Living with Legends

Reverend Jen, who has an open mike reading series on Ludlow Street and runs a trolll museum, is a crusader against the gentrification—and the stupification–of the Lower East Side.  I remember reading in Rverend Jen’s book (Really Cool Neighborhood, Printed Matter Inc., 2003) awhile back about how for her the final straw was when she saw somebody go into her building carrying golf clubs.  When she witnessed this abomination it actually caused her to vomit.

Well, I saw somebody check into the Chelsea with some golf clubs the other day, and that’s about how I felt too.  He had come from Florida to play golf in Manhattan. The Chelsea was able to hang on a few years longer than that larger and even more essential bastion of Bohemianism, the LES, but the end result is shaping up to be even more sickening.

Now, I don’t know where the best place in the country to play golf is, no doubt in some suburb somewhere, but I do know the absolute worst place: Manhattan !  What the hell was this guy doing, hitting balls off the roof?!  This is the kind of guests we have to get used to now, with the new management.  (And lately, these clueless assholes have had the gall to complain about us!  Increasingly, we’re being treated like second class citizens in our own home.) 

Let’s get something straight golfers: you’ve got the burbs, which you created in your image; isn’t that enough?  Don’t you get it?  We came here to get away from you.  We’re even willing to pay for your cut-rate mortgages that you can’t afford!  Please, we beg of you, just go back!

Anyway, Reverend Jen, with things even worse on the LES now than when you wrote your book five years ago, I hope you’re able to keep down the occasional Budweiser and slice of pizza. — Ed Hamilton