RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,240
(think like a rodent)
Apparently there's some major
difference between palmetto
bugs (Florida) and cockroaches.
In New York City, the cockroach
was a big item, prevalent most
everywhere, and most especially
in marginal places and apartments.
Of the sort I got used to. There
were usually one or two exposed
brick walls, red brick, from
probably 1888 or 1904. I never
knew if they'd been built that
way or if the original surface
of the wall had peeled away
and a subsequent owner or tenant
thought that cleaning the brick
and exposing it all was a tasteful
thing to do. I kind of liked it, as
far as 'looks' went. It's kind of
funny how - architecturally -
what's hip in Georgetown is just
done by necessity in NYC. Why
explain away poverty if you can
somehow conceal it by claiming
a 'style' for it?
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The poverty at 509 e11th street
was pretty evident - in fact, for
the entire block - but no one
paid it any mind. The street was
Hispanic, meaning 1960's Puerto
Rican. This was before the new
and more major influx of 'other'
Hispanics - such as Hondurans
or Peruvians or the Central
American influx which changed
the designation, over time, of
what 'Hispanic' meant for NYC.
Look at 'West Side Story,' if
you need to 'see' what I mean.
That movie wasn't filmed in the
lower east side, but it captures
the idea. Oddly enough, the
streets and scenes of West Side
Story were filmed among the
wreckage and debris of what
was called 'San Juan Hill' - an
area that was very Spanish and
which was torn down and had its
people displaced, for the elite
erection of 'Lincoln Center' -
so that after driving away the
locals and relocating them into
pathetic projects and places
like Starret City, a 'neighborhood'
could be saved by rebuilding it
for the rich and the elite and their
opera and their ballet. ['Starrett City
(informally and colloquially known
as the Spring Creek Towers) is a
housing development in the Spring
Creek section of East New York, in
Brooklyn, New York City. It is located
on a peninsula on the north shore of
Jamaica Bay, bounded by Fresh Creek
to the west and Hendrix Creek to the
east. Starrett City contains both
residential and commercial buildings.
The residential portion of the property
contains eight "sections" in a 'towers
in the park' layout. The complex also
contains a community and recreation
center, as well as two schools. Plans
for developing the site of Starrett City
date to 1962, when an investment
group bought the property with the
intention of developing a residential
complex called Park Shore Village.
The group ultimately withdrew from
the project, and another cooperative
housing project named Twin Pines
Village was proposed by the United
Housing Foundation in 1967. Control
of the complex was handed to Starrett
City Associates in 1971, and Starrett
City opened in 1974. The complex
assumed the name of Spring Creek
Towers in 2002, though it is still
popularly known as Starrett City.
Starrett City is part of Brooklyn
Community District 5, and its
primary ZIP Code is 11239. It is
patrolled by the 75th Precinct
of the New York City Police
Department. Politically it is
represented by the New York
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The point was, in each of these cases
(the World Trade Center site included -
which had been a Mideast/Lebanese
'electronics' store-section of lower
Manhattan), how the prevailing
powers of city government could
rationalize away, in the name of
profit, development, and growth,
entire, vibrant, section of the city's
people, destroy, and transplant, in
a cavalier fashion and without due
regard, simply be declaiming need,
'urban renewal' as it was called, for
motives of their own profit and greed.
Business interests taking first place.
People - even when engaging or
annoying or plentiful or part of that
whole, crappy, 'American Dream'
melting pot BS - became immediately
expendable (of course, in an urban
planner's book they always are).
Schemes for apartment complexes,
such as the one mentioned, became
nothing more than dumping grounds
and new ghettos for the displaced,
while those same schemers and
business-crats made secondary
profits by developing and building
the many paper-corporation levels
needed to draw further profit from
the new dump-ground for people
which they'd build. Truly, a closed
society of Greed...It was also odd to
me how, in most every case, and
with NYC's prevalent attention to
crime and crime statistics, all they
were doing, each time, was unsettling
a complacent and oddly serene local
neighborhood of like-minded people,
with crime-prone, barren and open
plaza'd and distant, wastelands of
high-rises, with all their hallways,
'garden' plazas, parking lots,
elevators and laundry rooms rife
with crime, drugs, assault and
rape opportunities. They they'd
go on, aloud, and banter on about
the low-lives and degenerates
who 'preyed' on such places. It's
no wonder it all went under.
-
My later study of urban development
taught me this: Developers - (from
even the days of George Washington,
who left the military after the
Revolution, trying NOT to secure
any further positions, so that he
could go back to Virginia and, as a
'businessman' and developer, where
he knew that a prime way of increasing
the value of property was to open the
states to easier access by building
roads and canals that linked them
with population centers and supply
sources. He had patiently accumulated
for himself thirty-thousand acres of
western lands over the years and felt
that, as a private citizen, he held
the right to 'invest and deal') - never
care. In the present day, projects
of this nature are handed over to
stockholders and those who guy
in. Initially, the corporation behind
the deal sets itself up with investors
who then erect the first subsidiary
corporation, into which the public
and others are invited to invest. In
this immediate first step, the initial
investors (who dreamed up the
project in the first place) are paid
back and reap their profit, in a
sort of Ponzi scheme effrontery,
and then, for each further step
- concrete, construction, workers,
etc., etc.) further paper-corporations
are set up, (with weird names like
1120 Park Ave LLC, or whatever)
by which each further step is
carried. By the final point, and
with all their profits and paybacks
of initial investments well-covered,
the initial investors little care the
quality of the finished product, nor
whether it evet gets fully rented
or is a success. They're already gone
and accountants and lawyers (all
on retainers) can clean up all the
rest and make sure costs and taxes
are taken care of, from the money
of all those others investors who've
jumped in along the line. So it
goes in America.
-
Back in the very early days of the
American Republic (a 'republic'
denotes a system where the
'people' delegate power to elected
representatives...who then proceed
to fleece them, pass laws ensuring
that the same charade will go,
and hopefully undetected, and
at the same time relegate to
themselves all the rights and
privileges of Monarchy itself,
engaging, in this endeavor, all
the business and corporate interests
they can in this fraudulent scam
across the face of the dolts who
somehow continue to elect them.
The sacrificial nincompoop of a
President gets set in place to play
the National Dummy, and that
job, too, is always willingly done),
Daniel Shays, in Massachusetts,
has always represented the best of
the American breakout spirit.
(One cannot do that anymore,
because it all gets filtered through
the puke-mouths of the National
Media tribalists and cantankerously
destroyed as issue and subject).
-
It's always amazed me how the
American people have never arisen
to break out of their straitjackets.
Instead they have allowed, and
continue to allow, others to make,
and saddle them with, laws made
to control the human mind. (I
guess that's why they no longer
have one). Here's a little bit on
Shay's Rebellion, which was a
result of'one of the very first,
post-Revolution, engineered
slumps of the American economy:
"A former officer of the Revolutionary
War, Daniel Shays organized a group
of neighboring Massachusetts farmers
who, like him, were in danger of
losing their farms and even going
to prison because of the combined
with bad harvests and heavy state
taxes to make it impossible for
them to pay their bank debts.
Massachusetts was slow to respond
to their demands for debt relief,
as some of the other states had
already undertaken, and its delay
invited dangerous passions. When
a previous insurgent leader named
Job Shattuck was captured by the
state and treated as a criminal, it
only enflamed the rebellious farmers.
Shay's followers grew to some
1200, and he decided to dramatize
the farmers' plight by arming his
comrades - with pitchforks for those
who had no shotguns. For two months
he gave them military drills while
threatening to attack the courthouses
that conducted bankruptcy auctions.
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The justices dodged trouble by keeping
the courts closed, but the state's Governor
Bowdoin wanted action. He raised an
army of 4400 men - paid for mainly
by wealthy Bostonians because the
Massachusetts treasury was without
funds. This larger force stamped out
the insurgent movement in two
pitched battles. There were a few
fatalities and the rebels were jailed.
Some were given the death penalty,
but all were pardoned after a dramatic
delay. Shay's rebellion was magnified
by the fact that similar disturbances
had recently occurred in Vermont and
New Hampshire, so the likelihood of
spreading disorder could not be ignored.
In newspapers and on street corners,
it was as hotly discussed as a major
war, which was justified by the pivotal
role it played in American history. The
rebellious farmers had many sympathizers
and the rightness of their cause came to
be confirmed by changed in the treatment
of debtors, even if the threat of violence
was condemned. Shays died in poverty
some years later, but had had unwittingly
made an important contribution to the
future of the United States. It was this
rebellion that caused Thomas Jefferson's
later famous quote: 'I hold it that a little
rebellion now and then is a good thing
and as necessary in the political world
as storms in the physical.' "
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So, cockroach or palmetto bug, we must
see, within the similarities, the many
differences as well : between the 'New'
man of America, perhaps, and the laggard
from the past, over whom we imply keep
tripping. Just over yet another slob-season
of soon-to-end Christmas jabber, it's
really time for something other.
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