The East Village is not a common spotting place for Wall Street traders. But being just a few subway stops away, the neighborhood has been feeling the turbulence from the current economic crisis, with residents worrying about losing jobs and savings.
Dave West, a lead engineer at Goldman Sachs for 10 years, mentioned that the company had a special meeting recently. “The tension is growing inside. We are afraid of receiving a pink slip,” said West one recent morning, while hopping on the bus in the East Village to get to his downtown office on Broad Street.
Richard, an audio-visual service provider for many Wall Street firms, said that the situation will only get worse. “The reason for this situation is that there has been too much cream to reap in this business,” he said. “A handful of executives have drawn the disaster on the rest of world by filling their own pockets. Greediness! ” Richard has kids and he is worried about their college fund.
More banks have opened their branches in the East Village. However, in the Wachovia Bank branch around the corner from Astor Place, business was quiet last week. One could feel the tension while the employees wondered what would happen to them as merger talks went on with Wells Fargo.
Those people who just lost jobs may now have leisure time to go out to bars and let go off their stress. While downtown bars still burst with people at night, the crowd in an old Irish pub, O’Hanlon’s, in the East Village, was somber. Manager James Gans has lived in the East Village for years and witnessed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the blackout of August 2003. People with money have moved in the Village.
Old red-brick walk-ups have unwillingly given way to a new architectural mindset and the old regulars have been slowly but firmly pushed away from the neighborhood. My friend, a long-time New Yorker, known to many as “Princess Poyang,”even had to move to her homeland, South Korea, because she could not keep up with the rent-hikes that her landlord imposed on the First Avenue.
While Gans does not blame the nouveau riches for “occupying” his neighborhood, he was not particularly concerned about what is happening to the firms on Wall Street either. “I don’t even have a checking account,” he mumbled by pouring another shot of Jägermeister to a well-suited businessman.
Fall in the East Village (Photo by Anne McCullom)