Tag Archives: NYC

Gentrification Blues #3

This weekend was hot. It was the official beginning of summer. I barely left my house. When I did I was again confronted with the changes in my neighborhood. It’s like the rats on a ship or roaches in the dark metaphor. Into the blinding sunlight and mildly scorching heat came the ghostly bodies of my new neighbors. Mouth dryingly pale and still without manners. It’s going to be a fun summer. I love sitting on the stairs of the library, now known as my office, and having to stare down the Park Sloper with the baby crying because it’s hot and mommy can’t take it in the library SCREAMING like that to cool it off or leave because she’s got a great spot to get some sun on her legs.

So here I am sitting alone listening to my iPod scribbling furiously on the stupid story I’ve been hacking away at, I mean writing, for like 2 years now…. “Sorry, what? No, no one’s sitting there.” What could I say? No one was sitting there. I wasn’t prepared to act crazy and have imaginary friends. So down she sits and my table’s perfectly placed for two ways to get sun and put the baby under the umbrella. The screaming baby. The baby screaming so loud that my Erik Satie makes my head hurt and hands shake cause it’s too loud and grating. I stare at the mother who apologizes profusely, but what am I supposed to say? “I accept your apology, but it would be better if you took your SCREAMING MONKEY home.”

She started doing all the things mothers do to make their children shut up, to no avail. I start shifting. I’m already hot and uncomfortable and writing outside and feel weird. How do I describe how I felt with the future sitting there raising hell and a mother who kinda didn’t give a shit. (Now, let me say that I have friends with kids and I know it’s a tough job and adults don’t want to be cooped up with kids all day. But I also know that that’s why I don’t have kids and really resent being subjected to other peoples problems.)

I guess it’s just that I’m seeing something more and more that disturbs me about this neighborhood I love so much. Too many babies. When I’m dictator, I’m putting a moratorium on procreating in Prospect Heights. Go to Queens to fuck up your kids.

Come On Brooklyn: or, Do I Have to Tell You Babies Don’t Belong in Bars?

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I don’t think this should be necessary to write but:

It’s not cool to take a screaming baby into a bar on a Saturday afternoon and then proceed to breast feed it while drinking a beer.

I know I have an antiquated set of social mores, but last Saturday I really almost snapped. It was hot and I couldn’t figure out how to set up my new home theater so I decided to go get a beer and sit in a little AC.

I walked in, said my hellos and then noticed that my skin was crawling. Nails on a chalkboard. As my teeth were sitting on edge and after I realized no one was playing The Whispers or Ashanti- I heard it. A SCREAMING baby. My shoulders hunched, my jaw was tight and as I looked around for the miniature offender I saw- a breast.

I have breasts. I’ve even been known in some circles as a bit of a flasher. Breasts are cool and I was breast fed. I believe the only reason women have breasts is for feeding babies. But not in the back of a bar with a beer in front of you. (Now I’m probably exaggerating about the beer. I don’t know if I actually saw it, but between the screeching and the breast I might have began hallucinating a bit.)

I couldn’t stay. It was so cool in there. It’s so hot in my apt. The beer looked delicious. I just wanted to shout “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?” Must adults be told this? I’m clear on the arguments that it’s natural and all that. I honestly believe that. There is nothing more natural than a mother feeding her child. But it was a sunny summer day. There’s a gi–normous park across the street. If it’s the AC factor there’s also a library across the street. I dig you want to be with your friends and socialize- but we can’t do it all at once.

New parents want to live the same lives they did pre– progeny and I don’t believe it works like that. I don’t have any children for just this reason. I like being able to get shitfaced in the middle of the afternoon if I want. And I’m not begrudging a new mother a cocktail. But perhaps the two acts are mutually exclusive. The topper was one of her friends coming out of the bar telling someone on the phone “no, no dogs, but we’re all here”.

Like babies, dogs shouldn’t be allowed in bars. Actually, if a dog is found in a bar, the bar owner could lose their liquor license. It’s unclean. And really?

I know I’m not particularly dog people. I like my friends dogs to a point. Some have more agreeable personalities for me than others, but where my cocktails come from- I don’t want to negotiate dog hair.

So, Come On Brooklyn. I know we’ve become all warm and fuzzy and suburban like, but again:

BROOKLYN IS NOT THE SUBURBS.

Cigarettes are How Much: or Mayor Bloomberg can Suck It!

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Cigarettes cost WHAT? $9 for a pack ofNewports(I’m black remember). Actually this all takes me back to when I first started smoking. (Hazy waves, hazy waves…)

It was my senior year in high school and I worked at a job with this totally rad grad school chick named Jen. She was also black and brilliant like me and working at a job with people she hated and didn’t respect (which I would come to understand moreviscerallyas I got older). I was the office assistant and she had actual work to do and would send me to go get smokes for her when she ran of Benson & Hedges Menthol Lights. Only I was only 17 and we worked on a campus that was hard onID’ingunderage smokers. So she’d not only call and tell them who we were she’d also send me with a note (handwritten even).

The night I was formally presented to society I turned to my escort and said “let’s get some cigarettes.” All I knew to say wasBensonhedgesmenthollights, so that’s what I got. By the next week when my escort was telling me how he’d had sex with his boyfriend in the car seat I was occupying on our way to see Tommy Tune in Bye, Bye, Birdie- we had cigarette holders, the long black and silver ones.

Smoking has always been so exotic and eccentric to me. It was also something grown-ups did. My grandma looked so elegant with her beautiful long brown legs crossed and smoke curling from her mouth. She’d look elegant until she got full of Schlitz and started cussing everybody out. But until that point, she looked like a movie star. And that’s really the crux of it, isn’t it. I’m an old movie queen and always wanted to move like Bette Davis or BarbaraStanwyck. I remember in All About Eve when Bette’s MargoChanningwas checking cigarette boxes to make sure they were full. What decadence.

Fast forward 60 years to a pack of smokes costing $9. So does that now make them a luxury item? I’m buying cartons now and can’t breathe because I feel like I have an unlimited supply. Until they run out. Then I’ll cry because THERE’S NO WAY IN HELL I’M PAYING $9 FOR A PACK OF SMOKES. I’ll have to start rolling my own, and I’m just too lazy for that.

Pissed: or “Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher”

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So today is Sept. 11. That sucks. And in case you were planning on having a good productive day, well fuck you. Cause the whole city needs to be on anti-depressants. The collective energy of a city of this size mourning will crush the most Mary Poppins of spirits. Think Ghostbusters 2. So then I have to come to the den of corporate idiocy and listen to inanity from kids who don’t know who Blair Underwood is.

Idiot #1: Did you know Blair Underwood got his start as Denise’s boyfriend on the Cosby show?

#2: no. (pause) wait a minute, I know who he is.

#1: He was on that lawyer show in the ‘80’s.

#2: Night Court?

I can’t make this up. They work at a TV station that specializes in classic shows. I wanted to yell “LA Law you dummies!” but since I’m freelance, I kept it to myself.

Then I have to suffer the crush of seeing my college classmates all married and successful in a way I never will be. I chose differently. And while I’m in this pit doing nothing, literally, I feel like a slacker and a loser because I could have chosen differently. The energy it takes to just make it through the day is enough to make me want to just get botulism from my salads I refuse to put in the fridge and just die.

I know this is for money and the city needs to just chill out. We’re like a bunch of kids picking a scab cause today’s a day to get attention. People die everyday. We should remember them everyday. It’s sad, it sucks, we have to move on or this city’s going to eat itself alive.

On the TV in the elevator, I hate it; they showed a picture of what looked like thousands of people down at Ground Zero. I understand that it was the most important day in some people’s lives. I understand that it was pivotal. I understand that it’s tragic beyond understanding. But life and grief is about moving on. Why go down there? Celebrate them in some positive, less photo op way. It’s like we don’t know how to grieve so we just go do what we see everyone else doing.

And we haven’t moved on. Not yet. We haven’t moved on emotionally, spiritually or politically. This morning I got spooked cause I heard airplanes low overhead. It’s an overcast day. I hear them all the time. I was spooked. And that was before I’d really realized what today was. And then the “President” decided to make a speech, a lot of speeches- not enough silence.

We’re all fucked up. And on top of it, personally, I’m trying to be a mature person when I’m sure I’m being dissed and I’m fucking pissed. I have no real reason to be pissed except that I feel betrayed. Am I over reacting, probably, but I do so too rarely. I don’t overreact nearly enough. The whole world runs on overreaction, and I’m gonna join the party today.

So besides this being one pissy little town today… let me tell you what’s gonna happen tonight. Again, think Ghostbusters 2. Only add alcohol and drugs. It’s gonna either get really ugly or the alcohol will be the positive slime that got infused with the Jackie Wilson song.

I, personally, hope that people who diss people should maybe get boots put on their cars. Or scabies. Or a perpetual runny nose. See, I do have a soft side.

I’m fucking pissed.

Gentrification Blues part deux

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In the bit about gentrification I kinda glossed over the fight part.

This shit is scary. I’m a little girl (well not little in the Sarah Jessica Parker sense- see other postings) but I’m a girl. These little monkeys are crazy.

It was so easy. I’m rappin’ with my homey about the season finale of the most excellent show on television and how mind twisting it was; having a few cocktails and now it’s time for a delicious smoky treat.

We’re headed out to smoke and walking talking. There’s this couple hemmed up in the doorway and my homey (I guess I’ll call him BC cause I’m gonna confuse the hell out of myself like that) tries to open the door and tells this little brother he can’t do that here. I’m stepping right behind him and the next thing I know is that this little MF is screaming and pushing BC and yelling.

When I told my sister she asked what he was yelling. I said it was unintelligible. “I don’t know. Something like ‘I’m a man’; ’ I got two eyes’; ‘I didn’t get enough love as a child’; ‘peanuts make my feet stink’; ‘public education has served me poorly’…” (You get the point. it actually tickled the both of us so we went on for about 5 minutes.)

That’s when BC punched the fuck out of him. I’m running out all Tyler Durden waving my arms yelling “whoa, whoa, whoa” (when he was in front of the van- favorite scene) and screaming for someone to call the police. The supreme queen bartender was on it already as were most of the patrons (the newbies. I do distinctly remember seeing a pair of eyes only peeking over the back of the bar. Like Cleavon Little was gonna come in shouting “where all the white women at?”). I moved through the crowd of ruffians that have BC jammed up against the door to the apt building and that’s my turf, so I kinda snapped a little. And remember it was like the Smiths in the Matrix so like a hundred dudes dropped out of nowhere (I think it was like 10 in the end).

So I get in front of BC and put my arms out tiger style and stood in front of him yelling, “STOP!” (Think Gandalf and the dragon thing). Then it was suddenly just the skinny troublemaker woozy looking and rising up in front of me. Then I was suddenly like shit, this kid’s gonna hit me. WTF? So before he could fully stand up, I kicked him in the chest. Kinda a bitch move- but I am a girl. I even had on a skirt and my Keds. Then he just staggered away. Remember when the LA cops said that Rodney King was on PCP and acting all hulk-like. Well that’s what this kid was like. Just not there.

Then BC calls my attention to the white body being dragged in the street and it’s another homey and that’s when I started shaking. For some reason that’s when it got real. And real scary. He was limp and this kid is a firecracker. These little animals were dragging him in the street. Do they even know the implications of that? I want to drop them in 1950’s Mississippi and then we’ll see when they drag someone in the street.

This is my home. This neighborhood is where I’ve spent my formative adult years. I’ve become an adult here. Now that’s not to say that I haven’t been called an ugly bitch from my door to the end of my block. And I was shocked because I’d never been called an ugly anything in my whole life. And ironically enough one of the ruffians was the grownup boy who called me out back then. He’s going to jail. And he has a baby now. Pity. But why come after people who look like you? And despite my animus for the newer residents, I also don’t want them to suffer at the hands of “angry black youth” but damn man.

What would Obama do?

Gentrification Blues

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I live in Brooklyn. I live in a really beautiful part of Brooklyn. It’s near Prospect Park and it used to be populated with really cool people. Until Williamsburg and Lower Manhattan shook itself out into my neighborhood. Key word: NEIGHBORHOOD. I’m neighbors with the people I see and have seen everyday for the last 12 years. I nod “how do” and smile at the people walking down the street. Even if I’m in a shitty mood, I acknowledge the people I see.

Sunday I formally decided to be an urban nuisance. Let me back up. Friday at my favorite bar I kicked a young man in the chest who was going after a friend of mine. Punches in faces, brawling, dragging another friend in the street, police, nothing. The kids, the black kids, were just wildin’ out. It felt like when the Smiths descended in the Matrix and there was this kind of hopelessness. Not hopeless because of the fighting situation (my friends weren’t badly hurt and said it felt like a bunch of soft punches); but hopelessness over the environment that created these young men. This skinny little thing was a boy. And obviously crazy as hell to go after a man who was at least a head taller than him.

So fast-forward to that Sunday. I’m going to help another friend move back into the neighborhood and as I’m walking to the train a couple comes out of a building on Sterling. They’re walking beside me (white man & Asian lady) and I’m bopping along to my walkman (okay- iPod, but walkman shows my age better). The girl starts whispering to the man as we reach a light and they’re now trying to get away from me. AWAY FROM ME!!! Dude, I’m so offended. They’re the ones walking side by side with me. Then they start walking really fast and I’m like “are you fucking kidding me?” So I start walking faster with them. Step in step. These assholes. Then they start walking slow, and I start walking slow. Now I’m obviously fucking with them. I’m wearing my Howard t-shirt for christssake. And I wanted to fuck with them. I know you think that just because your dumb ass is paying 3x my rent to probably live in ½ my apartment that doesn’t mean you get to be afraid of all black faces. Then these geniuses just stop. I guess they just stopped because by now I’m laughing out loud. But I’m so offended by the behavior of the people who’ve moved here in the last year, priced out the people who built this NEIGHBORHOOD and now think they own it. If you’re that goddamn important then I guess you should have stayed your white asses in Manhattan. And that’s not to be racist- it’s only whites moving here. And they call the places retaining blacks “the bad part” of the neighborhood.

So now the ugly assed glass and steel monstrosity is almost finished and they get to share my gym. This is going to be a real treat. I don’t mind the neighborhood changing, what I mind is the privileged behavior of people who can’t afford to live in Manhattan anymore, came over here cause Miranda moved here on Sex and the City, and give the current residents their asses to kiss.

And NO! It’s not okay to change your baby’s nappy IN THE WINDOW OF A BAR! NOT OKAY!