RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,358
(and maintenance-free as well)
The hardest thing I ever went through
was in August, 1967. What was it? Getting
my own place. 509 east 11th street was no
paradise, even though the old beatnik place
next door to the corner had always been
called Paradise Alley during that old era
of the '40's and '50's. You can still read
about it here and there, in references to
those days. I stumbled on it all by accident,
not even really knowing about it at all.
-
Each Weds, I think it was, the Village
Voice would publish their new edition,
a weekly, and it would hit the newsstands.
It was then a smart little local newspaper
breaking with hipness and cool things. Its
ads for apartments and lofts within the
greater Greenwich Village area was already
famed and notorious - people would line
up to get their copy (I mostly was at the
Sheridan Square newsstand), and immediately
run off as quick as they could to a listing
that caught their eye. I did so too; somehow
finding this 60 bucks a month 3-room and
a bath, place. It was all a new land to me, so
I had no location references or anything to
go by - except that one corny reference that
said 'cool people never go above 14th street,
especially not to live.' It was cheap in the
village, and pretty much lawless by reputation.
-
When I arrived to 509, it was a terror. What
was once Paradise Alley, (with its 'alley too),
was then (1967) a motorcycle den, a headquarters
of sorts of the initial planting of the Hells Angels
motorcycle bad-boys (and girls). They eventually
established themselves, for years, on 3rd Street,
with their famed headquarters and their famed
'safest street' in New York, motorcycle law
enforcement - which pretty much meant 'don't
mess with H.A. or the bikes, or we fuck you
up. I got an apartment on the third floor, and
moved in. With nothing except an old foot
locker filled with my crap, and a bicycle I'd
taken from the curb as a trash item and brought
into the apartment. No one had bicycles back
then, as transportation; now they're a common
item everywhere in NYC. I had no idea really
where I was or what I was doing there, operating
as I was on a remote control headed by an odd
intuition that this was the right place to be.
-
The 'super' or the guy on the first floor who
rented the apartment to me was kind of a creep.
I didn't much take to him from the get-go. I
can't even recall where I got the 60 bucks from
to rent the slimy place, but I did. As it turned out,
that was the last time ever that money changed
hands between us. A little while later I brought
a roommate in (another creepy guy), and he
covered the entirety of that rent each month,
though it was never in cash. Let's just say he
had a 'sideline' going, which I'd not known
about, as both a 'pharmacist' to the street, and
a male who very much sought after females.
-
None of it mattered to me; I was in a cloud
of my own making - a good cloud, but a
cloud nonetheless. Observant to a fault, all
that I learned I learned from awareness and
watching others. Street-smarts were easy
enough to learn, just by watching those
others, and without them you could pretty
much be assured of 'trouble' somewhere
along the line - so I made sure I caught
on, and as quickly as possible.
-
Besides the main NYC Library, at 42nd
and Fifth, there were, down in the village
two or three cool libraries that I liked going
in. Sometimes just for the warmth they
afforded. The old Ottendorfer Library,
in the old German Section (Klein-
Deutschland, meaning 'Little Germany')
was a red-brick, imposing edifice, with
carvings and busts of famed Germans
its facade. Very cool inside. Also, down
on East Broadway, another heavily-immigrant
section, was the Seward Park Branch Library,
which was a Jewish Red cell, back in the 1940's
era, of Communist and Socialist sympathizers,
and leftist Jew immigrants - they'd argue all
night over tactics, ideology, politics, and
anything else they could, in almost Talmudic
fashions of intensity. After the library closed at
night, they simply transplanted themselves and
their debates to the numerous dairy-restaurants
and Jewish-dietary observant all night cafes and
eateries. It was like a non-stop and crazy
Civics class, at all times, and very 'European'
in its ways.
-
That entire area of the Seward Library has
changed now, drastically. The immigration
influx of the old Euro types is, obviously, all
over and the local populace has changed over
to different groups - Chinese, Grand Street
hipsters, some clubbers and art-gallery types,
and hipsters way too aware of themselves.
The old days are dead and buried, as are the
people who gave those days their panache.
The Jewish Daily Forward, once an authoritative
and famed Jewish-Immigrant newspaper, had/has
its headquarters building their (I'm not sure what
they do now), and a place once called 'Jarmulowsky's
Bank' - which was a Jewish-immigrant neighborhood
bank that gave out loans and support to the local
populace. It's still there, the building, at Canal and
Orchard Streets, but the bank-rush that took place
when the bank ran out of money, in 1914, caused a
massive street crowd and demonstration/panic, and
many lost the money they had put their to 'escape'
their relatives from the European troubles of WWI.
-
Once I began learning of these places and the local
immigrant patterns and social histories, I was
entranced. Every step I took had a history tour
within it, and I regaled in those with every step in
the old atmosphere I was amidst. Of course, if
anyone had told me then that, in another few
years I'd be 250 miles away and living as a
farm-boy yokel somewhere else and distant in
time, I'd have laughed. So would they have, I
bet. The area had so degenerated by the early
2000's, that I was privy, from sitting on a park
bench outside the library, at Seward Park, to
witness a client/supplier undertaking, for
money, that, unfortunately, amounted to
oral sex performed on a jolly, though gaunt,
fellow by what had to be one of the most
'ugly' street providers in the world. But,
such it be I guess.
-
Lastly, 509 e11th? It was OK for a while,
and from there I learned that 'maintenance
free' could often mean, not just ' at no
charge' but also, in the other version of
the phrase, 'no maintenance at all.'
