Rossi Rant: new york new york

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Saturday, March 15

new york new york

i've been thinking a lot about the new york city i met when i moved here in 1981
and the new york city today

i guess it's safe to say that in 1981, i had the worst possible vantage point of nyc
because i was moved, or shall i say sent..to live in crown heights brooklyn

i arrived just shy of my 17th birthday to live in a neighborhood where i was the only non-chasidic white person out of a police uniform for as far as the eye could see

the chasids considered me a bewildering project of sorts

i was jewish so there was some chance of bringing me into the fold
but my pink hair, safari pants and motorcycle boots

made if fairly apparent that i wasn't going to be covering up my head, donning conservative attire and marrying a long bearded rabbi anytime soon

the jamaican drug dealers eyed me with concern as first
then when they figured out i wasn't some sort of undercover nark
they just figured either i was crazy or down and out
and let me be

probably the worst thing to contend with at that time
were the wild dogs that came out at night

when i walked off the 2 train after a night shift
selling the new york times over the phone (god help me)
it was the dogs i had to watch out for

i moved to manhattan in the early 80's into a hotel apartment in the now defunct
george washington hotel which was on 23rd and lex

the 200 square foot rooms had private baths and i hooked up a hot plate and coffee machine on the window sill
for 400 bucks a month i had my own place in manhattan

compared to where i had been manhattan seemed like the emerald city
all glamour and ritz

compared to today
manhattan was in its high crime glory

i remember carrying mase or pepper spray attached to my key chain

giving the look to anyone who looked at me that read
i’m crazy and i have razor blades'

i learned what it was like to come home to a burglured apartment
to be followed on the subway
to have a street gang throw rocks at me

to be gay bashed

but all that was small stuff

what i loved was the gritty, in your face, fuck you all
we are powerful thing that new yorkers got to feel
after going through all that

the east village where i live now was a war zone there

i remember the riots when they forced the homeless who lived in Tompkins square park to move out

i remember cutting through a police barricade to open a bullet ridden door to get into my kitchen and remove the food i needed to cater someone’s wedding despite the fact that the club where i cooked had had a major gang shooting the night before

i found another kitchen soon after trust me

there was rough stuff then
grime, crime, poverty
all kinds of shit

and new york city is cleaner now
safer
richer
more upstanding

but when i walk through times square and the image i'd seen for years
of sex clubs and transients
has been exchanged for something that looks like a cross between disney land
and boston

i wonder if we didn't throw the baby out with the bath water

the artists and the writers have been pushed out
they got shoved all the way to avenue c
now they can't afford the 3,000 rents
they went to williamsburg..it was only one stop away on the L train
then the yuppies followed in search of hip-dome
they pushed them further

now they sprinkle around in fort greene
in red hook
in prospect heights
even my old stomping ground of crown heights
is being gentrified

and i can walk up and down avenue c at midnight
and feel like i'm as safe as if its 12 noon

i love being safe
love not carrying the mase
or keys wrapped around my fist

but i miss the brother hood
the hip-dom
the coolness
the we are in this shit together
thing of funky old nyc

that was the only good thing to emerge from "911"
that sort of re-emergence of brother and sisterhood

and now that nyc's economy is in a slump

i wonder what will the next journey of this city be

would be nice if some of those artists and writers could come back
would be nice if not everyone on avenue b
on the weekends
was from new jersey or long island

would be nice if people who made less than a 100 grand a year could afford to live here again

anyway
however it comes
i love this city

i hate crime too

but damn i have to say
i am missing the new york in new york city

haven't seen a punk rocker with mohawk in weeks now

11:03 AM Speak (4)