perfidy

New York City Notes, Part I.

So the Goodwife and I took the Chinatown bus to New York on Friday night as part of the Goodwife Birthing-Day Festivular Extravaganza 2003 celebration. It's been a long while since I had time to see the city to any great extent, since previous trips back had been on business for the Death Star, my former employer. All I can say?

Sheesh.

My erstwhile city has gone downhill in some strong and meaningful ways. That's not to say that we have slipped back to the Early Koch Years where violence could leap at you from any doorway. Rather, the Disneyfication of Manhattan has proceeded faster than a case of the gangrene up the leg of a Confed'rate soldier left in the mud at Antietam.

Case in point. On Saturday night, at the behest of new friends, we went to a bar in Chelsea, not too many blocks north of the Meatpacking District, about which more later. The Chelsea I remember was a maze of gay bars, wealthy hipsters, and arty/literary types flocking to the new galleries in the Twenties between Tenth and Eleventh. It was remote, a little barren, and a little too ugly to properly gentrify.

As we came up the stairs from the subway at 14th and 8th, it was already clear that change had happened. Roaming packs of women, dressed up like self-hating hookers, were charging up and down every street and avenue, especially coming east from the Hudson. Guh? There's no public transportation in that direction! All that's over there is the mouth of the Holland tunnel (twenty blocks south...) and... oh... Jersey. Right. What are they doing? Walking the river bottom like zombies? And what are they doing not standing in line for Puffy's place over in the Flatiron district?

The bar we ended up at was unreservedly awful, but we stayed out of kindess for the host. It was a beautiful space with a very large, multitiered, brick garden, with $11 drinks and a vew of the stupidest humans I have ever been in personal contact with. Between 10:30 and midnight, we watched the crowd flip over from cheesy debutantes and aftershaven tools living out the Wall Street Dream on the last hundred dollars of their credit line to a 90% bridge and tunnel crowd. In Chelsea!! What the hell? I have never seen that many huaraches, white pants, or hungry leers in my life, outside the gay bars that used to line the street where this place stands now. I have never felt more out of my element in New York, a city that doesn't look twice if you walk down the street stark naked with a giant rubber chicken head on your penis. So, we left. And got hassled by the staff on the way out for not being beautiful. (For the record, I looked effing fabulous)

Worse than this, the fucking meatpacking district, where gay men used to come to, erm, pack meat, is now a fucking tourist and trading desk jockey playground. Fuck! Goddamn Bloomberg, and yes, Giuliani, have a lot to answer for. All the fun, mildew, grit, soul, and nastiness has been bled out of that stretch of lower Manhattan, in favor of the hooting, backwards-hat wearing motherfucker crowd and the hoochies that hang on them like lampreys and I hate it forever.

One of the writer friends we were out with put it well. "Manhattan is the liver of New York."

Damn straight. So we hopped a train back to Brooklyn where we belong.

Next: Joey Ramone, the Lower East Side, real life sitcom living arrangements, and smashing success in the outer boroughs. Fucking Manhattan may rot.