Greenpoint
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Am I A Real Greenpointer Now?
(Or, it’s a full moon in Greenpoint)
The one subject I am rapidly tiring of is the issue of what makes a “real” citizen of (insert neighborhood here). Some were born in New York Shitty, and yes, some have even died here! It’s what’s in between that seems to be the pickle. At what point has one lived in a given neighborhood (in this case, Greenpoint) long enough to earn “street cred” from the self-appointed guardians of citizenship? I neither know the answer of this question nor do I care to learn it. To fixate upon the past is to ignore the present and abrogate one’s responsibility to shape the future. Which brings me to a Greenpoint incident of note from yesterday, July 18.
When I arrived at the junk shop I noticed something balled-up in a plastic bag. It was a wig. I pulled it out and looked at it.
Me (to a co-worker): This looks pretty ratty. Methinks I am going to throw it in the dumpster. That way we’ll see some crazy person wearing it in the neighborhood tomorrow.
ASIDE: Before I continue I would like to clarify something. The dumpster at the junk shop is arguably as popular as the store itself. Not only do people see fit to use it as a trash repository (such as the psychic next door* who once saw fit to dump her barbecue grill, replete with smoldering briquettes in it July 4th), but it is rifled through on a nightly basis by people who either do not know what has been placed in there (trust me, some of it was rather gross) or do not care.
Now jump forward to last night. It is 8:45 p.m. and I am headed down Manhattan Avenue to meet some friends for dinner. True to form, dumpster diving was well underway…
and the dude doing the diving was wearing said wig.
Is it just me or does this man bear an uncanny resemblance to Ron Jeremy?
Close but no cigar: my prognostication was off by approximately three hours. I may very well be on my way to becoming a real Greenpointer, but clearly I still have a ways to go.
Miss Heather
*Who has a habit of buying large quantities of lotto tickets. If this woman was truly psychic why hasn’t she won by now?
Comments
3 Comments on Am I A Real Greenpointer Now?
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d on
Sat, 19th Jul 2008 3:33 pm
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missheather on
Sun, 20th Jul 2008 1:46 am
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rowan on
Tue, 22nd Jul 2008 5:29 pm
THANK YOU for addressing the “real” citizen issue. I’ve just been noticing it the past year or so and it seems mostly to come from a younger generation’s sense of entitlement over something they have no control over – where they were born. The older “natives” I’ve known over the past 10+ years that I’ve been living in and around NYC never bring it up and don’t seem to care about the issue – they tend to be 35+. Since moving to Greenpoint a little over a year ago, the neighbors that have lived here for all to most of their lives have been nothing but wonderful, they stop and chat and don’t treat me with any hostility despite not having oozed from my mother’s womb here. Also when I first moved here I found this blog and I thought it was great, I would never consider you less than a “native” Greenpointer! This site helped me a lot find stuff around the ‘hood and I especially love the Greenpoint history posts.
No problem. Frankly I am still trying to wrap my head around someone wearing a wig pulled out of a dumpster.
That said, thanks for the kind words. I love the old timers here. Take Irene who lives above the old funeral home on Manhattan Avenue. She’s has not only fought hard to improve this community (and is currently a member of the Newtown Creek Monitoring Committee), she is also an amazingly kind woman with a wicked sense of humor! Leonard Suligowsky (formerly of the Greenpoint Star) has helped me in ways I cannot BEGIN to list here. With all the things that are going on in Greenpoint, some good, some not so good, it strikes me as being very counter-productive to quibble over “pedigreesâ€.
That said, I am currently working on a Greenpoint history post. I am missing one vital piece of info to put it all together. I will be spending today trying to find it!
this brings to mind a quotation posted on some of the subway trains. to paraphrase roughly, it makes the observation of three types of New Yorkers: the natives, the commuters and the settlers. it concludes that the natives give the city its solidity, the commuters its sense of motion but the settlers are the ones that give New York City its passion. i find this very true in regards to the city as a whole and to individual neighborhoods. Greenpoint needs its long-time residents, its original buildings and enterprises but in order to keep from stagnating, it also needs new things (homogenization it does not need with cookie-cutter condos and chain stores). animosity and false sense of entitlement because one claims to have grown up here create a sense of alienation between newcomers and oldtimers.
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