying to find something.” Also, Beal noted, he really has to give away some more of his cats.
A bright idea:
We have to apologize to Fly after the caption on last week’s issue of the East Villager stated the “squat light bulb design” — with the fused squatter lightning bolt and musical note — on the banner at the recent memorial march for Michael Shenker was designed by Seth Tobocman. While Tobocman did indeed do the overall banner, the bulb design was Fly’s, and Tobocman asked for her permission to incorporate it into his piece. The quote on the banner, which is also the quote in Fly’s design, shown below, was something Shenker told her when she was facing a tough situation with renovations in her apartment — whether to put a window in a wall to let light into her kitchen, which was running up against house procedures and politics. “I’m really proud of that design and it documents a really memorable moment between me and Michael,” Fly told us of the bulb. “That sort of also is a metaphor for what he represented.” Also, in our earlier article on Shenker on Oct. 7, a photo caption showing the “squat godfather” in his apartment with Brad Will incorrectly stated that it was taken in the late 1980’s or early ’90s. Will didn’t get to the East Village until around 1994, Fly noted, adding she knows this since it was she who actually told Will what squatting was when they met in Wisconsin in the summer of 1993. Will didn’t live in Shenker’s space until the late ’90s, which the text of the article stated correctly. (The front-page photo of the bulb did not run in The Villager last week, though Sarah Ferguson’s comprehensive article on Shenker and his central role in the East Village squatter scene did.)
