Hello - I am daniel berman.

You might be coming to my site for the first time because you read my article in the most recent issue of , or maybe,  because someone blackmailed you. Either way, welcome. I have compiled some links to a few of my more popular posts. Some are funny, while others are heartfelt and demented. On occasion, I try to concoct a piece utilizing all three descriptors.

I live in this city

• Here I discuss my life altering operation.

• Here I discuss moving 7 times in one year and coming out more rooted because of it.

• Here I wrote two pretty disturbing cartoons about a pig with some urges.

and there are other little gems (anvils) on this site, please feel free to peruse. But, remember, if you break it, you buy it.

Email me with any thoughts, comments, or other writing opportunities over here.

Thanks sincerely for checking out my site and come back soon for more heartfelt craziness,

Daniel Berman

Daniel, Danny, Dan too

PS if you can digg my NYPress story, I’d appreciate it. Well, I WOULD. Thanks.

Two great articles in this issue of the NYPress:

THE PURSUIT OF CRAPPYNESS

Armond White examines the similarities in the post-racial strategies of Will Smith  and Barack Obama.

It matters that Smith and Obama—the most popular Anglo surname and an immediately, recognizably exotic surname—both are seen as inoffensive and associated with non-threatening ideology. It is the basis of the public confidence each man seeks. Smith’s distance from gangster rap (remember the disses he received as the first Grammy-winning—i.e. “safe”—rap artist?) parallels Obama’s distance from radical, upstart black nationalism, liberation theology and prophetic Christianity.

8 MILLION STORIES: GRINGA IN THE HEIGHTS

Kristen Bonardi Rapp experiences racism as a gentrifier in her neighborhood.

Choosing Washington Heights had been easy: It was affordable, and it was in Manhattan. What else did I need to know? As I packed up my old apartment in Boston, I read Washington Heights’ Wikipedia page as if it were scripture. I learned the neighborhood had been a refuge for European Jews in the 1930s and ’40s, who were then displaced by Greeks in the 1960s. By thata time, Washington Heights had become “the Astoria of Manhattan.” In the 1970s, the Greeks, in turn, were displaced by Dominicans, and now Washington Heights has the largest Dominican population outside the Dominican Republic.

Her article reminds me of the reason in which although I love “In the Heights” the musical, I also hate it for the romantic view of Washington Heights it gives to probable ‘gentrifiers’. What makes these people different from the eras of for displacement is that the people moving in are no longer working class people, (not to mention all the other changes they bring to the neighborhood).