...with apologies to Ernest Hemingway.
While I thoroughly enjoyed reading "New York Calling," I have to say that it's completely bummed me out. Slavishly detailed in its collected musings of the Manhattan of the relatively recent past, it's basically a three-hundred-and-sixty-eight page lament about the ruthless homogenizing and uptowning of downtown and the cultural devastation of same. It should really be required reading for every real estate broker with a troubled conscience. Go get it.
This morning, inspired by a specific passage in the book, I went out for a long stroll with Oliver through the East Village, loosely attempting to pinpoint a specific building on East 12th street where Allen Ginsberg and Richard Hell both evidently lived. While I've recently ranted about the ire we "breeders" continually face from self-styled urban hepcats and bristled at the pejorative tag "stroller-pushing Yuppie," I couldn't help feeling slightly alien -- if not complicit -- while pushing Oliver's stroller through these formerly bohemian badlands. This is a neighborhood continually romanticized for its legacy of picaresque squalor and outlaw sensibility, not to mention the veritable Mecca of heroin chic. About fifteen years ago, it would've seemed ridiculously ill-advised to even run down these streets at a full sprint, much less push a stroller through them. Oh how things have changed.
While crossing 2nd Avenue, I couldn't help noticing that the endearingly named gay bar, Dick's, has apparently closed up shop, its windows and front door all boarded up. I was never a patron of the establishment in this incarnation, but prior to it being called Dick's, this spot was known as The Dragon Bar, a watering hole frequented by surly East Villagers and arguably more enlightened NYU students bored with the jello shot scene across town. It was at The Dragon Bar back in the early 90's where I first heard Mudhoney, Nirvana and Blur. I remember watching the videos for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "There's No Other Way" played back to back on a television screen above the bar, a pairing which immediately led to a somewhat heated debate as to which was better (I believe I voted for Blur, but liked them both at the time). I was saddened when it turned into Dick's, but appreciated the prurience and shock value of its moniker. You'd probably have been hard pressed to convince me to go to Dick's, but I was happy that it was there. Now that it's gone, it's just another nail in the coffin of the neighborhood's character. Similarly, the noirishly shoddy Chinese chow mein restaurant directly across the street, Jade Mountain, has also closed its doors. No doubt these two spots will soon be turned into a Duane Reade and yet another bank, respectively.
Oliver and I turned South on Avenue B and ambled through Tompkins Square Park. Much has been said about the transformation of this park from a shanty-speckled homeless sanctuary, heroin hotbed and riot grounds into a welcoming haven of playgrounds, a weekly green market and a stately dog-run, but there's still a bit of a taste of its grim past therein. The park was still populated this morning by loads of folks who'd clearly spent the evening there, and its still a magnet for young, dutifully uniformed "Punk Rockers." Though resplendent in all the cookie-cutter gear -- multicolored mohawks, crust-caked Doc Martens, spike-laden jackets and bleach-splotched denim --- these kids weren't even born in in 1987, let alone 1977 -- too young to even remember bands like Kraut or The Mob, much less The Voidoids or The Clash. But why the punky kids still flock here remains a mystery. Most of the live venues where bands used to play are long gone, and I can't imagine that these kids panhandle enough change to buy themselves even a solitary beer in any of the neighborhood bars (most of the dive bars are long gone). But while there may be fewer and fewer of them, like the swallows of Capistrano, the mohicans still come back here.
I let Oliver out of the stroller and held his little hand as we slowly walked back West across St. Mark's Place, past a multitude of bars, shops and storefronts that have changed their names too many times to remember. This strip used to be a veritable alimentary canal of everything that made New York City unique, weird and desirable. Nowadays, it's just starting to look like just another street.
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