MARCH 1997
Apple jacked
Letter from New York, New York
by Michael Hureaux-Perez
Greetings from Nueva Jork, upper left hand side, the neighborhood
of Quisqueya also called Little Santo Domingo or Washington Heights. Anything
you want, we got it right here in Quisqueya, where vendors BUST their ass to
feed their children and sell everything they can get of surplus goods dumped
on them by more powerful entrepreneurial spirits. You can even find souvenir
Santa Cruz California T-shirts here.
Aye, Quisqueya, home to sweat shops for
every taste. Occupied twenty four seven by the squad cars, copters and foot
patrol of New York's finest, which is Mayor Guiliani's preferred branch
of government. Where the streets are triple parked and where Georgie the
Wash fought the battle of Harlem Heights and where the third oldest tree
in Manhattan is attended to by children who Chief Safir maintains are a
criminal element. The Audubon Ballroom, where Malcolm X organized the first
meetings of the Organization of African American Unity and where he was
eventually murdered is a few blocks from here, and John Audubon the bird
painter is buried in Trinity Cemetery just down off Broadway and 155th.
Apparently he was a big land owner on this part of the island when he died
in 1851.
Quisqueya on the Hudson, where my wife
Kathleen and I and a few hundred other renters in the area are attempting
to keep our landlords from throwing us out of our homes just because Riverside
Drive property in northern Madhatter is prime real estate and because possession
is nine tenths of the law and because they can.
Aye, Madhatter, where the caste of cash
doth grind slow but exceedingly fine and where all the Brahmin of Fifth
Avenue skip home by nightfall to avoid the untouchables of Harlem and the
South Bronx, who of late labor till they can't anymore and yearn but to
find where the Brahmin hide their caskets and drive a stake through their
hearts. Aye, Madhatter, one of the places Gandhi must have been thinking
of when asked his opinion of western civilization. He said he thought it
would be a good idea.
Aye, Madhatter, where your loyal server
Mikey yanks expresso in an upscale coffee store for our leaders of commerce
in the Silk Stocking District. (I think they call it that because they wear
them over their faces while they're jumping up and down in the trading pits
and stabbing the air with their pencils on Wall Street. This is the forest
primeval.)
I like this job. We have a cool uniform,
dark slacks, dark blue shirts and an earth colored floral print tie. We
look like the cast of The Untouchables. Appropriate, na? I suggested
they issue us shoulder holsters to wear, too, but the management says it
might frighten the customers. That's true, it might. On the other hand,
it might also make them feel more secure. During breaks, we could take our
rods down to the basement and plink a few rats. Biddabing, kapwing, pow,
pow! It would be like the 4th of July every god damn day. I mean, this job
isn't teaching, but that's okay. From the noises our leaders are making
about the direction education needs to take in this country, teaching isn't
going to be teaching either that much longer.
There's not anything more to tell you
this letter. Next letter, if I'm still living at this address, I'll tell
you about housing court and eviction processes out here, and the basic fairness
if somewhat predatory longing of the real estate market here, which, having
driven starving artists out of the studios of Chelsea ten years ago to make
room for gallery salespeople, and which has through the miracle of the entirely
unplanned but completely rigorous and impartial discipline of the market
figured out that if there's nowhere to go but up and up is already taken,
some people will have to be moved out of their rent controlled apartments
in a very choice area of Riverside Drive on the Hudson River facing the
New Jersey Palisades, which of course would be nicer place to live if there
were not already so many Latinos and Blacks living there and can't something
be done about that? Anyway, I'll try to tell you about that and not let
my pathologies as a member of the permanent underclass not get in the way
of a higher good, which is that of the experts, who always know that of
which they speak. Sometimes they even speak that of which they know.
Until then,
Mikey
© The Raven Chronicles 1997