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Thanks for the stickers 728 Fixed Gear

Your new site design looks fresh.

I am down here in Kagoshima city, Kyushu. Its one of the most southern points on the main cluster of Japans islands. Its a small city compared to Tokyo. You get recognized by people you`ve never met a day after seeing them once across a busy steet. It`s famous for an active volcano Sakurajima that sits across the bay from the main portion of the city. Yesterday I felt like I was in a 70`s James Bond film when it sent all this ash up in the sky. I was on the beach at the time when I took the above photo. The lifeguard was all “its good the wind is blowing that way” while pointing away from the shore.

Unlike other blackouts that affected the region, namely the Northeast Blackout of 1965 and the Northeast Blackout of 2003, the 1977 blackout was localized to New York City and the immediate surroundings. The 1977 blackout, unlike the 1965 and 2003 blackouts, resulted in city-wide looting and other disorder, including arson.

Looting and vandalism were widespread, especially in the African American and Puerto Rican communities, hitting 31 neighborhoods, including every poor neighborhood in the city. Among the hardest hit were Crown Heights, where 75 stores on a five-block stretch were looted, and Bushwick where arson was rampant with some 25 fires still burning the next morning. At one point two blocks of Broadway, which separates Bushwick from Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, were on fire.

Looting of electronics stores during the blackout allowed a number of kids to obtain DJ equipment. As a result, the Hip Hop genre, barely known outside of The Bronx, grew at an astounding rate from 1977 onwards.

According to Grandmaster Caz “It was like Christmas for black people” he said. “The next day there were a thousand new D.J.’s.”

I was having a look at it today thinking that it captured the moment nicely and figured it was high time we post it on the site. Kinfolk is happy.