WORKS ON DIGITAL PAPER

Early Sunday Morning, Old New York

Maybe it's too much to ask for someone to hear our stories about how it used to be one more time. Granted, the whole drama is irreparably played out to the hilt. But there they are, our friends, fresh off the plane from Antwerp, walking around the neighborhood. And it's all I can do to quell the urge from my very toes not to spout off about how this whole street used to have only Polish shops and how these five blocks used to be all Puerto Rican and how "no one" used to live between the train and our apartment. And then that same stinking realization that the "no one" I am referring to is actually a whole population of someones. Ah the shame of it all. But this morning I do pass the one remaining Polish bakery on Bedford. I do pass the Super Fund site that has somehow been miraculously cleaned up overnight and sold to a developer with just enough money. And to my greatest pleasure, I pass the group of kids, up early, jawing and crackling in the Sunday morning sun, warming up their arms for that one sport that is the most New York.

Danny's Take