Living on the Upper West Side, we avoided the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, but we had to suffer the downtown refugees. Of the influx of hipsters on the Upper East Side, my teacher Charles S., said, “They’re taking our groceries, our seats in restaurants, our women!”
“How do you know they’re from downtown?” I asked.
“Oh, you know!” he said.
When Chris came home with groceries from Fairway, he said the guy behind him in the check-out line was mumbling, “I can’t wait to get back to SoHo.”
Our sidewalks on Broadway are full, not just of hipsters, but runners as Riverside and Central Parks were closed and the marathon, cancelled.
But we uptown people can take all comers. The Upper East and West Sides are big tents: bigger than this year’s political parties in that we can seat all migrants at our tables in our kitchens or in our restaurants.
I coped with the influx of downtowners the way I coped with my helplessness after 9/11. I went downtown to see a show.
Yesterday Chris and I traveled via subway to Tribeca to see Heresy by A.R. Guerney at the Flea Theatre. So good.
This political play takes place in a military office stocked with a bar and characters who believe various degrees of American exceptionalism.
An offstage character, Chris (as in Christ), delivers a manifesto, extolling the:
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Shops were back in business in Chinatown. the evils of consumerism
- the lie of the American Dream
- the reality that frustration with #1 and 2 leads to violence.
Karen Ziemba was hilarious and Annette O’Toole was heartbreaking.
It was great theater and a needed escape from the crowded streets of the Upper West Side.
100 Days of Poems and Pics 