Editorials

Commentary: It was a bad night

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By Gary P. Custer

Tuesday, November 29, -0001

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Late Oct. 25 someone broke the glass in the office front door and walked out with our most important computer equipment. They took the computer we used to do all of the essential magazine production and administrative tasks and another computer we used to transfer the news stories our reporters write on Apple II computers to the small floppies used on the Macintosh.

The thieves are probably pretty disappointed with their haul.

The Macintosh LC 550 they got was a heavily used four-year-old machine worth maybe $200 – if they could find a computer illiterate buyer.

The other computer was a 10-year-old Apple II GS which has no market value at all.

They also got a couple of other pieces of equipment, a Zip disk drive and a desktop scanner, each worth less than $100 if they had taken all of the parts.

Their drug dealer probably laughed in their faces when they tried to trade the equipment for a day's fix.

The relatively small yield from their night's high-risk work might help explain why there were three other break-ins in the neighborhood the same weekend, one at an attorney's office on Court Street and the other two at the same house on Pierson Street.

The Pierson Street resident was assaulted by two young males with a hammer one night and then his house was burglarized the next night while he was away.

Although what they took from us had little value to the thieves, it was invaluable to us.

Every piece of equipment we use is either contributed or loaned. So almost everything we use to produce the magazine, from the old computers to the old telephones, is obsolete when we get it. We have no insurance because the yearly premiums would be much more than the value of the equipment.

Our reporters write their news stories on Apple IIs and old Macs, all more than a decade old. Everything else necessary for us to operate, from bookkeeping to information storage and retrieval, was done on a contributed inexpensive computer, the LC 550.

But as primitive as our equipment is, it has made it possible for us to provide you information you needed to preserve and improve your residential neighborhood during the past 21 years.

When I walked in that Saturday night and saw what had been taken I could see no way that we could publish this issue because the equipment that ties everything together was gone.

I spent the rest of the night sitting in a chair at my desk just looking at the big pieces of broken glass on the floor and the empty desktop. It was probably the most discouraging night since I became East Village Magazine editor more than 21 years ago.

But the next day my neighbors started dropping by to offer their help.

One offered to help clean up the broken glass. Another offered to guard the office until we could replace the door. Still another offered to loan us a computer (one that was a few years older than the one we lost, but usable) and donated security system equipment.

Most people just asked what they could do to help, then pitched in to help get this issue out.

It may not be the best issue of the 416 we have published, but it is the one done under the most adverse conditions.

It will not be easy to replace the lost equipment, to recreate the lost data files and to repair all the other damage caused by those morally challenged punks.

But we will do it.

Not to do it would be to surrender our neighborhoods to the predators and accept the quality of life they choose to let us have. I am not willing to do that.

You are invited to help repair the damage so that we can get on with the task of providing you information to help you preserve and improve your neighborhood.

If you have unwanted computer equipment, especially Macintosh equipment, consider contributing it. Financial support, as always, is welcome. We do not have the equipment, supplies or time to prepare a special insert in the magazine this time, but you can use the addressed envelopes in this and last issues to tell us how you want to help.

If you have any information that might help put these or any predators behind bars, we would like to hear it.

The punks almost closed us down permanently that Saturday night, but our neighbors made it possible to continue.

I am grateful that I live in a neighborhood where people care about each other.

That is the way it should be in every neighborhood.

Thanks for the help during this difficult time for us.

GPC

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