“Write What You Know”

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As I walked down Allen Street on my way back to the Ludlow dorms, I couldn’t help but look up.  I’d never really thought to do so before, until Richard Price, dressed in a yellow and black gingham button down, jeans, and comfy loafers, said that was the place to look and where one could see the history of the Lower East Side.  Having watched a Lush Life promotional video beforehand in which Price describes how it used to be the red light district where “truck drivers would come by and see some, you know, Jewish lady in a bathrobe and they’d go inside the tenements” and the street developed in order to “shed light” on the area, made it so much more interesting just to stop and look.

In the rooms of the dorms, there are floor to ceiling windows in which one could see up and down Delancey Street from the Williamsburg Bridge to the left and a few streets to the right; and with Price’s descriptions I try and imagine what the crime filled streets, the dirtinesss, the poor.  I imagine the ghosts he describes that suffered and his description: “the Lower East Side is vast and shallow; you could scoop up [history] with a teaspoon.”   His knowledge and observations of the LES were related to us in such a fascinating way; I think it was in part because he didn’t talk down to us and he was at ease with what he decided about the neighborhood.  He was just so laidback and engaging that made his presentation so much more exciting.  In contrast to his laidback character, it was amusing to hear his process in deciding to write about the LES: “And I’m an OCD writer, you know, so I had to find out how people in 1912 wiped their butts and if they used napkins and if they used napkins what kind they used…”

He was such a quotable yet unpretentious character and made the whole room laugh when he wanted to.  But this comedic quality didn’t show in his demeanor; he delivered his statements so matter-of-factly.  From his explanations that “the smell of cappuccino…kills a neighborhood” and that he pretends he’s James Joyce at times to his cultural descriptions about the stereotypes associated with different parts of America, one can tell that he is just genuine and so attuned to the world around him.  After spending so much time describing the LES and his history there, this is my favorite quote of the evening:  “And now I want to write a book about Harlem…because I’m black obviously.  Just like I’m an Orthodox Jewish Dominican.”