New York Faces Dramatic Consequences of Crisis

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Doubt, Worry and Fear
New York Faces Dramatic Consequences of Crisis

(Induced by the cultural corrupting "Chosen Ones" of course....CSR)

By Klaus Brinkbäumer in New York

Part 3: "Everyone Around Here Was on Welfare or Drugs"

Like so many others before him, Birchard came here seeking work. His father, a staunch Republican, worked for the Campbell soup company before teaching airmen how to drop bombs accurately. Tom wanted to get out of Pennsylvania, so he moved to the East Village in 1967. "It was crazy here, and it became my home overnight," he recalls. Here there were blacks, lesbians and gays, and Andy Warhol would come by in the evening from his place further up on Central Park. At the time, Tom Birchard didn't know what he wanted to do in life. It didn't matter. He ate breakfast at the Veselka, met his first wife, his father-in-law died, and Birchard finally realized where he would spend the rest of his life: at the Veselka.

Back then, kids used to play lacrosse on Second Avenue. Car repair men would grease engines on the sidewalk. Painters painted, writers wrote, musicians rehearsed, and hippies watched, read, listened and got stoned. Manhattan was a different place, a good place to be in those pre-70s days. There was a Polish woman at the Veselka who took your order, set the tables, cooked the borscht, served the borscht, took your money and washed up. And she wasn't fast.

But then the city ran out of money, couldn't pay its bills, bureaucracy and construction projects became too expensive, and tax revenues couldn't cover the costs. The subway ground to a halt, the potholes were covered with sheets of steel, the rats came out, and the district turned bad.

Birchard says the "Mafia clubhouse" used to be over there on the corner of First Avenue. Its runners went around collecting money for the numbers game racket. Heroin replaced hash, the hippies became pimps and prostitutes, break-ins and murder shot up. It happened right here, around the corner, in front of the door, even inside the restaurant, which was only half as big as it is now. The people of the East Village carried knives, and Birchard recalls that every apartment got robbed. They stole the TV out of his place, which cost him 125 dollars a month. "East of Avenue A landlords burned their own houses down because no-one was paying rent anymore. Everyone round here was either on welfare or on drugs," he says.

A City at a Junction

And then -- doesn't it always? -- the pendulum swung back. Cheap housing attracted young artists, chess-piece carvers, and designers, cafés opened up and students from New York University over on Washington Square flocked to the Veselka after the Village Voice wrote about Tom Birchard's blini, a kind of Eastern European sweet pancake.

Then came the 1990s; the decade of money. Wall Street took over New York, and the East Village was taken over by those who could afford $2,000 rents. Next to arrive were the fast-food chains: Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts and the like. "Give me a break," Tom says. "Stop! That's enough now!"

And now?

The city is at a junction. Everyone can sense it. Will the 70s return, ushering the past back in? History rarely repeats itself, and it certainly never ends. Nor will this city ever stop developing. It is changing simply because immigrants will continue to come to New York, changing entire blocks, and with them the rules.

A new, once unimaginable, New York under Mayor Bloomberg is coming to terms with global warming and cycle paths on Times Square, Ninth Avenue, from east to west, and only the taxi drivers still veer from left to right across six lanes of traffic, mowing down cyclists in the process. White bicycles, so-called "ghost bikes," are tied to lampposts as memorials to the victims.

Safety More Important Than Money

The New York of the Wall Street era was a city of egoists. Now rich unemployed people offer to help serve poor unemployed people in soup kitchens, the "city meals-on-wheels" service is growing, and former bankers now want to coach school baseball teams. If money makes people narcissistic, does a lack of it make them better?

Seminaries are reporting a rise in intake. Sociologists claim the new New Yorkers are starting to appreciate the value of regular work again. "In the past people didn't give a damn about safety. Safety was something for low-fliers," says Barry Schwartz, a psychologist at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. But now more and more people are realizing that "safety is more important for our happiness than wealth."

In years gone by, urban researchers described New York as a "hedonistic treadmill," the city of "maximizers." Everything had to be perfect, then even better, and everything was constantly being questioned because there was too much choice. New Yorkers were never content. Is this changing? Will calm come, composure even? Will what you do become more important than what you buy?

The same sociologists say aid organizations don't need more helpers because they're running out of money. The same sociologists say the worst thing that could happen to an urbanite is to lose his job because the failure and disappointment plunges them into the abyss here as in all other major Western cities.

Perhaps the city will soon be divided anew -- here the new communities, there the new ghettos -- and return to the rough New York of Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver," a New York of cheap rents, trash and murder. Another incendiary issue is that black men, an above-average proportion of whom are poorly or under-educated, are far more likely to lose their job than any other socioeconomic group.

Grace Dolan Flood says the city is spiraling downward, but New York is not a place that gives up, nor is America a powerless nation. "We're not just going to roll over and die," she says defiantly.

Grace would like to buy real estate. Right now. She could live off 10 or 12 apartments. But banks aren't handing out loans. She applied to become a New York City schoolteacher. She was invited for an interview -- that was the first hurdle. Teachers in New York earn $46,000 a year. She got through the entire application procedure before the program was axed. The city wouldn't be hiring any new teachers. "Sorry," they said. They had to cut costs.

"Winding down my upper-class lifestyle won't be hard," Grace says, pointing to her Irish heritage. Her family came to New York when Ireland was the poorest country in Western Europe. The Dolans lived in Brooklyn before it became fashionable. Her father unloaded cargo planes at Kennedy Airport, but he was also a janitor and cleaned offices. Sometimes he took his kids along. "I can still clean any bathroom in five minutes flat," Grace says. Her parents were determined all five of their children would have middle-class lives. They succeeded, and all five went to college. "I wanted my parents to be proud of me," Grace says. "Immigrants will lead this country out of the crisis because immigrants don't assume they have a right to a better life. They fight for it."

Grace has rented out her apartment. She can no longer afford the once paltry sum of $3,500 she needs to pay off her loans and feed herself every month. She found a cheaper place for herself. Grace no longer spends $2 every morning buying the New York Times. And who needs a $5 latte from Starbucks?

In the past, Wall Streeters went out to eat every day. Today former Wall Streeters go out for a meal on Saturdays, skip the appetizers and drink beer instead of wine.


New York Faces Dramatic Consequences of Crisis

By Klaus Brinkbäumer in New York

Part 4: 'We're at a Watershed. Everyone Knows That'

Fred Austin knows Lower Manhattan well; the people, the "New York feeling." He grew up here. Austin sits at the back of Katz's, the restaurant he runs on Houston. Over there is where Meg Ryan showed Billy Crystal how women fake an orgasm in the famous scene from the movie "When Harry Met Sally." Here's where Bill Clinton ate. It's a room full of photos; a museum that renews itself every day. The pastrami sandwich is its specialty.

The humor is Jewish: How many people work here? "Half of them," Austin replies.

Austin says New York is and remains the center of the creative world: "All the creative, smart money comes here. That's not going to stop all of a sudden. Young people are moving to New York, and they want to live, not suffer. Thirty years ago, people were predicting that cities would eventually die out. But no longer. We're a long way from the New York of the 70s. The crisis may be depressing and its effects wide-reaching, but urban culture -- a blend of ideas, strength, and energy -- simply can't be replaced. We're making a comeback."


http://www.spiegel.de/international/wor ... -3,00.html