You know why: It's our home. It was my parents' and grandparents' home. I'm not leaving.
Nor am I saying that every neighborhood is dystopian. Not every neighborhood has illegal immigrants setting out blankets in the streets full of stolen goods for sale, or women their bodies for sale, or strung-out drug addicts sprawled against vacant s…
You know why: It's our home. It was my parents' and grandparents' home. I'm not leaving.
Nor am I saying that every neighborhood is dystopian. Not every neighborhood has illegal immigrants setting out blankets in the streets full of stolen goods for sale, or women their bodies for sale, or strung-out drug addicts sprawled against vacant stores. Not every subway station has lunatics screaming out inner demons. But it's a crap shoot.
For a couple of years, my neighborhood had a band of substance-addicted vagrants who took over a block and used the post office steps, apartment building vestibules, store grates, and homeowners' gardens as their toilets and vomitoriums. We all of us had to scoop up foul excrement every day, sometimes a couple of times a day.
Kind of hard to Clorox beneath a forsythia. It was diarrhea; in summer, swarming with flies. Was it healthy for any of us to be wiping it up?
Ever get a smear of feces in your arm? I have. A guy had squirted his bowels against a shrub I was trying to clean beneath. No matter what I put on it -- soap, iodine, Clorox, Comet -- it stank for a good 24 or more hours.
Somehow we got rid of the guys, but our experience makes me attuned to what our neighbors in other parts of the city are going through. I think that's what it means to be a citizen of a city. You don't just get to live in your own little enclave.
You know why: It's our home. It was my parents' and grandparents' home. I'm not leaving.
Nor am I saying that every neighborhood is dystopian. Not every neighborhood has illegal immigrants setting out blankets in the streets full of stolen goods for sale, or women their bodies for sale, or strung-out drug addicts sprawled against vacant stores. Not every subway station has lunatics screaming out inner demons. But it's a crap shoot.
For a couple of years, my neighborhood had a band of substance-addicted vagrants who took over a block and used the post office steps, apartment building vestibules, store grates, and homeowners' gardens as their toilets and vomitoriums. We all of us had to scoop up foul excrement every day, sometimes a couple of times a day.
Kind of hard to Clorox beneath a forsythia. It was diarrhea; in summer, swarming with flies. Was it healthy for any of us to be wiping it up?
Ever get a smear of feces in your arm? I have. A guy had squirted his bowels against a shrub I was trying to clean beneath. No matter what I put on it -- soap, iodine, Clorox, Comet -- it stank for a good 24 or more hours.
Somehow we got rid of the guys, but our experience makes me attuned to what our neighbors in other parts of the city are going through. I think that's what it means to be a citizen of a city. You don't just get to live in your own little enclave.