Superheroes Anonymous in NYC

So much better than the Burning fuckhead's notions of helpfulness:

From The NY times

She calls herself Street Hero, says she is a former prostitute, knows martial arts and takes to the city’s underbelly to protect women who work the streets. Her uniform includes a black eye mask, a black bustier and black knee-high boots.

A Brooklyn man who calls himself Direction Man prefers helping lost tourists and locals. He wears a bright orange vest, a pair of thick black goggles and has numerous maps spilling from his pockets.

Then there is Red Justice, a substitute teacher from Woodside, Queens, who wears red boxer briefs over jeans, a red cape made from an old T-shirt and a sock with eyeholes to mask his identity. He trolls the subways encouraging young people to give their seats to those who need them more.

They call themselves real-life superheroes, and they were just a few of the do-gooders who gathered near Times Square yesterday for what was billed as the first meeting of a group called Superheroes Anonymous. They all declined to give their real names because they said they wanted to protect their identities.

The meeting was part news conference, part documentary film shoot and part patrol duty. There were locals and out-of-towners, most were in uniform (don’t dare call them costumes) and all said they were serious about helping make their respective communities cleaner, safer and kinder places.

The 13 or so who gathered yesterday are part of a growing community of activists across the country and beyond who use the Internet to communicate.

Chaim Lazaros, 23, a student at Columbia University and an independent filmmaker, founded Superheroes Anonymous to bring to New York as many superheroes as he could for interviews and to record them for a documentary he is making about the movement.

“I found these people on MySpace,” Mr. Lazaros said, referring to the social networking Web site, “and I knew I had to tell the story.”

Shortly after noon yesterday, Mr. Lazaros stood at a lectern in a park on West 48th Street where the attendees gathered before going on patrol in Times Square to pick up litter and hand out crime prevention literature.

“This is a serious job,” Mr. Lazaros said. “We are out in the streets fighting crime in a legal way. But most of all we are fighting the worst crime of all, apathy.”