The man apparently stripped and sat down in the middle of the intersection. Police arrived and hauled him off. Picked this up from tweet folks – SocialLifeAvl and *BlindiaN*
The man apparently stripped and sat down in the middle of the intersection. Police arrived and hauled him off. Picked this up from tweet folks – SocialLifeAvl and *BlindiaN*
22 Comments
I’m not completely sure how to process this from the limited information, but the conversation back and forth is certainly lively …
Maybe I’m just paying more attention, but there appears to be an increase in the frequency of incidents like this around Asheville lately. Last Wednesday while walking down Battery Park at 9 am, I witnessed a homeless man have a seizure while standing on the curb, he fell straight backwards and hit is head very hard on the street. I immediately called 911 and waited with him while several other onlookers who knew more about emergency medical care worked to stabilize and calm him down.
Channeling his inner-Randy Travis?
http://www.eonline.com/news/336329/randy-travis-popped-for-dwi-six-months-after-public-intoxication-bust
He just paid his tab at Ruth’s Chris and this is all that was left.
“Tweeting” in slang is one thing, but that’s just plain stupid. Kipper, I’m not sure why you are making this a race issue. Enjoy your evening.
Your insistence that they are “stupid” or that there’s “no hope for them at-all” was completely unfounded Selene. I wasn’t trying to make this into a racial issue, but one of those tweeters is extremely involved in improving the city of Asheville, an eloquent, and well thought person.
I ask only that in the future you wouldn’t make such intense judgements of people so quickly.
Have a pleasant afternoon.
Wow, I was working just around the corner from there and had no idea. It was raining pretty damn hard, though, so maybe he just got so wet that he decided to turn the experience into a full-on shower?
If it was indeed a protest, it seems the man knew exactly what he was doing and why. The two “tweeters”, on the other hand, are in danger of sounding stupid permanently. (Unless, of course, they were taught that stupid dialect from early childhood, in which case there’s no hope for them at all!)
Selene, one of those tweeters has done more to raise awareness of the racial dichotomy in Asheville than anyone else in the last two years.
Just because they’re tweeting to each other in slang doesn’t mean that either of them aren’t intelligent, conscious, and socially active people.
Kipper, I agree.
Awareness? You aren’t actually from Asheville, I’m guessing. There’s a pretty high level of awareness among AHS graduates who were around for the riot in ’69, which I think you’d actively enjoy reading firsthand:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/400280840018865/
Selene, I had the right scenario but the wrong tweets, so I removed them. But yes, they tweet in slang and that’s just the way they roll.
I think it’s says something about people that no one stopped to help this person …
oops … it says
a) How do you know that no one stopped to help this person? Just because cars were driving by in this one picture, or two idiots were yammering about the incident on Twitter, it doesn’t mean that everyone was equally callous. Feel free to draw sweeping conclusions about human nature based on almost no evidence, though . . .
b) How exactly do you “help” a person in this situation? In all likelihood, the gentleman was seriously intoxicated and based on the interaction with police, pretty belligerent. He’s not having a seizure or medical episode in the middle of the road where he needs help getting carried to the side, he’s deliberately sitting down in the middle of traffic. And he’s naked, to boot! I’d be pretty hesitant about reaching out to grab a drunk naked guy, personally, even without the cars going by on either side.
just as you stated that I don’t know if anyone stopped …
you don’t know if he was having a seizure, or an emotional breakdown or any other medical situation …
“based on interaction with police” … there is no mention of his behavior towards the police unless you got that from “idiots yammering” on the twitters …
Given enough bath salts, I’d say a seizure is highly likely. I wouldn’t stop and help him.
I am 37 years old. Since getting my license at 16, I can count on one hand the number of broken down cars on the side of the road I did NOT stop and offer my assistance, advice, a ride, or free repair of the broken vehicle if it was at all possible. I’m all about helping other people. But it’s pretty obvious when you are dealing with drugs or mental illness, in which case there’s nothing I – or the police, or EMTs, or any medical professional – can do that would in any way improve the quality of that person’s life.
Oh, dear…
I know nothing about this particular man, but I can tell you that Asheville as a whole has developed a cold-bloodedness toward the homeless and the insane that would do our big city cousins most proud.
I’ve personally been part of a crowd that was stepping over a toddler lying facedown on the sidewalk on Haywood Street outside the Chocolate Fetish as a man who I assume was her father played a guitar for spare change.
I’ve also stood in a crowd at the corner of Broadway and College watching a ragged-looking man drop to his knees across the street and start screaming and beating his forehead against the curb so hard you could hear the crack of it all the way across the street. It immediately became obvious who in the crowd around him was a tourist and who was a local. The locals all took a big step back or to the side and ignored him. The tourists got out their phones and cameras and started taking his picture.
So, no. It doesn’t surprise me at all that no one did anything to help this man… assuming that was actually the case. It would shock me much more if they did, though.
Asheville does not have a HOMELESS problem that we can’t handle. Asheville has transient problem that we enable.
He was just protesting the law requiring him to wear clothes but not providing them for him. Next thing you know, Cecil Bothwell and Gordon Smith will be inviting him to sleep naked under the I240 bridge.
God I hate Twitter.
Amen, Mike, amen!
Self absorption + Attention Deficit Disorder = Twitter