Social Justice in New York

 I remember moving to Spanish Harlem...108th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam...in the summer of 1984. $1,000 a month for a run down 325 square foot two bedroom apartment overlooking a back alley and a side alley. In today’s money, $2500/ month. Did I mention it was a fourth floor walk up? 

Defund the Police. Release the oppressed people in jails as the new LA Prosecutor has vowed to do. Because Social Justice. That’ll cure our cities.

The Crack Wars were going when I moved to New York. Spanish Harlem was actually pretty safe as it was a tight neighborhood where people socialized on the front steps, so they knew who belonged on the street and who didn’t.

We had a very nice guy from Costa Rica as manager. His first day on the job he opened a trash can and found a drug dealer looking at him. At least the drug dealer’s head was looking at him. Welcome to the Big Apple🍎, Enrique!

My first week in NY, riding the subway, and as the doors closed as the train pulled out of a station a guy slammed between them and out, with a gold chain he’d broken off a woman’s neck on the way. Same week I’m walking down the sidewalk...West 11th street...guy runs toward me and past, followed by a guy with a .38 snubby. Ah. That’s ok. .38 snubby = cop. Still the first week: guy with at least a dozen layers of clothes, none of which have been washed in at least a decade, standing behind a dumpster committing..um...inappropriate touching to himself. Quite enthusiastically. Keep moving: this is The Big Apple🍎.

The apartment rental agent, an old friend, tells me of an apartment I’d looked at but not taken. Real nice kid from Indiana took it. Young, clean cut. Innocent. Then he moved out a week later. Bad tenant, huh? Hmmm: got burgled three times his first seven days, the third time after spending $800 of his own money on burglar bars. Turned out the guy in the unit above was a junky who was teaching his five year old brother a trade: lowered the little bro out the window by his foot so he could get in the newbie’s window and open the door for his big brother. Give a kid a fish....

Another week, back in Spanish Harlem, big crash in the alley: three people pile out of another building’s window, slamming each other with 2x4s. Yeah: not like Hollywood. 2x4s break bones. Call the cops. Another guy shows up with a .38 snubby in hand.

My next door neighbor, very smart, very attractive woman in her twenties. Her boyfriend signed up for welfare, spent his entire first payment on drugs, except for a dollar seventy five he dropped on a present to demonstrate how much he loved her. Yeah. He got a job driving a limo, came home and told us he was going to work his way up, buy his own limo, and another. Make a lot of money. He was too stoned to go to work the next day. End of limo service ownership for him. His girlfriend, my neighbor, edited children’s primary school books for a major publishing house. She was still living with him three years later, because judging him would be just too harsh. Actually, since she paid all the bills, he was living with her. Don’t be harsh.

I only rode a bus through black Harlem, north of Central Park, a couple times, but that was Crack Wars Central. Both time I saw guys fighting in the middle of the street, middle of the day. Knock down, drag out fighting. No guns tho. At least that I saw, but I was on a Greyhound. Nobody paying any attention.

That’s what a city can be like when the politicians and more importantly the people who vote for them value criminals more than they value the decent people, and the decent people buy the politicians’ patter.

Because Social Justice. Or something.

Watch what happens to all the Social Justice Meccas over the next few years. 

Ideally from a distance.