No Good Sharks

On the persecution of Daniel Penny

Aug 07, 2024

On Friday March 23rd, 2012 Josh Basin was riding the L Train, Brooklyn to Manhattan. Inside the car was a man named Ryan Beauchamp, 33 years to Josh’s 20. Ryan had a weathered face that had once been handsome while Josh still looked young and boyish, a juxtaposition fit for cosmic foils. They had never met but, for reasons which remain a mystery, Ryan poked Josh in the chest and, while accounts vary, it’s rumored he said, “It’s showtime,” right before he began attacking. As their car ricketed through the concrete curves securing riders against New York’s subterranean splendor, Josh faded into a flurry of punches.

When the train finally made its way into Brooklyn and stopped at the famed Bedford Avenue stop in Williamsburg, the fight spilled onto the platform and then the tracks in what must have looked like a combination of ballet and slapstick to a chorus of Friday night commuters, extras in a film they never auditioned for, too busy to see the moment for what it was. As the sea of straphangers made its way across the platform, weaving around buskers, puddles, and rival travelers migrating against each other’s grain, they saw something that would forever change their lives. When all was said and done, Josh was still able to move his arms for a bit and, as the crowd stood still watching the last bits of movement struggle from Josh’s body, Ryan disappeared into the shadows and down the tunnels under cover of night. On March 23rd, 2012 Josh Basin died under the weight of a train.

All fights go to World Star

Exactly one week later I was leaving a party on the Lower East Side, alone since it was a lesbian party and the only woman interested was a pixie-girl makeup artist there with her bull dyke of a wife. I went downstairs to the 1st Avenue platform to take the very same L Train into Williamsburg and, as I walked towards the benches, saw a short white guy, clearly very drunk, spitting at people as they passed him. He missed his first two targets but ultimately hit a big oafy hipster who immediately shoved him back, at which point the fight quickly turned into an alternating test of push and pull without much hitting.

As modernity dictates, there were more than enough people standing around sniggering in a circle, cell phones drawn, thinking to themselves, “All fights go to World Star,” but not many seemed willing to break it up. Because it was obvious to me there was a clear wrong and right, I stepped in but, upon inserting myself, found that I was the fight. The big guy who took the loogie to the face immediately ran off and left me to battle the short king who followed me onto my car and began choking me with both hands.

As our car took the same line (in reverse), from Lower Manhattan through the East River and out to Brooklyn, I started going to work, mostly jostling him since I didn’t have much space to wind up. Between getting on the train, riding it for only one stop, and then spilling onto the very same platform ourselves, we got broken up twice and twice I tried to let him go and go home. After the second scuffle, I was walking away towards the stairs to the street when I heard him jogging up behind me. When he got to me, I turned around and connected with him. One of the people on the platform said, “Oh shit. It’s a real fight,” which is when I dropped him. After it was clear he wasn’t going to get up, I took his cell phone and threw it in the trash and walked home.

Strength in numbers

In fiction, when there’s a Rambo or Batman type figure, waging vigilante justice in an unjust world, people can get behind it. Do you really have to worry about the cleanup costs in rural Washington or Greater Gotham? Does it matter how many construction workers/stunt double cops get murked off for our lulz? No, we’re here to talk real life and, in real life, public perception is largely predicated on how many people participate in said direct action/vigilante event.

To put it succinctly, when a group of people bands together to enact vigilante justice, the story can become the story of folk heroes. A group of regular everymen clique up to wreck the overdog and liberate a people. No matter how illogical the virtues of a group going medieval may seem, it is often more readily accepted than the story of a single man standing up for what is right. If you are a Jewish person such as myself, you may find the Passover and Hanukkah stories worth celebrating since they show the triumph of collective action over unjust tyrants. If you are Egyptian or Italian, they might seem like the story of unruly employees and citizens who got together to throw paint at public works and flip off authority. Even in reality perspective dictates.

Whether you actually act alone or are just another Timothy Mcveigh or Lee Harvey Oswald, if you are seen to act alone, the word used to describe you will be terrorist.

Imperfect vessels

People often compare the original Star Wars trilogy to The Wizard of Oz. Both center around an ensemble of ragtag characters who join forces to embark on a journey beset by perilous obstacles. One group includes a Tin Man searching for his heart, a lion for courage. The other includes yet more men made of metal, along with a gambling Wookie who has poor impulse-control, of course accompanied by his swaggy, womanizing friend. Though these stories include topics like violence, incest, dark energy, noble lies, and questions about hereditary evil, we are ultimately able to valorize those who take the journey, imperfect as they may be. No one really expects to see the Star Wars guys get locked up for murder even though they drop a few characters along the way.

Rather than pursuing the well-trodden path that compares Star Wars to The Wizard of Oz, I want to compare the lone wolf’s reception to that of the ensemble cast.

Wolves among us

In the ensemble cast’s journey, everyone is seeking a missing piece of themselves. If you are Luke Skywalker or anyone else, for that matter, you may be asking: Who am I? Who is my father? Why am I here? If you are Dorothy, you may be asking: Which way is Kansas? Why are all of the male figures in my life broken? And why are older, unattractive women mean to me?

Questions asked and promises made. This detail is important. This thing over here matters. The journey is ultimately as optimistic as the most schlocky corporate culture growth experience. Each character in the crew has to change before the story can end. This is not Ocean’s 11, the development is the main show here. The MacGuffin and its pursuit may be a total red herring. Here the plot serves as a vehicle for the self-actualization lesson to be learned.

Conversely, in the tale of the lone wolf, details still matter but he does not seek to enhance or discover himself and they are not pointing toward a trajectory of spiritual development. Unlike the band of outsiders, the lone wolf spends every waking hour trying to suppress something deep inside him, something he has too much of. True, some dress like grandma at night but many more cloak themselves as men by day. I say wolf but, of course, there are various kinds of wolves.

No good sharks

There are people today who use the word iconic, but there are people from decades ago who embody it. In the film Drive, Ryan Gosling wears a gold bomber jacket with diagonal crosshatches and a yellow scorpion beaming across the back. An entire ocean of cool rests between the man’s shoulder blades—dripping swag in the form of a predator—not hidden, but ignored for being so obvious.

Early on Gosling is sitting on his neighbor’s couch watching a cartoon with her son. Gosling asks the boy if the character on screen in the cartoon is the bad guy and the boy responds, yes. When Gosling asks why, the boy says because he’s a shark.

In return Gosling asks, “There’s no good sharks?”

And before they’re interrupted, the boy says, “Just look at him.” And though, it is out the mouths of babes that such truths flow, not even he can see Gosling for what he is.

In the book I Wear the Black Hat, Chuck Klosterman defines villains as the guys who know the most but care the least. He compares the real life Bernard Goetz to Charles Bronson’s character in Death Wish. Were I Wear the Black Hat written after the release of 2019’s Joker, it might include a comparison between the subway scene in Joker and Goetz’ actions in real life. It might examine Drive.

Ride of a lifetime

On December 22nd 1984, Bernard Goetz was riding the New York City Subway when four men tried to rob him. Goetz had observed the crime, insolvency, and ineffectiveness of a beleaguered and corrupt police force in the preceding decade and had eventually taken to carrying a pistol. When it was clear the boys were committing a robbery, Goetz pulled out a Smith & Wesson 38 and discharged it into the four boys. All of them survived although Darrell Cabey would be paralyzed and suffer severe brain damages from that day forward. In the immediate aftermath, Goetz went on the lam for nine days before turning himself in. While on the loose he became an American folk hero standing up for law and order in a city and country that had long ago let the monopoly on violence slip.

Recently a similar news item cropped up regarding citizens in Queens tracking down a man named Christian Inga who raped a 13 year-old girl in front of a 13 year-old boy at knifepoint in a park. As many articles point out, when “the community” found him, they began beating him and restrained him until police could make an arrest. While none of the community members seem to have gotten much individual attention for their efforts, none of them were hauled in for taking matters into their own hands. None are suffering consequences for disincentivizing criminal behavior. And while none are individually heroes, none are in jail for it.

What happened as the Bernard Goetz case matured is that he came to be understood as a prototypical bad guy, a bloodthirsty racist who opportunistically took advantage of four urban youths who were never taught not to rob. And, although there are occasional thermostatic shifts in how Americans remember Goetz’ cultural legacy, over a decade after the incident a civil court ultimately saddled him with a $43 million judgment for paralyzing and mentally incapacitating Darrell Cabey, and Goetz is generally remembered as a cranky bigot who attempted to murder a band of misguided, harmless youths. It is the nature of being identified as solo that sets one up to be martyred. When you are collective and anonymous, no one is able to care. The devil, as they say, is in the details and this is why activist groups are so quick to give context and animate those they wish to portray as martyrs. The same treatment is applied to villainize others. To get specific is to emphasize.

As far as “the community” in Queens is concerned, none of “the community” seem to have been charged with violating the monopoly on violence or for using a belt to take Inga hostage. While Klosterman seems to focus on the distinctions between real life vigilantes and those who battle on the silver screen, I am concerned with individuals versus groups in the real life we call Meat Space where it seems that if you fight on behalf of the public, you are criminal; if you assemble the public into a mob, you are greeted as the underdog.

You’re a woman I’m a machine

The Wikipedia article titled “Killing of Jordan Neely” begins like this: “On May 1, 2023, Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old black man who was homeless, died after a 24-year-old white former Marine named Daniel Penny put him in a chokehold.” The sparse, declarative prose makes promises. This detail matters. This will come back later. Here are the facts. What gets left out in the flattening of the facts is an entire suite of further pertinent facts. What gets left out is that anything is left out at all.

I was not riding the train that day in May 2023 and I do not know the full extent of the observable details. I do not know how much videographic footage there is and I don’t know how much of what happened was captured to begin with. I certainly do not know what coursed through these men’s hearts but I do know Penny was not alone in restraining Neely that day and I do know why someone like me ends up in a fight on the New York City Subway. Cell phone footage shows two other men involved in restraining Neely but both Alvin Bragg’s District Attorney’s Office and the prestige press present Penny as the sole arbiter of who lived and who died that day. They present the story of a lone wolf against an underdog rather than the story of an underdog fighting for a lazy, ungrateful public and its corrupt institutions, a man chained by his virtue and cast out for separating himself from the pack. I feel for Daniel Penny because I am him. I don’t know how to be another way.

While it shouldn’t matter, there is a big difference between what I did and what Penny did, which has very little to do with whether our assailants started it or lived for that matter. The difference between us is that Penny did not act alone and yet he alone has been charged in Neely’s death. It would be much harder to charge him were it obvious three men of different races collaborated to stick up for peace and quiet.

Penny’s trial is set for October 8th of this year. I suspect much of the trial will hinge on painting a portrait of Penny acting alone, rather than as one of many men who stood up for safety against those who cause chaos and intimidation. Prosecutors will portray Penny as someone who acted against the popular will of the riders on the train, rather than for it.

We don’t know what’s in store for Penny and we don’t know exactly what happens to Gosling at the end of Drive. In the film’s final turn, Gosling turns it loose. He isn’t looking to fill a hole in his personality. He doesn’t lack heart, brains, or brawn, for all of these things, he has in spades. He has an overabundance of character his body can no longer contain and he lets it out so that the world may finally witness a righteousness unencumbered by sloth and despondency. As David Foster Wallace says, “Although of course you end up becoming yourself.”