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Gentrification Blues part deux

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.

Gentrification Blues #3

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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.