Wednesday, September 20, 2017

A Little Bit Of Urban Rock


I still love this damn city, even if it's a shell of what it once was, and any semblance of a real community is nearly gone. I miss the days when your neighbors actually wanted to know you, would say hello, and knew they could turn to you for help if needed. I miss when there were cats in the neighborhood who'd chase-out/beatdown the predators when they rolled through looking for a vic; when folks didn't turn a blind eye to someone in distress. Long gone are the days when you didn't get sneered at by transplants for sitting on their stoop, when there weren't separate entrances for the poor in newly built buildings, and nearly everyone could afford a piece of the pie, even if only a small slice.

All that said, I still get a massive jolt of city-love when I spend the afternoon in Coney Island or an evening in South Brooklyn, or spend time in one of the many boss parks that I once took for granted. When I drink in Jimmy's Corner, catch a rock'n'roll show, grab a plate of $1 dumplings in some hole-in-the-wall joint in Chinatown or tacos from a street-cart in Jackson Heights, hit up one of the hundreds of free gallery openings that happen monthly, or chop it up with another local, reminiscing about the good times and the bad... I feel alive.

This is still a great city filled with art, adventure, culture, and a fair amount of real humans, but for how much longer it's hard to say.

Words by Lee Greenfeld © 2017
[ If anyone knows the name of the photographer who snapped the above shot of
the Montague Street OTB, please be in touch so they can receive proper credit. ]

Thursday, September 14, 2017

Love That's Like Music Or Something


“When I'm dead, I hope it may be said: his sins were scarlet, but his books were read.” 

J.P. Donleavy
Rest In Peace

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

From The Ashes


"I think it's a mistake to ever look for hope outside of one's self. One day the house smells of fresh bread, the next of smoke and blood. One day you faint because the gardener cuts his finger off, within a week you're climbing over corpses of children bombed in a subway. What hope can there be if that is so? I tried to die near the end of the war. The same dream returned each night until I dared not to go to sleep and grew quite ill. I dreamed I had a child, and even in the dream I saw it was my life, and it was an idiot, and I ran away. But it always crept onto my lap again, clutched at my clothes. Until I thought, if I could kiss it, whatever in it was my own, perhaps I could sleep. And I bent to its broken face, and it was horrible … but I kissed it. I think one must finally take one's life in one's arms."

Words from After The Fall, 1964

Monday, September 4, 2017

On The Waterfront


Photograph by Lee Greenfeld © 2017