perfidy

New York City notes, part II.

My favorite parts of Manhattan have always been the East Village and the Lower East Side. Starting at about 10th street and heading south, and going no farther west than Broadway, is where I find the places for people like me. I am happy to report that Disney has not yet gotten a toehold here. Canal Street is still a crazy parade, Clinton Street is still full of Latinos, Welcome To The Johnsons, Motor City Bar, Barramundi, Lakeside Lounge, Beauty Bar and Tonic are all still open, and The Pickle Guys are still holding it down next door to the accordian store and the yarmulke wholesaler.

Walking around that part of the city the day after Johnny Cash died made me miss Joey Ramone all over again. The Lower East Side was Joey Ramone's New York, and it fit him to a T. Gawky and alluring, deceptively savvy yet bashingly simple, chaotic, surprisingly kind, and tragic. It was a bad week... Warren Zevon, Johnny Cash, and John Ritter, who I seem to like a lot better than most people do.

But the majority of our trip this time was spent in Brooklyn, kicking around Park Slope and Williamsburg. Being a partisan for Queens myself, I had never really spent much time in the BK apart from a few bars on Smith Street, a party or two in eastern Willamsburg, and that time I spent at a hospital just south of downtown Brooklyn when my testicle was trying to kill me.

Know what? I love Brooklyn. Moreover, the two friend we went to see both live in impossible sitcom apartments. Especially the Vet. The Vet is fresh out of Evil Animal Medical School, moved to New York to take a job in Queens, and lives in a converted warehouse space in the heart of Williamsburg. Apart from being the finest living space I have ever had the pleasure to inhabit in New York, the hipster tide around the neighborhood has ebbed just a little because the thirtysomething liberals and older hipsters have moved in with their money and chased the young Onanistic hipster crowd somewhere else. Where? Hell if I know. East New York? Flatbush? Bed-Stuy? Who cares. It's fantastic! And it makes it possible for actual human-type people to live in spectacular apartments with exposed brickwork, skylights, and four fire doors between them and the outside world. Wonderful. Brooklyn is what Manhattan would be if the power and allure of limitless money hadn't twisted it, Gollum-like, into something crabbed, grasping, and unpleasant.*

Up next: Sappho, Johnny Cash, and Performativity in Art

*Except the St. Marks Bookstore! Long live the St. Marks Bookstore! Unaccountably, I was unable to find a single book at the Strand that I wanted to buy, but at St. Marks, the Goodwife had to physically discipline me to keep me from buying the whole store.

And also the vegetarian chili cheeseburger at Veggie City Diner on 14th. They should build a statute to its immortal glory.

And also the exceptions noted above. It is possible that the usually worse-than-useless J/M/Z subway line is actually a giant viaduct of ley energy, funneling Brooklyn-vibes into Lower Manhattan and Lower Manhattan-vibes into Brooklyn as a guard against the encroaching armies of Disney. That'd be cool, and explain an awful lot.