New_York

Arrival in Megopolis

      It had been a few years since my last trip to the City That Never Sleeps
      and I was anxious to see the new and improved Gotham, made clean and neat
      under the leadership of the Guliani Regime. To some a blessed man...to
      others IL DUCE in a combover. I swore not to prejudge and see for myself
      whether New York was better or worse off.

      I made plans in my surprisingly comfortable bus seat as we rambled on
      toward the city. I had certain places I wanted to check out and formed a
      loose itinerary as I held my breath against overpowering waves of ennui
      wafting from the ultra hip, two cell phone wielding gent in the seat in
      front of me. I was going to stay with my friend Karen who lives in the
      heart of Greenwich Village. She had agreed to play hostess and tour guide
      to me on my fact finding mission.

      The sky was low overcast with fat gray clouds and the air was wet and
      chilled as the bus cruised down through Harlem and 8th Avenue to the Port
      Authority Terminal. The tops of the massive skyscrapers were hidden on
      this unusually cold April friday. This did not bode well for my hopes of
      many high level city photos. I'd have to shoot from the ground on this
      trip. That was fine by me as New York is one of those cities as impressive
      from the bottom up as it is from the top down. And I don't mind milling in
      the gutter.

      I stepped off the bus into a mass of brown peoples and more languages than
      Babel knew. All nationalities swirled around me chattering on in
      incomprehesible syllables. I felt like an intrepid white explorer
      strolling a bazzar on some dark continent. This illusion was quickly
      shattered by a security guard screeching obscenities at someone. This was
      the New York I remembered.

After a short subway ride I met Karen at W. 4th street and we walked to
      her apartment in the Village. It was freezing out, a miserable afternoon,
      so we decided to stay at her place to sip a few beers before heading out
      into the night.

      Greenwich Village is a strange area of Manhattan. It is both ritzy and
      poor, hip and gauche, cool and classless, gay and straight, black and
      white, artsy and utilitarian. All of these factions seem to easily coexist
      in its narrow and angled streets that are so unlike the rest of the
      island. It is one of those places that you find in most large
      cities....the Place Where It All Happens. The Village has a funky
      vibe...musical....it remains rebellious and subversive in spite of the
      proliferation of transplanted midwestern yuppies and the advent of the
      cell phone and Cosmo magazine. If you listen closely enough...past the
      booming base of passing car stereos and honking taxis...you can still hear
      the echoes of Dylan, Kerouac, Krupa, Ginsberg and the sarcastic rantings
      of Tuli Kupferberg.