Well, at least in New York it often does. Walking back from grocery shopping last night down near NYU I was trailing behind a young guy who could have been a model for one of Giacometti’s sculptures. Seven feet tall, easily, and probably two-thirds legs, which is what reminded me immediately of the sculptures, along with the fact that he couldn’t have weighed more than, say, 140 pounds. The word “attenuated” came immediately to mind. Of course, being already slightly freaky, poor kid, he’d decided to just go all the way and go Goth: mohawk in blue, piercings, all in black, which made him look even thinner than he was. He was, of course, heading east into Alphabet City to be with his peeps.
I love that part of town and envy Roz her 9th Street apartment in some ways, even though it’s an old railroad tenement walk-up. It’s just such a great place to people-watch, and despite the noise, I love the mixture of people there, too: old immigrants, new college kids; old hippies, new punks; artists both performance and scam. And I love the way the area resists gentrification, no matter how hard people try. It’s certainly cleaned up its act from when I first moved here in the late '80s, but not a lot--just enough. It’s resisted The Gap, Benneton, the major chain stores and is still full of Mom & Pop places or boutiques. I like that the restaurants have gotten better, but I wish just a few less Yuppies had moved in, to keep the property values down. Somewhere in there has got to be a happy medium. I think it helps that the Lower East Side and the East Village were actually built as slums with all those tenements and storefronts. It’s still hard to turn a tenement into a luxury condo without completely razing it.
Then this morning, there were a couple of guys on the 14th Street Uptown #6 platform playing trumpet voluntary duets. Fabulous. I love the music you year in the subway here. It’s not always good, but it’s bound to be different: everything from Chinese flute to bowed saw. At the moment, my favorite is a group called Mecca Bodega, though I hope Theo Eastwind cuts a new and better CD soon. I liked his set in the Union Square station, but the CD was older material and not as good. Check them out.
*This is an old draft post, more of which will be appearing here periodically to clean up my blog and finish what I started.
Comments