Thanks BBC!Dear BBC.CO.UK,
I am writing in regards to your article about today's heat, Emergency in NY as city swelters !
I particularly liked the illustrative photo you chose: half-naked black children playing in fire hydrants. Was this photo from an episode of Seasame Street circa 1975?
Because I have lived and worked all over Manhattan for over a decade. I have never, EVER seen a black baby, or any baby for that matter, playing in a fire hydrant. I feel cheated.
In any case, thank you for continuing to give my British relations a gritty, stereotyped, outdated impression of Manhattan. It's photos like these that make them thrill to think Serpico still roams the streets and Kojack is on the case!
Yours,
Susie
PS It was a bold choice not to take a picture from any of the parks we've built in the last 20 years to see children playing in beautiful urban sprinklers. Like here. Or here. Or you could've taken this picture featuring topless lesbians with perfect ta tas cooling off in Washington Square fountain. I think people would've enjoyed that one a lot.
UPDATE: A nice co-worker informed me that Gawker linked to this post. Then sometime after 5PM, the BBC changed the photo on the story cited above to this pic of an old man who is too poor to afford an air conditioner, too frightened by the mean streets to venture out and too heterosexual to pick out nice curtains:
Mr. Hooper, is that you?
And so I say bully to you, BBC, for providing the world with an even more depressing, downscale image to represent New York City in the heat!
Now, if you'll excuse me, y'all can play in your fire hydrants and peer nervously out the window, but I'm off to have a beautiful BYOB dinner cooked by Bruce Springstein's former personal chef.
