No Borough for Old Men

It is, above all else, a hard landscape. Hard stone ridges and valleys between. Seven-story yellow-brick apartment buildings scaling the heights, like faded rock mesas in the Southwest, overwhelming their narrow streetscapes.
Taking the elevated number 6 train to Fordham Road, the city had decided to paste stickers over the windows of the many abandoned buildings. A flowerpot and other domesticated emblems hiding the gaping holes behind them for commuters in both rail and car.
Getting off at Fordham Road. Thousands of shoppers moving up and down the wide street, which at the time was considered the borderline between the South Bronx and the better districts to the north. Noise, insults, and come-ons in Spanish for both consumer and merchants. Nobody paid me the slightest bit of attention.
I turn off the road and past a security guard. Immediately greeted by rolling green lawns and lush, leafy trees, a mostly Gothic campus so shockingly and immediately bucolic it is used as a stand-in for an Ivy League university in car ads, or so my friend told me.
Our adventures usually took us to the neighborhood just north of the campus where many young Irish lived. Crowded, lively bars, immediately friendly to you, especially if you were associated with Fordham, at the time a buffer zone between south and north Bronx.
Fast-forward about 10 years, and those bars had become isolated Gaelic outposts, ready to be taken over by the relentless tide of Hispanic migration.
"It's all gone to shit," said one of the few older men in one of these taverns. Only real Irish place left in the Bronx was Woodlawn, past the subway's end. Ireland, as we now know, has become "The Celtic Tiger," actually drawing in many more migrants than it churns out, for once in its sad, ever-gloried-in-song history.
A last memory of my friend at Fordham. We went to Sunnyside in Queens, also an Irish haven. The Irish were playing heavily-favored Italy in the World Cup in soccer that afternoon. Much to everyone's astonishment, the Irish won, 1-0. The crowd rushed outside and took over the street in pint-smashing celebration.
It's too bad to remember too much just yet.