Apocalypse, Now What?
The weekend is over, boxes of cereal are empty, watermelon rinds re-odorize the trashcan, 40 lbs of laundry wait in limbo, and my appetite to discuss blog traffic methodology has been thoroughly dulled pulseless by heat, thunderstorms, and laying in the dark for a couple hours listening to NPR's old The Mideast: A Century of Conflict series. (Don't ask, I won't tell.) But it was this comment on a previous post that signaled the final bell on this ballyhoo:
Oozing right along to the next meaningless and self-righteous right-on debate, perhaps it's time to go retro and dust off the always available two-faced sword of Damocles dripping mocca brown doom over the once dead, then resurrected, now booming, you-get-shot-die, back to alive-and-kickin', oops it's dead again Lower East Side. In other words, "Daddy Starbucks, must you throw out all the old cool stuff from our garage we don't use anymore so you can have room for that circular saw or whatever it is you use to hack little babies into pieces?"
To get worked up about the "soul" of a neighborhood changing is at best pointless and hypocritical at its worst. You can't cheer Schiller's, The Hotel on Rivington (bet ya thought it was much cooler as Surface Hotel), Rothko, The Delancey, etc. as well as everything else that infests the twin death strips of Ludlow and Orchard between Houston and Delancey without eventually expecting a large multinational chain of coffee shops to rattle one of its fence links onto a soul-patch of your backyard. If you don't like it, then move or don't patronize it. Others will, you can't change them. Washed masses, rinsed and conditioned, repeated.
The signs of that Starbucks sign were sprouting 3 to 4 years ago, with roots planted well before that, when going out on the Lower East Side rapidly turned into a no-fly zone on Friday and Saturday nights for those living there. I think I can count on both hands (even after being "late on payment" once or twice) the number of times I've been to a bar on Ludlow or Orchard between 10pm and 3am on a Friday or Saturday in the last three years. It turns into a carnival of "misplaces" or parade with the scariest of clowns on those nights. Stay inside, venture beyond the wilds, or go to hell. Those are your options. It's the same reason one would avoid Broadway on any day of the week, but especially the midtown and downtown stretches on weekend days unless you're a tourist or dying to get a police scanner at Radioshack. (This time if you ask, I'll tell.) Do you write Soho off for good? No, you only go there during the week, preferably during the day.
But for those hot heads battle-crying about a neighborhood stripped bare from gentrification and genital fixation, I suggest you cool off your boys (or flowers, girl) at the Hamilton Fish Park pool on Houston and Pitt. I spent Saturday with a friend in the big pool where it was comfortably populated, adequately chlorinated, and if you said "Clap Your Hands Say Yeah" to anyone, well, they probably would.
My point (crap, just realized I probably said it better last year): This is New York, and the ONLY thing that doesn't change is people complaining and condemning. If you're looking for a more static environment then move to the suburbs or country where change moves at a more glacial, though less chilling, pace. Me? I've been living in the same spacious two-bedroom, criminally-cheap, rent-stabilized apartment on Stanton and Essex for ten years and unless some tenant's temerity causes irreparable structural damage to the building, I'll be right here 'til the cash-cows come into my home with plans for a Barnes & Noble and NYU frat dorms.
god- do you remember when our fights used to be about sexy, important stuff, like who called who a bad name, or who was quitting what and going to work for who? now everyone is fighting about statistics and methodology. for shame, krucoff- i would have thought you'd at least try to sex it up.No, I don't remember any of that but I take your point in any case. So I now officially abandon all talk of panel research and enumeration proclamations to the fifty filthy flies who care enough to hover around that shit for more than a couple days. I've got other fish to cater to and stink up the joint with.
Oozing right along to the next meaningless and self-righteous right-on debate, perhaps it's time to go retro and dust off the always available two-faced sword of Damocles dripping mocca brown doom over the once dead, then resurrected, now booming, you-get-shot-die, back to alive-and-kickin', oops it's dead again Lower East Side. In other words, "Daddy Starbucks, must you throw out all the old cool stuff from our garage we don't use anymore so you can have room for that circular saw or whatever it is you use to hack little babies into pieces?"To get worked up about the "soul" of a neighborhood changing is at best pointless and hypocritical at its worst. You can't cheer Schiller's, The Hotel on Rivington (bet ya thought it was much cooler as Surface Hotel), Rothko, The Delancey, etc. as well as everything else that infests the twin death strips of Ludlow and Orchard between Houston and Delancey without eventually expecting a large multinational chain of coffee shops to rattle one of its fence links onto a soul-patch of your backyard. If you don't like it, then move or don't patronize it. Others will, you can't change them. Washed masses, rinsed and conditioned, repeated.
The signs of that Starbucks sign were sprouting 3 to 4 years ago, with roots planted well before that, when going out on the Lower East Side rapidly turned into a no-fly zone on Friday and Saturday nights for those living there. I think I can count on both hands (even after being "late on payment" once or twice) the number of times I've been to a bar on Ludlow or Orchard between 10pm and 3am on a Friday or Saturday in the last three years. It turns into a carnival of "misplaces" or parade with the scariest of clowns on those nights. Stay inside, venture beyond the wilds, or go to hell. Those are your options. It's the same reason one would avoid Broadway on any day of the week, but especially the midtown and downtown stretches on weekend days unless you're a tourist or dying to get a police scanner at Radioshack. (This time if you ask, I'll tell.) Do you write Soho off for good? No, you only go there during the week, preferably during the day.
But for those hot heads battle-crying about a neighborhood stripped bare from gentrification and genital fixation, I suggest you cool off your boys (or flowers, girl) at the Hamilton Fish Park pool on Houston and Pitt. I spent Saturday with a friend in the big pool where it was comfortably populated, adequately chlorinated, and if you said "Clap Your Hands Say Yeah" to anyone, well, they probably would.
My point (crap, just realized I probably said it better last year): This is New York, and the ONLY thing that doesn't change is people complaining and condemning. If you're looking for a more static environment then move to the suburbs or country where change moves at a more glacial, though less chilling, pace. Me? I've been living in the same spacious two-bedroom, criminally-cheap, rent-stabilized apartment on Stanton and Essex for ten years and unless some tenant's temerity causes irreparable structural damage to the building, I'll be right here 'til the cash-cows come into my home with plans for a Barnes & Noble and NYU frat dorms.
