Riverdale etc.

SPUYTEN DUYVIL

There are so many nice things in the world and I own so few of them- like this Porsche, for example. And a beautiful two storey house nestled on the leafy banks of the Hudson River, steps away from the Spuyten Duyvil Metro-North, a short ride, maybe in a nice Porsche from a ‘shopping-street-with-a-small-town-feel’ where one can enjoy tolerable pizza and beer with one’s local friends and buy pastries and mail a letter. One’s fine, fine children will be privately educated in one of the Great Private Schools scattered about hillsides and one’s wife will play bridge and attend functions. Or whatever good Upper Middle Class Jewish Families do when they live in gorgeous neighborhoods. I would like to have seen it decades ago before they built the huge blocks of flats. Is a nice neighborhood still nice even after you’ve built the behemoth in front of the sun and the river and covered half the hills with parking. In all fairness, the bit I really liked covered only about a block of prettiness down the hill towards the station, up the hill is 30 blocks of pettiness. Nowhere outside of the heavy artillery firing range at Fort Carson, Colorado have I seen so many signs warning trespassers to stay out, no soliciting, no photographs, parking for residents only and if it happens that you are lucky enough to be invited to visit a guest in their apartment, detailed instructions on how to approach the residence, and that’s only in Spuyten Duyvil, the less tony of the upper Bronx neighbourhoods, fuck Fieldston.

FIELDSTON

Fuck Fieldston

RIVERDALES

If you felt like trespassing all over Fieldston, braving their private police security, soliciting, taking pictures and parking your car where you’re not supposed to, you will see that the nice house in a leafy glade without the sun blocking behemoth can exist in New York City because that’s what happens when you live in a private community, pay dues to the Fieldston Property Owners' Association who take over responsibilities of the city and no doubt have a covenant prohibiting you to do anything within Fieldston other than drive your nice black Porsche in and out of your driveway to go to work.

This is not the case with The Riverdales, known as South Riverdale, Riverdale and North Riverdale where the cottages and other single family homes are interspersed with big apartment buildings blahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, what am I, a fucking realtor? I’m not going back up there because there’s nothing to do, of course there’s a park but there’s a park down the road from ours. Damn it, I have to go back because I didn’t find enough maps. I can’t talk about this place because I was only there for a couple of hours. I liked the Irish workmen walking their tiny dogs; I always wondered where those fellas lived. I liked the homeless shelter on the seedy end of the neighborhood and the loonies standing outside it. It always gets seedy near the border. I liked the border and I stepped over it to experience the wonders of Yonkers briefly. I liked the Bx 7 bus that took me swiftly from Riverdale to Manhattan and although it wasn’t quite as nice as the black Porsche of my other life, at least I could finish my book.

Hunts Point

Hunts Point is another poor ass neighborhood in South Bronx, this one notable for the fearful level of poverty, the lively commercial activity in the huge industrial park there and the massive, massive food markets there. I have been to other parts of New York that have maybe been as poor but the people are a jolly people, more like an ‘Oliver Twist- The Musical’ kind of poverty not the sullen, makeshift poverty of Hunts Point which manifests itself in a dearth of joy or activity- only orange food and the numbers.

I did find a Mister Softee ice cream truck distribution center and a dozen ice cream trucks waiting to be filled up with delicious goodness. It seems you can pick your own route and many of the guys do nothing more than circle the streets surrounding this Mister Softee ice cream truck distribution center plying their wares. Ha, that’s what I would do! There are so many of them, its almost a procession.

Further in, there is an old building called the Banknote Building, an old banknote building renovated for small businesses but as yet virtually empty. In spite of its emptiness, or maybe because of it, you can wander freely throughout the whole building. It’s a great place for a game of hide and seek and I got some beautiful shots of the Bruckner Expressway and beyond.

For the markets is the only reason anybody would need to go to Hunts Point, and that’s why I went there. "The World's Largest Food Distribution Center" according to the website and I tried and tried and tried to find someone with a map of the bugger. I walked and walked and talked to everybody and I came close once when a long series of ‘ask this fella’ culminated in the office of the manager of the mechanics and maintenance department, or such and the fella rifled through his filing cabinet for several minutes before admitting defeat. Damn. Thank Christ for the NYC Planning Office. If it weren’t for them boys my map of the Bronx would look like shite.

There is fantastic pizza at Fratelli’s, right there in Hunt’s Point and Joe, the owner said he would help me with a map but they never do, they never do.

Not everyone was as helpful as manager and Joe, the security guard to the fish market nearly had an aneurysm when I skirted around his checkpoint to take a picture of the prison barge near there and blew a gasket completely when I asked if he happened to have a map of the locality. He shielded his face from me and told me that he wouldn’t answer any questions at all. I must have looked a bit Talibanny that day.

I ended my tour with a visit to the new park which finally gives Southern Bronxiterish access to the water that surrounds them. Even in Autumn there was plenty going on with the fishing, taking pictures of a dancer, boozing and dog walking. When the swimming pool barge is in full swing, I bet the place is a blast. I enjoyed Hunts Point immensely and would totally gentrify the shit out that place.

The Arse-end of The Bronx- Mott Haven

I get the feeling that Mott Haven used to be a nice place to live. Walking to Bruckner Blvd from the 138th St station you pass several nice buildings, standing like good teeth in a rotten mouth and even a whole block or so given landmark status. What happened, Bronx? What made you so filthy and bedraggled? While searching for the answer I discovered several websites very similar to my own that cover this history and where you may also find about the nicer buildings and who the streets are named after and other remarkable things, the best of which is probably this;- http://www.forgotten-ny.com/. So in the interest of keeping the internet as free from useless repetition as possible and lessening my research burden I will relay only first impressions; ignorant, shallow and uneducated as they may be.

I don't know The Bronx at all so I don't know where to walk to find maps. I've ended up walking pointlessly up the whole length of a road with nothing on it but mapless projects so to eliminate these dreary journeys I found I had to do a bit of research after all. Poor neighbourhoods generally map themselves with Chinese restaurant menu maps so, using Google, I plot a circuitous course around a given neighbourhood visiting every Chinese restaurant and seeing what there is to see in between, so...

Mott Haven is a poor, poor neighbourhood in the southern-most part of The Bronx. The area seems to be mainly Puerto Rican and a little bit black. Just over the 3rd Avenue Bridge is a few blocks of big factories developers and artists are and have been turning into lofts, the vanguard of gentrification. I picked up leaflets about the big plans afoot to redevelop South Bronx but I cut up the only English language one. 'El South Bronx esta volviendo a tener barrios activos y seguros y una economia creciente,' which is good news.

I met only one other white guy (outside the Bruckner/3rd Ave Green Zone) and he seemed disappointed to see me. He was collecting his dry cleaning which seemed important to note at the time although I don't know why now. In amongst the obvious idleness, poverty and neglect there are wee flowers of real community activism, inventive and imaginative ways to improve the neighbourhood and pass the time. Because of the reduced pressure for space, lower expectations for the people who live here and the fact that things have improved dramatically (the crime rate has gone down 80% in 15 years), the people here have far more licence to do things that would be unacceptable in other parts of the city; booze on the street, massive community gardens, build a rickety old ranch house on an empty lot and keep chickens. It's great while it lasts.

Mott Haven is still a sad little place to live- a cop on every third corner, unbeautiful housing, no bars, bad food and no access to the waterfront but all that will slowly change. I hope the chickens can stay

Manhattan Finished

I've done about as much of this place as I can right now and I'm going to concentrate on the outer boroughs. Later on I'll have a wee skip about the place and see if I can pick up a map or two to fill in the gaps and write a bit about the different neighbourhoods thereabout. Here is finished Manhattan sans Liberty Island, where the Statue of Liberty is, which isn't part of Manhattan anyway.

The Greatest Chinese Menu Map Ever!

Roxbury, Queens.

Dear Michael,
I'm very drunk. I walked down a very long road in Brooklyn called Flatbush Avenue. I started on Cortelyou Rd and ended up in The Rockaways. I saw a great many things- Haitian ghetto, the Target store, Jewish suburbia, pastel polo shirts segueing into 9-11 T-shirts, a golf course, grassy wetlands to the beach, a long bridge over to Rockaway and turned right to a private community called Roxbury. I saw a party from the bridge and thirsty from my travels I went there. The hospitality, grudging and suspicious at first improved after laying low for a while amongst the middle aged, middle class republican firefighters, I told one man (Henry) about my 8 mile odyssey to their party. Not that I've anything against these people, I just get nervous surrounded by 200 of them. I believe only my accent saved me from being kicked off their private beach.

Nevertheless I made many new friends at this party who I will never see again. When I told a trio of drunk older residents I was looking for maps they only half jokingly made me promise that I wasn't a terrorist bent on destroying their community. Ha ha. I promised. Many of them are the descendants of the people who originally founded the town a hundred years ago. You can't just move in to this place, you have to be invited. Nice.

The occasion was the 100 year anniversary of the Roxbury Volunteer Fire Department and a band played music, free Budweiser. I think it is beautiful that there is room in New York City for a community of right wing, middle aged reactionaries. It was like being in Colorado Springs again- all those 9-11 T-shirts covering beer bellies, orange skin and baggy arms. Just beautiful.

St Nicholas Ave/ Washington Heights

St Nicholas Ave is a truly grand and majestic strip of real estate which my fairly grand neighborhood of Ditmas Park look like the ewok village. Past, present and future home of well to do Black people, nice parks, great real estate all the way to the meeting of Broadway at 160th St where the architecture humbles to basic tenements, the population is mainly Spanish speaking (Dominican) and the zoning changes from quite strictly residential to a lively jumble of shitty restaurants, discount stores and cell phone stores. I got a great map from an old people's home though.About the shitty restaurants- I tried to order a gyro at a pizza place, probably my first mistake and after waiting over ten minutes for it I left in a huff. I don't want to eat the gyro it takes ten minutes to make. After several more aborted attempts to have teenagers feed me fast food I stumbled delirious into a time warp. A hokey old fashioned Cuban eatery presided over by a hale old woman as her very elderly husband? dozed in front of the TV, intermittently woken by the sound of his own name attached to the junctions of her monologue.
It was still a bone dry piece of Cuban sandwich I received but at $4 including seat, who's complaining?
A lively place in the daytime, I have it on good authority that it rocks at night. Indeed it has a reputation for being the most violent and crime ridden part of Manhattan but reports may be exaggerated. It's a long old fucker of a road starting at 110th St and ending at 193rd St. I never did get to the end of it.
...and unlike in much of the rest of Manhattan where you have the smell of someone else's lunch blown through a vent at you while walking down the street, Washington Heights's wide and airy streets blow no fumes from the trough at you. I found it to be one of the more livable parts of Manhattan.

Except I did stumble into another dimension trying to find my way home- a wee mixed white/ mixed enclave carved out of Washington Heights at 181st St which calls itself Hudson Heights. It even had a wine store that sold only wine- no liquor! Also a sushi place that wasn't part of a Chinese restaurant- a true gauge of fanciness. People looked at me funny here as I trolled for maps where they mostly ignored me in Washington Heights proper. I saw a great map in a locked building, I wanted to break the window but that would have been silly, wouldn't it?