Homeless Reappearing (& Vanishing)

There's been all this panicked talk recently about an increased visibility of homeless people. The neoliberal media is worried about a return to the city's "bad old days." Mayor de Blasio just sent a swarm of NYPD to guard Tompkins Square Park from the people who sleep in it. Again, there has been no recent spike in the homeless population--the massive increase happened under Bloomberg's stingy policies. They're just not getting hassled, dragged away, and imprisoned like they were under our previous two mayors. The homeless have always been with us.

Which brings me to a 1960 essay by Jack Kerouac, "The Vanishing American Hobo." Wrote Kerouac, "The American Hobo has a hard time hoboing nowadays due to the increase in police surveillance." Prosperous towns "don’t want old bums any more."

Bums, hobos, homeless--they don't vanish because the city takes care of them, giving them psychiatric care and affordable housing. They "vanish" because they are put in jail or swept to the margins. Bloomberg even hatched a scheme to load them onto old cruise ships and push them out to sea.

Anyway, here's a selection from Kerouac's essay in which he focuses on the old Bowery.


from Lionel Rogosin's The Bowery

The Bowery is the haven for hobos who came to the big city to make the big time by getting pushcarts and collecting cardboard. -- Lots of Bowery bums are Scandinavian, lots of them bleed easily because they drink too much. -- When winter comes bums drink a drink called smoke, it consists of wood alcohol and a drop of iodine and a scab of lemon, this they gulp down and wham! they hibernate all winter so as not to catch cold, because they dont live anywhere, and it gets very cold outside in the city in winter. -- Sometimes hobos sleep arm-in-arm to keep warm, right on the sidewalk. Bowery Mission veterans say that the beer-drinking bums are the most belligerent of the lot.

Fred Bunz is the great Howard Johnson's of the bums -- it is located on 277 Bowery in New York. They write the menu in soap on the windows. -- You see the bums reluctantly paying fifteen cents for pig brains, twenty-five cents for goulash, and shuffling out in thin cotton shirts in the cold November night to go and make the lunar Bowery with a smash of broken bottle in an alley where they stand against a wall like naughty boys. -- Some of them wear adventurous rainy hats picked up by the track in Hugo Colorado or blasted shoes kicked off by Indians in the dumps of Juarez, or coats from the lugubrious salon of the seal and fish. --Bum hotels are white and tiled and seem as though they were upright johns. -- Used to be bums told tourists that they once were successful doctors, now they tell tourists they were once guides for movie stars or directors in Africa and that when TV came into being they lost their safari rights.

...


Fred Bunz, where Whole Foods is today

American hobo Lou Jenkins from Allentown Pennsylvania was interviewed at Fred Bunz's on the Bowery. -- "What you wanta know all this info for, what you want?"

"I understand that you've been a hobo travelin' around the country."

"How about givin' a fella a few bits for some wine before we talk."

"Al, go get the wine."

"Where's this gonna be in, the Daily News?"

"No, in a book."

"What are you young kids doing here, I mean where's the drink?"

"Al's gone to the liquor store -- You wanted Thunderbird, wasn't it?"

"Yair."

Lou Jenkins then grew worse----"How about a few bits for a flop tonight?"

"Okay, we just wanta ask you a few questions like why did you leave Allentown?"

"My wife. -- My wife, -- Never get married. You'll never live it down. You mean to say it's gonna be in a book hey what I'm sayin'?"

"Come on say something about bums or something."

"Well, whattya wanta know about bums? Lot of 'em around, kinda tough these days, no money -- lissen, how about a good meal?"

"See you in the Sagamore." (Respectable bums' cafeteria at Third and Cooper Union.)

"Okay kid, thanks a lot." -- He opens the Thunderbird bottle with one expert flip of the plastic seal. -- Glub, as the moon rises resplendent as a rose he swallows with big ugly lips thirsty to gulp the throat down, Sclup! and down goes the drink and his eyes be-pop themselves and he licks tongue on top lip and says "H-a-h!" And he shouts "Don't forget my name is spelled Jenkins, J-e-n-k-y-n-s. --"

Another character -- "You say that your name is Ephram Freece of Pawling New York?"

"Well, no, my name is James Russell Hubbard."

"You look pretty respectable for a bum."

"My grandfather was a Kentucky colonel."

"Oh?"

"Yes."

"Whatever made you come here to Third Avenue?"

"I really cant do it, I don't care, I cant be bothered, I feel nothing, I dont care anymore. I'm sorry but --somebody stole my razor blade last night, if you can lay some money on me I'll buy myself a Schick razor."

"Where will you plug it in? Do you have such facilities?"

"A Schick injector."

"Oh."

"And I always carry this book with me -- The Rules of St. Benedict. A dreary book, but well I got another book in my pack. A dreary book too I guess."

"Why do you read it then?"

"Because I found it -- I found it in Bristol last year."

"What are you interested in? You like interested in something?"

"Well, this other book I got there is er, yee, er, a big strange book -- you shouldn't be interviewing me. Talk to that old nigra fella over there with the harmonica -- I'm no good for nothing, all I want is to be left alone."

"I see you smoke a pipe."

"Yeah -- Granger tobacco. Want some?"

"Will you show me the book?"

"No, I aint got it with me, I only got this with me." -- He points to his pipe and tobacco.

"Can you say something?"

"Lightin flash."

Jane's Walk on the Bowery

This weekend, May 2 and 3, come downtown for a Jane's Walk about Hyper-Gentrification and Appropriation on the Bowery. I organized and wrote the walk, while Kyle Supley from #SaveNYC will be your knowledgeable and charismatic guide.



Jane's Walk is a global "movement of free, citizen-led walking tours inspired by Jane Jacobs." In New York City, the walks are sponsored by the Municipal Arts Society.

Visit the site for more on the Bowery walk and many others. Here's a description:

For over a century, the Bowery’s character had been of the countercultural sort. Since the late 1800s it had been the sleazy territory of outsiders—punks, artists, bums, queers, and drop-outs, drag queens, prostitutes, tattoo artists, and con men. It was a haven for homosexuals when it was illegal and unsafe to be gay. Groundbreaking artists, including Mark Rothko, moved to the Bowery in the 1950s. More artists arrived through the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, including Jean-Michel Basquiat and Robert Mapplethorpe. The music scene at CBGB’s gave birth to punk rock. Then, in the 1990s, everything began to change.

Today, the Bowery, once synonymous with Skid Row, has become a luxury brand that appropriates its gritty past, sanitizes it, and then sells it for a sky-high price. On this walk, organized by Jeremiah Moss of Vanishing New York and #SaveNYC, and guided by preservationist Kyle Supley, participants will tour the main sites of the Bowery’s massive transformation and engage in a discussion about hyper-gentrification and appropriation. If time allows, participants will also loop back to Houston Street via Rivington and Essex for a look at how hyper-gentrification has transformed what is now known as “Hell Square.”

Globe Slicers

As the Bowery continues its radical shift from Skid Row, restaurant supply, and lamps to stratospheric luxury, I am always relieved to walk by and see Globe Slicers still in business.

It's been in business since 1947.



Chances are, unless you run a deli, you're never going to need a slicer. But the place is worth a peek, if only for its windows.



They are cluttered with a collection of random items--baseball photos, transistor radios, dolls, books that warn of "Genocide Emergency TODAY."



There's a large and eerie doll dressed in a pith helmet and what looks like a Boy Scout uniform, a button pinned to its arm that says STOP IRAN.



The interior of the shop is equally fascinating, a cacophony of slicers, boxes, papers, the detritus of 67 years, and a slice (sorry) of the old Bowery, before everything was sleek and clean, sterilized for the comfort of newcomers.

White House Flop

As Grieve reported yesterday, the White House hostel, nee flophouse, has closed forever on the Bowery. The building has been sold and it looks like the 97-year-old place will be demolished, replaced by a 9-story hotel.



Awhile back, I went in to take a look around before it vanished.

The old Bowery men were mostly gone, just a few "permanent" residents remained. The long, narrow corridors were quiet, except for some snoring.



In 2009, the Times visited the White House before it had been turned into a tourist hostel. They described the lobby: "Residents sit hunched over cans of soda or cups of coffee, eyes closed or staring, lost in silence. A man in a wheelchair whose left leg ends in a stump below the knee can often be found there, listening to music on earphones."

By the time I got there, the lobby was full of young foreign tourists clicking away on laptops. The Bowery men had been bought out for little money, sent away.



Signs still warned, "NO SPITTING."

Guest rooms remained claustrophobic flophouse cubicles, 4' x 6' of paper-thin walls and no ceilings. Inside, I could hear the next-door neighbor's raspy breathing.



The White House was opened in 1917 by a man named Euzebius Ghelardi. They still have a ledger dating back to 1918--hopefully, to be preserved. Maybe it'll end up in this rich guy's basement with the rest of the vanished Bowery.

Bowery Bar Protest Signs

While watching Kevin Frech's documentary Bowery Dish, I was excited to see the following shot of 38 East 4th Street, the former tenement that stood next to Bowery Bar:



For years, I've been trying to find a photo of this window--and to find out who was behind the signs, a question that remains unanswered.

In addition to "Cooper Union: How could you do this to our neighborhood," there was also a box sign with a red blinking light inside of it. You can just barely see it in the lower left of the window here. I don't remember what it said.

A little history:

When nightclub developers Eric Goode and Serge Becker opened the "grit-to-glam" celebrity hangout Bowery Bar on the site of an old gas station in 1994, the locals got restless. The Times reported that many members of the neighborhood association and community board argued “that the bar, and others they believe would open in its wake, will erode the character of the area by changing it from a haven for light industry and artists into a trendy night spot."

That year, the New Yorker reported on "a curiously medieval sight" outside Bowery Bar, when "a small crowd of Bowery denizens were peering over the courtyard wall, like serfs at the castle gates." New York magazine called the scene “an exercise in extreme cultural dissonance, evoking images of Calvin Klein and Linda Evangelista sipping Cristal on the inside as derelicts guzzle Night Train on the outside.”


the cultural dissonance continues today

In 1995 a group of artists, purportedly led by bicycle activist George Bliss, painted a trail of footprints leading to the bar, marked with slogans like "Boycott the Bowery Bar" and "Don't Party on the Poor." Bliss and other detractors argued that the bar was operating without a zoning variance, doing business on land zoned for light manufacturing, an environment conducive to artists. In the Times, Goode responded, "We're manufacturing. We're manufacturing hamburgers."

At some point, in the tenement window next to the luxe lounge’s entrance, a protesting neighbor put up the “Cooper Union, how could you do this to us?" sign. (It was the college that owned the land and had granted the lease to Bowery Bar.) The sign lasted a long while, providing a constant protest that could not go unseen by Bowery Bar and its customers.


before

But by 2007, Goode and his new partner, Sean MacPherson, would take over the protestor's tenement, call it a brownstone, and turn it into the monied hipster hotel Lafayette House.

I don’t know what became of the protester and the angry sign--or to anyone else who lived in that building. (Does anyone know?) The window where the signs once hung is now the doorway into Bowery Bar's exclusive hotel.


after

Plantworks

VANISHING

A tipster writes in about the imminent closing of Plantworks on East 4th Street: "I talked to the owner who said after 40 years they will be losing their lease, and are closing. The rent has gone up from $15k to $34k a month."



Plantworks is being essentially kicked out. The shop will shut down May 31, with the outdoor garden center closing June 31. 



This may have been in the works for awhile, as Grieve reported back in 2012 when a For Lease sign appeared in the window. Plantworks has been in business since 1974.

Wartella's Strip Show

Award-winning Village Voice cartoonist M. Wartella has just published a book of his work, Wartella's Strip Show. I picked one up recently at the Comic Arts Brooklyn fest and was impressed, especially by his giddily incendiary "Runnin Scared" pieces, many of which chronicle moments of extreme gentrification in the city.

You'll be able to find the book in stores January 14. Until then, you can view an excerpt here and buy it online here--or get a signed edition on ebay.

I asked Wartella a few questions about his work.



What made you decide to publish a collection of your work and why now?

I needed to unload all this crap! I've been cartooning professionally since I was ten years old, so that's 25 years worth of printed matter that was filling my closets. It was time to set it all free and the amazing guys at Burger Records, an awesome little record label outta L.A., they believed in it and made it happen!

I'm most interested in your Runnin Scared cartoons, since they deal so much with gentrification in the city. They have a busy, jam-packed quality, such a departure from your previous work. How did you decide to go with that style for the themes of Runnin Scared?

I just wanted to do something different! I talk about this a little bit in the book, I was inspired mostly by super-old-school political cartoons like Charles Nast or the original Puck. Most cartoonists nowadays are doing either topical 4-panel strips (like Sutton, Sorensen, or Rall) or those obnoxious one-panel political cartoons like you read in USAtoday or something. But those are drawn so simply, I wanted to draw a complex cartoon with no beginning, middle, or end. Something that felt like a real New York street scene! I even based the drawings on how the locations actually looked at the time, right down to the street signs and characters I saw. Those are real New York Freaks in there!


"Bowery Booms: Whole Foods Grand Opening on the Bowery"


Detail: "There goes the neighborhood!"

Cartoons like Bowery Booms and others are amazing, fully loaded snapshots of moments in time when certain neighborhoods--the Bowery, the High Line--went over the edge into hypergentrification. What are your feelings about what happened to those neighborhoods at that time?

Well, gentrification is a double-edged sword. We all love the gritty city we first fell in love with. But change is inevitable. It's part of life. Some of the conveniences improve a neighborhood, but we definitely don't need more 7-11s. That's SO un-New York!!! Yeccch!

In many of the Runnin Scared cartoons, you've got an old New York character, usually down and out, a bum, wino, or bag lady, sort of caught surprised in the middle of it all. I wondered if that person represented some aspect of yourself?

Yeah, I think you're honing in on something. I do imagine myself as some of the characters. Or I did when I drew them, just watching the scene unfold, brown-bagging it from the sidelines!


"The Great Rock N Roll Swindle: The Gentrification of the High Line Area"


Detail: Lou dreams of luxury

In the Great Rock N Roll Swindle, you depicted Lou Reed as an aged sell-out dreaming of Starbucks and Chanel. Did this represent your feelings about him at the time, or a vision of the future?

A little of both, actually. I felt really bad about that cartoon after I drew it because it really painted Lou as a sell out. I decided after that not to draw mean cartoons ever again. Ha-ha... At the time, we didn't really know what the HighLine Park was going to be like yet, and I kind of feared it might be like an outdoor Chelsea Market. But the HighLine turned out really amazing... I love it! I actually ran into Lou Reed early on during Occupy Wall Street in Zucotti Park, and I chatted with him a bit. He said he saw the cartoon and thought it was funny. He was actually a really nice guy, very loving, beautiful energy.


"Bowery Booms II: Transformation of the Bowery"


Detail: Iggy gets a deal from John Varvatos

The Runnin Scared series is over, but do you ever think of doing more of them? What neighborhoods or scenes do you think deserve the Runnin Scared treatment today?

Well, the series isn't *totally* over, but we're not doing them regularly anymore either. I just haven't had time. But I'm still a VOICE contributor off and on, and I keep a list of potential cartoons in the back of my mind so a never know! There are tons of "Only In New York" scenes constantly unfolding. I already mentioned the Occupy movement, and I could do a whole book just on that. I was actually there on the very first day. What a trip, but no news outlets would cover it for over a month! Can you believe that?

Other scenes I'd love to draw: those kids who dance in the L train subway cars and swing on the poles and shit. They're insane, but great! The annual SantaCon is ripe for the picking, and I remember its origins over a decade ago as the original "Santarchy."

It's New York--there's ALWAYS something interesting going on. That's why I love it.