John Menick

Much to the relief of many New Yorkers, the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater, and Broadcasting decided to scrap its proposal to revise the city’s photography and permit laws. Inundated with stories from artists, journalists, amateur shutterbugs, concerned citizens, bloggers, libertarians, bird watchers, filmmakers, and regular folks, someone made a decent call downtown and backed off one of the most absurd proposals concerning public space in recent memory.

However, I have to say that I’m not confident that this will blip off our radar any time soon. The city is only proposing to redraft a new law, not back away from it entirely. It may be typical politics: test the waters with something outrageous, and scale back until people get tired of fighting or the city gets what it wanted in the first place. My feeling is that the NYPD just wants another excuse to search citizens, and there are plenty of ways to help facilitate that project. A watered-down version of the proposed legislation might do just fine.

Also of note: the above Times article mentions bird watcher D. Bruce Yolton and his website Urban Hawks. As I learned a couple of weeks ago from one of my commenters, in recent years birders all over the city have been unfairly targeted by police. Perhaps not unhappily, it’s been an unintended benefit of the legislation that so many people are learning about the rich and extremely vital NYC bird-watching community.

And then there’s also that awesome video.