Notorious Thugs | NY Transit Museum (Vol I) | Jets - Bucs
Alright @YouTheReader,
Christopher George Latore Wallace, also known as the Notorious B.I.G., Biggie Smalls, or Biggie, was born in Brooklyn, New York on May 21, 1972. He grew up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, which is about a 15-minute car ride from the NY Transit Museum Week to Week Notes stumbled upon. Biggie had a very rough childhood where at a young age he was surrounded by drug addicts and drug dealers. His father left him and his mother when he was just 2 years old. His mother, Voletta Wallace was a preschool teacher who worked multiple jobs for Christopher Wallace’s education. Biggie attended Roman Catholic Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School before he convinced his mom to transfer to a public school. In the classroom was where Wallace initially became good with words and as Voletta put it, “Christopher did very well in high school; it’s just that he talked back a lot. He was a smart-ass.” (Source: Biography)
While Mrs. Wallace was working shifts, her son by the age of 12 Wallace had joined the street life. He once said, "Hustlers were my heroes. Everything happened on the strip I grew up in. It didn't matter where you went, it was all in your face."(Source: Hip Hop Scriptures) The switch from Catholic School to Public went awry as he ended up dropping out. At 17 years old, Biggie was arrested in North Carolina for selling crack cocaine. He was in prison for 9 months. Once he got out and returned to New York, he started experimenting with music with a group called the “Old Gold Brothers”. From there he built up a reputation as a rapper named “Biggie”. Eventually, his notoriety on the Brooklyn street corners would reach the ears of Sean “Puffy, P Diddy, Diddy, Puff Daddy” Combs who would sign Biggie and the rest is history that I won’t get into today.
Look, I don’t think it’s necessarily right to glorify Biggie Smalls as some hero. People come from messed-up situations all the time and they’ve found a way to succeed by other means. That said, you can’t tell the story of hip-hop without including Christopher Wallace, and sometimes you gotta drink some coffee, put on some gangsta rap, & figure it out.
This has to be one of the best hip-hop intros of all time.
Full disclosure, The Notorious B.I.G. spoke with a ton of profanity and I can’t get Mintzy’d so a lot of this verse will be left out.
See, Biggie gets what I mean! I’m sitting on my arse typing this tryna win and avoid the temptation of sin.
@StillSkepticalReader: “I don’t like how you called out Mintzy there.”
Well, this time last year I bumped into that eejit on the Hoboken streets while trying to catch a train. All I said was “Sup Mintzy” and he looked at me like I was a piece of dirt with no acknowledgment.
You’d be surprised where this sports media content game will lead you. I’ve only been in the game since ‘22 and look at some of the petty insignificant bullshrimp I've been through. That eejit failing to give an everyday working-class American sports fan a head nod or thumbs up may have contributed to my so-called one-sided beef with you-know-who. The Butterfly Effect is a real thing, people.
That’s enough for today, all in good fun!
On to Stumblin’ Along…
NY Transit Museum (Vol I)
Today will just be the first part of this Stumblin’ Along at The New York Transit Museum. Located in Downtown Brooklyn, there was loads of cool stuff at the museum that anybody can check out on their own at $10 for adults and $5 for children. The entrance to the museum is authentic in that it’s an old subway stop.
New York City Mayor Robert A. Van Wyck and banker August Belmont broke ground on the New York City Subway system on March 24, 1900. The picture above is the surveyor compass used on the site at the ceremony at City Hall. The day was called "Tunnel Day" at the time. Mayor Van Wyck was a 1 term City Mayor from 1897 to 1901 and his political career was destroyed over his American Ice scandal. In 1901, when ice was a hot commodity Van Wyck and his $15k mayoral salary racked up a $680k tab of unpaid ice debt. Teddy Roosevelt, governor of New York at the time, started the investigation on Van Wyck. As for August Belmont, he had ties with the Rothschild family so he was basically in the Illuminati. This Belmont fella was a huge backer of the Union during the Civil War and was a huge sportsman for his day - the Belmont Stakes thoroughbred horse race is named after him. Anyway, we all know the politician and financier really didn’t do any of the real hard labor work, that was done by…
The New York Irish, Italian, and African American men were really the ones who built this transit system for The City. This spirit of improvement and expansion attracted hundreds of thousands of immigrants to New York. In 1880, 2 million people lived in the city, mostly native-born Americans, and Irish and German immigrants. A new wave of immigration from southern and eastern Europe began during the 1880s and continued unabated through 1919. Few of the new immigrants had skills usable in New York's commercial and industrial economy. Instead, they provided muscle for public works projects in an expanding city-including the subway
The Tammany Hall Democratic political machine all but ran New York City in 1900. Dominated by the Irish, Tammany held the fierce loyalty of New York's largest ethnic group. Tammany welcomed new immigrants, finding them work and housing, ushering them through the citizenship process, and then to the polls. In 1900, 36% of all working Irish were employed by the city; by 1930 that figure rose to 52%.
The Irish workers benefited from a political culture in which government officials, contractors, sub-contractors, and leasers of the trade unions were Irish. Tammany Hall Democratic clubs directed new immigrants to subcontractors and hiring foremen. These same neighborhood channels directed workers to union halls of building trades, and from there to subway construction. Tammany Hall won the worker's loyalty and their votes.
Of the great many men employed in subway construction, most were laborers. With picks, shovels, jackhammers, and wheelbarrows, they hewed New York's tough bedrock and hauled it away. Of these men, the vast majority were Italian immigrants. The peak of Italian immigration to this country coincided with New York City's building boom. Between 1900 and 1910 more than 2 million Italian immigrants arrived in the United States. Their labor was needed to build the city. Poor and unskilled, they took work as laborers.
The skilled trade unions in New York City barred African American membership or segregated them into their own locals. They were welcome, however, in the dangerous job of "cut and cover" subway construction. In the most hazardous jobs--in deep rock and underwater tunnels-even more African Americans found work.
African Americans were working in subway construction since its inception in 1900. In May of that year, civil rights leader Dr. William R. Hunter extracted a promise from Alexander Orr, chairman of the Rapid Transit Commission, to hire 500 African American workers. Hunter, a medical doctor, seems to have single-handedly organized the Longshoremen's and Mechanic's Union for the purpose of securing these 500 jobs. Little else is known about Hunter and his organization.
This above is a Dynamite Blasting Machine. The use of dynamite on a New York transit system would be something that Alfred Nobel would be proud to know his invention of dynamite was used. Unfortunately, the explosions from the use of the Dynamite Blasting Machine did cause some disasters. On October 24, 1903, the subway's worst construction accident occurred in the Washington Heights tunnel near 190th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue. Ten excavators died in the 60-foot deep tunnel moments after a dynamite blast loosened badly cracked rock. With a deafening rumble, a 300-ton boulder crashed down from above, crushing the men underneath. Newspaper accounts named Timothy Sullivan, William Schuette, and 8 unidentified Italians as casualties.
The Construction of the Underwater Tunnels posed the greatest danger for the workers. The most dangerous place in the tunnel was the digging shield, a specialized piece of equipment that helped dig the tunnel while protecting workers from the constant danger of collapse. It was a steel-reinforced cylinder placed in the riverbed with the aid of sandhog shovels and hydraulic jacks. Underwater tunnels could collapse at any time during construction. In this situation, only compressed air and wooden planking would prevent the river from rushing in through the sand. This planking called a "breast board," was held in place by hydraulic jacks. One or 2 breast boards were removed at a time so that "muckers" (tunnelers who "mucked out" the sand, earth, and rock) could dig. Once 3 or more feet had been dug ahead the sandhogs would push the shield forward with hydraulic jacks.
Here are pictures of what it was like to be in the Shields of the Underwater Tunnels. The workers would place the shattered rock debris in a spoil cart. Oh yeah, also the workers of the subways had a nickname - The Sandhogs. Pretty badass.
After the Sandhogs paved the way, the last stage of the process was that highly skilled artisans would come in for a beautiful finish. Very thoughtful and cool designs that you can still catch a glimpse of over a century later if you ride the subways.
The incorporation of the subway system did wonders in expanding The City’s population upwards and outwards. In 1880, 52k people lived in the Bronx. Thanks to the subways, by the time Babe Ruth was a Yankee in the 1920s the population of the Bronx multiplied by an insane 14x to 732k.
One last thing to show what life was like over a century ago, check out these prices. $2 for a quality hat. 2 cents for a pound of apples, you could get a hot dog and a beer at a ball game for a dime. If Hal Steinbrenner saw that his head would explode. Hell if you wanted to go on a date, you could get a haircut, buy two tickets for Barbie or Oppenheimer, and it’d only cost you a quarter and 3 pennies. Hinge must've been unreal.
To reiterate, this is just the first volume of the Stumblin’ Along to the NYC Transit Museum, more on the way next week!
Jets vs Bucs | Preseason 8/19 ‘23
- Aaron Rodgers is not playing tonight.
- D-Line is jumping off the line. They are getting into the backfield with such force, Quinton Jefferson and Tanzel Smart especially.
- Sleeveless Zach Wilson in at QB. 3-N-Out on the first possession.
- Ashtyn Davis (I’m not related to if you’re wondering) just laid a dude out. Bryce Huff followed that up with a QB hit. Bucs punting.
- Xavier Gipson with a great punt return, setting up a great field position.
- Zonovan Knight got the start tonight at RB and looks like he is being featured heavily. Is this his showcase game?
- Zach Wilson spin and run for 35 yards. Great play, just no need to lower the shoulder at the end (even though I kind of love that).
- Back-to-back screen passes don’t get it done. Leg-A-Tron kick is good.
- The United States of America is roughly 3 times the size geographically as India. Whoops how did this get in here?
- Jets driving to close out the 1st half. TE Kuntz, Izzy A, Bam Knight, and Brownlee all contributed.
- WR Jason Brownlee is having a very nice game. There might be something here with the undrafted free agent out of Southern Miss.
- RB Izzy A down with an injury. Looks like Bam Knight might have secured his spot.
- Punter Thomas Morestead with an absolute bomb, the TV cameras almost lost it.
- Mekhi Becton was healthy and really moved people at Right Tackle. Looked great.
- Preseason loss. No big deal. G-Men to close out the preseason next weekend.