Fields: Urban Weekend Gets A Bad Rap
BY SAM FIELDS
Guest Columnist
If only Raymond Herisse had been white, the whole narrative would have been different.
Even Mary Thingelstad, the 57-year-old housewife who wanted to shut down Miami Beach’s Urban Weekend, would have felt a bit better.
In case you forgot, the late Raymond Herisse is the jerk who got a Bonnie and Clyde finish on Washington Avenue in the middle of Urban Weekend.
Good riddance to this piece of rubbish from Boynton Beach. He got just what he deserved after trying to run over a cop. He had been I.D.’d for robbing a Boynton Beach gas station and shooting a clerk. He was looking at life without parole. We saved over a million it would have cost to convict and house this 22-year-old thug.
Let’s make it clear, Herisse was not part of Urban Weekend which is an annual rite of passage for hundreds of thousands of black college kids celebrating the end of school.
Those who oppose this event have been trying to put this piece of scum on the 250,000 kids blowing off steam. You can no more lump black Herisse with these kids than you can blame FSU for Caucasian Ted Bundy.
If Herisse had been white we would not even having this discussion.
Instead it is being used by the frightened, such as Thingelstad, to justify ending Urban Weekend. It brings comfort to racists who long for the days when Blacks, without I.D. cards, were not allowed on Miami Beach after 6pm.
These kids are not much different than those of us who went to Spring Break in Fort Lauderdale.
The ingredients are the same; an over abundance of beer, drugs and testosterone.
Stupidity and arrests abound at both. At the Broward Courthouse it is known as: “Come to Lauderdale on vacation; go home on probation.â€
If the truth be known Urban Weekend attendance is up and arrests are down.
If further truth be known, people, especially white people, are reflexively scared by large crowds of black males.
On the other side, blacks are reflexively suspicious of the police and many question if Herisse’s death was racially motivated. Indeed, pumped up Miami Beach cops apparently tried to destroy a video from a cell camera of the shooting, which is always suspicious.
But the final truth is this: Urban Weekend 2011 is no worse than Spring Break of the 1960’s and Herisse got what he should have expected and certainly what he deserved.
June 7th, 2011 at 11:09 am
Urban Week is nothing like Spring Break, Fields.
Police found hundreds of guns among Urban Week “participants.” That was not a feature of Spring Break.
Spring Break was white. The city did away with it because it caused noise, disruptions and chased away adults with money to spend.
Miami Beach has the right to be without the traffic, noise and extra expenses caused by a stepped up police presence.
June 7th, 2011 at 12:48 pm
sam i see your still trying to tilt windmills, but, alas, in the wrong direction, what else is new.
June 7th, 2011 at 1:35 pm
the spring break analogy is unfortunate but the videos now circulating on the web confirm that the police acted very poorly…smashing bystanders cell phone cameras at gun point is scary…
June 7th, 2011 at 2:32 pm
Urban Week is a wonderful thing. That is why several businesses said they would rather close than go through it again.
June 7th, 2011 at 5:19 pm
Fantastic headline.
June 7th, 2011 at 5:32 pm
Howard Stern used to warn people to get out of Manhattan during the annual Puerto Rican festival lest one desired to be mugged.
A friend who lives on South Beach told me the she and others come to Broward and rent a hotel during Urban Week. She said the problem isn’t the college kids, rather it’s the masses of thugs who descend upon the area.
A few times in college I attended the New Orleans Jazz festival. I had never seen so many low-class dangerous white people in my life.
I am not sure that the objection to Urban Week is racist, but I do think that it could be “classist” and perhaps for good reason.
FROM BUDDY:
I think Miami Beach homeowners are probably fed up being a draw to thugs. It really has little to do with race. As the below article indicates, Hooligans know no color boundary
This from the New York Times earlier this year. The St. Patrick’s Day event is Irish:
HOBOKEN, N.J. — With its mile-long stretch of boutiques, restaurants and bars, this waterfront city long ago left its roots as a shipping and industrial center, finding new life as young professionals set up homes here, and hordes of younger folks arrive each weekend to drink.
The police patrolled Washington Street, the route of the parade, on Saturday. There were 34 arrests, up from 25 in 2010.
There have been growing pains. Rent creeps toward Manhattan levels, and the nightlife scene can certainly get out of hand — especially around the city’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade, an event that has spawned so much rowdiness that the mayor is threatening to cancel it.
Those who favor banning the parade gained more ammunition after the festivities this year, which, by all accounts, got astonishingly out of hand soon after the parade ended on Saturday afternoon.
Indeed the level of excess is only now coming into focus; the city’s police chief and the mayor held a news conference on Tuesday to announce some of the grim statistics. There were 34 arrests, up from 25 in 2010. Two women told the authorities that they were sexually assaulted over the weekend.
Officials at Hoboken’s main hospital said they admitted 166 people on Saturday, the highest such one-day total at the hospita
June 7th, 2011 at 8:10 pm
The event is called Urban Week. Not Black College Student Week. In this context the word urban is synonymous with the word ghetto. Who the hell wants ghetto people in their neighborhood. I don’t. If business owners don’t see the value in it then there is no purpose to promote the event.
June 7th, 2011 at 9:50 pm
Sam,
If you think hip hop weekend is such a wonderful thing, i suggest you take yourself and your family there. I challenge you to put you and your family where your mouth is. Please go to the next one and stay the entire weekend. Get a hotel room on the beach and hang out on ocean dr. I personally don’t think you will last half a day with your family there.
Please prove me wrong that you really believe this and stay the weekend and walk around (no hiding in the hotel). Please sit at a cafe and walk ocean dr. but you have to stay the entire weekend. I am not sure the next one will be in miami, but i am sure you will go where ever it is. I am sure this won’t be a problem for an open minded guy like yourself!
June 8th, 2011 at 9:56 am
what’s with the people who write here…..STOP PICKING ON THE MESSENGER…Sam puts himself out there and you blast him behind secret names…you have facts, state them…you have an idea, tell us…Field’s age, girth and personal interests are not at issue
June 8th, 2011 at 10:46 am
Dear Las Olas lawyer,
So hundreds out of a quarter million were exercising their Second Amendment rights. You got a problem with that?
You need to go to a Cane, Nole or Gator Homecoming. Try the Flroida/Georgia game aka “The World’s Largest Cocktail Party.
Arrests abound at all these events. Fights break out.
But, apparently having gone to Brigham Young University, you would be unaware of real college life.
As for the suggestion that I should take my family over there I don’t recall my parents having any interest in going to Lauderdale Beach during 60’s Spring Break.
Have you never seen the photos of the kids who took over the streets around the Elbo Room?
June 8th, 2011 at 11:13 am
I saw you in court last year and the judge said your argument was as well thought out as the one here about Urban Weekend. He ruled against you.
Gainesville is a college town with almost only college students living around the stadium or the Gator Growl events. Urban Weekend takes place in a resort with some of the highest priced hotel rooms, condominiums and restaurants in Florida.
The college events you mentioned do not include gun play and rape. They have been common at Urban Weekend.
The college events you mentioned do not draw thugs and gansters. Urban Weekend does.
Urban Weekend has nothing to do with “real college life.”
By the way, Fields, it was the Univesity of Florida. Not Brigham Young University.
June 8th, 2011 at 5:50 pm
Dear Las Olas
I am sure the readers want to see all these rape and robbery reports that you speak of.
I am sure you will supply the evidence (if you remember that from law school) that there was some high end aberration with these 250,000 students compared to any other 250,000 students.
What I smell is racism…and I am white!!!
June 8th, 2011 at 7:59 pm
I see you went to Las Olas Lawyer and didn’t want to put your money where you mouth is. Typical talking head!!
All mouth no sack!!
June 9th, 2011 at 10:39 am
It has been said that “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel”. Well, to update that, it should say, “Playing the racism card is the last refuge of a scoundrel”.
Sorry Sam, calling us racists doesn’t work anymore. I’m fresh out of “white guilt”.
June 9th, 2011 at 10:53 am
I wasn’t going to answer Sam Fields again until I read It’s A Miracle at 10:30 a.m.
Fields can’t answer my comment. All he does is accuse me of racism.
Let me point out one more mistake you made. There is no University of Florida event that draws 250,000 students. You couldn’t fit that many in Gainesville or around the Gator/Bulldogs game in Jacksonville. And again, college events are not analogous to Urban Weekend. Yes there is drinking. However, they don’t draw thugs with guns and long police records.
June 9th, 2011 at 5:15 pm
Hey Sam: Why not invite these quarter-million folks over to your place next year to they can “blow off steam” there?
June 9th, 2011 at 5:26 pm
Your racism is so inbred you don’t even realize it. This was a college weekend that was crashed by outsiders who you refer to has “thugs and gangsters’. The arrests totaled only 250.
Question: Why are you holding the 249,750 responsible for the actions of the 250? If all the gangsters and thugs, including the late Mr. Herisse, were White we would not be having this discussion.
Alas they are not, so it’s easy for you to lump all Blacks together. I suspect you have been doing it your whole life.
If our Armed Forces had 250,000 in town for a weekend I am pretty sure you would have just as many arrests. Would you blame the military for the actions of the outsiders or a small percentage of the insiders?
Try judging people individually rather than as a racial group.
Once again, I openly admit I would not go down there. The last time I hung out on South Beach was to eat my grandmother’s blintzesI I am 66 and have not the slightest interest in emersing myself into the middle of teenage chaos be it Black, White, Yellow etc.
Now if Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were headlining…that might be a different story.
June 10th, 2011 at 12:13 pm
does this mean you and your family will be there next year? Or are you to racist to accept the challenge??
June 10th, 2011 at 1:19 pm
I’M TOO OLD,NOT A FAN OF RAP AND i LIKE TO GO TO SLEEP BY 10 PM
MY KIDS CAN GO–THEY ARE AGE APPROPRIATE.
IF THE LOCALS WHO MOVED TO SOUTH BEACH ARE SHOCKED TO BE SURROUNDED BY NOISE AND CROWDS THEN THEY ARE AS DUMB AS THE FOLKS WHO MOVED NEXT TO AN AIRPORT AND ARE NOW COMPLAINING ABOUT PLANES
June 10th, 2011 at 1:31 pm
Fields isn’t going to take you up on your challenge. He is the typical Limousine Liberal. He preaches togetherness, then lives in a white neighborhood and stays away from anything that involves blacks. He is a phony.
Sam, lets have Urban Weekend in your neighorhood next year. Or Irish Weekend. Or any kind of event involving blacks, whites or anybody else who get drunk, rowdy, violent, take up all the parking, cause endless traffic jams and generally make a mess of the neighborhood.
Sam tries to deflect every argument with insults or unfunny attempts at jokes. I’m sure he will do the same this time. Get rid of him, Buddy.
June 10th, 2011 at 9:58 pm
Sam,
I knew you were to much blabber mouth who didn’t put into actions his words. I doubt anyone here cares about your age excuse. It is such a wonderful event according to you. I would think you would want to broaden your horizons. Maybe you can learn to like rap or tolerate it, for the sake of knowing what you talk about. I guess not!!
Typical Sam….useless blowhard!!!
June 12th, 2011 at 5:23 pm
The Gatornationals drag race draws close to that many people and it’s just as crazy. I will bet 5 gazillion to 1 that there are more guns and drunks there (both in actual number and percentage of attendees).
Bottom Line: If you get 100,000+ people together anywhere, it’s going to get crazy.
June 12th, 2011 at 5:23 pm
Also, many of North Florida’s finest that the gatornationals draws have long rap sheets. The same with Bike Week? How many of the gentlemen who display a motorcycle club patch are sober and unarmed and have no priors?