Google Street View is fabulous for a writer like me, who’s setting a book in a city I don’t inhabit. It lets me take a virtual drive along almost any San Francisco street I wish. I don’t have to stick to the tour bus routes. And I don’t have to rely on photos in my coffee table books, or the snapshots I took the last time I visited the city. If I want to know what the neighborhood around the Hall of Justice looks like, Google’s panoramic visual tour will take me there.
And I did want to know. But when I took the tour, and panned the view to see what was across the street from the Hall of Justice, I discovered this. A giant black-and-red bus belonging to “Your Black Muslim Bakery Security”.
Your Black Muslim Bakery is the outfit that’s been implicated in the murder of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey. Bailey, who was investigating the group, was gunned down in broad daylight as he walked to work. Seven members of the group have been arrested in connection with his death.
Bailey’s murder is hardly the first killing associated with the group. “Security”? Seeing that bus is downright sinister.
3 responses so far ↓
Snart // August 25, 2007 at 4:25 pm
Wow! I had no idea this Street View existed! Too bad they don’t have it in Kosovo right now. I could really use it.
The Black Muslim Bakery Security bus, with its seemingly blacked-out windows, was freaky. Talk about timing when that photo was taken!
I just looked at the main street near my house, under a freeway overpass. Sure enough, it showed the migrant workers standing on the corner waiting for work.
Big Brother…a term I generally eschew…is alive and well. Talk about freaky!
Snart // August 25, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Okay, okay, don’t give me a hard time. Just saw my Third paragraph. No, I don’t live under a freeway overpass. The camera was there. Geez!
djpaterson // August 26, 2007 at 2:54 pm
I suppose a freeway overpass is as good a place as any to write auto-erotica…
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