talkpolitics | New York is never the same city for a dozen years together.

Quite a few New Yorkers have their own chickens!

I know several of talk_politics community participants are from New York City, but this post is by no means limited to New York, it concerns any large city around the United States and the world. I first discovered Jeremiah Moss's blog (Jeremiah's Vanishing New York) (the name is an alias) that chronicles photographs and stories about "the good ole days" in New York City, a period that seems to have been from the 1950s through the 1980s, early 90s, depending on how you measure the growth of gentrification in the city as the economic boom times became apparent. The blog also notes the closings of landmark diners, or bars, or privately owned businesses, usually mostly due to rent increases from what was considered greedy owners.

But about a year ago, Moss had an op-ed rant published in the New York Times (surprising they agreed to let him use his alias and not a real name) about the High Line park, entitled Disney on the Hudson, with a lot of wharrgarbl about tourists, models with shopping bags, and apparently the crowds gave him an anxiety attack.¹

Moss also has a Facebook page, lots of rants about too many 7-11 convenience stores (he's apparently unaware that 7/11 has been in NYC for over 30 years in some parts of Brooklyn), rants about Williamsburg hipsters just ruining everything. And he bemoaned some young man opening a closed newspaper stand, and while he stocked it with traditional magazines, but the real sin was adding vinyl records, "zines," video games and some trendy sports drinks. There was some significant push-back on the whining. Recently, Moss blamed hipsters for a recent spike in abandoned egg laying chickens in Manhattan, based on this linked article.. Urban chicken coops and co-ops have been successfully built for many poorer citizens of the city (and yes "foodies" and "hipsters" too), but any abandoned or mistreated chickens that are found are all the results of hipsters. (According to the Cornell extension office website-- MOST chicken owners in NYC are from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, or have moved to New York from the South; and live in Brooklyn or the Bronx.

The High Line Park in Manhattan

If car repair shops are closed, record stores closed, it's all bad, bad, bad. The irony for me is I'm doubtful many of Jeremiah's New York readers drive, or even have record players. But this issue isn't limited to New York City by any means, large cities in the United States are having this debate over "gentrification" or turning cities into miniature Disney parks.

But there has been a significant push back against Moss and his supporters, and the thinking behind what drives his blog and its followers. For many critics, Moss is the ultimate conservative: he wants to freeze a very specific time frame in a city's history, because that's what he knows.

I think Moss writes from a distinctly American perspective. Caught up in his own moment and place – this particular postage stamp in time, a few decades worth of history – he bemoans the loss and financial suffering of auto repair shops and other businesses that have long been his neighbors. What’s troubling about this point of view is that it assumes that one period of time – the one that Jeremiah Moss is here to document – ought to be preserved in amber over every other.

One hundred years ago West Chelsea was home to lumberyards, iron & bronze foundries, breweries, railroad terminals, even a factory that made elevators. It was filled with shipbuilders, traders, blacksmiths, carpenters, riggers, haulers, oyster merchants, and more. Such men once lived in the former tenement building on 25th Street, where floors that once held kitchens and bedrooms are now filled with Mercedes’ and Lexus’ being serviced by Marty’s Auto Repair. The architect and writer Kevin Bone describes the area during the 19th century as “a tidewater frontier town,” a world unto itself, which for many “was the only New York they knew.”

I wonder: when the auto repair shops were being built on this land in the 20th century, did anyone lament their passing? Even longer ago, much of the area Moss writes about in his op-ed and I write about regularly – the neighborhoods that the High Line park traverses – was part of the Hudson River. Today, I type in a former warehouse (once home to cigarette packers, later furniture makers) that sits on landfill. Who rues the day when the River’s tide washed against the walls of the General Theological Seminary and this place really and truly did feel like a small village where everyone knew (and perhaps even trusted) his neighbor?

It was ever thus. Since the beginning of time New Yorkers have lamented the change that defines our city. In 1856 a writer for Harper’s Monthly complained: “New York is never the same city for a dozen years together. A man born in New York forty years ago finds nothing, absolutely nothing, of the New York he knew.”

Source.

Times Square, vintage 1970s/1980s

And that makes complete sense. My father grew up with Times Square you see in 1940s musicals-- lots of family oriented movie houses, theaters, and shopping areas: in other words, a very different Times Square from the one Jeremiah Moss romanticizes from the 1980s, filled with adult book stores and peep shows, hookers, and pick-pockets. While I didn't live in the city during the 80s, I remember our family visits, and the Times Square of that period was a real shit hole. I completely agree with Moss' concern about affordable housing, the pushing out of lower classes from Manhattan, rent stabilization abuse, etc. That's one of his greatest gifts for his soap-box. But for people that live in Harlem, the opening of a coffee shop (who cares if it's a Starbucks) and bakeries is a welcomed thing! Such things are a sign of stability and economic vitality and it provides a real service to those that live in the area.

Resources:

NBC stock footage that was shot all over in New York City in the 1970s. About 90 minutes worth:

http://www.nbcuniversalarchives.com/nbcuni/clip/51A07130_s01.do
http://www.nbcuniversalarchives.com/nbcuni/clip/51A07503_s01.do

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[1.] The High Line Park was an abandoned rail spur that ran from Midtown area of Manhattan down the western side to the lower end of the city, terminating around the Meat Packing district. Here a highly detailed map.