In the early morning hours of November 15th, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg changed the face of Occupy Wall Street forever. Teams of police officers flooded the park, pulling protestors out of tents, sending them scrambling into the black of night, leaving in their wake the remnants of their 33,000-square-foot piece of paradise.

Before that moment Zuccotti was amorphous, a thermometer of the ever-changing scope of the Occupy Wall Street movement. In the early days, when the nights were warm and the company few, Zucotti resembled a mountain valley—a couple hundred protestors – heads resting against the cool, slick granite – dotting the otherwise open space like columbines, enveloped by the towering peaks of the financial district.

But as the movement grew, the park evolved. In true homage to Manhattan, space became a sought after commodity. Mattresses, airbeds and possessions wrapped in blue tarps turned Zuccotti into an ocean of inaccessibility; a stroll in the park was no longer an option. Tents sprang up in erector-set fashion—the domed domiciles, each decorated with the flair of their respective occupiers, made Zuccotti look more refugee camp than urban picnic spot.

One look at the park now and there’s no sniff of a revolution. When the sanitation plows rolled in after the raid of Zuccotti Park, they pushed out a nearly two-month accumulation of personal items: tents and tarps, homemade signs and mattresses, but most importantly, the occupiers. A Friday night at Zuccotti no longer hears the methodical beat of drums, or homegrown acoustic melodies set to lyrics of protestation.

Now the ground is clean, almost too clean for the outdoors; the sheen of granite reflects the sparkle of honey locusts draped in white lights; and the steps, once battered with the words, “All day, all week,” now only hear the laughter of a playful child.

The post eviction era of Occupy Wall Street kicked off with a march from Tribeca’s Juan Pablo Duarte Square back home to reclaim Zuccotti Park.

The march went largely unsupervised by the NYPD, culminating in the protestors spilling off the sidewalks and onto Broadway at Walker Street, holding up southbound traffic as they chanted and slowly stepped their way toward their former home.

When the crowd of several hundred reached Broadway and Chambers Street, they came to a standstill, dancing in circles, tapping their feet to the rhythm of drum beats and chants of, “Get up, get down, there’s a revolution in town.”

One man, clad in shirt and tie, called out from a second story window, pleading for the protestors to stop. But the clump of boisterous protestors stayed until NYPD officers, like cowboys on horseback, came streaking down Murray Street, blocking off Broadway and cutting off protestors, pushing them back onto the sidewalk.

No clashes with police ensued. The group reached Zuccotti Park where they stood shoulder-to-shoulder, smashed and clumped together.

The protestors were allowed back in the park in the evening, but are no longer allowed to camp there.

Detroit Sports from Pavement Pieces on Vimeo.

Something eerie is happening in Detroit. Like an old Twilight Zone episode in which cosmic forces abruptly bring about an alternate reality, the Motor City has had the vibe, in recent weeks, of a “parallel universe,” as one local journalist described the curiosity. The sports writer, Drew Sharp of the Detroit Free Press, characterized this “bizarre” phenomenon in the following fashion:

“It’s actually safe to call yourself a Lions fan,” he wrote, “without looking over your shoulder for the men in white coats carrying a straitjacket.”

Sharp was referring, in satirical terms, to the city’s pro football franchise, long an NFL doormat and national laughingstock, whose sudden burst of winning has shot ripples of excitement throughout greater Detroit. With five straight victories to start the 2011 season, this ordinarily woeful squad – that last made the playoffs in 1999 and has compiled an anemic 39-121 record in the past decade – is now a sizzling topic of conversation among sports fans nationally. And with the city’s baseball team, the Tigers, having penetrated deep into this year’s playoffs before being eliminated by the Texas Rangers Saturday, the collective mood here – in a city where optimism can be at a premium – is high.

“There’s a real buzz going on in the city,” said Jeffrey “Stu” Stewart, 31, sitting in box seats along the right field line of packed Comerica Park, the Tigers’ home stadium, during Game 5 of the American League Championship Series. Wearing a Tigers baseball cap and a Lions jersey, Stewart, from the suburb of Redford Township, Michigan, said he planned to “paint my face like a clown” for Sunday’s Lions-49ers game at adjacent Ford Field.

Outside the ballpark, Shawn Crawford, 28, wearing a dark blue Tigers’ cap identical to Stewart’s, said that the Lions’ and Tigers’ success is “bringing people together.”

“Even though it’s a down time in the city, the city’s very resilient and it’s gonna fight back,” said Crawford, a delivery truck driver who lives in Detroit. “Winning helps cure everything.”

Sports’ power to unite a racially fractured society around a common cause, and to bring joy to the masses during times of distress, is no mysterious notion. But perhaps nowhere has that emotional healing power been more vital than in Detroit, whose ills – unemployment, crime, illiteracy, racial segregation – are well-known.

Charles Pugh, Detroit’s City Council President, said that sports have historically been one of the lone “shining spots” for a city that’s been “in the doldrums.”

“[In a city] where sometimes things get pretty bad,” said Pugh, “Sports may be your only solace, may be the only source of joy.”

Over the past half-century, both the Lions and the city in which they’re beloved have chugged down similar tracks – although over time, both sets of rails have become increasingly rusty, broken, cliff-bound.

In the early to mid-1950’s, when Detroit’s car industry boomed and its population of nearly two million ranked it fifth biggest among America’s metropolises, the Lions were in the midst of a golden era, capturing three NFL Championships in six years. The Lions’ last NFL Championship, in 1957, came a year before a recession rocked Detroit, hitting its auto industry especially hard. The 1960s saw race riots and a white exodus from city to suburbs, just as the Lions were experiencing one of professional sports’ most prolific droughts, making just one playoff experience in a 24-year span.

By the 2000’s, Detroit’s woes, and the Lions’ misfortunes, had made the Motor City a go-to punch line for late night comics; a Conan O’Brien or Jay Leno could reliably follow any dud of a joke with a crack about the Lions or about crime in Detroit, and quickly re-claim the audience’s affection. (like when O’Brien named Detroit the globe’s fourth worst vacation destination). But the realities weren’t as humorous: illiteracy rates hovering around 50%, record levels of crime and school dropouts, entire neighborhoods becoming the scenes of chilling post-apocalyptic-looking abandon.

In 2008, the year that the Lions became the NFL’s first ever team to go 0-16, the city’s mayor, Kwame Kirkpatrick, left office in disgrace amidst a string of scandals and felony charges, including for perjury and obstruction of justice. He ended up in jail.

But the Lions’ sudden winning ways, said Pugh, have contributed immensely to the city’s collective psyche, not to mention the “residual capital,” such as an economic jolt, and positive media coverage that has aided Detroit’s image nationally.

Still, Andy Markovits, a Professor of Sociology and Political Science at the University of Michigan, who has written a book on sports’ effects on politics and culture, cautioned against over-valuing these teams’ impact on the community.

“If you wonder what the effects are in terms of long term structural [impact], they’re probably zero or minimal,” said Markovits, adding that positive news surrounding Detroit’s car industry is a much more significant development. Any long-term economic impact, added the professor, is similarly “very hard to assess and very dubious.”

But that isn’t to say sports aren’t influential, Markovits stressed. Sports, he said, can provide a temporary yet “unbelievable sense of collective euphoria.”

“This is a wonderful high [for Detroit],” said Markovits, “and that’s important in life.”

About 600 miles away, in a bar on Manhattan’s East Side, such euphoria was being shared among self-proclaimed Detroit “ex-pats,” who scrunched themselves into long, narrow “Tammany Hall” tavern for the Lions’ first Monday Night Football appearance in a decade.

“Detroit Lions fans love their team and have endured years of torment,” read a website promoting the event, entitled ‘From Motown to Midtown.’

Forming a sea of Honolulu blue, the Lions’ official color, the faithful wore shirts like “Made in Detroit” and “Motor City Pride.” They sang a Detroit Lions fight song after touchdowns, and expressed – whether they’d been raised in Detroit’s suburbs or within its city limits – an intense pride in their hometown.

Standing near the bar was Justin Stewart, 29, who works for a real estate company and lives in Manhattan’s West Village.

“I have to be up at 6 am tomorrow, but I don’t care,” said Stewart, wearing a Tigers’ cap and a t-shirt with multiple blurry ‘Detroits’ on it, as if his attire had been designed by an eye doctor. Stewart is from Bloomfield Hills outside Detroit, one of America’s most affluent suburbs, a place where giant mansions soar above bright green lawns. He said he’s been recruiting friends to move back to Detroit with him within the next several years. Increased excitement surrounding the Lions and Tigers, he maintained, has strengthened his sales pitch.

“What better place to be [than this]?” said Neil Steinkamp, 34, wearing a dark suit with a backwards Detroit Tigers cap. Steinkamp, a financial consultant who grew up in the Detroit suburb of Birmingham and lives on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, had driven to the bar directly from LaGuardia Airport, where he’d just flown in from a business trip.

“I think this brings people together,” said Steinkamp, as the Lions closed in on an impressive 24-13 win over the Chicago Bears. “It gives the city something to rally around.”

Back in Detroit, on the city’s West Side, in a neighborhood where rotting, boarded up homes outnumber healthy ones at least two to one, Juan Scott, 54, hobbled out of a house and onto his front porch, a cane supporting his weight. He said that he’s been out of work “because of an accident”, was once a chef, and, that he’s always been a Lions and Tigers fan.

Juan Scott, 54, stands outside of his home in West Detroit, on a block dominated by abandoned houses. Scott, who is out of work, is a long-time Lions and Tigers fan. Photo by Louie Lazar.

“When sports around here aren’t looking good, there’s a lot of trouble,” said Scott, a Detroit native. “But as far as the [Lions] looking up, everybody seems to have a different attitude about things.”

It was late afternoon, and filtered rays of sunlight illuminated peeling paint on nearby houses. Gusts of wind rustled through weed fields growing on front lawns; overgrown tree branches scratched against broken house windows. The block was empty of people, except for two young boys down the street, who tossed around a mini-football.

Asked whether he thinks the Lions’ success is making a difference in people’s lives here, Scott formed a slight smile.

“Yeah, you can tell the difference,” he said, shifting his cane from one hand to another. “There’s a buzz in the air.”

Pilar Cuban Eatery’s owner Ricardo Barreras understands his Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, restaurant is part of a dying breed in the city. It is one of the last places serving authentic food and operated by the child of Cuban immigrants.

“I want to serve the best Cuban food in the city, which isn’t a big chore because the standard is pretty low,” Barreras said. “I knew there was a need for it.”

Maricel Presilla, the chief and owner of the pan-Latin Zafra restaurant in Hoboken, N.J., said genuine Cuban restaurants are rare and have been closing because there is no heir, in these mostly family businesses, willing to continue the tradition.

“There were a lot of people here that opened businesses and their children are not following,” said Presilla, who moved to the U.S. from Cuban in 1970. “There kids are going to school and moving up in the world.”

Presilla said the lack of authentic cuisine correlates with the lack of Cubans in the kitchen. She said most Cubans have relocated to Miami to be closer to family.

“It’s an endangered thing and its probably going to die out,” Presilla said. “It’s not a happy story, but it’s the reality of it.”

Some of the popular and traditional meals include ropa viega, a shredded skirt steak dish; arroz con pollo, a combination of rice and saffron chicken; and picadillo, a rice and bean plate with season ground beef.

Chinese-Cuban restaurants, once thrived in New York City, but have also seen a surge of closings. La Nueva Rampa on West 14th Street was the most recent one to close several months ago.

Mike Yip, the manager of La Candida 78 Restaurant on the Upper West Side, said his is the last Chinese-Cuban restaurant in the New York City area.

“They are closing because we don’t have a new generation coming over here from Cuba,” said Yip, 56, who moved to the U.S. in 1970. “After me, that’s it, and I’m old already.”

Kathleen Lopez, an associate professor in the department of history and Latino, Hispanic and Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University, said Chinese-Cuban restaurants suffer because there hasn’t been another flood of immigrants from the island in decades.

“They have been cut off since the last wave of migration,” said Lopez, who has a special interest in Chinese-Cuban history and Chinese migration to Cuba. “And the second and third generations don’t want to take over the restaurants.”

Lopez said the last wave of Chinese immigrants from Cuba arrived in the U.S. after 1959 when small businesses were nationalized. She said most owned bodegas and laundromats and settled in Miami, New York City and Union City.

Yip agreed that the menial number of Cubans coming to the U.S. has stunted the growth of authentic Cuban and Chinese-Cuban restaurants in New York City.

“We keep doing it the same way, like my grandfather did in Cuba,” Yip said. “But one of these days I think it will be gone.”

Decked out in anything from marshmallows and playing cards to banners, trinkets and plastic eggs, hundreds made their way along Fifth Avenue Easter Sunday in the Bonnet Festival at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Yet religion was not a requirement to come out and celebrate.

“I’m not Catholic,” said Jill Macklem of Greenwich Village, Manhattan, who wore a straw hat trimmed in tulips. “It’s a day of community and everyone’s coming out and being part of it.”

Beth Tallman of Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, represented her borough by sporting locally inspired headgear. “Our neighbors raise chickens, so we decided that we’d take the chicken theme to a whole new level and be the Bed Stuy Peeps,” she said.

Parade goers put on hats to promote a number of causes, including animal cruelty, same sex marriage and workers’ rights.

Moved by a recent wave of protests in the Midwest, Brian Griffin of Astoria, Queens, decorated his tall, vertical creation with labor speak slogans.

“In support of unions in Wisconsin, I made a hat that said New York is pro-collective bunnying,” he said. “United we bargain, divided we beg.”

Still, most came out to embrace the wacky, the quirky and a sense of camaraderie.

“I stumbled on the Easter parade several years ago,” said Mike Revenaugh of Astoria, Queens, who wore a motorized Ferris wheel head dress he built out of K’Nex toys and glue. “I saw it was a bunch of people making their own silly hats and that’s kind of right up my alley.”

At her Las Vegas commitment ceremony to her partner Jamie last year, LeAnna Bradley wore a white floor length gown with lace trimming and a beaded train. Her red hair was coiffed in an updo, crowned with a tiara. The fact that her sheer sleeves did little to hide her many tattoos, or that her carefully set curls imperfectly disguised a partially receding hairline did little to dampen her grin. Bradley, a 37-year veteran of the armed services, likes to say she feels like someone 20 years younger.

But Bradley hasn’t always been so carefree. For most of her life, the highly decorated Lieutenant, born Donald Daryl Alfred, felt like a woman trapped in the body of a man. For six decades Alfred struggled with feelings of confusion and isolation associated with the gender struggle. Two failed marriages and a pair of Purple Hearts later, Bradley’s struggle culminated in her 1997 gender reassignment surgery, an operation that resulted in the completion of Bradley’s “real self.”

Performed in Thailand, the surgeries — including various implants and facial reconstructions — were like the resetting of Bradley’s biological clock. “I really felt that I was a woman all those years,” Bradley said. “I really wanted to be a female.” And finally, at the age of 60, she could say she truly was one.

Although now content with her new life, Bradley’s childhood and early military service was riddled by molestation and abuse, both at the hands of family members and servicemen. Her parents refused to recognize her identity struggles, adding to her confusion by writing off any youthful effeminacy as merely a fad.

“I really didn’t know which way I was going or which way I was headed,” she said. “Twice in Vietnam I thought about suicide. By the time I retired [from the military] I was pretty well beaten up and bullied.”

Bradley’s experiences are shared by more American veterans than either the public or the military publicly acknowledges. While exact numbers have not yet been determined, Monica Helms, president of the Transgender American Veterans Association (TAVA) estimates that just as 13 percent of Americans in the U.S. are veterans of the armed service, approximately the same percentage of this country’s transgenders are veterans as well. She added that at transgender gatherings and conferences, veterans constitute a far greater than 13 percent of the attendees.

Helms said there are several reasons why transgender or transsexual people could be attracted to the military in proportionally higher numbers.

“Some transgenders join the military to “get cured,” Helms said. “They think, ‘The army will make a man out of me.’ Or women will join because you can do things that are more masculine. [Transgenders] can hide who they are or be able to express who they are in a society that accepts those types of behaviors.”

Following the recent, yet not fully enacted repeal of the military’s ban on gay and lesbian service members, advocates like Helms are trying to shift the focus to the ‘T’ (for transgender) in the LGBT alphabet soup. He considers this the final frontier in terms of military discrimination; transgender status and “gender identity disorder” are still automatic disqualification from military service.

Helms said that in her capacity as a leader and co-founder of TAVA, she fields numerous complaints about the treatment of transgender veterans, especially by the Veterans Association Health Department.

“Transgendered people are discriminated against by the VA,” Helms said. “They are denied service, misgendered on purpose. Just a whole series of things happen.”

The VA declined to comment.

A 2007 study commissioned by TAVA and The Palm Center, a Southern California public policy think tank, found that of the 827 respondents, nearly one third reported “having experienced some form of discrimination in the workplace.”

In addition, “Respondents reported organizational discrimination at the VA in a lack of clear and consistent practice, with little support of gender transition. …there were many reports of interpersonal discrimination, via lack of respect from VA doctors, non-medical staff and nurses.”

Denny Meyer, spokesperson for TAVA as well as a longtime activist for gay service members, said even as the military prepares to open its doors to openly gay men and women, transgender individuals remain locked out in the cold. Those that do manage to join up, he said, risk “both emotional isolation and physical danger.”

“While gay service members have been able to be increasingly open among their peers in the past 10 to 15 years, transgender troops have remained largely closeted and isolated, with no ‘renaissance’ of understanding at all,” Meyer said. “There are endless stories of transgender vets being discriminated against. I get calls every week.”

Monica Helms, president of the Transgender American Veterans Association (TAVA) and a veteran, has been living as ‘Monica’ since 1997.

Helms, who has been living as ‘Monica’ since 1997, said transgender veterans —who were generally overlooked during the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell debate — now need a voice more than ever.

“The media doesn’t seem to care,” Helms said, adding that until the major, heavily funded LGBT rights organizations like the Human Rights Campaign switch their focus, the issue will continue to take a back seat. “[Organizations like the HRC] pretty much run the show in Gay Inc. Most of the people who donate to them are rich white gay men. They get to call the shots.”

Yet there are signs that some people are beginning to rally around TAVA’s pink and blue standard. Columbia University hosted a debate this February on whether to allow Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) — banned for more than four decades — back on campus. Raucous protesters heckled veterans who spoke in favor of ROTC programming.

Protesting student Sean Udell specifically mentioned the treatment of transgendered people as a reason to continue the ban. “Transpeople are part of the Columbia community,” Udell said, as reported originally by the New York Post.

Still, Helms remains unconvinced. “Until I start seeing progress, I can’t really say [when change will come],” she said. “I can’t give false hope to people.”

During her decades of service, Bradley herself sometimes found hope hard to find. She battled depression and substance abuse as well as the persistent questions about her own sexuality. Now, Bradley harbors no ill will towards the U.S. Navy and her partner is herself a transgendered, 15-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force.

Bradley managed to have her military record officially changed to recognize her gender transition, something few others have been able to accomplish.

“All my paperwork has been changed,” Bradley said. “I went through a board of review and took me three and half years. The government and the military recognized that I had exhausted all ways and means of what my sexuality was. I’m one of the rare few.”

Immediately following her gender assignment surgery, her local VA center in Miami, Fla. refused to treat Bradley at the female clinic, yet Bradley maintains her positive outlook on her years of service.

“I don’t blame the military,” she said. “I’m very proud of what I did. More so now than I was before.”

Muhammad Tahir stood tall over the sea of umbrellas and patterned headscarves, his face solemn as he held a soggy sign high above the crowd.

Hundreds of others flashed similar posters, all with the same six words printed in bold, black and white letters: “Today, I am a Muslim Too.”

Nearly 1,000 protesters gathered yesterday in Times Square to rally against the upcoming congressional hearings on “radicalization” of Muslims in America. The hearings, proposed by Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) last year, are slated to begin this Thursday.

Tahir, 35, of Queens, who has lived in New York for 16 years, said it was only recently that he told his son—who was born four days after Sept. 11, 2001— about the World Trade Center attacks.

Still, Tahir said it did not prevent his son from feeling their effects.

“There was graffiti on the subway that said, ‘kill all Muslims,’” he said. “I was walking with my son and he said, “Dad, but I’m an American Muslim. It’s almost impossible to explain something like that to a child.”

According to a February Public Religion Research Institute survey, 56 percent of Americans consider the hearings “a good idea.”

Yet Cyrus McGoldrick, civil rights manager at the Council on American-Islamic Relations in New York (CAIR), said the hearings have also prompted a backlash from Muslims and other religious groups calling for King to reconsider.

McGoldrick added that so far, the senator plans to proceed as scheduled.

“We don’t expect our pressure will change his mind,” he said. “What we’re most concerned about is how the rhetoric will spread and perpetuate hate on the ground. By offsetting that rhetoric with a display of positive energy, our voice will be heard more clearly no matter what Peter King does in congress.”

The senator did not respond to requests for comment.

Ciara Ulloa, 19, of Queens, said she has been “harassed on the streets” for adorning a hijab, the traditional head covering worn by Muslim women.

“People have actually cursed me out when I wear these clothes,” she said, pointing at the purple paisley scarf wrapped around her hair.

Ulloa said that many times, it is her peers who launch the verbal attacks.

“At a tutoring center two years ago a kid called me a terrorist,” she said. “He told me Arabs weren’t welcomed there, that I probably had bombs in my backpack. I was born and raised in this country as were my parents I shouldn’t be treated any differently than any other non-Muslim American.”