Ghost Towns
Yesterday, my mother came to look after Solly so I could go buy some clothing that fit me (I've gone up a size or two since having my son; I have no worries about that in and of itself, but it does mean that I have closet full of clothing that no longer fits me, and that is frustrating). I had been looking forward to this: I was going to go to the East Village, where I grew up, and hit Trash and Vaudeville and Meg for the kind of clothing that makes me feel like myself again. But it was one of the more depressing excursions I've had in a while.
I was reading Jennifer Marie Brissett's excellent Elysium on the subway, and was smack in the middle of a chapter taking place in the bombed-out ruins of an unnamed city when I reached my stop, and then I came above ground and the first thing I saw was the street torn up where Astor Place used to be, and the cube was gone. My stomach dropped and I may have actually staggered back. I haven't been around in quite a while, what with the pregnancy and the baby and nobody had mentioned this to me at all. When I was a little girl I thought the cube was hollow and you could go inside and play, and I remember pushing it round when I was a teenager. And it was just part of the landscape, and now it is not. They say it'll be back, but they also say there'll be a second-avenue subway, so I'm not holding my breath.
The absence of the cube made me take a good look around Astor Place and St. Marks Place, and I realized how little it looked like the place I'd gotten on the subway to go to school from sixth grade through senior year. All these chic glass and metal buildings; no Dojo, no Sounds, no drunks or homeless people (and where are they now? probably dead, those guys were living rough), lots of chi-chi activity. It was like seeing an overlay on a familiar picture; everywhere I looked I had to clear my head of what I knew used to be there to see what was actually there now, and I didn't like what I saw. I made my way to Trash and Vaudeville. I walked in to silence. Jimmy, the manager was in between music and there was nobody else in the store. I floated through the shop picking up random items to try on as he put on "Rebel, Rebel," and felt surreal, absent. As I was trying clothing on I looked around the walls and tried to figure out who if any of the referenced musicians were still alive. Not the Ramones. Not Joe Strummer. Not Bowie. John Lydon, I guess. I bought a couple pairs of jeans and floated out, down to 9th St, wondering if the coming move to 7th between 1st and A meant the shops' days were numbered. Gallery Vercon is closing after 30 years. I didn't recognize more than a handful of the boutiques. Second-Hand Rose closed down long ago, and I made my peace with that (also found her again running a couple of tables at the flea market on the Upper West Side on Sundays) but Jill Anderson is gone too, now. Meg is still there--hey, Meg is all over the city now! I couldn't find Fialka. I think a vintage shop called Dusty Buttons is there instead, but it's possible I just overlooked it, as I was in a haze?
It felt like a ghost town. Not because it was empty--there was plenty of activity on the streets. But because I felt like I was walking in a different neighborhood than the one that was actually around me. I've felt like this before, when Jenna Felice died and I tried to retrace my steps in the neighborhood we grew up in, and everywhere I went I felt her ghost. But this time I was the ghost, a remnant of the old East Village trying to find her bearings in the new one, moving in the same geographical grooves she always had, and not finding anything the same. That's why they call it "haunting," right? You're in your old haunts, but there are these new people and everything is different, everything but you. Of course, I'm different too; not a teenager with heavy black liquid eyeliner and fishnet stockings and motorcycle boots, not a young woman with fire-engine red hair and combat boots--well, I still wear combat boots. But a middle-aged mother with many white hairs who has appeared in public in yoga pants.
I went to the East Village to try to get what I needed to feel like myself, but there was no there left there anymore. I used to staunchly refer to the neighborhood as the Lower East Side, but fuck it, that battle was fought and lost years ago. I don't like the East Village any more. I'm not sure there's that much to like about most of Manhattan any more.
No wonder ghosts are so pissy all the time.
I was reading Jennifer Marie Brissett's excellent Elysium on the subway, and was smack in the middle of a chapter taking place in the bombed-out ruins of an unnamed city when I reached my stop, and then I came above ground and the first thing I saw was the street torn up where Astor Place used to be, and the cube was gone. My stomach dropped and I may have actually staggered back. I haven't been around in quite a while, what with the pregnancy and the baby and nobody had mentioned this to me at all. When I was a little girl I thought the cube was hollow and you could go inside and play, and I remember pushing it round when I was a teenager. And it was just part of the landscape, and now it is not. They say it'll be back, but they also say there'll be a second-avenue subway, so I'm not holding my breath.
The absence of the cube made me take a good look around Astor Place and St. Marks Place, and I realized how little it looked like the place I'd gotten on the subway to go to school from sixth grade through senior year. All these chic glass and metal buildings; no Dojo, no Sounds, no drunks or homeless people (and where are they now? probably dead, those guys were living rough), lots of chi-chi activity. It was like seeing an overlay on a familiar picture; everywhere I looked I had to clear my head of what I knew used to be there to see what was actually there now, and I didn't like what I saw. I made my way to Trash and Vaudeville. I walked in to silence. Jimmy, the manager was in between music and there was nobody else in the store. I floated through the shop picking up random items to try on as he put on "Rebel, Rebel," and felt surreal, absent. As I was trying clothing on I looked around the walls and tried to figure out who if any of the referenced musicians were still alive. Not the Ramones. Not Joe Strummer. Not Bowie. John Lydon, I guess. I bought a couple pairs of jeans and floated out, down to 9th St, wondering if the coming move to 7th between 1st and A meant the shops' days were numbered. Gallery Vercon is closing after 30 years. I didn't recognize more than a handful of the boutiques. Second-Hand Rose closed down long ago, and I made my peace with that (also found her again running a couple of tables at the flea market on the Upper West Side on Sundays) but Jill Anderson is gone too, now. Meg is still there--hey, Meg is all over the city now! I couldn't find Fialka. I think a vintage shop called Dusty Buttons is there instead, but it's possible I just overlooked it, as I was in a haze?
It felt like a ghost town. Not because it was empty--there was plenty of activity on the streets. But because I felt like I was walking in a different neighborhood than the one that was actually around me. I've felt like this before, when Jenna Felice died and I tried to retrace my steps in the neighborhood we grew up in, and everywhere I went I felt her ghost. But this time I was the ghost, a remnant of the old East Village trying to find her bearings in the new one, moving in the same geographical grooves she always had, and not finding anything the same. That's why they call it "haunting," right? You're in your old haunts, but there are these new people and everything is different, everything but you. Of course, I'm different too; not a teenager with heavy black liquid eyeliner and fishnet stockings and motorcycle boots, not a young woman with fire-engine red hair and combat boots--well, I still wear combat boots. But a middle-aged mother with many white hairs who has appeared in public in yoga pants.
I went to the East Village to try to get what I needed to feel like myself, but there was no there left there anymore. I used to staunchly refer to the neighborhood as the Lower East Side, but fuck it, that battle was fought and lost years ago. I don't like the East Village any more. I'm not sure there's that much to like about most of Manhattan any more.
No wonder ghosts are so pissy all the time.