Report: Stanton and Ludlow
The environment is what we all share -- it is the revealed fact of our unity. This is nowhere more true than in the city, which always tends to resolve wild spaces.
What was the environent? As summer was changing to fall, something was getting wild at the corner. The cart was caught up in this uncertainty. There was one night -- I think it was Yom Kippur.
I was parked on Ludlow, adjacent to the crowd out front of Pianos. We had weathered the first cold front of the season, the temperature had rebounded but not all the way. The beginning of the night was slow business -- many groups of people, but drifting or standing around aimlessly. I myself was caught in one of these groups for a while -- and it was pleasant: making some food, enjoying some conversation.
[The incident of the hundred dollar hot dog happened during this part of the evening, but that's a yarn for another day...]
Then suddenly it kicks into another gear altogether, starting with an orders for 4 Korean Style Beef Barbeque (my most elaborate and expensive dish), followed immediately by two more orders. The rush is on, and I'm caught flat-footed, with not much food already prepared. I'm tossing off a few hot dog orders, a few sausage orders, and then the orders for Chicken BBQ Sandwiches start coming in. People are hungrier than they had realized/ the natives are restless...
Then a silver BMW SUV pulls up off the curb behind me, the soundsystem amped. It's good music, too -- a cold fusion of hip-hop and latin dance. It's one of my regulars -- he orders a chicken sandwich and sits back to wait, propping the car door open and jacking up the sound on his speakers even higher. It's a party in the street. What do you do -- you rock and you don't stop.
In reconstruction: it must have lasted for a little over an hour, from about 2:30 to 3:40 -- nice young people getting loose, hardened partyers brightening up, Puerto Ricans stoned and straight, a car service driver, a two German chicks snapping photographs -- a good time, and no casualties. It ended quickly and well, the crowd dispersed peaceably. Someone must have taken notice...
The next weekend I arrived to find the the police squatting on the block. There was a police checkpoint at the bottom of Ludlow. The manager from Pianos told me the story: they had been harrassing him about "blocking the sidewalk." They kept asking him why I put "his" pushcart there. He had explained that it wasn't his, but offered to pass on the word: "they don't want you on this side of the intersection." When I asked why, he said I could talk to the Leiutenant myself if I wanted. He pointed him out: the white stuffed-shirt asshole swaggering around overseeing the checkpoint, his fat belly hanging over his belt, an unlit cigar caught in his slack mouth. I declined.
On Friday, the building department raided Pianos, dropping its occupancy by a third. The checkpoint was still in effect. Every car with any violation -- so much as a seatbelt law violation -- was pulled over, the occupants forced to show ID. Apart from one incident where the 5-0 bit off more than they could chew and the driver leapt out, screaming "I'll have your jobs! do you know who I am? who I know?" --- I didn't see it, but the manager of Pianos recounted it with great glee: "the Leiutenant backed right the fuck down!" --- apart from that, the action had the desired chilling effect.
The next week the "emergency response unit" lowered the occupancy of Pianos even further. The checkpoint held, in Friday they even added a paddy wagon, parked ominously directly across from Pianos. No one was arrested, but the message was clear. Business was, shall we say, quiet.
[was there another weekend in there? -- I don't know, the ordeal of the lot switch strains my ability to recall]
Yesterday the police were finally gone. Business was at a record high, but it was no party. The manager of Pianos invited me to go to the Community Board Meeting on Wednesday, and I've decided to take him up on it. It is, ominously, held in the police precint building on Pitt Street.
Your faithful reporter...
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further analysis to follow...now I need to sleep...
Posted by Sam at October 11, 2004 08:27 AM
