Crumbling from Within, and Without

Things have gotten much worse.

We have crumbled from within. Lacking foresight, courage, strength to maintain the traditions that have made this neighborhood so nice to live in. We've just been overrun and outgunned.

The local city councilman is a big, if unwitting, part of it. He's a good man, but he must have had to cut some deals to achieve his personal agenda. One deal was clearly with real estate developers. And he admits he is having a great time hobnobbing with big wigs all over the city. It looks as if he does a great job with the Ravenswood neighborhood, the LIC gold coast, libraries and schools among others. But developers, not so much.

The head of Phipps, who cordoned us off with Sunnyside Houses LLP, has convinced him he is a nice guy. During negotiations with the Phipps tenants' association he showed himself to be the slipperiest of slippery characters. His representatives said in court that the judges order to "pay" tenants who had proved the owners installed defective windows was incomprehensible to him. He didn't realize that "pay" meant give them money, he said.

You have to admit, they have some steel. People with law degrees, business degrees, manage millions of dollars state clearly and unequivocally in open court that they don't understand the meaning of the word "pay." That's breathtaking.

All is lost

Over time, all is lost. Really it is.

Only the architecture remains, and often it is obscured or neutered by accumulations of greenery or possessions.

A new wave of small fry, flapping about on the wet sand, lucky if they can find a tidepool to await the next wave in, are in charge now. They are as seasoned as the tender green growth last year's twigs.

Yet, they are so young they have no idea how much they don't know. That is what make them dangerous.  They believe the know-how they gained in the working world, before they became parents, will serve them well here in our shared courtyards. But none of the skills transfer. No one is in charge, here. No one is getting paid. No one leaves their problems at the door and uses their party manners at meetings.  We don't all have the same education and methods of operating. And that is what makes them vulnerable.

Operators, that is what my dad's generation called them, fry people like them for breakfast every day of the week. And they have no idea. They think they are playing ping-pong, but their partners are gutter-ball champs.

Rocco, Macky,  Sorie and Wizzy. All experts in the playground arts.  You are buried six feet deep before you realize you arebnot on your feet anymore.

Dying

I'm only realizing that I am a Mohican. Truly. I am the last who knows how to behave the way I was brought up to behave in my own neighborhood.

In the park, everyone is equal. But new people come in an start shifting about for a heirarchy. Although there is no heirarchy, people make one up, and then, in actuality, there is one. But it is imported not intrinsic to the organization.

And the they so believe in these phantasmagorical ladders, they are willing to kill.

Sorie. is a murderer. Wizzy, is a leech. Rocco. is a vat of poison.

Standing Up But Going Down

I saw a lawyer about being kicked out of the garden. Viscerally I knew I was right--that the three who did it had no authority, they only claimed to have it. Whether they are primarily a Park Garden or   primarily a city garden, they ignored all written rules and procedures. They will have to go before the board to explain themselves. I hope they suffer consequences. They will have to prepare for an inspection by Green Thumb. They are out of line in so many ways they will have to spend weeks getting paperwork together.

Their minds dove below the level of actuality into vicious slander. And they acted from visceral outrage.  Those actions hardly ever stand up under scrutiny.

Neither they nor I meant any harm, we just came from such different perspectives this crack up was bound to happen.

This place  has been my home for most of  my life. My father came from Treesdale, my mom from Sun Garden Estates. All my brothers and I were born here. Our best friends were the children of my parent's best friends. Almost 60 years later, we are still in touch.

And for fifty of those years nothing much changed in this town. Some new stores, people came and went at the usual rate. You would lose a family or two every few years, a new family would come along. The priests in the parish would change. The beauty shop owners would change. A new guy was running the deli, that kind of thing. But deep down, it remained the same, a rather nicer than average working class neighborhood ten minutes from the Bridge. Built in up in the 10s, 20s, 30s and 40s. Then at full bloom in the 50s, a slight decline in the 60s, a more precipitous one in the 70s,  rock bottom in the early and mid 80s, and then a few signs of new life.

First there were more Asian people, many from Korea. And people from central and south America. Then Romanians, Pakistani's, Nepalese. These were all immigrants of the usual kind. People from different countries, holding on to the ways they grew up with while their children taught them American ways. We all took some getting used to each other, but essentially they are what Queens is used to, new immigrants.

But, then, Oh, my, came a different kind of immigrant. People priced out of Manhattan and Brooklyn. That is when the neighborhood no longer felt like home at all. A horde, armed with glossy brochures, ignorance and hutzpah, ushered themselves into a previously quiet precinct at the behest of an aggressive billionaire mayor who decided that since NY didn't make products to sell anymore it would have to sell itself.

So in surged a tsunami of people miffed that they couldn't be enviable Manhattanites, or even cool Brooklynites. So they determined to turn the quiet couple of blocks that is Sunnyside Gardens into a
"destination neighborhood."

Its been distressing, to say the least.