DAN'S PAPERS, June 12, 2009 Page 19 www.danshamptons.com
Vehicle Booting If There Were Ever Something to Send People Away, This Is It By Dan Rattiner Last Thursday at around 11 a.m., a well known local realtor in East Hampton, Leslie Reingold, drove her Mercedes into town to do some shopping and check her mail at her office on Main Street. She parked in the private parking lot next to the Citarella Market, locked up her car and went to her office 10 storefronts down from the market. Fifteen minutes later, she went shopping in Citarella and returned to her car with her shopping bags to find that a metal boot had been attached to the right front wheel of her car. She was not going anywhere. A young man sauntered over and told her he could remove it, but it would cost $170, and it was cash only. She had violated the parking restrictions in this lot.
Schmidt knew all about those restrictions. There were big signs posted. The signs read that you could park there for two hours as long as you were a customer either at Citarella or at the gym in the back. After two hours your car would be booted and you’d have to pay the fine. She had just been a customer at Citarella’s and had only been gone one hour. “Yeah, but you left the property,” the young man said. “Once you leave the property and are no longer shopping here, you are supposed to leave. And if you don’t, you get the boot.” Reingold was appalled. No sign said that. How could that be the case without a sign? What were they, the secret police? Were they following her? Did they have a film of her leaving? The young
man said he was one of the two attendants at the lot and he and the other were paid to know who was coming and going. She had gone off. That was that. Reingold now saw the other young man involved in this. He was sitting in a car, keeping time to some music on the radio, not paying the slightest attention to what was going on. “Did that guy watch me leave too?” “Look lady, do you want the boot off or not?” She took out her cell phone to call the police. But then she changed her mind. Instead, she went to her car, unlocked it and took out her camera. She would take pictures of this whole business — the sign, the boot, these two young (continued on page 22)
DISNEY STRUGGLES TO CREATE A BLACK PRINCESS By Dan Rattiner About a year ago, the suits down at Disney decided that it was about time to make an animated movie that featured a black princess. Until this decision, all the princesses in all the Disney movies were by default white: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, the Little Mermaid, Belle of Beauty and the Beast, and, of course, last but not least, Snow White. At the time, one year ago, Barack Obama had just been selected as the Democratic candidate for president. If not then, when? The movie was given a title and a simple plot. A black chambermaid would be emboldened to
kiss a frog. But the kiss would backfire. Instead of turning the frog into a prince, the chambermaid turned into a frog. After that, the two frogs spend the rest of the movie, accompanied by a friendly alligator and a goofy firefly, trying to get themselves turned into royalty, at which, after awhile, they succeed in doing. They kiss. The end. The setting for the movie is New Orleans in the 1920s and 1930s with all the various jazz parades and voodoo hexes. The name of the black chambermaid was originally written into the script as Maddy. Soon thereafter, it was decided that Maddy was too much like Mammy. After that it was decided that her profession as a black
chambermaid to a white woman was insulting. So they renamed Maddy Tiana, and they made her a waitress in a New Orleans restaurant who wishes to become a chef. The kiss with the frog changes her decision about her future profession, of course. Tiana, according to the glossy photos that accompany the previews to The Princess and the Frog, is going to wind up in a beautiful green gown and diamond tiara. She will sport high heels and a classy upsweep hairdo and will embrace a prince who is, uh, Latino. Getting this movie to the theatres has pro(continued on page 36)