This piece is a followup to my post of a few days ago, Third World America-The United States of the Bronx.
Friday morning, two days after my little Bronx odyssey. I work nights, mostly, and rarely get to bed before 3AM. This time? Even later. I have a complicated Friday…a meeting in Manhattan followed by a latin gig at a housing project on the Lower East Side in the late afternoon/early evening. I have scheduled my day so that I can get sufficient sleep, drive into midtown Manhattan and park at one of Mayor Bloomberg’s little “50¢ for 10 minutes” ripoff meters for an hour or so, then drive on down to the (lower) Lower East Side and find a parking spot before 4PM. This neighborhood is a small triangle south of the Williamsburg bridge that was a dirt-poor Jewish/Puerto Rican ghetto for a long time and before that an equally dirt-poor Irish ghetto, thus almost impossible to reach by public transportation. Why build subways for people who ain’t working, right? So they didn’t. It doesn’t even have a name, really…the “Lower East Side” name was appropriated by the real estate developers/gentrifiers during the last decade or so to hype the extension of the now fabulously expensive “East Village” south across Houston Street and the even more expensive SoHo east across Broadway.
So…I have my day planned out fairly well. But as my Irish grandmother…whose family lived near that neighborhood in the storied Irish hell called Five Points…so often used to say, “There’s many a slip `twixt the cup and the lip.”
Yup
Indeed there is.
Read on for more.
9AM…I’ve been asleep maybe 4½ hours. There’s a middle school across the street from my apartment. Its students are almost entirely Hispanic, and the playground during most mornings is a super high-energy adventure in sound. I’ve learned to live with it (sleep with it, actually…earplugs, etc.) but today is the annual “It’s The Last Day Of School So We Can Put Up Loudspeakers And Play Terrible Music Really Loud For Three Hours While We Use Microphones To Shout At The Kids About How Excited They’re Supposed To Be” Day.
Impossible to sleep.
OK…I’m used to that. I sleep in shifts often. I’ll change my plans, reschedule the meeting for the morning so I can get back after the noise-fest is over at noon, grab a couple of hours more sleep and then go to the gig.
One phone call works that out, so I get dressed, grab some coffee and hit the subway into Manhattan. No sense driving in…rush hour public transportation is usually pretty good in my neighborhood. I’m in midtown a little after 10, get a good muffin from my favorite midtown morning place to fuel up, spend a couple of hours in discussion about a musical project in which I am involved and then hit the street again, headed for the subway back to the Bronx.
Now this is one hot, hot day…in the 90s, and humid besides. Really uncomfortable, especially in the subway stations. Plus my ass is beginning to drag a little from lack of sleep. But everything’s gonna be fine. The subway arrives; I get on, find a seat and we’re off. However, after two stops the subway…a local, but going easily 20 or 30 MPH…comes to such a screeching halt that several people fall down. No one’s seriously hurt (at least not in my car), but this was the most sudden stop that I have ever experienced in 40+ years of NYC subway travel. OK. Time to wait. At least the air conditioning and lights are still working, and the people in the subway are all real New Yorkers. Just gotta deal wid it, right? Right. The PA system says something about “We received an emergency signal. The operator is looking into it. We will be moving shortly. Thank you for your patience.” OK. Five minutes later, essentially the same speech. And five minutes after that and five minutes after that…for almost an hour. OK. Dealin’ wid it. All of us. Things happen. Whaddaya gonna do? And eventually the train does begin to move…but very slowly, a few feet at a time. Like there is something pulling it. You can hear the couplings between the cars clack together the length of the train with every move. Ten minutes later we crawl into the 72nd Street station and everybody gets out. The station PA says something about “a switch problem”…probably total bullshit, because a switch problem wouldn’t have injured the mechanism of the train itself unless the sudden stop itself fucked something up…and announces that the local trains will be running on the express tracks (72nd St. is an express station as well as a local one.) up to the next express stop, 96th St. I do some calculations and figure that if it is bullshit, we might not see another train for a very long time. I know that there is an express bus to my neighborhood that runs every 20 minutes during the day right upstairs, so I leave the subway to grab a bus. My sleep time is already gone, but maybe I can catch a nap on the bus.
Bus? No bus.
For almost an hour. Why? Who knows? It’s New Yawk, right? Things happen.
I wait. It is hot! I spend the time watching the face circus. I can do that for hours. Days. Years, even. New Yorkers. Gotta love `em. Ugly, beautiful, smart, dumb, young, old. Every race, every sex…the works. Never boring. Ever.
And the bus eventually arrives. At least I’m not going to be late for the gig.
Except…the bus hits traffic in da Bronx. Another hour gone. Plus traffic going into Manhattan looks really bad. UH oh! I call the bandleader and give him a heads up that I might be a little late. He understands. He’s a New Yorker too.
Finally home…just enough time to change clothes, pick up my instrument and head out. Decision time as well. I’ve got less than an hour to get from the Bronx to a somewhat isolated part of Manhattan. Traffic looks bad. Shall I try the subway again? Yes. The A train this time…express like a motherfucker from 15 blocks away from my house to Manhattan. Take a bus to the train, get on the train, and zoom! I’m at the W. 4th St. station 25 minutes later. I need to change to an F train to get close to the gig.
30 minutes later…
F train? No F train. This is getting stupid. I’ll be damned if I’ll spend $20+ to take a cab. First of all, latin gigs don’t pay that well and second, they rarely start on time. So I wait. And it shows up. Three stops and I’m there. This is one of the few neighborhoods in Manhattan that I do not know well, but on a map it looks like a 5 minute walk. Maps lie. More like 20 minutes. I hoof it. I’m soaking wet with sweat by the time I get there. And…I’m only five minutes later than the most of the rest of the band. Hooray for latin time!!!
A nice little party in the courtyard of a well-kept project. Mostly older Puerto Ricans who really know the music, plus the usual Democratic political hustlers there for the vote. Among them is the rancid Stanley Silver, speaker of the NY State Assmbly, one of the crookedest groups of political thieves ever to embezzle a dollar. This is part of his district, and he is doing what he does. Bamboozling the peons in search of votes. He’s been doing it since 1976, and he’s good at it. The stench of ongoing graft oozes out of his every word and gesture, of course, but his constituents don’t smell a thing. He gets them services, they give him votes. They give him votes; he gets rich and they stay poor. That’s the way it works.
Hey…it’s New Yawk, right? As one of Silver’s predecessors once said, “I saw my opportunities and I took `em.”
Yup.
Honest graft.
That’s where you don’t get caught.
The party goes on…great Puerto Rican food, some old friends playing familiar music…a lovely gig. Good people.
And then it’s over. 7PM. The trek back to da Bronx. Another 20 minute walk…I’m feeling every step, now…and back into the subway. A fairly smooth two trains and a bus back to my apartment, and less than 12 hours after the middle school mania knocked me out of bed I am…blessedly…home.
Food, wine, sleep.
Eat, drink, pray.
But here’s the thing.
I bought a car last year because the public transportation infrastructure was not working as well as it had been working for the previous several years. And now it’s working worse. This in probably the most well-balanced and prosperous city in the United States.
Hmmmmm…
Wildings all over Chicago.
The old ultraviolence increasing exponentially in Philadelphia, Chicago and many other cities large and small.
Unemployment rising.
Food prices skyrocketing.
Gas prices too high for most of us to even use our cars to get to work. And the roads suck!!!
China just clamed that the U.S. has already started defaulting on its loans.
The debt ceiling vote deadline has been pushed back three weeks to August 2nd, and there is still no agreement in sight on what to do.
Borrow more?
Pay later?
Borrow more and then don’t pay later?
Hmmmmm….
(Could happen.)
Cut services even further?
Pare down the defense offense budget? (Never gonna happen.)
Don’t borrow anything and cut straight to the Hooverville chase or worse?
Maybe. At least the military would have something better to do than chase Afghani tribesmen around in the mountains. They could chase poor people around in the cities instead.
Lissen up.
We’re going broke, folks.
Word.
Just as I have said we will for the past several years.
The house of cards is falling, and underneath that previously stacked deck lies a nasty third world game.
Watch.
An old joke:
In the days of primitive tribes and grass huts, there was one tribe which was very warlike. They won many battles and took control of many other tribes.
One of their customs when they beat another tribe was to take the most prized possession of the enemy’s chief.
Once, after a particularly fierce battle they defeated a rich tribe whose king owned a solid gold throne.
The warlike tribe took the throne and put it in a loft in their chief’s house.
Unfortunately, the throne was much too heavy to be kept in the loft of a grass house, and it eventually fell through the ceiling onto the chief, killing him instantly.
Moral?
Sure.
People who live in grass houses shouldn’t stow thrones.
We’ve been stowing thrones for over 65 years. Over 100 years if you count the Spanish-American War.
Stowing thrones in a grass house of cards.
The payback’s gonna be a bitch.
Watch.
Hearts and diamonds? No. Clubs and spades.
Watch.
Bet on it.
Sooner than you may expect.
Bet on that as well.
Watch.
Gonna be a hot summer.
If electricity goes down in a rough neighborhood or two or four?
Uh oh!!!
If the hurricanes act like our recent tornados? Global warming-fueled?
Oh, MAMA!!!
Followed by a winter like the last one?
With heating oil expenses moving up at the same rate as have been gas prices?
Gonna get…interesting.
Yup.
Watch.
Sooner rather than later.
Watch.
Bet on it.
AG
