There's a new book out (I'll find out the name later) that I flipped through that said New York has lost its character because of rampant real-estate development.
I must admit, Manhattan has lost much of its sense of place due to chain-development and the like. But it was an accident waiting to happen.
Real-estate pressures on Manhattan are immense, owing mostly to the lack of it and idiotic real-estate land-stealing through rent-control and rent-stabilized units.
But the real land-burst came with the city's plummeting crime rate. All of the sudden, neighborhoods that had been off-limits became open for development.
Anyone who knew NY in the 1980s knew the palpable sense of menace that started to overcome you, say, as you went further into Alphabet City. I remember my college roommate, an Upper Westsider, turning back on St. Mark's at about First Ave. because it supposedly got too bad "down there."
As I got bolder, I went more and more "down there" and enjoyed feeling like a badass simply by being in Tompkins Square Park with the "Anarchists" (read, apartment redevelopers before their time). My favorite place in the city was the intersection of 2nd and Ave. B, where there was this post-apocalyptic "gas station" where noise bands would play, surrounded by empty buildings.
So none of that is left. But a city is an organic creature, constantly reinventing itself. It is left for succeeding generations to create a new lefty/non-conformist-center, probably in Brooklyn. Don't look back.
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My aunt and uncle own a building on Tompkins Square. They inherited it from their landlord ca. 1988 because none of her family wanted it. After all, the Homeless were literally rioting in the park at that time.
On my first visit to the city in nearly six years, we pulled up on tenth between A and B and I saw one guy laying on a bench getting beaten with shovel by some other dude. My uncle shouted at them and the one with the shovel casually moseyed along. We locked the vestibule door and waited for the ambulance.
I lived in that building a decade later, it was a like a different planet. Fuggin' dog parks and Starbucks. Crazy.
Where should a new Tompkins Park be? Somewhere in Williamsburg? There's already a community park there with the massive pool re-opening - the space for rock concerts in recent years (McCarren Park).
Possibly in the badlands around Gowanus Canal, still conveniently polluted. Somewhere in the Hook? Too far from the Train. It'll be somewhere (perhaps in cough, cough, cyberspace).
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