the voyage of cityboy...

Yesterday---walked, walked walked. Where, well the first walk was the most interesting. Had a whim to see the Yankee game about 12;20--jumped on the D, thinking that there would be time to get a ticket and enter the ball park. Instead, when I arrived, long lines getting in--lots of security checking---I thought that even if I got a ticket I would miss the first half hour of the game. Forgot about it. but there I was in the Bronx. So I decided to walk. Followed Jerome north to 167 the street, the glamor of the stadium soon fades, and by 167 and Jerome, one feels one is in a very poor neighborhood. Nothing like that in all of Manhattan and even in the integrated sections of Brooklyn that I freqently go to. How do describe poverty? Just a sense of a very different community--no places to go into--lots of phone places, small Chinese take outs, and bodegas. Stayed on 167th to the Grand Concourse, then over briefly to the museum a few blocks south, and then east (driven east by curiosity) on 165th. Passed Sheridan, Sherman, Grand, to Morris---all the same---finally on Morris, waited for the bus, and when it did not come walked to 161street where a 6 bus came that I took into Manhattan. Just a community trying to fend for itself---sometimes families, sometimes churches---just a strange place.
Of course, all this juxtaposed with my "past"---the first twenty one years of my life when I could have visited any one of those apartment houses to hang out with people very much like myself. Where did it go? Well, you know---we were born to take one step further than our parents, and at that point, it was not to difficult. And we bequeathed the neighborhood, the art deco houses etc to ...? Its over 50 years later, cityboy  come to terms with it.
  The other walk was after hanging out at La Flaca---touring the once heavily hispanic but now heavily "millenial" lower east side, looking in at all the bars and restaurants that seem to come in every day.  And more luxury housing--more and more of it. Is that the story of the city today..? Displacement?  Still, plenty of places for cityboy to go and have a beer, if his stomach approves.
 That is all for now---work continues, will report soon.