{"id":548253,"date":"2026-01-28T03:16:32","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T03:16:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/548253\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T03:16:32","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T03:16:32","slug":"bernie-goetz-declares-hes-a-better-person-now-but-nyc-will-never-forget-the-subway-vigilante","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/548253\/","title":{"rendered":"Bernie Goetz declares he’s ‘a better person now’ — but NYC will never forget the ‘subway vigilante’"},"content":{"rendered":"

We can\u2019t for-Goetz, but try<\/strong><\/p>\n

Topsy turvy. In\/out. Up\/down. Left\/right. What, which, how our country is today, who knows. I only know what it was when it worked.<\/p>\n

Newspapers wrote recently about the \u201csubway vigilante\u201d \u2014 1984\u2019s\u00a0Bernie Goetz<\/a>. I lived inside that story. I was there. In the courtroom. Repeatedly in Goetz\u2019s 14th Street apartment accompanied by his now-retired brilliant attorney\u00a0Barry Slotnick\u00a0plus Bernie\u2019s then-permanent houseguest \u2014 a live chinchilla.<\/p>\n

After a quick time in prison, this subway gunman \u2014 sporting a marijuana drawing on a T-shirt \u2014 told me he wanted a pardon. Said the eccentric vigilante we\u2019re still dissecting and whose trial fried half of America, \u201cI want to run for mayor.\u201d<\/p>\n

He then disappeared to tend a wounded squirrel he\u2019d named Cr\u00e8me Puff.<\/p>\n

On an anniversary of the shooting, this electronics guy told me: \u201cPeople say it was opposite racial problems and we were reverse pariahs \u2014 whites against him, blacks against me.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s it like after a high profile gets lots of hate directed at him?<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my case, it made me a better person. I therefore consider the whole thing an uplifting, educational, improving experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even without shooting four punks, Bernie Goetz is just not your average everyday dude. So his life these days?<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m now a better person. And definitely a better vegetarian. And I\u2019m taking care of squirrels. One I found in Union Square Park. I feed him and he comes back to me. I don\u2019t train him. I teach him. Train is for something wild. My definition of \u2018wild\u2019 is a creature that eats another creature.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yeah, OK, so you marking this in some way?<\/p>\n

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\u201cI think maybe we stage a re-enactment or have some get-together with the jury. Or I\u2019ll do nothing. The press has called but I don\u2019t plan on speaking with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

I then watched the chinchilla walk on my coat.<\/p>\n

Making yourself\u00a0a \u2018shah\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

REZA Farahan\u00a0is on Bravo\u2019s \u201cShahs of Sunset.\u201d It chronicles wealthy Persian-Americans and he reps the LGBTQ+ community. Born in Tehran, he\u2019s a prominent Persian-American. Reza: \u201cWhen uprisings started, my parents, who were here on vacation with me, decided to never look back. I was 3. I told my parents I wanted to be a shah. They said this would never happen. So I got myself on TV as the shah of Sunset Boulevard and was a hit on Bravo. Happened when a friend invited me to a party where I met a guy who had the idea of making a show around Persian people. Mother\u2019s Muslim, father\u2019s Jewish and being gay is not acceptable in Middle Eastern culture. So I felt like a unicorn on an island all by myself. I told people we\u2019re the good Iranians. We love this country. Listen, Beverly Hills is 50% Iranian. We are the No. 1 highest achieving minority group assimilating in America.\u201d His book \u201cMemoirs of a Gay Shah\u201d is out April 7.<\/p>\n

Hicks getting hip<\/strong><\/p>\n

The hicks are tired of being called hicks. Got it!? So Opie from Mayberry is straightening us out.\u00a0Ron Howard\u2019s Imagine Entertainment and Land O\u2019Lakes are partnering on something called Modern Rural Collective. City folk translation: Shove outdated rural stereotypes and \u201cpromote nuanced, contemporary portrayals of small-town America\u201d across film and TV projects. So shove the \u201cBeverly Hillbillies\u201d reboot. Dig?<\/p>\n

Jewish people beware. Soon enough comes Passover. And today\u2019s matzos is thinner and smaller. Just letting you know. Another thing to know: A happiness-at-Father\u2019s-Day type of present is a table in Atlantic City \u2014 that will take gift certificates.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s not just in New York kids, not just in New York.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We can\u2019t for-Goetz, but try Topsy turvy. In\/out. Up\/down. Left\/right. What, which, how our country is today, who…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":548254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,240920,9904,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,1269,28715,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,240921],"class_list":{"0":"post-548253","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-bernhard-goetz","10":"tag-mta","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-newyork","14":"tag-newyorkcity","15":"tag-ny","16":"tag-nyc","17":"tag-opinion","18":"tag-subways","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-united-states-of-america","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","23":"tag-us","24":"tag-usa","25":"tag-vigilantes"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115970558220331184","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}