the gentrif-erosion of manhattan

i have lived in eight apartments in five years.
in five years, i have had one flood, one fire, two mice, and three breakups.
it's not a lot, but it's something.

have you ever lit a piece of newspaper on fire and watched All the News That's Fit to Print brown and curl at the edges? sometimes i feel as though the city is doing this very thing at a rate in which i can actually see it happening. maybe it's an epidemic. i feel it getting smaller and smaller and i don't know what bloomberg is going to do about it, but since it effects me directly maybe he will want to step in. i'm sure it's at the top of his to-do list, along with banning chewing gum and cancer-causing agents like oxygen and trees. or maybe i need to stop moving. if you connected the dots to all of the memories in all of the neighborhoods in which i have lived, it would spell something really twisted. or maybe not. it would probably resemble the shape of an apple, since i kind of moved counter-clockwise. how fitting.

i am most nostalgic when i am driving through old neighborhoods and scenes-of-crimes. my ribs fuse, my fingertips go numb, and i can feel the drumbeat on my neck. not necessarily in a bad way. not always. but i become so overwhelmed by sights and smells that take me back to exactly what i was doing at that moment. i can't drive by 20th & 1st without feeling this way. or 23rd & 3rd, or bleecker & 10th, or 16th & 7th...

if you hit "star D" on my life and add seven years, it is the summer of 1986 and i am sitting in the backseat of the blue volvo listening to my walkman. the FDR feels about 50 miles long. we exit the 20th St. ramp into an army of brick buildings with hunter green windowsills and i know grandma's apartment is near. i feel safe because i am with my mother and father and sister, but once we say goodbye, and i am all alone in the guest room and the lights are out and i see the gray shadows chasing each other along the walls like cops and robbers with sirens as my soundtrack, it is a different story. i am scared. i am on mars. the next day, in broad daylight, standing in the peter cooper oval underneath an outdoor shower in rubber jellies with "true blue" playing on repeat in my head, i feel safe. but 10010 still feels like the whole wide world to me. in my mind, all of manhattan takes place on that one beating block. everything is experienced for the first time during my stays there. the first bialy. the first blue whale sighting. the first "little brown bag."

then i grow up and i move in. and with each address, i acquire a new bodega, a new shoe repair shop, a new dry cleaner, new memories, and new sets of problems. we all do. that's life. but sometimes i feel like we're running out of neighborhoods. have you ever noticed that every time it rains, diversity and record stores flow down the street, and when the sun shines and the pavement dries, another banana republic has sprouted?

i wish the city could grow neighborhoods the way it grows duane reade's, and delete the parts of the old hoods that make it so hard to be here, but it can't. besides, they say the rotten parts are what give you character. they make you smart and analytical and tough and funny. and even if they sometimes ruin your coat or break your heart, they leave you with great restaurant recommendations and the reminder to never put plastic in the oven again.