Remembering Variety Photoplays: "you could get a handjob/blowjob, with no need of knowing who was giving it to you." [LL]
From 1986, THEM returns to PS122--Dennis Cooper reads to "cacophonous electric guitar live; frequently violent and exhausting dance sequences" culminating "in a horrific duet between Houston-Jones and an animal carcass on a dusty mattress."
Bad old days are back? The Guardian Angels are papering the city with recruitment flyers:
A newbie says Goodbye New York after two years. City Room commenters are unsympathetic. [CR]
And another one bites the dust--bidding bye-bye to Brooklyn. [LM]
East Village Colossus. [EVG]
In the market for a coffin? [NYS]
ArchiTakes finds more to hate about historic rowhouse renovation that puts celebrities first. [AT]
Is it a trend now to write about oneself leaving NYC? Jeez, stop whining and pack up and go already. Nobody cares.
ReplyDeleteFrom the first good-bye whinefest: "I miss you standing listlessly with the homosexuals in their tube tops outside dark-windowed clubs as they waited for rescue from their boredom."
I'm pretty sure all these transplant whiners are closet homophobes and racists with all their "ironic" jokes.
Re: Newbie leaving - seems to me he was never here in the first place. Chased a girl, she escaped and now he's going back home. It really has nothing to do with the city - he could have written about any city.
ReplyDeleteAs for the Park Slope Guy, I get where he's coming from, but I also get how others see him as a pretentious jerk. His neighborhood has changed, so he's opted to leave. Ok, but did he do anything himself to preserve his neighborhood or educate those he felt were behaving badly?
Both writers are putting blame on the city and/or the people around them as they run away. If you care so much, why not stay and fight for what you want?
Now, if about a million more could leave with them . . . .
ReplyDeleteThe Park Slope guy got in some good points about Brooklyn's psychotic parents (the parents with the 'graffiti wall' was a nice touch). The acceleration into full blown yuppiedom in the last couple of years in Park Slope has been kind of amazing. But I don't know . . .
Hey, there are a lot of reasons to leave New York. I often wonder what I'd think of the city if I moved here now for the first time, if I'd like it or think it was a historical but vastly overpriced, curiousity, like Paris, and move on. People move in and out of my street all the time - they come here looking for work, whatever, they can't make it, they leave. This is the reality of the money divide in New York, and all cities like it.
Maybe it was the absence of this economic reality that grated, in both cases.
T.
Goggla--Park Slope newbies are asshats!!Can't tell em nuttin--they know all--asshats.
ReplyDeleteHmm... Interesting to see the Guardian Angels looking for new recruits... With all of the homophobes running around lately, I'm wondering when The Pink Panthers are going to start patrolling again. Remember when you'd see them around the East/West Village?
ReplyDeleteI saw a lone Guardian Angel on the 1 train on Saturday night. I thought it was a fluke, or someone feeling nostalgic about his beret, but I guess there's more to that story.
ReplyDelete