A long-time East Village resident, I appreciate the fact that New York City is a heck of a lot safer than it was when I first moved here. But there are a lot of things I miss, including cheaper rents, the small shops and restaurants that once made this city unique and the overall feeling that you could come to the Big Apple and achieve anything.
I'm not giving up on New York City, of course, and neither is my cat Charlotte, who only moved here last year and is pictured above observing the city from my window. But I do feel like the city has lost some of its soul.
Might the economic downturn bring it back?
Yes, according to Jeremiah Moss, who writes a blog called Jeremiah's Vanishing New York in which he chronicles the death of New York City. Actually, this writer, who tends toward the bitterly nostalgic on his blog (a must-read for anyone who loves New York City), is downright giddy about the prospects in an op-ed piece he wrote for the New York Daily News titled "The downturn's upside: N.Y.C. may finally regain its character."
I think he could be on to something.
Here is an excerpt from his piece, which appears in today's Daily News:
The media have been working overtime to paint the recession as utterly bleak for New York City. We keep hearing that the bad old days of the 1970s are returning. Rising crime will force us all to go back to carrying Mace in our pockets and barricading ourselves indoors. City services will grind to a halt and the streets will choke with uncollected garbage. Rats, muggers and squeegee men will run rampant, destroying the quality of life extolled by the so-called Golden Age.
Supposedly, all of New York City is suffering from a mass collective malaise, a dark cloud of shared pessimism. But the truth is very different. In reality, many of us are feeling giddily optimistic about this city for the first time in a decade.
Who are these crazy optimists? Head-in-the-sand deniers of the economic calamity? No, just people who welcome the possibility that the unique character of New York, sanitized in the Giuliani and Bloomberg years, may finally return.
As the writer of the blog Jeremiah's Vanishing New York, where I catalogue the city that's being lost to hypergentrification, I have heard hope rising from many vocal readers—hope that we'll at last have our beloved, wild, creative, eclectic city back.
Welcome Cat
Hi. I'm Client Nine Lives, and I reside in New York City. My cat sitter and I have play dates during the week. I sit on her lap, and she brushes me, then she runs around the apartment dragging a ball of twine, and I chase her. Don't judge. Your cat might like it, too. This is my cat sitter's blog, by the way. Unless otherwise noted, all of the cats pictured on this site are her clients. If I were you, I'd bookmark this site and visit often. As for my identity, I'd rather not go public at this point. I'm a rather private feline. That said, you can probably figure out who I am if you read this blog. Damn!