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Alphabet City Will Never Be the Same

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From East 14th Street to East Houston lies Alphabet City and all of its residents. Most of New York’s residents look at neighborhoods with convenient stores, close transportation and lower rent prices when deciding where to live. About 66,000 people live in this neighborhood. 66,000 people have chosen to live in a neighborhood that lacks what people find most convenient about this city.

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A busy entrance to the L train on East 14th and 1st Avenue

The nearest subway line to this entire neighborhood is the L train on 1st Avenue and East 14th Street. “It takes me 25 minutes to walk to the subway every day and then I have to always transfer to another station” said resident Gina Cappola rather frustrated. She moved here because the rent was slightly cheaper than the other apartments in the area. It seemed like a good idea at first, but now she can’t wait to move on to a different neighborhood when her lease ends.

“I moved into the city because I was a commuter and now I am still a commuter” said Gina Cappola laughing. It takes her over an hour to get to where she works which is just about as long as it took her when she lived near Rockland County.

You can see the look of frustration at the Subway entrance for the L train. There are lines at each turnstile during busy hours and each person looks like a zombie waiting to get in as if they do this everyday.

“Its truly unbelievable what I need to go through to get on this subway” Daniel McDonald said while waiting for his train. Most days this 50 year old man does not mind, but others when he’s tired the train seems further away then ever.

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The Pheonix, a small bar/ restaurant in the neigborhood

Alphabet City is not your typical neighborhood. As you walk up and down the streets there is no Starbucks. Duane Reade is only on the border streets. There is no chain grocery store favorites such as whole foods and no chain restaurants. “I can always find something similar to what I need but it isn’t always what I want. Sometimes walking twenty minutes to get my favorite brand of coffee just isn’t an option” said long time resident Billie Hudzik.

New York is known for its convenient means of transportation. Usually we think of subways at almost every corner and a McDonalds or a Starbucks every other block. Alphabet City denies its residents both.

Manhattan Community Board 3 has addressed issues of transportation saying they have been working on plans for decades now. There was talk of extending the subway line under Avenue B.

Residents of this neighborhood laugh when asked about it. They feel that this is never going to happen. “If it does happen maybe my grandchildren’s grandchildren can get to work faster than I ever did” Billie Hudzik said jokingly.

The lack of transportation and commercial shops and restaurants to draw residents in, are issues not being ignored any more. Gentrification is now being seen in Alphabet City. There are plans for new Walgreens to be brought into the neighborhood as well as talk of other chain establishments.

IMG_1857There are all new upscale restaurants and trendy spots that have emerged over the past few years with the intention of changing Alphabet City for the better. “They won’t ever do anything about the Subway system so they are trying to make it more appealing in other ways” Billie Hudzik said when asked about future changes. The new crowd that these trendy spots are bringing in has changed Alphabet City and is beginning to give it a new reputation.

According to DNAinfo.com this gentrification brought a dramatic 71 percent drop in major crimes in the area over 17 years since 1993, led by a 91 percent plunge in car thefts, an 81 percent drop in robberies, and 77 percent declines for murders and burglaries. “This neighborhood used to have a bad reputation but now its becoming a hot spot for young crowds. I used to just see the same people walking around everyday now I see a new face every night” Billie Hudzik said after living here for 35 years.

East Village Cafe on East 13th

East Village Cafe on East 13th

Crime rates have dropped and rent prices have gone up. The new developments to Alphabet City have caused a significant increase in building costs. Buildings that have been vacant for years are now getting swooped off the market, remodeled and sold. According to StreetEasy tallies the median increased for asking prices rose 2.79 percent to $699,000 by the end of 2014, but today this has jumped to $865,000.

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Residential area of Alphabet City displaying the artsy vibe of the neighborhood

Some new residents were drawn to this area because of the changes and the style of living. New resident Aliyah Sullivan says, “It was one neighborhood that reminded me of how New York is supposed to be.” Each street you walk up and down has businesses and restaurants that created by people hoping to find a place to thrive in the city. Here in Alphabet City they find a way to mesh creating a vibe that draws people in to live here and an authentic New York feel.

Alphabet City is changing, but not everybody is happy about it. Julia Bennet who has lived in Alphabet City for 10 years said, “I have to leave this neighborhood after this year. My rent keeps going up and I can’t afford to stay here anymore.” The unavoidable increases in rent that are due to gentrification is pushing out many long time residents.

“This neighborhood used to be original but now they want to take that away from us” Markus Reynolds another long time resident said angrily.

Artwork dedicated to Robin Williams on Avenue B

Artwork dedicated to Robin Williams on Avenue B

Despite the lack of subways and a quickly changing neighborhood, many residents are in favor of this. “Its always good cardio for me to walk to the subway I have never minded!” said Richard Brenner who currently lives all the way on Avenue C.

“The changes are making this neighborhood safer and more original then it ever has been before. Alphabet City is really coming into its own” said Sophia Watts of Avenue B. This is why many people are leaving, but why more are coming. The changes coming to Alphabet City are unavoidable. Almost as unavoidable as the walk all of its residents put of with to get to work each day.

This neighborhood has become something beautiful. While some residents are frustrated with its lack of similarities to the city, majority are being drawn closer due to its differences.

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Black and White

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In both Fox’s and Bagli’s pieces we see how the Stuyvesant town housing is inaccessible to different people.

In Bagli’s piece we are explained more about the prices of the apartments rising and how this forced out groups of people. These are the groups of people that the housing was meant for in the first place. It was originally a place where lower social class found themselves comfortable but due to the rent rising above an average of 4,000 an apartment, many of these original groups were forced out.

Fox’s piece touches on how Stuy town was originally meant for lower income families and war-veterans, but excluded black families. This was even though many war-veterans included blacks.

Both are about a social and economic struggle in the complex but Bagli focuses more on the current issues forcing out certain groups whereas Fox looks more into the past.

I live in Stuy town currently and notice that it is prevalently whites living there. The rent is high and theres no way I could have lived there if my parents did not have decent paying salaries.

American Girl

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What is the theme of Ta Nehisi-Coates’s profile?

Growing up black in her neighborhood and how it affected her. It shows how it shaped and made the person she is today. There also includes a history of the neighborhood.

Is there an overarching narrative?

Though the article speaks largely of Michelle Obama, it is also about all black residents of south side that grew up like Obama. It takes the idea that all black people grew up impoverished with both parents working and struggling and presents us with an alternative truth, black people growing up in “normal” homes, with a working father and stay at home mother. It presents us with a break in the stereotype.

What surprises Coates about Michelle Obama?

Coates says that “The first time I saw Michelle Obama in the flesh, I almost took her for white”.

How does Coates contextualize Michelle in the context of his own background growing up in Baltimore?

Michelle grew up not knowing what “blackness” was whereas Coates compares himself and knew very much of his “blackness”. He knew his “blackness” as his culture and to her i was not a culture she was familiar with or viewed it as. They had different perspective on life in their early upbringing.

 

Alphabet City Conflict Story Proposal

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Alphabet City is a tiny neighborhood in New York that is full of tiny boutique shops and cafes. As I walk around I do not recognize the names of any of the shops as chain restaurants. The only Starbucks coffee shops are on both the far ends of the boundaries of this neighborhood. Many young people move here and I would like to investigate if they feel like this neighborhood is lacking things that the city has to offer. The subway is very far out of the way, large grocery stores are not nearby and the basic shops most of these people are used to going to are not a few steps away.

I talked to a few people who think it is a big issue and they said they were considering leaving because it can be so inconvenient sometimes to live there. They also knew people who were considering leaving. On top of not having these conveniences to offer, they are shooting up the rent prices. So what is truly making alphabet city a desirable place to live anymore? Some people were saying this is the reason they love it there so much its different and unique compared to other parts of the city.

Either way I would love to look into it, go into a board meeting and see if there is any discussion about this. Are they purposely keeping the chain business’ out of the area ? Do the chain business’ think they cannot find business there? Is Alphabet City going to become to inconvenient and an undesirable place for city residents? These are all things I would like to explore.

Back Where I Came From

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I agree that Liebling’s, “Back Where I Came From” is like a love letter. Through his description of New York and the people here, you can tell it is a place he truly loves. He talks about growing up here and says there is nothing better than New York and the people here. To him the women in New York are the most beautiful, and he can not compare New York to anywhere else including his friends travels. He truly made me feel as a reader that there is no place like New York. This is a very opinionated statement to make which is why I agree that this is very much like a love letter.

Ciao for Now!

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Ciao for Now is a family owned and operated kitchen that is owned by the Miceli Family. It is a cafe and catering company that specializes in market-to-table menus prepared fresh daily from their highest quality ingredients. Every morning they bake a wide selection of homemade pastries and cakes. They also serve their famous freshly brewed organic coffee.

They pride themselves in providing the healthiest food they can to their clients. They have a whole menu filled with delicious meals in vegan and gluten-free options. They use organic eggs and Hudson Valley Milk (Where I grew up upstate NY). They also use free-range, grass-fed, hormone-free and nitrate-free meats and source organic grains, fruits and vegetables when available.

What sets Ciao for Now apart from other businesses in the area is the fact that they have been around for over thirteen years! This is one of the longest times a business has been around and thriving in this neighborhood. Their top comments from people inside the cafe are that their coffee and their atmosphere make them feel like they are home, or that it makes NYC feel like home. They also say it is one of their favorite places to stop in during the day. Another comment was that the food, the atmosphere and the staff are perfect!

I think it would be a great business to profile. I could find out what makes it thrive and how they lasted over a decade. Maybe also see what inspired them to take the fresh and natural organic angle. I know it can be very expensive to buy foods that fresh and clean. I’d also love to do more in depth interviews with a few people that regularly stop in. Some people have been coming there weekly for years. They might have some interesting stories about their time there and what the shop means to them.

 

 

A Penny on the Sidewalk

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Walking down the decorative streets of Alphabet City many types of people can be seen. There are the struggling artists in their dirty overalls, the cop with a scolding coffee in their hand, the rich woman with her designer purse and tiny dog and the young college crowd bopping about with no real direction. Not every one is so well off. When you take a second from all the surroundings in front of you to look down a person can be seen laying on the ground at almost every corner. A whole other world many of us are fortunate enough to have the pleasure of not understanding.

The homeless have been scattered all over Alphabet City for over a decade now. Colin Cosnell from local bar Percys BBQ and Darts said, “It has always been an issue here. The issue being how do we help these people and get them off the streets. The problem is that most of them get stuck in a ditch and can’t pull themselves out of it”. People all over this neighborhood make an effort to hold soup kitchens and clothing drives, anything to make a difference.

When it comes to defying the odds Penny Lieberman takes the cake. She has long shiny black hair all the way down her back and she stood at Father’s Heart Soup Kitchen on East 11th passing out food with a smile on her face. The place was so packed with hungry people that you could feel the humidity and smell sweat in the air. What makes Penny so happy to be there was because it was not too long ago that she was in that predicament herself. “I feel like coming back here to help where I once ate is a small way for me to give back after being so blessed”, Penny said humbly. She is merely twenty-two years old, but spent two years on the streets.

She grew up on West 165th street with her parents that regularly abused substances. She had a hard life growing up in a shabby walkup apartment where rats were so regular she started to name them. She was neglected by her parents and her home situation became so intolerable she made the decision after completing high school to be on her own. It started off with her hopping from couch-to-couch of her friends and certain acquaintances. Penny looking down said, “Things went downhill from there. Most people didn’t want to genuinely help me. They all expected favors and favors that I couldn’t do for them”. It became so much pressure for her to live with other people that she decided to leave. She felt as though she could not go back to her parents so she made one of the biggest decisions she ever had to make and she went to live on the street.

She moved around a lot to different neighborhoods, but something about Alphabet City kept her there. You could see the fear in her eyes as she talked about how scary certain areas were. A young beautiful girl of her age on the streets has a high risk of danger. She tried different shelters, but she was less harassed being on the street with a hood over her head. Alphabet City was different to her. The people were nice, it wasn’t overly crowded with tourists and she felt like it was as far as she could get from her parents.

Maria Marzigliano, a mentor of Penny’s, said “I remember asking her what her dream was and her answer was priceless”. Penny could not afford the things girls her age had. She used to look at how beautiful they looked walking by and that began her obsession with make up. She became so obsessed that she openly admits that the first thing she ever stole was a lipstick from a drugstore. Not food, not water but yes LIPSTICK! Maria Marzigliano told Penny that if she loved make up so much she should go to school for it. Maria cleaned her up walked her to the Fashion Institute of Technology and helped Penny apply for scholarships, she even paid for her application.

Penny wrote essays at public libraries and would work on projects in Maria’s living room. “While all of this was going I was feeling skeptical that it might not work out. I sat on the steps of the church and saw a penny facing heads up on the sidewalk while I was thinking about it and I knew it was a sign for me”. Thanks to her good grades, but mostly the people she met that helped her along the way, Penny received a full scholarship to attend FIT.

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Penny sitting at her new vanity. She has the quote on the wall for motivation.

Today she is living in her own apartment with two girls that she met from school. She works at Sephora where she is able to not only pay for her apartment, but get a discount on makeup! She regularly goes down to the soup kitchen where she once ate to give back. But her favorite thing to do is go to women’s shelters and give free makeovers with her other classmates. “The looks on their faces when were done with them gives me a satisfaction I can’t get anywhere else. I love making women feel beautiful. You feel like you can conquer the world. If I can do that with a few brushes and some powder, why not?”, Penny said with a smile.

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Penny on her couch holding up her FIT sweatshirt with pride.

Penny has a name that is perfect for her. A penny does not have much financial value, but it is the one currency that has a reputation for being lucky when found heads up on the ground. While Penny had not a dollar to her name for a long period of time, she managed to turn things around and now she is following her dreams and on a path to success. “All I ask is that people reach out and give a helping hand. A few people that didn’t have much themselves did all they could for me and changed my life completely because they gave me a chance. If only we all could do the same.”

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Some of Penny’s makeup collection.

Joe Gould’s Secret

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What do you think of New Yorker editor Harold Ross’s calling Joseph Mitchell’s profiles: “highlife-lowlife” pieces?

I agree very much so with New York editor Harold Ross’s calling Joseph Mitchell’s profiles “highlife-lowlife” pieces. Joseph Mitchell would make his way around the city dapperly dressed in designer attire. He looked higher up in social class yet he never wanted to interview anyone that looked this way. Harold Ross writes, “The only people he didn’t care to listen to; were society woman, industrial leaders, distinguished authors, ministers, explorers, moving picture actors, and any actress under the age of thirty-five.” Mitchell was only interested in interviewing lower class, “low-life” types that had fascinating stories, whether he was elaborating them or not.

Joe Gould is a perfect example of a “low-life” profile done by a “high-life” Joseph Mitchell. Gould is an oddball and while seemingly he may seem to be of a higher stature it is merely a facade. Truly Joe Gould relied heavily on the support and charity of others. Possibly this is why he spent so long and filled over one hundred spiral notebooks with an “oral-history” and events in his life that were never even true. Gould having writers block was constantly writing and rewriting this. Mitchell spending much of his time writing about Gould was outraged when he found out that it was a lie and revealed Joe Gould’s “secret”, that this history was false. After writing this Mitchell had writers blocks and never really published anything for the rest of his life. The irony in this is that both Joe and Joe fabricated fascinating stories and could not collect their thoughts in their last pieces of work. Perhaps Mitchell’s reason for having writers block at the end of his life was because he was disturbed by how much of himself he saw in Gould.

Alphabet City Backgrounder

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Alphabet City is a small neighborhood in New York City. Its boundaries are East Houston St to the north and E 14th St to the south and contains Avenue A, B, C and D. It gains its name from these avenues. Some more popular locations in the area include Tompkins Square Park and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.

It is a very artsy area that is heavily populated with German, Polish, Hispanic and Jewish. During the 1980s there were African Americans and Puerto Ricans living in the area as well as hundreds of struggling artists. The area also had a very high crime rate and high levels of illegal drug activity. Today it is 58th safest for all crime. There are many schools in the neighborhood such as The Neighborhood School, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Tompkins Square Middle School, New York City Community School District 1 Region 9,  Escuela Hispana and the George Jackson Academy.

In my research I found the following statistics as of 2013. The median household income was $68,148. The median rent was $1,374.There was more females than males but not by much. There was 31,769 males and 34,355 females documented. The median age for both sexes in the neighborhood was 35 years old. There was 25.9% of married couple families with children and 20.4% single-mother households. 13.1% of people do not speak english in the neighborhood and 24.4% were foreign born residents. 34.8 % of people were born in another U.S state and 35.7% were born in New York.

Asking prices for buildings has significantly increased over the past 3 years. Vacant buildings are being bought, remodeled and sold for prices reaching over 1 million dollars an apartment.The average housing price for housing units in 3-to-4 unit structures was $1,282,293. The streets are lined with early 19th and early 20th century buildings. Some buildings of note in the area include the St. Nicolas of Myra Church, the Eleventh Street Public Bath, the Congregation Beth Hamedrash Hagadol Ansche Ungarn, and the Congregation Mezritch Synagogue. Public School 64 is a French Renaissance Revival structure that was designed by master school architect C.B.J Snyder and was built in 1904-1906. This was a time period of tremendous expansion and construction of new schools due to the consolidation of New York City and its recently centralized school administration, school reforms, and a burgeoning immigrant population (wikipedia). Some notable residents of  the area Louis Abolafia, Rosario Dawson, Bobby Driscoll, Allen Ginsberg, Madonna, Charlie Parker and Heraldo Rivera.

This neighborhood is growing in money. What once was home to starving artists and immigrants has become expensive area to live in. Crime rate has dropped and the area is filled with young hip adults crawling the bars in the neighborhood. Just like many neighborhoods it is filled with family own businesses and bars that have been around for centuries. A understated but special neighborhood to say the least.

It is changing into a hip trendy area and drawing in a younger crowd attracted to the nightlife. Its filled with more unique businesses and restaurants then ever before.

http://www.city-data.com/neighborhood/East-Village-New-York-NY.html

http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/crime-safety-report/manhattan/east-village

Robert Shelton

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Does the writer give us more than Robert Shelton’s personal history?

The writer goes deep into Robert Shelton’s history as far as to mention that he mainly remembers his stepfather for beating his mother. A rather personal statement that does not directly correlate to the main point of this article, but serves as a purpose to understand Mr. Shelton on another level. The writer also gives us a history of Domino Sugar and the factories previous workers.

Describe the narrative of this profile, the arc of the story.

The narrative of this profile is very personally connected to Mr. Shelton. We learn about his life and his personal struggles. We come to understand the connection he has to the sugar factory and the sculpture. It starts off with us learning about the conditions of the factory that Mr. Shelton worked in and we find out that it will become residential offices. Then we get more personal into Shelton’s life and learn the history of the Domino sugar factory. Finally winding down to Shelton’s present day life and wishes for the remains of the factory.

What do you think of the lead?

The author is primarily focused on Mr. Shelton’s emotional connection and history to bring the story to life. I think the author does a good job in making the reader feel connected. The descriptions used by Shelton and the author brings the story to life in a story that is otherwise dead without them.

Where is the nut graf?

The second paragraph on the second page where we learn about the sphinx being hauled away and the sugar house becoming residential offices.

What about the author’s point-of-view?

The authors point-of-view is that this is a special place and the lives of the workers and the significance of this place to them is of great importance and should not be forgotten.