Posts Tagged ‘t-shirt’

Both AC Transit Bus Fighters Speak Out – Planned Boxing Rematch Cancelled

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Here’s some fresh video from YouTubes’s doghousefm. It seems that the famous incident started when Epic Beard Guy Thomas Alexander Bruso boarded an AC Transit bus so he could go “to Frisco to get some weed.” His original plan for his mother’s funeral:

“I’m going to wear a powder blue fucking suit, and a white shirt and a red tie and a fucking breast cancer pin…”

Comes now the fight loser “Michael” (who appears to be on a first-name-only basis with DJ “JV“):

“First of all, I’d like to aPOlogize to AC Transit…”

It goes on and on, Black History Month, 5150, bygones, veterans, arthritis, murder, parole, apologies, brothers, stolen money, leaking, ass kicking, Strike Force(?) Showtime TV, 10,000 kids, cocaine - it goes on and on.

Can’t remember which morning-zoo / dawg-pound joint this screengrab came from. Oh yes, it was from WILD 94.9 FM:

And here’s more information about the now-cancelled plans for a rematch.

We’re approaching endgame on this one…

A Message from Thomas Bruso: “Don’t Fuck With Old Senior Citizens, They’ll Surprise You”

Friday, February 19th, 2010

Well, somebody tracked down Epic Beard Guy Thomas Bruso after he got released from John George Psychiatric Pavilion.

Here he is, straight outta Caffe Trieste in North Beach, Tom Bruso:

Wow, he runs the gamut.

He mixes fact with fiction – how can you sort it all out?

Here’s the reaction on KRON 4.

How Should the SFPD Deal With Somebody Like Epic Beard Man Thomas Bruso, Tasers?

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

[UPDATE: Tom speaks out on video.]

Now-famous 62-year-old Bay Arean Thomas Bruso (aka Epic Beard Man, Tom Swift, and Tom Vietnam) picks fights as he rides AC Transit in the East Bay, of course, (incident video now available in high def) but he also has been known to take BART to visit San Francisco from time to time. For example, here he is near Market Street back when he was just 48, as seen by Caliber photographer Troy Holden:

“Back in 1996, I was working at the intersection of 2nd & Market. Each and every day the man pictured above would walk by my shop, wave a loaf of sourdough in my face, and scream obscenities about the San Francisco 49′ers.”

Good times, via Troy Holden

This guy is as strong as an ox and quite onery to boot, needless to say. So, could Tasers help the SFPD control and handcuff Tom (the next time he’s off his meds) and people like him should the need arise?

Let’s find out, courtesy of footage of Tom at an Oakland A’s game last year. Is this a proper use of a Taser? I don’t know. It ended up being a time-saver for the cops, certainly. Would they have felt justified in shooting Tom with bullets at that moment? Obviously not. The question after any Taser discharge is what would you have done if you didn’t have the Taser, right?

If cops view using a Taser as a first resort, you end up with a tragedy like that of Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver International.

Speaking of Tasers and the East Bay, check out this excellent report from Demian Bulwa about how the BART Police Department ran the initial stages of its Taser program.

That’s a poorly-run operation. What about the California Highway Patrol? They seem to do be doing better with Tasers these days. For them, a Taser is just another arrow in the quiver. Check it, a CHP officer on San Francisco’s Octavia Boulevard with his two primary weapons, a Smith & Wesson Model 4006 semi-automatic and a TASER International X26:

  

So why shouldn’t the SFPD have Tasers? We already trust them with handguns and assault rifles, right? We’ll end up with a few more lawsuits but with fewer dead civilians. Sounds like a win, overall.

And finally, let’s hear from the RAND Coporation. They pondered the use of Conducted Energy Devices (CEDs) for the NYPD and had this to say: 

“Our key less-than-lethal force recommendations:

We reviewed reports of about 455 NYPD shootings from 2004 to 2006 and identified 25 cases where we judged that had a less-lethal weapon been available, officers may have used it to subdue suspects instead of using their handguns.

We also note that when other departments have deployed Conducted Energy Devices or CEDs, commonly known by the brand name TASER, injuries to both suspects and officers have declined.

We recognize that some groups have criticized the deployment of CEDs, raising issues of safety, overuse, and misuse. As such we recommend that the NYPD undertake a pilot program for the deployment of CEDs.

Such a program should allow patrol officers in selected precincts to be trained and equipped with CEDs that can incapacitate suspects from a distance. We believe there is evidence that if NYPD officers had access to this device, some number of officer-involved shootings could be avoided, and injuries to both suspects and police officers will decline. A carefully designed pilot program conducted over six to 12 months in a few select precincts would give the department enough information to determine whether the devices would alter the way the NYPD officers apply force and whether the weapons could be used properly.”

So, it would seem a well-executed Taser program could be a good thing for the SFPD.

Oh and yes, an apology from videographer Iyanna, after the jump

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The Kids in San Francisco Think Ben Bernanke is a Big Fat Zero

Friday, March 27th, 2009

This tattoo’ed youth seen in the Civic Center area of San Francisco appears to have had a football jersey custom made in order to criticise Ben Shalom Bernanke, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve and the fourth most powerful person in the world per Newsweek.

Either she thinks he’s a big fat zero, or she’s calling for zero percent interest rates, or something like that.

Poor Ben Bernanke!

The full list of the most powerful people in the world, complete with arbitrary groupings, after the jump. Joe Biden and his fans should avert their gaze…

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The Hippy Cops of Haight Ashbury Now Selling Groovy T-Shirts

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

The next time you visit Haight Ashbury, which is a Drug-Free Zone by the way, see if you can score a groovy black T-shirt commemorating 100 years of policing at Yelp-rated Park Station. Ask about it the next time you get pulled over on your bike or in your Ferrari

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Newsflash: Obama is a Lefty! Why are so many U.S. Presidents Left-Handed?

Friday, July 11th, 2008

This was the scene at famous Pier 39 in San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf the other day. Barack Obama has a new T-shirt.

But what’s that, John McCain is left-handed as well? And Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton?

That means four out the last six U.S. presidents be lefties. And, as of next year, the stat will be five out the last seven presidents. That’s 71%, or a rate ten times higher than what you’d expect.

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Why are so many of our Presidents Left-Handed?

CDC Prisoner Garb on the Streets of San Francisco

Saturday, June 7th, 2008

This was the scene on Ashbury near Haight in San Francisco. Maybe this guy was a firefighter for the California Department of Corrections or maybe he got his orange clothes from craigslist.com.

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The ad from craigslist said that there’s nothing preventing people from wearing this kind of prison clothing out on the streets.

ObamaNos T-Shirts at CA Democratic Convention – Kaus Nightmare

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

Godfather of Blogging and longtime Slatester Mickey Kaus probably wouldn’t want to see this latest pro-Obama T-shirt being sported by attendees at the 2008 Democratic Party State Convention.

Why’s that? Well, because it truncates the northern half of the continental U.S. and associates the southern U.S with Latin America. Kind of an Aztlán thing. That’s why.

Getting into demographics, Barack is doing well with African Americans, of course, as well as enthusiastic white people and Asian Americans, but some of the folks with roots in the areas the t-shirt map purports to show don’t cotton to him all that much so far. Obamanos is a clever phrase designed to help Barack with the latino demo.

 It can’t hurt.

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The entire mise-en-scene, after the jump.

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