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Flashing red lights are this season's most fashionably hip accessory, or is this trend just another Mega City fad?
Phone Vandalism Epidemic
Up 50% from previous years
By City Desk
Phone vandalism throughout the city has surged to levels half again as much as in previous years.
Regional Bell officials are at a loss to
explain the reason for the upsurge, although speculation abounds.
Theories include a protest reaction to rising calling rates, economic
stress causing outbursts of anarchy, and, - most conspiratorial - an
effort to force people to purchase mobile phones, and drive up sales
for telecom providers.
City officials have responded with
surveillance spot checks and a rotation of spy cams trained on
oft-afflicted phones. So far no vandals have been caught.
Damage
is often sophisticated, involving electronic hacking rather than
obvious physical vandalism. Police say this lends credit to the
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theory the damage represents an organized effort, rather than a trend of random acts.
Citizens are urged to report damage immediately,
noting time and who may be around. Experts say the vandals may linger
to observe the frustration they cause, much like arsonists often
inhabit the crowd around the fire they've set.
"This is more serious than you know," offered one
young woman who gave her name only as Azure, one of numerous
person-on-the-street interviews Sentinel Staff conducted. "People
depend on these phones to get home. It can be very dangerous to be
prevented from going home. To both mind and to body."
"I got my cell phone," said William Eastland, a human
Please See Vandalism on A2
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| | Light-Emitting Diodes as Fashion Statement: Digital and Proud Of It
By SENTINEL STAFF
You see them all over the city: electronic
accessories, and sometimes clothing, with small, red telltale lights.
They're on PDAs. On cellphones. On laptops, MP3 players, radios,
eyeglasses,belts.
At night, our streets swarm with crimson fireflies.
"It's caught on with the button-down crowd,"
City fashion fashion website webmistress Melanie Vranakalovich said.
"It's unusual, since the club scene is usually the origin of new
fashion trends, such as the leather duster/fedora craze that's still
going strong. But the red lights have bypassed the usual hipster
contingent completely."
Charcoal-suited businessmen favor the look, often
with the slightly cool touch of dark glasses, worn even during the day.
We asked two such men, who declined to identify themselves, about the
red-LED accessories. "The better to see you with," said one. "Now go
back to your dreamy little life, citizen, and stay warm," said the
other.
Cryptic is the new repartee style, we guess.
Club denizens take a different view. They view the
red-LED types ("LEDdites," they are sometimes called, or "LED agents")
with wariness. One muscled hipster, who goes by the handle ToughLucky,
put it bluntly: "we're expected to get along, but those are bad dudes.
Stay out of their way. They're hard enough to handle even with the
latest downloads. You blue - " (he hesitated, here) "You civilians
don't stand a chance. Say, do you ever feel all this is some kind of
lie?"
This last is an expression of another popular trend
in the city: a quasi-religious movement which maintains reality is an
illusion, and promotes worship of - or, as adherents are quick to
qualify - gratitude to "the One ."
Please See Glowing Red on A2
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Andres Bonifacieao |
First, a favor. I don't usually do the society
beat, but I do have this valuable front-page real-estate, so Polly over
in the Style section asked me to help with a little mystery.
Seems the sultry trophy wife of a very
prominent businessman - I needn't mention names, here, mon cher - was
captured photographically kissing a mystery man wearing a very
convenient hat.
We've got the pic, but no name, nor even a face. And boy, would we like it. In fact, we're offering a very generous reward for the first one who'll cough up, verifiably, who got this enviable smooch.
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Who is this Mystery Smoocher?
Not that I'd like to be that guy, tomorrow.
So, on to my real topic: I'm sitting at the bar, trading the latest
with Wally. He's pretty cynical, and describes this trend for hipazoids
wearing black latex everything as "hydrophobia squeakalotus." And yeah,
I guess some of it creaks and squeaks a lot.
Still, I don't complain about the noise when an aerobics-toned goddess in a painted-on backless halter sits
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down next to me and waves off Wally. She doesn't need a drink. She wants to talk to me.
I'm all ears. And eyes. She starts this rap
about how don't I feel like something's wrong about all this? And at
first I'm thinking, sure, graft in this city is as common as discarded
Latte cup tops, and there oughtta be a better way.
Then she does something that makes my heart
sink. My heart and other physiological items. She pulls out a couple of
pills. If I take the blue one, I'll forget all about her and go back to
my normal life. If the Red one, I'll learn some painful truths and be
set free.
Now these words, along with her
look - not a heavy dominatrix vibe, but she isn't exactly wearing Laura
Ashley, either - make me wonder if this was code for some subculture or
another. Painful truths. Set free. Uh huh. I start to think nothing was
going to happen here unless I make a trip to the ATM first. And maybe
it's too weird, anyway.
Please See Column on A2
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