Category — Site Authors

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As I step out of my dorm every morning, I don’t really think of the history.  I just take in the immediate things that the streets of the Lower East Side have to offer me on my daily walk to class. I don’t think of who lived in these same buildings around me, who walked these same streets before me. But after I began hearing the stories that Richard Price told, I was opened to a world of rich history and wonder.

The Lower East Side is filled with what Richard Price called “Ghosts:” remnants of people’s lives in old tenements and buildings, memories of those who made their way through the dimly lit streets. But what separates the time they lived in from ours? Sure, these “ghosts” lived lives filled with hardships that aren’t often a present day problem, but what has changed the streets? Richard Price attributes the downfall of a neighborhood to the presence of “cappuccino”—but is that all that has brought our time to be so starkly contrasting with the past? It seems that although the pavement may have been re-done, and although the buildings may have been re-surfaced, the ubiquitous history isn’t out of sight—it is all around us. When Richard Price spoke of ghosts, my first thought was of specters and apparitions—but now, I imagine the past people of the Lower East Side, and what they did on these streets: bustling through their daily routines, chastising children, meeting new people at markets, greeting fellow neighbors in their travels…it’s amazing how easy it is to visualize the wonders of the city that have been covered by only a few layers of asphalt.

As teenagers, we are supposed to be the ones in touch with technology and modern culture. We all want the newest phones and ipods so that we are up to date with what is “In.” That is a cultural aspect of being young. We know the latest technology more than adults because we are growing up with this. Most adults weren’t presented these options at a young age. However, young age may not be a barrier to these new trends.

My mom, who has four kids and in her mid fifties has recently crossed the generation gap from adult to teenager in how she uses technology. A few years ago she was introduced to texting, which she can now stop doing. She will literally text me if I’m in another room of the house if she wants me to go to her, or walk the dog. If she wants to know where I am, she texts me. In just a couple of years she went from talking on a house phone to texting on a cell phone.

Another way she has joined modern culture is that she now has a facebook and is attached to it. Other classmates of mine notice how she’ll comment on a few status’s, or leave a wall post on my page. I don’t mind because it’s my mom, but I just find it funny how she’s become so socially and technology advanced over the past few years. Many adults say how “us kids” are spoiled with our new technology, but my mom doesn’t. She uses it as a way to join this new wave of technology and be socially and culturally connected with people.

I feel many of the cultural differences between age groups have been getting smaller as technology has grown. This modernized way of life has brought generations closer together, whether it’s good or bad. The most recent thing my mom has gotten is a kindle, something that would be unheard of and unimaginable thirty years ago. Now it is what is expected.

When my boss first told me that I was going to be working at Citi Field, I did not know what to think. I had never had an interest in sports and had never even seen the inside of a stadium. My coworkers who had worked the stand there before warned me that it was pretty boring. However, as the start of the season approached, I felt myself growing more and more excited. I started tuning in to all the talk of baseball, whether in school or on the news, and wanted to experience this sport that so many people seemed so passionate about.

The first few days at the stadium were a blur to me. I was introduced to many new people, intimidating men dressed in suits and my supervisors in their green uniforms. There were complicated cash registers to get used to and long forms to fill out at the end of every game and food prices to remember. However, after the first home stand, I had really settled in and started to feel comfortable in my new job. The most interesting part of working at Citi Field was the customers. I would see the same faces all the time. There was the young guy who would come every Tuesday and Thursday, grinning as I would go prepare his usual turkey sandwich exactly the way he liked it. There was another man who would be there every Wednesday and announce his presence each time by shouting to me, “Let me see the brightest smile in the stadium!” There was the elderly woman I would see almost everyday, buying a salad and going off to sit on a bench alone. What all these people had in common was their intense love for baseball. One of my teachers once told me that sports are like a religion, and that is the way that many people seemed to treat the Mets games, something sacred reserved for a certain day of the week.

To be honest, I still don’t have a great interest in sports. I still do not know any baseball terms or players, despite having watched the games a countless number of times. However, I do have a greater respect for sports fans and their passion. Though I no longer work at Citi Field, I have returned a few times, just for that uplifting atmosphere of excitement that you cannot find anywhere but at a sports stadium.

Yesterday, I took a stroll around the Lower East Side. Well, rather, I walked out of the dorms and got myself lost. But in getting lost, I found a lot more than I had expected.

I was on the lookout for E Houston St, and instead found Chinatown and Fuji-town, a few solemn synagogues, a few empty lots and a lot of ghosts. I took Richard Price’s advice, and looked up at all the history. Right now, if I look out my window, I see high-rise tenements with “For Sale” signs in Chinese, English, and who knows what. I see advertisements for leases, coca-cola and others amid weather-beaten bricks.

So naturally, my mind raced back to the reading. Richard Price’s quirky, sarcastic face popped up right in to my consciousness. His head floated around in my head as he pointed out all those little things I had never seen before, and soon I saw myself pointing them out to the friend I was with as well.

His face and advice are unforgettable to me. Not just because his hilarious story resonates so close to home, but for other reasons. The tone of his voice and his overall demeanor fascinated me. He seemed so familiar to me: a coach, a dad, a neighbor. Something about him was so odd to me; maybe it was how alike he was to my own father (in a complete opposite universe where my dad is a millionaire writer. I wish), and some of my friends as well.

It was apparent that Richard Price had a strong sense of community and that old-style Brooklyn (in his case, Bronx) sense of a close-knit neighborhood. I could see the subtle sadness in his eyes as he answered the questions about LES, and how this communal closeness has gone right out the window.

Tis a shame, but I still love LES just the same.

It was a Friday night and I was returning home from my weekly model UN meeting with my friend Kevin. As we boarded the 6 train, he turned to me and asked if I knew how to play Mahjong. I had seen relatives playing Jewish Mahjong, and I had seen yakuza play it in old Japanese mafia films, but I had a feeling that wasn’t going to cut it, so I told him that I didn’t really know, but that I would love to learn.

We got back to the dorm, and two of our friends were sitting in the community room, eyes glazing over as they stared at their laptop screens. They were more than willing to play with us.

The game started off a little rocky. Each of us knew a different version of Mahjong; Jewish/Japanese, Shanghainese, Hong Kong, and a Toisan/Canton mixture. By the end of the fifth round, however, everyone started to get into their own groove. We were able to mix and match our different Mahjong styles and it made for quite an interesting game.

“Rokuman!” I cried out, putting down the tile with the Chinese characters for “six” and “ten thousand” on them.

“Samton!”

“Pon!”

“Window!”

Because we could all read the Chinese characters and recognize the pictures, we could cry out the name of the tile in whatever language we so pleased. As the game progressed, five languages (Japanese, Cantonese, Mandarin, Shanghainese, and English) were being combined, giving way to quite an amusing game and learning experience.

The game lasted from 8:30 PM until 3:00 AM, us laughing and shouting the whole time. The later it got, the more ridiculous our combinations became, until no one could understand what anyone was saying, nut we didn’t need to. We all found ourselves on the same page, connected through our extremely fun multi-cultural game of Mahjong.

Although I lost all of my chips and ended up owing some to everyone, I won a few games and greatly broadened my cultural horizons while deepening my friendships. I cannot wait to play again.

Photo from: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/03/11/price/

The excerpt from Richard Price’s Lush Life gave me a taste of his fast-paced storytelling. The narrative instantly gripped my attention when it took place right off the Williamsburg Bridge, where my home is in the Lower East Side of NYC. But I didn’t know what to expect from the reading; maybe he would just read a few passages monotonously and then be on his way. When I saw him at the reading, I was surprised by how much of a normal guy he was. Actually, he was so normal that he was wearing the same shirt I had seen him wearing in the LES tour video! His manner of speaking seemed very nonchalant, yet he never spoke nonsense. Even when going off on tangents, he made his words count.

I admire when a respected artist is comfortable poking fun at his/herself, and I knew Richard Price was this kind of person when he introduced his piece by saying the first couple of pages might have to be translated. He knew his heavy use of slang might leave the reader confused. He captured the essence of my neighborhood eerily accurately and it made total sense that he had to write about a murder to get these different groups in the same neighborhood to come out of their bubbles and interact with each other.

After the reading we were all dying for him to “tell us another one.” The second piece he read was written from the perspective of living in Harlem. Price seemed to me like an Anthropologist who wrote his etymologies in poetry. He lives with and studies different groups of people and how they interact, then he writes about it. The storyline needn’t be factual because the culture and the types of people he depicts are truth.