Bronx Cheer: NYC Nailed

Bart Plantenga

last time in nyc i sed, wow, what a crazy and ugly place to raise a kid. it felt confining oppressive and dreary - all the things the PR tells you ny is not! i rail often against the over-hyped image and illusion of ny as this place where invention and creativity blossom. hogwash. it is a provincial town with seething underlying antagonisms among all the people. everyone is angry frustrated stressed working too much and at night justifying endlessly why they live in nyc by going to extremes...but ny is already much more insanely not our places
since the money spinners totally took over all of manhattan...

in amsterdam the idea of fixing up a neighborhood implies that the people who lived there before will still be living there when their street gets a facelift - right now all of amsterdam is being beautified street by street - in ny/us, when a place gets 'fixed up' - east village - it means the former inhabitants can no longer afford to live there. that is a basic fundamental difference in expectation and attitude toward 'the natural process' of capitalization...

website: Bart Plantenga, http://www.wfmu.org/~bart/

email: ninplant@xs4all.nl

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