Shit Loads of Money

I used to breeze by 16th street, near Union Square everyday. Twice. Rushing my feet to get to the office, running home after work. Particularly between 5th and 6th avenues, the street required particular attention. As I am always curious about the way others live, I'd peek into street-level windows, while avoiding the various sizes and shapes of road mines. Notice, I didn't say various colors because it was at the end of the day the same shit. Amongst historic New York buildings, across from a breathtaking church, next to the private prep school, there always was some shit. You had to be rich to live off of 5th avenue. So what was this shit? They could afford dogs but they could not pay someone to follow behind them with a scooper or a bag? It amazed me to see how the rich lived in shit.


I lie awake in a loft apartment on the corner of Bethune and Washington. The noise from the cranes outside is so strong, my white noise machine is a mere swoosh in the background. Superior Ink used to be there. Now there is "Something Superior." According to the New York Times ad, the superior condo townhouses will go for just a tad bit more than 12 million dollars. That's superior to what the artists at Westbeth pay across the street. Everyone living on that block, whether on the superior side or not will breathe the same air, hear the same highway noise. And they will certainly walk into the same shit every morning. Watch out for the mighty dog walker who comes around the corner at 8AM with a thousand leashes stemming from his thin, overstretched arms.


G and I are on the bus back from our adventurous trip to the Fairway in Red Hook. G is not sharing my enthusiasm to buy produce that day. He is not digging the neighborhood. "But doesn't this feel familiar?" I say. He mumbles, "Uhmm yeah, maybe," looking over to the Park Slope lady with the fur coat. "So what, we checked out a new neighborhood," I say with forced enthusiasm as we wait for the bus. It finally arrives. We get on and take our seats. We are the only people who are not from the neighborhood in the bus. If you're not living there, you drive in and out. Well, we're neither superior, nor from the hood, so we take the bus. We get stared down. Our faces are fresh and unwanted. Sensing the tension and the increasing value of our seats, we get off the bus somewhere on Smith Street. "I think they knew we were not from that side of the BQE," I say to G as we shuffle with our groceries towards Court Street. "No shit," he replies.