Outstanding. I've been in Philly almost 30 years now, and every time I visit my oldest son in Brooklyn I am reminded in a different way that it is no longer *my* NYC. You capture this sentiment, somewhere between peaceful closure and resignation, just beautifully.
Personally, I'd take a slight increase in the odds of a mugging for a more interesting city (or muggers limiting their muggings to tourists)(not ex-New Yorkers returning for a visit but the rest of them). Few love/hate relationships are greater than a New Yorker's for the city. OTOH, every day, the ruling class makes the city just a little shittier.
Which gets to one of my, like, macro bete noires: What's the quality of life for the masses? So we get the ruling class cleaning things up and erecting tall, skinny, shiftily-constructed edifices. Big deal; how's the school system? (Wait, maybe that's a bad example since the ruling class wants a shitty school system, but you get the idea.)
The City's prettier but less fun except for the topless women around Times Square. Literally, that's the sole improvement: Cleaner and boobs.
`I only lived in ATL for five years: the rest of my life in a couple of little, but was in town all the time trying to flog my artwork: RuPaul took over the 688 Club with an early all drag show (before he'd had a Genderfuck band called "WeeWeePole") the night I'd decorated* it for my buddy Chuck's band "Lubetool" (haven't figured out how to add umlauts on this new laptop), there was a music scene that was interracial, pre hip hop: and some good stuff emerged from it. REM would play in Piedmont Park for a last time, sounding like Steppenwolf...
The Atlanta pre Millenium is as dead as the place they burnt in Gone with the Wind.
Tom Wolfe, the real one, felt the same way about Asheville NC.
*wrapped portions of the exterior with Black plastic and string, and yarn webs and painted carpet backing on the walls...all scrapped from dumpsters: Chuck joked "it's more Crisco than Christo."
"All I can say is keep going, guys, palace of wisdom and all that, and if it doesn’t work out at least maybe I can afford to move back."
Ha! As you well know, people are fleeing the city in droves, stampeding to anywhere else because of the horrible socialism imposed by the Dread DeBlasio. That's why rentals are so unaffordable--because nobody wants them.
On a serious note, beautifully written as always. And I know well the mix of nostalgia and los, of place and feeling misplaced in walking the old haunts of Manhattan. When Thomas wrote that you can never go home, I think this is what he meant.
"In McCarren Park I saw a guy working on his golf swing;" - Jesus, what a detail. When I lived in Greenpoint in the 90s, I stumbled upon 2 1/2 dead guys in that park. The 1/2 -- an ill-tempered Polish guy who lorded it over the other homeless sleepers like he was King of the Drunks -- turned out to be not quite dead. He recovered and was soon back brawling on Nassau Street.
Please keep these up. Between the NYC and DC stories I am reminded of Scott Fitzgerald’s follow-up to the “holding two opposing points of view” quote: “One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.”
This is excellent, Roy. With the exception of a few pre-teen years, I’ve spent my entire long life in New York City, and I’m only able to live in Manhattan now by dint of subsidized housing. Being such an old geezer that I can no longer joke about it, I've sold out some of my longing for the NYC of my yewt to the needs of old age and infirmity. My wife, as a young nurse back in the good old days, was once mugged late at night on the Brooklyn Bridge by a guy with a gun (being a native New Yorker, she talked him into giving her driver's license back since the DMV was such a nightmare -- I guess he could relate). I like the fact that now I can go out at 1:30 AM and see little old ladies walking their dogs.
No doubt, any longing I have for the exciting city I used to know is suffused with nostalgia for lost youth. My days of spending a Saturday night bacchanal looking for one more after-hours freak show are over. Which is just as well, it would look like a sequel to "Cocoon." The streets now are teeming with Children of the Wealth, who must find their excitement in places us old farts don't know about. But I can still find traces of old New York in old New Yorkers, characters like my eye doctor, who in his 90s still rides the subway all over the place to find ethnic food treasures. Even as we become a Disney ride for trust funders who think a good apartment is one whose rooftop pool has a coffee bar, I still wouldn't choose to live anywhere else.
Terrific piece. I lived there from '72 to '80, and whenever I go back I'm clobbered by how dense it is with people, shops, traffic, everything--which I'm no longer used to.
And speaking of Cody and Dylan: For my sins I'm doing ghostwriting jobs via an agency, and one project involves working with a husband and wife team of real estate developers in NY on a children's book. I wanted to name the kid characters "Katie" and (in my concession to modernity) "Cord," but no. They've chosen "Lexi" and "Maddox." They're the boss!
This is why I love the columns of former and current perspective. It reminds me of how I write about Iowa when I leave (and I only visit it once a decade or so) because the idyllic charm of youth is gone, you stand as an outsider now looking in, but with knowledge of what was, what could have been, and (for Iowa) how awful it would be as a family to live there now. Yet we do have to acknowledge for NYC, the city changes constantly, just like it does now in Portland where I live now. The vibrancy of so many compactings does this in one sense. Where there was a one story junk shop, the old one story lesbian bar, now are multistory developments with no parking for the multicultural young who have flooded my neighborhood. For me, seeing that young love proudly walk the streets, make their presence known, it gives a bit of hope to the few multiracial couples like ourselves.
This stirred various feelings in me - about your age, living somewhere I didn't grow up (and definitely priced out of where I did grow up, though I think it was a better place to be from than to be) - definitely aware there's less than 50% left even if I'm not feeling the downhill slide very much. Your last two paragraphs really land for me, and I'm glad that you're over the exile's longing.
Lovely.
Outstanding. I've been in Philly almost 30 years now, and every time I visit my oldest son in Brooklyn I am reminded in a different way that it is no longer *my* NYC. You capture this sentiment, somewhere between peaceful closure and resignation, just beautifully.
Personally, I'd take a slight increase in the odds of a mugging for a more interesting city (or muggers limiting their muggings to tourists)(not ex-New Yorkers returning for a visit but the rest of them). Few love/hate relationships are greater than a New Yorker's for the city. OTOH, every day, the ruling class makes the city just a little shittier.
Which gets to one of my, like, macro bete noires: What's the quality of life for the masses? So we get the ruling class cleaning things up and erecting tall, skinny, shiftily-constructed edifices. Big deal; how's the school system? (Wait, maybe that's a bad example since the ruling class wants a shitty school system, but you get the idea.)
The City's prettier but less fun except for the topless women around Times Square. Literally, that's the sole improvement: Cleaner and boobs.
But still, <3.
"Over the Mountains of the Moon..
Down the Valley of Shadow..."
I have that poem memorized.
`I only lived in ATL for five years: the rest of my life in a couple of little, but was in town all the time trying to flog my artwork: RuPaul took over the 688 Club with an early all drag show (before he'd had a Genderfuck band called "WeeWeePole") the night I'd decorated* it for my buddy Chuck's band "Lubetool" (haven't figured out how to add umlauts on this new laptop), there was a music scene that was interracial, pre hip hop: and some good stuff emerged from it. REM would play in Piedmont Park for a last time, sounding like Steppenwolf...
The Atlanta pre Millenium is as dead as the place they burnt in Gone with the Wind.
Tom Wolfe, the real one, felt the same way about Asheville NC.
*wrapped portions of the exterior with Black plastic and string, and yarn webs and painted carpet backing on the walls...all scrapped from dumpsters: Chuck joked "it's more Crisco than Christo."
"All I can say is keep going, guys, palace of wisdom and all that, and if it doesn’t work out at least maybe I can afford to move back."
Ha! As you well know, people are fleeing the city in droves, stampeding to anywhere else because of the horrible socialism imposed by the Dread DeBlasio. That's why rentals are so unaffordable--because nobody wants them.
On a serious note, beautifully written as always. And I know well the mix of nostalgia and los, of place and feeling misplaced in walking the old haunts of Manhattan. When Thomas wrote that you can never go home, I think this is what he meant.
Bravo! Now do Bridgeport, for the complete George Webber reimagining.
I've been to NYC once. My clearest memory is of getting really sick (bad clams, I think).
"In McCarren Park I saw a guy working on his golf swing;" - Jesus, what a detail. When I lived in Greenpoint in the 90s, I stumbled upon 2 1/2 dead guys in that park. The 1/2 -- an ill-tempered Polish guy who lorded it over the other homeless sleepers like he was King of the Drunks -- turned out to be not quite dead. He recovered and was soon back brawling on Nassau Street.
I have no idea why you still like humanity. I'm just grateful that you do. It's beautiful and it gives me hope.
Please keep these up. Between the NYC and DC stories I am reminded of Scott Fitzgerald’s follow-up to the “holding two opposing points of view” quote: “One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.”
This is excellent, Roy. With the exception of a few pre-teen years, I’ve spent my entire long life in New York City, and I’m only able to live in Manhattan now by dint of subsidized housing. Being such an old geezer that I can no longer joke about it, I've sold out some of my longing for the NYC of my yewt to the needs of old age and infirmity. My wife, as a young nurse back in the good old days, was once mugged late at night on the Brooklyn Bridge by a guy with a gun (being a native New Yorker, she talked him into giving her driver's license back since the DMV was such a nightmare -- I guess he could relate). I like the fact that now I can go out at 1:30 AM and see little old ladies walking their dogs.
No doubt, any longing I have for the exciting city I used to know is suffused with nostalgia for lost youth. My days of spending a Saturday night bacchanal looking for one more after-hours freak show are over. Which is just as well, it would look like a sequel to "Cocoon." The streets now are teeming with Children of the Wealth, who must find their excitement in places us old farts don't know about. But I can still find traces of old New York in old New Yorkers, characters like my eye doctor, who in his 90s still rides the subway all over the place to find ethnic food treasures. Even as we become a Disney ride for trust funders who think a good apartment is one whose rooftop pool has a coffee bar, I still wouldn't choose to live anywhere else.
Terrific piece. I lived there from '72 to '80, and whenever I go back I'm clobbered by how dense it is with people, shops, traffic, everything--which I'm no longer used to.
And speaking of Cody and Dylan: For my sins I'm doing ghostwriting jobs via an agency, and one project involves working with a husband and wife team of real estate developers in NY on a children's book. I wanted to name the kid characters "Katie" and (in my concession to modernity) "Cord," but no. They've chosen "Lexi" and "Maddox." They're the boss!
This is why I love the columns of former and current perspective. It reminds me of how I write about Iowa when I leave (and I only visit it once a decade or so) because the idyllic charm of youth is gone, you stand as an outsider now looking in, but with knowledge of what was, what could have been, and (for Iowa) how awful it would be as a family to live there now. Yet we do have to acknowledge for NYC, the city changes constantly, just like it does now in Portland where I live now. The vibrancy of so many compactings does this in one sense. Where there was a one story junk shop, the old one story lesbian bar, now are multistory developments with no parking for the multicultural young who have flooded my neighborhood. For me, seeing that young love proudly walk the streets, make their presence known, it gives a bit of hope to the few multiracial couples like ourselves.
This stirred various feelings in me - about your age, living somewhere I didn't grow up (and definitely priced out of where I did grow up, though I think it was a better place to be from than to be) - definitely aware there's less than 50% left even if I'm not feeling the downhill slide very much. Your last two paragraphs really land for me, and I'm glad that you're over the exile's longing.
I completely hear ya, but I do still love it. 😉 If you find yourself back for another visit in the future, would love to buy you a drink!