Neither more nor less

Ray , 75 , works in his candy store at 113 avenue A , 12 hours a day , 7 days a week .He has done so for many years . Thanks to the always rising rent , utilities and the New York City imposed fines for this and that from this and that city agency he is barely making it . His credit cards have kept him afloat for the last couple of years but that accumulating debt is now near to overwhelming him with considerable minimum payments .

A couple of weeks ago Ray was robbed of $400 by some young men ; a $400 that he could not afford to lose .

Today a company producing a television pilot titled " Cupid " Blocked off his store with their equipment and activities causing him to lose a good bit of business . On the uptown side of him was a large tent , on the street side was a wall of equipment and to the downtown side a production assistant stood blocking sidewalk traffic . Of course the PA claims that she always allowed people to pass to Ray's . We watched and many just never attempted to walk towards Rays ; without hesitating they walked around the obviously conjested area before ever encountering the PA .

For a few minutes a few neighborhood folks made a lot of noise protesting the production company for not compensating Ray for the loss of business that they had caused him .

There was not ,to our knowledgew at least , any effort made to compensate Ray even though higher level PAs attended to the protestors promising that they would certainly look into the matter .

Almost certainly there will be no compensation simply because there is no threatened punishment for not doing so .

This is all a piece of the previous post : the big media plutocrats that own this company --this production company has considerable wealth at it's finger tips--and their minion do and take what they want and the ordinary working folks pay for it in ways that they can hardly afford . More and more the common course of things in this town today .