{"id":116627,"date":"2014-05-06T18:44:06","date_gmt":"2014-05-06T18:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=116627"},"modified":"2014-05-06T18:44:06","modified_gmt":"2014-05-06T18:44:06","slug":"postcard-end-america-manhattan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/postcard-end-america-manhattan\/","title":{"rendered":"Postcard from the End of America: Manhattan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Linh Dinh\u00a0<\/strong>
\nRINF Alternative News<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Getting off the Greyhound bus at the Port Authority Terminal, I immediately saw a man in his mid 50\u00e2\u20ac\u00b2s digging through a garbage can. With his right hand, he held a plastic tray on which were placed whatever edible scraps he could find. Lickable flecks clung to his ample brown beard. Chewing while scavenging, he was quite leisurely with his task and no one among the many people sitting or standing nearby paid him any attention. Done with one trash can, he moved to the next, and since there were so many in this huge building, I imagined his daily buffet to be quite ample and varied.<\/p>\n

Like central libraries, bus stations are daytime havens for America\u2019s homeless, but the man described above is a throw back of sort, for his number has dwindled considerably ever since Giuliani decided to hose most of them away. Los Angeles has its Skid Row, San Francisco the Tenderloin, and you can find hundreds of roofless Americans sprawling all over Northwest DC, the showcase quarter, but much of Manhattan has become quite sanitized, purged of not just the homeless but any other kind of poorer Americans, as well as the artsy, Bohemian types, who have mostly migrated to Brooklyn. Pumped up by Wall Street, much of Manhattan has become off limits to all but the super affluent. You can work there, sure, after taking two trains and a bus, but don\u2019t think of moving in, not even into a closet, or curtained off corner of a roach motel-sized, shared apartment. As the rest of the country sinks, this island is buoyed by bailouts and quantitative easing directly deposited into its too-big-to-fail swindling houses, but hey, the Bangladeshi cab drivers and CUNY-graduated waiters and bellhops also get their short stacks of nickels and dimes, so don\u2019t bitch, OK? Dwelling in this Green Zone, it would be easy to think that this country\u2019s near collapse is but a ridiculous rumor.<\/p>\n

Speaking of Gotham cabbies, only 8% are native-born these days, and pointing to this fact, Pat Buchanan blames the liberal welfare state for the decline of the American work ethics. What he ignores is that the terms for driving a cab in\u00a0New York<\/a>\u00a0are so bad, even many Pakistani immigrants have stopped driving. Instead of pocketing a share of each fare, most drivers must rent their vehicle at a fixed rate, so that they may even lose money at the end of a 12-hour shift. Thanks to an increasingly superfluous supply of labor, however, you can always get someone to do anything, and this is the direct result of having a porous border in a sinking economy. Globalism is not just about exporting decent jobs, but also importing cheap labor until everyone everywhere makes just about nothing. That\u2019s the master plan, dude, so although\u00a0ning\u00c3\u00ban ser humano es ilegal<\/em>\u00a0is self-evidently true, it\u2019s also a smoke screen to make slaves out of us all.<\/p>\n

In Taxi Driver, Travis complained, \u201cAll the animals come out at night\u2014whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.\u201d Well, 42nd Street is certainly spic and span now, with Travis\u2019 beloved Lyric Theater, where he took Betsy to see some starkly instructive coupling, long gone, as is the pen with half a dozen naked women. Standing in an individual booth, you deposited quarters to lift up a window, then after tucking dollars into the G-string of your chosen date, you\u2019re allowed to knead her for a bit. Many greasy spoons and mom and pops have also been shooed from Manhattan, to be replaced by chain stores and restaurants. In Manhattan alone, there are now 200 Subways, 74 McDonald\u2019s, many of them open 24\/7, and 194 Starbucks. Dunkin\u2019 Donuts has 500 locations citywide. The biggest corporations shall roll over all!<\/p>\n

The lamer Manhattan becomes, the more popular it is with the tourists who come to ride a double decker bus and gorge at a Midtown\u2019s Applebee\u2019s, TGI Friday, Olive Garden, Outback Steakhouse or Red Lobster. They travel to Babylon to experience all the comforts of Annandale, Virginia. Not long ago on 42nd Street, however, I did find another throwback, a guy who Frenchkissed a mouse<\/a>\u00a0for tips, but before I could deconstruct his amorous technique, stratagem, fudged aims and secret meanings, six cops, no less, appeared to tell our ratty Casanova to beat it. Hey, there are still enough weirdos here. When Occupy was still happening in Zuccoti Park, I ran into a guy who was trying to enlist people into his \u201cFart Smeller\u00a0<\/a>Movement.\u201d To show what he was talking about, this dough-faced gent displayed a photo of himself squatting down, with his nose wedged into a woman\u2019s ass as she was, presumably, liberally exhaling. Listen, man, I don\u2019t want to come off as nostalgic for the New York of gutter punks and a nightly, Boschian bacchanal in Tomkins Square, with its in-house cannibal, but the Lawrence Welk version of the city just ain\u2019t cutting it.<\/p>\n

Leaving Port Authority, I trekked north, and just past Lincoln Center, I encountered a young male beggar in a New Jersey Devils cap and dirty jeans. With his small, beat up backpack and nearly empty cup, he sat in front of the cheery window of a clothing boutique. Head down, his face was obscured by this sign, \u201cHOMELESS. Too honest to steal\u2026 Humble enough to Beg. JUST Trying to SURVIVE. ANYTHING HELPS! GOD BLESS.\u201d Two blocks from him, I then spotted a young, blonde woman in a bouffant pony tail, also begging. It was brisk, so her legs were wrapped in a thin, gray blanket, of the austere kind not found in any normal home, but to be handed out after an earthquake, hurricane, false flag terrorist attack or Second Coming of Jesus. At least it\u2019s not the packing stuff I\u2019ve seen wrapped around the street pariahs of our nation\u2019s capital. On her bulky, hooded jacket, there was a small patch of the American flag. Reading a large book, she was also looking down, and so I couldn\u2019t immediately tell that I had met her before, in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

Born in Russia,\u00a0Liza<\/a>\u00a0is 22-years-old. When she was seven, Liza was adopted, along with a younger sister, and brought to Cambridge, MA, but she never got along with her new mom, and so was put on lithium at 11, then sent to a boarding school at 14. Liza\u2019s drinking problem began around this time, and she was stuck in 9th grade for three years. Liza quit school, drifted around the country and drained half a gallon of whiskey a day, to the point of passing out, but she has pretty much cut out this suicidal habit. With her, um, All-American good looks, Liza can always count on making more than enough to survive, just by sitting behind a sign that says, \u201cA LITTLE KINDNESS GOES A LONG WAY. GOD BLESS.\u201d For Liza\u2019s 21st birthday, her adoptive mother, a very rich woman, sent her $20.<\/p>\n

In 2011, Liza met her boyfriend,\u00a0Harvey<\/a>, at a Rainbow camp in Washington State. The Rainbow Family holds one large gathering each year in a national forest. While there, they shun money and alcohol while saying yes to universal love, world peace, hallucinatory drugs, food sharing, bartering, cotton, skin, mud, strumming, drumming and singing, as well as shitting in the woods in a green, hygienic and inoffensive manner. Assholes, though, do show up and sometimes ruin the good vibes, but that\u2019s just life on this sick and unmoored planet. To the Rainbow Family, the world at large is considered Babylon. Done with ummmming while standing in a circle, Liza and Harvey went down to San Francisco and chilled at the Occupy Camp for a while, and for cash, they begged in nearby Daly City, making over $200 a day. It was mostly her bringing in the dough, for Harvey is no retinal lollipop.<\/p>\n

Born in small town South Carolina, Harvey inherited a dilapidated house and crappy car when his parents suddenly died in an accident. A year later, he sold this house to a friend for $70,000, or $500 a month, then hit the road. There is an army of young, jobless Americans drifting from city to city. To survive, they beg, dumpster dive and use soup kitchens. Many sing or play music for change. In\u00a0Berkeley<\/a>, they swarm all over the university area, their\u00a0scruffy presence<\/a>\u00a0contrasting sharply with the yuppyish or Gap-fashioned students, though I have been told that some of the homeless neo-primitives are actually alumnus of UC Berkeley. In this economy, it\u2019s all too easy to move from an overpriced dormitory to totally free off-campus accommodations that include sidewalks, church verandas, condemned homes,\u00a0store entrances<\/a>\u00a0and landscaped knolls off freeway exit ramps. In Berkeley, you can also sleep unmolested at\u00a0People\u2019s Park<\/a>, where you will have plenty of company.<\/p>\n

Universities have colluded with banks and government to fleece students and shackle them to a lifetime of debt servitude, but as long as you\u2019re still enrolled, and your payments deferred, life will seem good and promising, for the university\u2019s primary job is no longer to teach, but to maintain this rosy illusion. In these United States of universal debt bondage, universities have become a marketing branch of the criminal banks. It\u2019s all good, children, so just sign here to get your very own academic(ish) casket!<\/p>\n

So Liza and Harvey are basically professional beggars, but before you scream, \u201cGet a job, losers,\u201d consider that less than 59% of working age Americans are actually employed, and 47% of the population are on some forms of government assistance, a record high, so nearly half of us are already\u00a0de facto<\/em>beggars, although most are not sitting on concrete in heat or cold, looking sorry, at least not yet. Simply put, many Americans have become redundant in an economy rigged to serve the biggest banks and corporations. With no one hiring us and our small businesses bankrupted by the behemoths, many of us are forced to beg, peddle, push or steal, though on a scale that\u2019s miniscule compared to what\u2019s practiced by our ruling thugs. As we shove dented cans of irradiated sardine into our Dollar Store underwear, they rob us of our past, present and future.<\/p>\n

In this sick order, even the best among us are reduced to being outcasts, if not criminals to be locked up, tortured or killed. In this sinister arrangement, you\u2019re lucky if you\u2019re merely ignored, like the fiercely astute Paul Craig Roberts. Although countless Americans depend on him to understand more clearly the dangers and rot afflicting their unraveling society, he\u2019s not paid for his articles, but must depend on readers\u2019 contributions to keep writing. In this evil mad house, even Paul Craig Roberts is a beggar. Meanwhile, morons are paid handsomely to waterboard the masses with septic sludge.<\/p>\n

Past Columbia University, I crossed into Harlem, then Washington Heights. In the upper reaches of Manhattan, there are signs of the black market everywhere, for people must do what they can to get by, and since the residents here are mostly non-white, City Hall has pretty much left them alone. Like Jews a century ago, Latinos and blacks are selling just about everything on sidewalks. One guy was offering four\u00a0old pairs of sneakers<\/a>, which he left in a heap. Another had four pressure cookers displayed on a cloth-covered ironing board. At 168th and Broadway, a man was\u00a0selling tamales<\/a>\u00a0from a shopping cart. It was only $1.25 per, and you could choose from chicken, pork, cheese, beans, Oaxaca styled or sweet. Like most conversations on the street, his sign was strictly in Spanish. Within sight of this, however, there was a huge McDonald\u2019s that was packed with locals, including a grimy man with his head on a table, soundly sleeping. A guy in his mid 20s asked one customer after another if he could have some change \u201cfor something to eat.\u201d He even approached people at the counter as they were paying. With his palm out and eyes like a basset hound\u2019s, he leaned towards a pretty young lady and muttered at her platinum-plated hoop earring. She gave him nothing.<\/p>\n

To be fair, the panhandlers hounding this Mickey D\u2019s are a direct result of having two homeless shelters half a block away, and they don\u2019t usually come inside. In any case, step outside this corporate fortress and Washington Heights is still a wonderful mess of small stores and eateries. Isn\u2019t it telling that the most lively streets and neighborhoods in America are filled with recent immigrants? They haven\u2019t been here long enough to become zombies, and don\u2019t think I\u2019m talking racially now for European cities are also much more exuberant and life-affirming than their American sisters, many of which have become desolate and menacing. Strapped to automobiles and conditioned to stare at one screen after another,\u00a0bona fide<\/em>\u00a0Americans dread eye contact and the human breath. Alienated from all those nearest to us, we expect to be saved and led by our distant brainwashers and slave masters.<\/p>\n

For any community to be healthy, local initiatives must be encouraged, nurtured and protected, so let\u2019s reclaim our home turf, reestablish the common and, in the process, regain our collective sanity and dignity. With this in mind, let\u2019s check out Word Up, a volunteer-run bookstore and mini art center in Washington Heights. Just over a year old, it is filled with people by day and hopping at night with either a concert, literary reading, play, film showing or lecture. Kids can even show up in the afternoon to get help with their homework. Sounds too good to be true, and in this culture of Lil\u2019 Wayne and Justin Bieber flanking a wife-beating boxer named \u201cMoney,\u201d this nourishing oasis is barely hanging on, sustained only by donations from a recent crowd-funding campaign. Already working for free, the 50-plus people who keep Word Up going are also beggars, but that\u2019s just how it is now, and if not for the tireless efforts of its head beggar, Veronica Liu, Word Up would never have come into being in the first place.<\/p>\n

Born in Toronto to Hakka and Filipino parents, Liu came to NYC 16 years ago. Before Word Up, she started Washington Heights Free Radio, which is operated out of her apartment. Liu is also a co-founder of Fractious Press and helps to organize the yearly book fair at the Ding Dong Lounge in Morningside Heights. Liu has a day job, and makes no money from her various community building efforts, which she does because, I don\u2019t know, maybe Liu\u2019s insane? According to the norms of Babylon, she is certainly batshit, but to gain, no matter how fleetingly, a bit of light and grace with one\u2019s words or actions is a reward in itself. Some may even claim it is a necessity. Since every evil act is accompanied by a lie, a disguise or suppression of meaning, a society that traffics in practically nothing but lies or distracting nonsense is also one that\u2019s drowning in serial and habitual evilness. Meaning is not just calling everything by its proper name, but grasping their relationship and having a sense of proportion, but these have all been banished from our public discourses. Bushed and Baracked, we seethe, scream, take our medication then joyfully jerk, with pomposity and authority, the voting lever.<\/p>\n

Two thousand and five hundred words already and still no lager? So how is this a damn Postcard?! I hear you, I hear you, but at six to eight bucks a pop further South, I had to walk seven miles before I even dared to mumble in my humblest voice, and with my eyes filled with shame and mortification, \u201cA bottle of your cheapest, please.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yah, yah! I feel so much better already! Don\u2019t you? I\u2019m so hopped up, I can run a marathon! OK, OK, I must calm down before I get flagged. We\u2019re in Reynold\u2019s, a musty Irish grotto in the middle of Nuevo Santo Domingo. There was a stuffed animal over the bar, but no one could tell me what it was, not even the Wisconsin-born bartender, Brian. Although there were less than a dozen souls there, I couldn\u2019t imagine too many rooms in Washington Heights that contained more white people. I asked Brian, \u201cDo Dominicans drink here?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, sometimes. Not really.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo where do they drink?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the streets. If you come here in the Summer, you\u2019ll see them all over the sidewalks with their bottles of Presidente! They like to drink outside, play dominoes outside. It\u2019s a different culture. Besides, it\u2019s too expensive inside a bar, and most of them don\u2019t have that much money.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his mid 40\u2019s, Brian wore his beard\u00a0long and bushy<\/a>\u00a0in a style that\u2019s now associated with Duck Dynasty. It evokes a down-home America that hunts, fishes and salutes the flag. Brian\u2019s thoroughly at home in Washington Heights, however, and is, in fact, married to a Dominican woman. In NYC for 25 years, he can\u2019t imagine returning to DePere, Madison or Milwaukee, where he has all lived, \u201cIt was very boring in Wisconsin. There was nothing to do.\u201d This Summer, he\u2019ll take his wife to his home state for the first time.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey, maybe she\u2019ll love it there!\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI doubt it.\u201d Then, \u201cThere is a Latino guy who comes in here every now and then, and each time he does, he\u2019d buy beer for the whole bar.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s pretty generous! How can he afford it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo kids!\u201d Brian smiled, \u201cand I don\u2019t think he\u2019s married either. He\u2019s an older gentleman, retired. He used to work as a police detective.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last time he was here, he gave me $10 for cab fare,\u201d\u00a0Peggy<\/a>\u00a0interjected, \u201cand I was just going to take the bus. What a nice man!\u201d Sitting in a corner, she had been playing one crossword puzzle after another. She was bundled in a sweat shirt, hoodie and a padded, nylon jacket. Like the rest of us, she was certainly not dressed to kill, as is common further down the island. She did wear blue eye shadow, however, and her squarely trimmed fingernails were perked up by white nail polish.<\/p>\n

Born in Brooklyn Heights in 1941, Peggy moved to Washington Heights as a child and has remained there ever since. The only other place she\u2019s been is Wildwood, New Jersey, where her family used to go during the Summer, for its beach. \u201cI\u2019ve never been anywhere, and I\u2019m proud of it!\u201d<\/p>\n

Peggy worked 40 years as a school crossing guard, and now comes to Reynold\u2019s every day at 8AM, as it opens, \u201cI get up at 5:30 or 6, then I come here. I come here to watch television because I don\u2019t have one at home.\u201d She runs errands for the bar, does its laundry at a laundromat down the street, and they pay her with bottles of Coors Light, \u201cPeople also buy me drinks. I never go without.\u201d Peggy entered Reynold\u2019s for the first time 44 years ago, six years after it opened \u201cThey built this bar around Peggy,\u201d Brian joked.<\/p>\n

Peggy\u2019s husband died in 2003. Nearly daily, she orders a pastrami submarine from the same deli, and though she only pays them once a week, she does remember to tip the bicycle delivery man two bucks each time. Presently, two Dominican couples walked in, but only for the women to use the bathroom, it turned out, and soon after they left, a shouting match erupted over a clogged toilet.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s your fuckin\u2019 fault, you asshole!\u201d A patron in his early 50\u2019s hollered at an older man.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey, calm down! I\u2019m not allowed to show someone where the bathroom is?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFuck no! Not when you know they\u2019re not going to order anything!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow was I supposed to know? Unbelievable. You\u2019re just a crank, man, and a racist!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m no fuckin\u2019 racist! You saw some Dominican pussy and lost your fuckin\u2019 mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cListen, I\u2019m 62 years old. I don\u2019t need to take your bullshit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGod bless you, but why don\u2019t you shove your fuckin\u2019 head down the toilet. Maybe that\u2019ll fix it!\u201d<\/p>\n

The seething crank turned out to be Pat, a unionized building manager. Born in Ireland, he returns there often with his wife. When I told Pat I had been to England and Scotland, but never Ireland, he replied, \u201cThere\u2019s nothing there. You\u2019re not missing anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

The people who live in Harlem are \u201canimals,\u201d Pat also informed me, and he spoke of how dirty it is compared to Washington Heights. During my three hours in Reynold\u2019s, Pat never relaxed or smiled. Just about anything anyone said, he contested, and even when he agreed with you about something, he sounded argumentative. Maybe he\u2019ll burst a blood vessel soon. Maybe someone will kill him. Pat did play Hendrix\u2019 \u201cAll Along the Watch Tower,\u201d then Tony Bennett\u2019s \u201cRags to Riches,\u201d however.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, it\u2019s the other way around,\u201d a woman said in a throat cancery voice.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou got that right!\u201d Pat sneeringly concurred.<\/p>\n

It was late afternoon by now. Swiveling on my stool, I turned to survey the glary, sun splashed scenery through the open door. A guy on a\u00a0cheap scooter<\/a>rolled by, then two\u00a0smartly dressed kids<\/a>\u00a0with their mom appeared. It couldn\u2019t have been a babysitter, I don\u2019t think, for she was also fashionably attired. Her boots were certainly not remaindered bin quality. Across the street, a store was for rent, and there was a jeweler with \u201cWE BUY OLD GOLD\u201d in the window. The ubiquity of these signs is yet another indication of our destitution. Have you sold your heirloom, keepsake or wedding ring? I too have learnt how to Ebay.<\/p>\n

I was very much at peace in that fine low life establishment, but like the Buddha, Jesus and George Harrison said, \u201cAll things must pass,\u201d and so I had to extricate myself from Reynold\u2019s. In any case, I don\u2019t want to go from lower class to rags. My clothes are already torn and tattered. With the Fed right there, I\u2019ll stay a\u00a0beggar<\/a>. So don\u2019t blow or kiss me, blow up Goldman Sachs!<\/p>\n

Linh Dinh is the author of two books of stories, five of poems, and a novel,\u00a0Love Like Hate. He’s tracking our deteriorating social scape through his frequently updated photo blog,\u00a0Postcards from the End of America<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Linh Dinh\u00a0 RINF Alternative News Getting off the Greyhound bus at the Port Authority Terminal, I immediately saw a man in his mid 50\u00e2\u20ac\u00b2s digging through a garbage can. With his right hand, he held a plastic tray on which were placed whatever edible scraps he could find. Lickable flecks clung to his ample brown […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":116628,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-116627","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}