The Charm of Alphabet City in New York October 15th, 2009
Alphabet City in New York is one of my favorite neighborhoods. Perhaps it is for sentimental reasons, as the first time I visited the city, I stayed with my friend on Avenue C for two weeks. I was doing a show on 42nd Street, and when I left each morning for the theater, I pretended that I was living and working there, I pretended that it was my town. This was in the early 1990’s and the neighborhood was just at the beginning of becoming gentrified. People still slept in doorways, and one night a cab driver dropped me off at the corner of Avenue C, refusing to take me all the way to the apartment, stating that “something very, very bad” had happened to him there once. I was not scared though. My friend had lived there for many years, and I just felt protected–perhaps naively so, but so just the same.
And last year I went back for the first time since my first visit, and things have changed. It is still the funky neighborhood I remember though. It has been gentrified, but unlike the Chicago neighborhood of Wicker Park, there are no corporate coffee shops putting the indies out of business. There is still charm to be found in a boutique hotel in New York, and small independent book stores and restaurants. They have managed to keep the gritty and the artistic feel to this particular area. There is a yoga studio for dogs, and underground burlesque shows. And Tompkins Square park is not the drug infested square that it was the first time I was there. There is now a dog park, weekly farmer’s markets and live performances. It was a beautiful change, in a time when change can be done without thought. All of my visits in the future will include a walk through this neighborhood, my first ‘hood in the city of the Big Apple.
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