Showing posts with label flash mob. Show all posts
Showing posts with label flash mob. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Merry Christmas to all my faithful blog readers around the world, from a place that's Far From the Madding Crowd of Swedish Moose, Reindeer, Fir trees, Snowmen and snowmobiles -South Florida, where it'll be in the '80's today. But you all know where I'd much rather be today!


Above and below, some of my January 2013 photos at Sergels Torg, Stockholm, Sweden. All original photos below by South Beach Hoosier.  © 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

Above, ground level, looking northeast towards the obelisk and Sergelfontänen, the fountain, which in the winter becomes the scene of large lighted reindeer, sans red noses.

Behind that is the large SEB building, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB, on Sveavägen, the firm I used for my currency exchange at Arlanda upon arrival and departure. 
Very friendly and professional people, unlike most banks in South Florida.













Below, earlier in the afternoon, looking east towards that same scene but from farther west on the plaza. 
In the far right, you can see the iconic revolving 22-foot neon, circular Nordiska Kompanaiet Department Store sign not too far away over on Hamngatan, which is green on one side and red on the other at night, with a clock.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tommyajohansson/4948444585/

It's not only an iconic symbol in the area, but a beacon for those for whom the fashionable life that exists in Stockholm is the only way to go. 


It's pretty amazing, which is why I have said here on the blog so many times that people who live there REALLY love it in a way that is hard to describe to people who live in South Florida, given the high percentage of people who are from elsewhere.

That's part of what gives it its palpable soul and sense of style.




Above, looking west from ground level near the middle of the Plattan towards the very popular Stadsteatern, the Stockholm City Theatre, http://kulturhusetstadsteatern.se/










The plaza is only one of my favorite places in all of Sweden and anywhere actually.

I literally spent HOURS standing and walking around it and the adjoining areas in January's cold, marveling at it all -the perfect public square. I simply couldn't get enough of it, just like when i first moved to washington, D.C. in 1988, and could spend as much time as i wanted on the steps of the west side of the U.S. Capitol overlooking The Mall, or from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, looking east towards the washington Monument.
A nexus of high-minded culture, social policy, pop culture, amazing retail shopping, very serious people-watching and the ease of well-located public transportation hubs that make everything seem more intimate and possible.

So unlike South Florida.


[OFFICIAL] Michael Jackson Dance Tribute - STOCKHOLM, July 2009.

When kids in small towns in Sweden think about what they want to do in Stockholm one day when they are older and have left their bucolic and boring life behind, one of the things they think about is being able to take it for granted that a place like this exists for them, too.

That it belongs to them as much as it belongs to people who have always lived in Stockholm.
There is nothing like this at all in South Florida.


RetardedVideos2013 YouTube Channel video: Crazy snowmobile ride in Stockholm (SWEDEN). Uploaded on December 6, 2012. http://youtu.be/j7sCpSFRKww 

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Multi-talented DxDutch does it all: sings "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" and plays talent scout and spots Old-style flash mob in the Old Country, complete with costumes: Flash mob in Munich shopping center startles some shoppers but amuses the hip and the cool kids who "get it"; #voXXclub, @DxDutch







Multi-talented DxDutch does it all: sings "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" and plays talent scout and spots Old-style flash mob in the Old Country, complete with costumes: Flash mob in Munich shopping center startles some shoppers but amuses the hip and the cool kids who "get it"; #voXXclub, @DxDutch
Last week I first got wind of this interesting video and insight into German pop culture, courtesy of a Tweet by super-music talent DxDutch, one of the genuine stars of the YouTube generation, and an actual YouTube Partnerjust like vlogger extraordinaire and HBB favorite Justine Ezarik, i.e. iJustinehttp://ijustine.com/category/vlogs/

(See vid of them together at http://youtu.be/LBvWk6yv5XE)

It features the music and antics of Universal Music Group (Germany) recording artist s voXXclub.  http://www.universal-music.de/voxxclub/home


voXXclub YouTube channel video: "Rock mi" flashmob in den Riem Arcaden in München. Uploaded March 19, 2013. http://youtu.be/0Y_VqqXphaQ

Over the weekend I was going thru my large YouTube inbox of subscribed videos I hadn't gotten around to watching yet because of the NCAA Mens Basketball tourney, the usual unethical doings in Hallandale Beach and environs, and some other matters not worth getting into now. 
There, staring back at me from my computer screen was this remake by DxDutch of a Sonny Bono tune that he wrote and which became a hit for Cher in 1966, reaching #2 on Billboard's Hot 100 list.
And who, counter to some of her fan's fears, is NOT dead -NOWTHATCHERISNOTDEAD... 



DxDutch YouTube Channel video: DxDutch sings "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" Uploaded March 30, 2013. http://youtu.be/9yP2VBT1ehs

After watching it, I went back to her Twitter feed and there it was, at the top.

See and hear more about DxDutch at:
http://www.twitter.com/dxdutch 
http://www.facebook.com/dxdutch 
https://www.youtube.com/user/DxDutch
http://instagram.com/dxdutch

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

An embarrassing case of flash mob déjà vu in North Miami Beach - NMBHS students use the pretext of protesting death of Trayvon Martin to steal in plain sight



WSVN-7, Miami video: Student walk-out for Trayvon gets out of control. March 27, 2012.
http://wn.wsvn.com/global/video/popup/pop_playerLaunch.asp?vt1=v&clipFormat=flv&clipId1=6883323&at1=News&h1=Student walk-out for Trayvon gets out of control&flvUri=&partnerclipid=
Article at:
http://www.wsvn.com/news/articles/local/21007056287333/student-walk-out-for-trayvon-gets-out-of-control/
An embarrassing case of flash mob déjà vu in North Miami Beach - NMBHS students use the pretext of protesting death of Trayvon Martin to steal in plain sight  
Per this disturbing South Florida story yesterday that was picked up on The Drudge Report, and thus got more attention worldwide than it would have ever received thru simply local Miami TV newscasts -and which happened just five blocks from where I grew-up in North Miami Beach in the 1970's- it's NOT like this sort of thing hasn't happened before... like last month, as I wrote at the time, below, and mentioned here on the blog because I suspected that this sort of thing has happened previously under Principal Ray Fontana.

So, what exactly did Miami-Dade Schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho do a month ago in the way of punishment? Anything you heard about?
No, nothing.

I know what I saw a month ago, but the Miami Herald, as usual, continues to whistle-past-the-graveyard when it comes to troubling social incidents like this involving school kids, unless it happens in Coral Gables or Pinecrest!

That is, except when someone who knows what's going on like longtime NMB resident, civic activist and blogger Stephanie Kienzle manages to gets a letter into print that somehow escapes the oblivious PC policies of One Herald Plaza.


Like the sort of myopic thinking there that causes them to actually think for even a moment that that initially running an eight-sentence AP story on the incident in NMB is an adequate response -and which doesn't even credit the Miami TV stations who actually reported it yesterday- rather than having one of their own reporters do some actual journalism, since it was demed important or troubling enough that The Drudge Report linked to WPLG-TV/Channel 10's Noon newscast.
As usual, the Herald's performance on a local South Florida news story they should own nationally, is completely inadequate:
How embarrassing!!!


It's exactly the same deluded mentality that causes them to bury negative stories about parent McClatchy Company's earnings reports in their puny little business section, usually without any reference to declining readership and revenue numbers at the Herald, and run 3 or 4 sentence fragments from AP that say, well, nothing. 
Sometimes, they even run those banalities and only credit "Wire Sources," as if that means anything to anyone.

Here's that 2008 Kienzle letter I refer to earlier, which I sent out as an email to lots of folks i know shortly after originally seeing it because it was 100% true, reason enough to send it, but also thus making it unusual to see in the HeraldCarolyn Guniss was the Editor of the Neighbors section for NE Miami-Dade back then, and was apparently a victim of the Herald's many employee purges over the past few years due to declining readership and ad revenue.
Right, chicken or the egg?

I've never met Carolyn Guniss, but from my perspective, based on the essay below, it's unfortunate that she was forced-out, since her willingness to give space in the newspaper to well-informed people in the community who are actively challenging South Florida's establishment's Conventional Wisdom and orthodoxy, is NOT something that's currently replicated in either the Herald under Jay Ducassi or ever seen in the Sun-Sentinel

I suspect that if she were in charge, there'd be MUCH MORE compelling news product for readers -and advertisers- compared to the overwhelming number of articles and columns that I see everyday that seem to largely exist to comfort the powerful thru stenography rather than chronicle thru objective journalism.

That unwillingness to challenge the powerful is perhaps best explained thru the Herald's
constant coverage of MDPS Supt. Albert Carvalho.
Frankly, I'm surprised that the Herald doesn't sell "I heart Carvalho" buttons at their customer service counter, given their weird sycophantic coverage of him, where seldom is heard a discouraging word...


And as I'm always reminding you here on the blog, as blah and uninteresting as the Sun-Sentinel's Education blog has become the past two years, the Herald STILL doesn't even have an Education blog in the year 2012!
That speaks volumes!

If you ask me, there ought to be an entire page in the Herald on Sundays that is full of well-informed contributions like this!

-------
Miami Herald
Soapbox
OJUS ELEMENTARY'S BOUNDARY IS POLITICAL
April 13, 2008 
Enid Weisman, the Miami-Dade Public School Region II superintendent, has changed the boundaries of Greynolds Park Elementary School by moving children who live one block from their school to Ojus Elementary, which is more than two miles away.
Children who now walk to school in less than five minutes will be forced to be driven through extremely heavy traffic twice a day.
Those kids whose parents don't have cars will have to wait for a school bus in unpredictable South Florida weather, hoping the bus even shows up. This ordeal could take up to 30 minutes each way depending on the bus route.
This is not the first time Ms. Weisman has arbitrarily drawn school boundary lines. Take, for example, the boundary line between North Miami Beach and Dr. Michael M. Krop Senior High schools.
For some reason known only to God and Enid Weisman, children who live in Eastern Shores and Sunny Isles Beach, a mere hop, skip and jump from NMB, travel well over five miles or more to Krop High.
On the other hand, students who live in Pickwick Lake Estates, less than one mile (or about eight minutes by car) from Krop, are directed to NMB.
Granted, NMB is slightly closer to Pickwick than is Krop, but how on earth can you justify sending Sunny Isles Beach residents to Krop?
Both the NMB/Krop and Greynolds Park boundary lines were drawn purely along socioeconomic or, as the politically incorrect would say, racial lines.
They have absolutely nothing to do with where children live, but everything to do with draining our lower income neighborhood of even more of its much needed funding.
By making sure that NMB and Greynolds don't achieve or maintain status as an "A" school, the bulk of state money will go to Krop, Ojus and the new K-8 school called Aventura/Waterways .
The areas that already have the money will get even more. Ms. Weisman knows where her power base is and she sure knows how to suck up to it.
Weisman must stop tinkering with school boundaries that work only in her imagination. The children of Miami-Dade County would be better served by getting rid of administrators with political aspirations like her and putting the money where it rightfully belongs -- in the classroom.
STEPHANIE KIENZLE
NORTH MIAMI BEACH
It occurred to me when I was watching the videotape at the top that some of you reading this may well recall the mass student walkout at Miami Edison High School a few years ago, which happened LIVE during the local Miami Noon newscasts that day.
That was yet another situation where the adults at the Miami-Dade School Board & MDPS literally cowered in fear of actually having to call-out the behavior of their own students, and admit that, well, maybe... some of them weren't all future brain surgeon/diplomats after all.

Any media types out there reading this blog post might want to try to put on a charm offensive and get the videotape from the NMB Walmart, too.
You don't have to be Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie or Sherlock Holmes to know that given the law of probabilities, once you have a large enough sample size, you can make a few hypotheses that are likely to be accurate.


Mine is that at least a few of the kids involved last week were ALSO involved last month, which only further burnishes NMBHS's bad rep the past 15 years, as everyone in NE Dade and SE Broward who pays any attention to these matters sees the entirely predictable results of some very conscious social re-engineering/redistricting at MDPS years ago, when Dr. Krop High School opened.
Bad educational and social policies that continue to have their negative ripple effects to this very day.


See also: http://www.votersopinion.com/  particularly

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Date: Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 3:45 AM
Subject: FYI: Flash mob of North Miami Beach Sr. High School students attempt to swarm the 163rd Street Walmart with M-D Metro Police in pursuit with flashing lights

-----
Well, as I said above:
Mail Delivery Subsystem  
show details Feb 28
Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:
Technical details of permanent failure:
Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error.
----- Original message -----

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Flash mob of screaming/laughing North Miami Beach Sr. High School students attempted to swarm the 163rd Street Walmart with M-D Metro Police in pursuit with flashing lights

It's all been downhill since they modified the classic logo...
Monday afternoon was a sad day for a proud NMB alum like me, Class of 1979, when I witnessed so many current NMB students so willingly to make complete asses out of themselves -just because they could. Like there was some doubt?
In my opinion, these kids need to be publicly punished and royally ostracized, but I wouldn't hold my breath that it'll happen now if I were you! 
Former NMBHS Principal Marvin Weiner would NOT have tolerated that one bit, and neither would most of my classmates at the time. Give how new our school was when I first got there in 1975 for 9th grade, just four years-old, my friends and I wanted our school to become well-known throughout the area for the character, smarts, class and sportsmanship of our students and athletes,
NOT become infamous for what the social misfits of no real accomplishment could manage to do. In those pre-Internet days, my friends and I would've put our heads together and figured-out a clever, practical and fitting way to make sure we made real examples of the ringleaders of a stunt like this, so that they'd feel rightly humiliated for embarrassing the rest of us. 
But today, these particular NMB kids feel so emboldened and free to do whatever they want, that they laugh their asses off for wasting the time of the police thru their own intimidation tactics. 

Flash mob of screaming/laughing North Miami Beach Sr. High School students attempted to swarm the 163rd Street Walmart with M-D Metro Police in pursuit with flashing lights



Shades of the Chicago Teen Mobs and the Summer of 2011!
(In case you forgot about that or never heard about it, see the Chicago CBS-TV affiliate WBBM's story from last summer, Mag Mile Shops On Alert After Flash Mob Thefts


I arrived at the Walmart Supercenter on N.E. 163rd Street in North Miami Beach on Monday afternoon around 2:30 p.m., ostensibly to use the Dade County Federal Credit Union facility located inside, since it's the closest branch to me here in Hallandale Beach.

As I was walking from the far side of the parking lot and was about to walk over to the area directly adjacent to and in front of the store -and checking to make sure I had my cell phone on me!- I was startled to hear hundreds of screaming, yelling voices and then turned to my left and saw hundreds of kids walking quickly from the west towards the store like they were marching in a parade.
But a very disheveled mess of a parade to be sure.

And just about the point that the kids were near the front doors, six Miami-Dade Metro Police squad cars with their lights flashing came up quickly behind them from the west, dozens of yelling kids made a mad dash thru the front doors, with more soon following.

People in the parking lot around me were so dumbfounded, they just stood there motionless, almost in disbelief that this was happening on an otherwise boring and hot Monday afternoon in NMB.

One of the officers driving a Metro police car yelled for someone parked in front of the store to move their car, and then he quickly brought his squad car to a quick start in that vacated spot. And then from across the street I watched as probably 6-10 police officers went running into the store, walkie-talkies in hand.

I stayed outside and unfortunately, by the time I thought to dig my camera out of my bag to shoot some video, the students had either already run into the store or had run towards N.E. 15th Avenue, the east border, where the Miami-Dade Metro buses going south and west are located, and where, after school, it's natural that there are lots of kids hanging-around waiting for their bus ride home.
Which is why the video I have for you is NOT so exciting or enlightening.
I guess I was a little more dumbfounded than I originally thought, huh?




(As most of you regular readers of the blog know from my having mentioned it here, I grew-up in North Miami Beach, having lived there from second grade thru graduation from North Miami Beach High School in 1979, and had first come to know that retail area as the original 163rd Street Shopping Center, where I worked at the Burdines in high school. My last six years in NMB, I lived  only four blocks away, on the corner of N.E. 159th Street & 14th Avenue in the 1970's.)

The Metro police seemed pretty intent on forcing anyone who looked like they were in high school to get out of the store, and as I stood out of the way near the packs of interlocked shopping carts, it was like being outside of an arena exit door after a concert, people just streaming out for what seemed like forever.
And Monday afternoon, all very pleased with themselves.

I waited 2-3 minutes to go in and when I finally did, there were still dozens of kids inside
near the front where the McDonald's is located, all waiting to get out as the Metro police
tried to herd them forward like lambs, with some outliers just not interested in going-with-the-flow. 
Surprise!

I would've shot video from inside the store but thought better of it since, among other things, 
a.) my father had been a M-D Metro policeman for 25 years, and,
b.) it was clear that the kids wanted attention and were not the least bit afraid of trying
to provoke something, so why add fuel to the fire and give the kids a forum to act out?
Or give the clearly frustrated police a new target to vent at?

Once I got inside, the rattled Walmart employees and mostly middle-aged and older
customers, many of them Orthodox Jews dressed in their long clothes, still seemed a bit shaken-up, and once I got towards the Credit Union, I could already hear exasperated voices on cell phones extrapolating theories out of thin air about what had just happened and why.

The answer, of course, is that the kids did it because they could.
And because they thought they could either get away with it, or not get punished if caught.

About an hour later, roughly 3:30 p.m., as I was coming out of the store, there were still
six Metro squad cars outside the Walmart instead of the usual one, near the front door.

Definitely would be interesting to see the Walmart security feed of the incident.


By the way, before I forget to mention it, I tried to send this information to Miami-Dade County Public School Supt. Alberto Carvalho via his email, but it was rejected -twice.
Maybe it only accepts positive news.

My previous posts on the explosive subject of flash mobs were on June 12, 2011,
Chicago Trib readers screw w/Trib execs: "The board for this story has been closed because of excessive violations of the Tribune's comment policies"
and June 29, 2011,
While crime and flash mobs roil Chicago-area residents, City Hall, Police, Tourism & Business Establishment act like ostriches. Sounds familiar!


Saturday, December 17, 2011

After watching this, I'm convinced: singing & dancing flash mob across the U.S.A. during Super Bowl's halftime would be more fun than watching Madonna



Madcon - Glow - 2009 Eurovision Song Contest Flashmob Dance Finale (HD), Oslo, Norway. May 2009. http://youtu.be/32lpdFS7rPM

It starts a little slow, I'll grant you, but at 2:19, as the cameras leave the arena, then, serendipity...

After watching this, I'm convinced that a televised singing and dancing flash mob across the U.S.A., during the Super Bowl XLVI halftime show, would be MUCH MORE FUN to see than simply watching Madonna perform a medley of her well-known songs in Indy at Lucas Oil Stadium.

Or, perhaps more interesting than even that, would be to have it televised from the two cities which have teams playing, as people sing and dance wearing their -quite likely- Green Bay Packer cheeseheads and Baltimore Ravens purple jerseys and gear.

Me, I never watch the Super Bowl pre-game programming anymore, as there are far too many 'human interest' stories with female reporters trying to look empathetic as they interview some special-team player's sister's husband's barber with cancer, or the like.
I usually mute the TV during Super Bowl halftime anyway, and flip on the radio telecast to hear their analysis, so this would actually be more fun and amusing to watch and see how each city tries to top the other somehow.
And it would be easy to find a commercial sponsor, too!

Whatever happened to all the genuinely dangerous flash mobs, anyway?
Like the ones that terrorized Chicagoland and Philadelphia this spring and summer, which I wrote about here, along with some startling videos?
They seem to have stopped in their tracks once 'Occupy Wall Street' came on the scene.
Hmm-m...

Then again, maybe it's just a spring and summer phenomena...

-----

In case you forgot why the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest -above- was being held in the Oslo area in the first place, it was because Norway's Alexander Rybak had won the 2009 competition in Moscow with "Fairytale", and the next competition is always hosted by the winner's home country.



EUROVISION 2009 WINNER -NORWAY, ALEXANDER RYBAK, FAIRYTALE -HQ STEREO
http://youtu.be/uiH4BFTELME

-----
http://www.youtube.com/user/AlexanderRybakVideo/


http://www.alexanderrybak.com/

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Chicago Trib readers screw w/Trib execs: "The board for this story has been closed because of excessive violations of the Tribune's comment policies"


WBBM-TV, Chicago video

WBBM-TV, Chicago video: Walter Jacobson: Time to be upfront about mob violence
Story at

Upset Chicago Tribune readers are continuing to screw with Trib execs over the paper's fact-free reporting on the rash of mob attacks that have struck the Chicagoland area, prompting the execs to have to shut down their own comment forums.
That these forums, like their blogs, are among the best in the country, and light-years ahead of anything in South Florida goes without saying.

See Chicagoist on "mobs", including this headline, Did Gang Bangers Force Cops to Close North Avenue Beach?, at

This sort of politically correct writing has provoked the counter-force you could expect and that criticism of the Tribune policies and execs has led to the following embarrassing disclaimer being placed at the bottom of news articles:
"The board for this story has been closed because of excessive violations of the Tribune's comment policies. Details of those policies are described below."
Yes, on account of the Trib's self-serving, heavy-handed, condescending and parochial, not-to-mention Politically Correct polices, readers all over Chicagoland are saying f-em and 'shut 'em down!'

Chicago Tribune
3 teens held in downtown attack
By Jeremy Gorner and Dawn Rhodes
Tribune reporters
8:20 a.m. CDT, June 8, 2011

Two teens have told police they were attacked by a group of at least five youths downtown Tuesday evening just west of North Michigan Avenue.
A witness described the incident as similar to last weekend’s downtown attacks when 20 youths were arrested, including five who allegedly robbed and beat several people inStreeterville and on the Magnificent Mile.

Read the rest of the story at:

(Reminder for late arrivals to the blog -I lived in Chicago, Evanston and Wilmette in the mid-80's, including the Bears Super Bowl season.)

Later in the day, under the headline Rahm on the spot over youth mobs this appeared:
The most disturbing feature of the mob crimes is that they seem largely recreational. As early as February, police were warning merchants and residents in the Water Tower neighborhood about "flash mob offenders" — groups of teens who arrived via mass transit to stage shoplifting raids sometimes organized on social media networks. One unruly crowd took over the dining room of a McDonald's in April, forcing it to remain closed for hours after police broke things up.

That led to this eye-roller of a headline on Friday:
Teens feel they're being watched downtown
Most youths don't want to cause trouble, many students say in wake of mob attacks

Well at least the Trib didn't call them "youths" in the story.

Sure, because when you're a news reporter, when something happens, rather than trying to get some answers as to why someone or some group is or was engaged in a particular behavior, you interview a group of people that are NOT doing that, and tell how they feel victimized.
OH, PLEASE!

They still won't interview anyone who was actually involved in any of this because that would involve some work and enterprise, so instead they interview the United Colors of Benneton kids who attend the school for wannabe social activists.
How precious.

Oh, sorry, I mean the Urban Outfitter Crew.

This was all the perfect predicate for the following piece by the Editor of the newspaper which ran in Saturday's Trib.
It tells you almost everything you need to know about the state of American journalism in the year 2011.

Or, put another way, I could've headlined this post "When the PC Police run a newspaper: Chicago Tribune editor writes "When race is relevant in news coverage" Still waiting for Miami Herald's own take on illegal aliens? Good luck!"

Chicago Tribune
When race is relevant in news coverage
By Gerould W. Kern
4:52 p.m. CDT, June 10, 2011

This week the Chicago Tribune published several news stories and related columns about assaults by groups of youths in the Streeterville area of downtown Chicago. More coverage appears Sunday.

A number of readers have asked why we have not included racial descriptions of the assailants and the victims in these incidents.
Read the rest of the editorial at:


See also: Chicago Incapable of Combatting Flash Mobs