For an update on the disgusting story of the NYPD officer that body-checked a cyclist that I wrote about last week, head on over to Gothamist, where they discuss how city council members are urging a much needed investigation into the recent harassment of cyclists by the police.

Here’s an excerpt from the letter that the council members wrote:

There has been a history of police harassment of cyclists, especially during the monthly Manhattan Critical Mass group bicycle ride. Most often, these attacks are unprovoked and aggressive, and the behavior of police towards cyclists is anything but the courtesy, professionalism, and respect on which NYPD prides itself. The recent incident involving Mr. Long is a particularly disturbing example of the NYPD’s attitude towards cyclists, one that happened to be caught on video tape.

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There’s an awful, yet important video, making it’s way around the internet right now that features a NYPD officer body-slamming a cyclist off of their bike during the last Critical Mass. The cop is claiming that that the rider, 29 year old Christopher Long, rode into him - the video would seem to suggest otherwise:

What do you think? In a surprising turn of events, action is actually being taken against the cop and he was stripped of his gun and badge pending an investigation. Although it is quite disturbing that Long was bruised, arrested for attempted assault, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct and spent 26 hours in jail.

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The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out some of our most popular stories of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites!

TakePart Gang:

Sudan Leader Charged with Genocide: What Are the Reactions? by Wendy Cohen

Inconvenient Truth of the Day: Al Gore Speaks on Climate Change by Joshua Tremblay

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Nicole Hughes:

“Farms in the Sky” a Solution to Global Food Crisis?

Wal-Mart Launches Eco-Bling Project

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Andy Kondrat:

NYC To Bring in 300 Hybrid Taxis Per Month

Coolio To Educate Students On Climate Change

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Jon Popham:

Pickens’ Plan for Energy Independence

On “Rent” Closing, the East Village, and Gentrification

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Gina Telaroli:

Batman Morals: Top 5 Lessons from the Capped Crusader’s Films

Emmy Nominations Kick “The Wire” to the Curb

“Rent” the Broadway musical portraying the bohemian life in NYC’s East Village in the early 1990’s is closing this September. This passing in the cultural life of the city and an article in today’s New York Times examining the changes that have occurred in New York City since the times the show was set in have me reflecting on my own tenure in the Big Apple.

I should start by saying I never saw “Rent“. I’m not much for musicals and in fact have never seen a single one since I moved to New York in 1994 for college. But what I’ve shared with Jonathan Larson’s bohemian epic is a neighborhood: the East Village. A neighborhood that has constantly changed since my arrival in New York City at a speed I never dreamed possible for a piece of land. The East Village intimately introduced me to gentrification, a force that has been a constant throughout my adult life, and a fitting associate, seeing how I fast realized after moving into the area that I was a gentrifier.

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I think we can agree that that the environmental movement has taken a strong foothold when even the billboards in Times Square are getting into the green act - the landmark area will get its first solar- and wind-powered billboard come December. From livescience.com,

The billboard, for Ricoh Americas‘ parent company Ricoh Company Ltd. of Tokyo, will measure 47 feet (14 meters) high by 126 feet (38 meters) long. Its floodlights will be powered on site by 45 solar panels and four wind turbines.

The result will reduce carbon dioxide usage by 18 tons a year, Marchetta said.

If replacing one billboard in Times Square reduces carbon dioxide usage by a ton and a half a month, I shudder to think how much energy is going into all the other signage out there.

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The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out some of our most popular stories of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites!

Katie Halper:

“The First Time I Every Saw Your Face” May Be the First Time You Hear About Ewan MacColl

California’s Gay Marriage Ban Overturned & 5 Ways To Take Action

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Nicole Hughes:

“Bottlemania” Book Takes Bottled Water Industry To Task

Arnold Tells Automakers To “Stop Whining” About Tougher California Emissions Standards

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Andy Kondrat:

Department of Energy Forecasts Large Increase In Wind Power Usage

Edward Norton & Gavin Newsom Speak To Congress About Environmental Building Practices

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Jon Popham:

Spencer Tunick Strips Hundreds Naked

Lichtenstein Sculptures At Fairchild Garden In Miami

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Giulia Rozzi:

Does Being Ethical Pay?

Is the Anti-Female Genial Mutilation Campaign Offensive?

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Gina Telaroli:

A Global Look At Media On Pangea Day

Everything Cinema: Brody Takes On the Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard

Spencer Tunick stripped hundreds of willing participants naked over the weekend for a new photography installation shot in Austria. The American photographer, who has taken nude to a whole new level, snapped photos of 1,800 disrobed subjects in an Austrian soccer stadium that will play host to this year’s 2008 Euro Cup Finals. Tunick arranged the subjects throughout areas of the stands, having been prohibited from using the grass playing field due to official’s concerns about wear and tear. According to the photographer’s website:

“This very special ephemeral installation that we are inviting you to be part of is devised to capture and combine the spirit of sports, the grand sweeping waves of stadium architecture and the abstract relation of the human form to modern structures,”

It is indeed one of this writer’s great regrets to have not taken an invitation to appear in Tunick’s 1997 installation in Times Square, NYC seen above. At the time the photographer’s works were much more guerilla-style affairs, which involved the invitees showing up in robes at 5AM at the selected location, and quickly stripping and running out into the street for the shots like a (literal) flash mob. Since then both Tunick’s fame and the scale of his work has grown immensely, to the point where his 2007 Mexico City - Zocalo, MUCA/UNAM Campus installations (shown below) included upwards of 18,000 subjects.

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Raul Vincent Enriquez, a Brooklyn based-artist, has set into motion his most recent installation, “I in the Sky,” in NYC’s Times Square. Eye contact, says Enriquez, is the most important concept he is trying to convey with the exhibition. Whether an invitation to a fight or a signal of empathy, it is one of the most fascinating characteristics that make us distinctly human. Good Magazine explains how the exhibition works below:

Forty-eight stories above Times Square, short video portraits”the end-result of a subject’s staring into a camera in the nearby chashama gallery for 30 seconds while 30 photographs are produced”are projected onto a towering 2,500 sq. ft. LED screen. Having been manipulated by computers and animators, the resulting images take on an odd, flickering flip-book quality.

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