did you see the "rudy" movie last night starring james woods?
i did
i thought it did a very good job of capturing this man that new yorkers like myself have had a love hate relationship with
i live on a block that rudy transformed from a heroin block into a block the osmonds could live on
i remember high crime nyc
i remember when union square park, might as well have been named needle park except there already was a needle park
i remember when thompkins square park could not be walked through without fear
i remember wondering if david dinkins had ever really taken over as mayor at all or if his only job was to be an african american who got elected as mayor
i remember carrying pepper spray with me wherever i went
i remember having burglar alarms on my windows
i remember being hassled every time i walked through times square
rudy fixed all that
he cleaned up new york
no doubt about it
but he also threw the baby out with the bathwater
where are our neighborhoods?
our mom&pop stores?
the sleaze element that also had a right to be a part of the spice of time square?
where are all the independent book stores?
where have all the artists and writers gone?
i have watched my beloved west village where i lived for 12 years
be transformed into hollywood boulevard
and trust fund alley
i moved out because i was tired of being the only one on my block who worked for living
i was in the west village recently
i coulda sworn i was in beverly hills
in the east village
my home
i have loved watching the pushing out of drug dealers and crime
but with them have come the high rents
the pushing out of pink haired pioneers, painters, poets
musicians...
if you had asked me what i thought of rudy guiliani on sept 10th 2001
i would have said, i hated him, but loved what the job he did on crime
then came september 11th
the worst day imaginable
and rudy came out of the dust
with the same hard-nosed tough guy strength he'd always had
but we could see he was fighting back tears
he went to countless funerals
he hugged people
he rallied us on
he made us feel proud of ourselves and him
he became
our rudy
in the movie, the actual footage of the burning and collapsing towers on september 11th
brought me to tears
i was taken back to that terrible morning
to the terror and horror i felt in my very soul
but it was the images of the towers before september 11th
just a part of the nyc skyline with their thousands of lights
that really got to me
they are gone
the other night i was walking with my friend debby
talking about the war
and i said you know it still gets to me
if you had asked me on september 10th
if i thought two planes could down the world trade center
i would have said only in the movies
only in the movies
its preposterous
it really is
even now it seems impossible
even now
i sometimes expect to see them
if you had asked me on september 10th
if i would vote for rudy again
i would have said i'd like to see a democrat back in office
new york belongs to democrats
but on september 12th
i wanted no one else but this man
this ugly tough guy who refused to let us
feel beaten
our rudy
