Why? It’s a great city, and I tend to like every city I’ve been to, to a greater or lesser degree, including Los Angeles, Cleveland, Santiago and Gary, which I once recommended in this space as a tourist destination.
I didn’t go to New York Christmas, but have in the past, to see a Broadway show, enjoy the lights on Fifth Avenue. I haven’t yet gone to Radio City Music Hall to see the Rockettes, but can easily imagine doing so. Unless this column cheezes off the owners and they ban me, the way they did all the lawyers at firms that have sued them.
In case you missed that story, over Thanksgiving, a personal injury lawyer named Kelly Conlon tried to attend the “Christmas Spectacular” at Radio City, chaperoning her 9-year-old daughter’s Girl Scout troop. But guards barred Conlon.
“They told me that they knew I was Kelly Conlon and that I was an attorney,” she told the New York Times. “They knew the name of my law firm.”
What happened? Cameras captured Conlon’s face as she entered Radio City, facial recognition software identified her as someone on the “attorney exclusion list” that MSG Entertainment, which owns Radio City, Madison Square Garden, and other venues, created over the summer. MSG is a publicly-traded company controlled by the Dolan family, who’ve been accused of ejecting people from their venues for reasons having little to do with security.
Conlon never sued MSG. She just belonged to a firm that had.
Why is this significant to people in Chicago?
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1. You like Gary Indiana?
ReplyDeleteThe song is OK, but the city is an appalling dump.
The number of abandoned buildings in Downtown Gary is enormous.
2. Every time I read about the Dolan's in any NYC paper, everyone hates them! They really are creeps. Most New Yorkers want them to be forced to abandon & demolish the current Madison Square Garden when their lease is up in a couple of years, so that Penn Station can be rebuilt as an actual train station instead of the disgusting rat hole it now is, since the Pennsylvania RR criminally sold it off & had it destroyed in 1983.
I find it kinda fascinating, like an Indian ruin.
DeleteThen you must love Cairo, IL.
DeleteI must confess that I once thought that all the fuss about facial recognition was unwarranted. Neil has convinced me otherwise. Trying to think, however, of an upside for Rockefeller Center in banning hostile lawyers from their venues.
ReplyDeletejohn
That’s where the pettiness comes in.
DeleteUnbelievable, though I know it's true and most frightening.
ReplyDeleteThis SEEMS like a slam dunk open and shut for the poor woman. Is she suing the bastards?
ReplyDeleteFor what? I'm sure it says in small print on the ticket they can refuse admittance to anyone for any reason.
DeleteSo what? The US Constitution SAID that Natives were 3/5ths of a person...how's that holding up in court?
DeleteAn entity can say anything they want That's why we have watchdogs, lawyers and courts...to hold bastard's feet to the fire.
Is Facial recognition foolproof? If not MSG could be denying innocents, by their own standards. The inconvenience and expense involved might warrant a civil suit, regardless of disclaimers on the tickets. Baseball has mandated extended screens because of injured fans, as teams claiming that ticket holders assume all risks doesn't absolve them. I find it interesting that the Rockettes in full make-up are less attractive than in real life. I've seen them rehearse and they are far more beautiful than the dancers pictured in the paper. Would facial recognition see through the heavy make-up?
DeleteJust because the Dolans put that language on the back of the ticket doesn't mean it's legal. "For any reason" could include what race you are or other vile reasons.
DeleteI do remember an article when a lawyer was refused a rental apartment, the landlord's reason was that lawyers are always suing people & guess what, that lawyer sued the landlord for not renting to him, but the judge ruled that lawyers weren't a protected class!
But in the case of going to an entertainment show, my guess is the lawyer would win that case, as this is obvious insane pettiness & outright discrimination.
Or for no reason. And if no reason exists, they will invent one. She can sue their asses off. She still missed the show and she still will not be allowed to attend one later. Big Corporate Brother kicked her ass, and now he is laughing about it all the way home.
DeleteI'll be 76 next summer. More and more, I'm glad my time is relatively short...and that I'm not 36...or 26...or...God forbid...16. It won't take another 60 years for America to become like China. Hell, we may even be a province of China...or what's left of us, anyway.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was entering my teens, in 1960, we were repeatedly told that Spanish was the language of the future, and that we needed to be able to speak it and to understand it. Better start studying Mandarin, kids. And put on your game faces, or you won't be allowed to play the game. Which game, you ask? The Game of Life.
C'mon Grizz, don't be that person. Mandarin? Ha! Remember when Japan was going to run us? Then they went into recession for 25 years. China is poised to do the same. Totalitarian systems can't prevail because so much energy is wasted squashing dissent. You missed the first 13 billion years of existence. And in a very few years you'll go back to being off scene for the next 13 billion. Don't wish away what few years of consciousness are left. To me, life is the milkiest pearl, to quote Evan Handler.
DeleteI hope you're right about China, Mr. S. Even if they don't squash us, we're still going down all those technological roads that I'd rather not travel. And in those "very few years", I won't have to deal with any of it.
DeleteI'm talking about things like facial recognition, ubiquitous surveillance, and social credit scores. That last one will probably land on our shores eventually. That's the brave new world we face, no pun intended, even if the Untied Snakes is still "free" somehow, the land of the freaks and the home of depraved.
My father was an early adapter. LPs before 1950 and TV not long after that, and reel-to-reel tapes by 1956. Surround sound and the first PCs. I benefitted from some of that, and enjoyed it, but at a certain point, probably at around 50 or so, I became a late adapter and even a technophobe. It was all just too much. I could no longer keep up. And I try only when forced to. Windows 11? Bah, humbug!
I still have VCRs and tapes. Cable TV. Cassette tapes and CDs. Desktop PC Analog watch. Turntables and a wall of LPs. I hate phones. I use my wife's only when necessary. I just bought a car and I find I can't even preset the AM-FM stations or activate the satellite radio. I'm increasingly alienated from too much of everyday life, a stranger in a strange land, old and in the way. And no daughter or grandson to give Gramps a hand. I didn't go down that road, either.
See you in 2023, Mr. S.--we're going to that state up north, to see the Van Gogh exhibition in Detroit. Happy new ear...
Hey, HNY to all you goddamn everydayers.
ReplyDeleteIf you want a farcical, black comedic approach to a recognizable dystopian future (narrated by one of the great shlubs of literary history), pick up a copy of Gary Shteyngardt's "Super Sad True Love Story". Credit poles, media and mercenaries, coming soon to YOUR street!