SMOKE OUT
In November, a judge upheld a rule passed by a condominium association in Golden, Colo., prohibiting owners from smoking even inside their own units (in that neighbors had been complaining for five years that a couple’s cigarette smoke had been seeping into their town houses). A few days earlier, Belmont, Calif., became the first American city to ban smoking everywhere in the city limits, including condominiums and even cars, though not detached, single-family homes. But a day before that, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to instruct the police to treat marijuana smoking as the city’s lowest law-enforcement priority.
BRIGHT IDEAS
The City Council of Greenleaf, Idaho, passed an ordinance in November to require nearly all residents to keep a gun at home in case the town becomes overrun by people relocating after Gulf Coast storms. Also in November, a report from the Missouri House’s Special Committee on Immigration Reform blamed much of their state’s acquiescence to illegal immigration on the fact that since Roe v. Wade in 1973, 80,000 potential Missourians have been aborted, thus helping to create job vacancies for aliens.
GOVERNMENT IN ACTION
According to an October New York Post report a New York City housing program begun in the 1970s to encourage new construction has enabled huge reductions in property taxes on certain buildings in Manhattan, and those savings continue to this day. Among the beneficiaries: Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter, who saves $130,000 a year on his $4 million Trump World Tower apartment; designer Calvin Klein ($134,000 savings on his penthouse); and actress Natalie Portman (saving $26,300 a year on her $5.8 million condo).
MUSICAL GENIUS
“I’ve always had the desire to play [the cello] naked,” said Ms. Jesse Hale, a music major at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tenn. and member of the CJ Boyd Sexxxtet of nude cellists who play their experimental, chant-like songs in concert around the country. Hale, who says she’s been playing naked since sixth grade, explained to Austin Peay’s newspaper in September that cellists “make full body contact with [their] instrument,” and their legs even “wrap” around it so that “[I]t just feels natural.”
SOCIAL MESSAGING
The magazine Time Out New York reported in September on the “artistic palettes” of the Sprinkle Brigade of artists who dress up dog droppings on New York City streets with glittering candy bits and colorful toothpicks, for “urban beautification.”
POLICE SQUAD
At the county jail in Dubuque, Iowa, in November, Michael Kelley Jr., 29 and accused of attempted murder, was swapping stories with inmate Jamie Brimeyer, 34, when he asked about Brimeyer’s facial scar. As Brimeyer described being stabbed in the cheek by an unknown assailant in 2005, Kelley realized that he was the one who had stabbed him and recalled the incident so well that he corrected some of Brimeyer’s recollections. Brimeyer later reported Kelley, who is now also charged with assault with a dangerous weapon.
LEAST COMPETENT CRIMINALS
In Sheboygan, Wis., in November, police arrested Leah Jerolimek, 21, and charged her with trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill at a gas station, even though the bill—made with a computer and printer—was blank on the back. MTW
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