Thursday, October 11, 2007
Street Scene
If you go out the front of my building & turn right, you immediately see questionable apartment buildings & often pass some not very nice people, & a block away there's a small liquor store & dark, nasty little bar. If you turn left, one block up are some better maintained apartments , & a block later is a clean, well-lit 7-11 & very pleasant single family home streets where a friend of mine lives. I'm at a crossroads corner & I rarely turn right. In some ways, it's not much different than where I used to reside, there were nearby streets I avoided after dark. Living in downtown Rahway for so many years, I worked through my interest in street scenes. By the time I moved I was bored by the people hanging out on the benches & corners, couldn't be bothered to stop & watch police frisk & arrest bottom-feeding drug dealers & angry drunks, & I always crossed the street rather than wade through a crowd of rowdy high schoolers surrounding two kids shoving each other & screaming,"Fock you muthafocka." The same things got my attention that had always gotten it: fire engines, long freight trains, rivers after heavy rain, & attractive women. In late summer, I'd get an iced coffee & sit in train station plaza when the butterfly bushes were in bloom & attracting monarchs.
Some residents of my building sit out front on the stoop. The landlord doesn't approve of it but he can't prevent it. Sitting there for hours, of course they become familiar with the punks & creeps living in the buildings across the street, or coming here to sell the smallest available retail sizes. By craning their necks they even see some of the activity all the way down by the nasty bar. I guess it all looks rough-edged after awhile. But it's all happening to the right. Sometimes I stop & chat for a few minutes, then walk to the left. Here's what I see on the street:
1. The punks don't wear cool clothes.
2. They don't have cars.
3. They don't have girlfriends.
4. Most of them act & sound stupid.
So if you're a young street guy on this corner, you're demonstrating that someone else is dressing snappy. Someone else is driving an Escalade with tinted windows (or even an old Toyota). Someone else is getting laid at 2 am on a weekend (small, anorexic women who look like 12 year old boys are the fashion). That's not interesting. Occasionally, a higher up in whatever organization comes by in a late model vehicle to check you out, maybe to collect the money, maybe to make sure you're not high on the product. The window rolls down, heavy bass thumping hip hop on an expensive sound system. All you got is a beeping walkie talkie. Well, you can always hope. But your future is the county lock up & a public defender. You would have been treated better running numbers for the Italians.
It's hard to find a parking space around here at midnight. Over half of those spaces open up between 5 & 7 on weekday mornings. Between 7 & 8 dozens of kids leave for school, yellow buses or walking, many accompanied by a parent. That's the neighborhood, too.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Some residents of my building sit out front on the stoop. The landlord doesn't approve of it but he can't prevent it. Sitting there for hours, of course they become familiar with the punks & creeps living in the buildings across the street, or coming here to sell the smallest available retail sizes. By craning their necks they even see some of the activity all the way down by the nasty bar. I guess it all looks rough-edged after awhile. But it's all happening to the right. Sometimes I stop & chat for a few minutes, then walk to the left. Here's what I see on the street:
1. The punks don't wear cool clothes.
2. They don't have cars.
3. They don't have girlfriends.
4. Most of them act & sound stupid.
So if you're a young street guy on this corner, you're demonstrating that someone else is dressing snappy. Someone else is driving an Escalade with tinted windows (or even an old Toyota). Someone else is getting laid at 2 am on a weekend (small, anorexic women who look like 12 year old boys are the fashion). That's not interesting. Occasionally, a higher up in whatever organization comes by in a late model vehicle to check you out, maybe to collect the money, maybe to make sure you're not high on the product. The window rolls down, heavy bass thumping hip hop on an expensive sound system. All you got is a beeping walkie talkie. Well, you can always hope. But your future is the county lock up & a public defender. You would have been treated better running numbers for the Italians.
It's hard to find a parking space around here at midnight. Over half of those spaces open up between 5 & 7 on weekday mornings. Between 7 & 8 dozens of kids leave for school, yellow buses or walking, many accompanied by a parent. That's the neighborhood, too.
Labels: Elizabeth NJ
