I recently posted a link to the Village Voice's obituary of longtime EV resident Richard Leck. Without any living relatives, there was concern that this veteran might be laid to rest in Potter's Field. Here's an update from the Voice:
Richard Leck, the East Village habitue whose death we reported two weeks ago, was buried today in Calverton National Cemetery on Long Island.
Leck, 75, a former soldier, died of heart disease on Dec. 19 without next of kin. His friends had contacted the Voice because they feared that he would end up in a pauper's grave.
But the city Medical Examiner, the Mayor's Office of Veteran's Affairs, the VA, and a coalition of veteran's groups got together in impressive speed and took care of the transportation and burial of his body.
In other words, the system worked. Kudos to them.
We wrote about Leck because he was one of that disappearing class of people who make the neighborhood colorful and interesting.
Runnin' Scared had a lovely feature obituary earlier today on Richard Leck, a longtime East Village resident who recently died of heart disease. As Graham Rayman notes:
Leck, 75, was one of that disappearing class of people who make the neighborhood more colorful and more interesting than the yuppie scum who invade this sacred ground and drive up the rents.
Without any relatives, the veteran may have to be buried in Potter's Field.
The Village Voice unleashes its annual "best of NYC" issue this week. Check it out here. The issue features an essay from Tom Robbins titled "The Hidden History of the City's Greatest Era." He writes, in part:
The fact is that to live in New York in the late '70s to early '80s was to enjoy a cornucopia of inexpensive artistic and intellectual entertainments.
Here's one small bit of payback that angry and frustrated New Yorkers could easily bestow on the grasping financial merchants behind last week's meltdown: Have the City Council — always down for a good street renaming — simply re-tag Wall Street with a new label, one more in line with its recent history: Boulevard of Greed? Gluttony Gulch? Chozzer Terrace?
For those of us prone to take the low road, these are the sort of names that instantly spring to mind, the nastier the better. And why not? How else to describe an industry that applauds nearly $500 million in bonuses for executives recklessly steering straight into the fiscal rocks, taking an entire economy down with them?
Paumgarten avoids going all the way with this, suggesting that we can have the sweet side of the 70s cup without tasting the bitter. The collapse has unloosed something in him; for a long time such as he could not mention New York's bankrupt days without a show of revulsion, as old-world types could not mention the devil without crossing themselves. But the Wall Street debacle tells him that those prayerful gestures have come to naught: the bubble's burst and the wolf is at the door. Now he can admit that there was something cool about those old days, and he can even be glib about them. But when that 70s show really goes into re-runs, we won't be able to edit out the unfunny bloopers. There was never a chance that we'd get cheaper rents without a crash, and as of now the market fluctuations are only ruffling the high end of the market. We're a long way from the vintage conditions of that last renaissance. Before you can have the Ramones, you have to have rehearsal spaces that even glue-sniffing slackers can afford. Before you can have Taxi Driver, you have to have urban moonscapes that don't need to be built by film crews. And you only get those in the wake of real catastrophe.
Joy-popping the 70s is a fun pastime, but be not deceived: playful speculation is nothing like the real thing. We remember fondly our $125-a-month railroad flat in a forsaken neighborhood called the East Village, and the good times we had there. We also remember nightly gunfire, mugger money, and Etan Patz. Are we willing to accept one to get the other? It's not worth wondering about: we'll find out when we get there.
[Photo of 216 E. 7th St. in 1979 by Marlis Momber.]
Bonus: Are you ready for 1974 again?
And! If you don't have time to watch all of the 39 Death Wish movies, let's just get to it:
The Voice has the story on "the Most Annoying People in Lower Manhattan": the college-age canvasser. (Subhead: "The young bleeding-heart carnivores who hunt you down on your lunch hour."
Despite the fact that his breathless spiel is all monologue, Garth's job title is "dialoguer." It's a term coined by an Austrian company known as the Dialogue Group, which helped to develop this brand of street confrontation and brought it to U.S. cities a few years ago with a subsidiary called Dialogue Direct.
Garth pauses to catch his breath and then whips out a laminated picture of his own sponsored child, an innocent-looking boy sitting in a hut thatched with palm fronds. The location, he says, is the Dominican Republic. He checks to see whether he still has the attention of the woman in front of him. He does, but then realizes he's talking to a reporter.
"Children are dying and you're wasting my time!" he says, scowling. Mramor drops the laminated photograph back into his duffel bag. He doesn't apologize for seeming rude. "Being nice doesn't work," says the irritated college student. "I signed up two people today by being an asshole, and I'll continue to do that. Have a nice day."
The ongoing war between the forces of gentrification and the middle and working classes of the "old New York" has hit Chinatown too. A new organization, calling itself the Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side, has taken aim at what it says are three threats to the neighborhood: a lack of affordable housing, a rezoning plan that could push upscale high-rise development from the Lower East Side to Chinatown, and a potential Business Improvement District that they say would tax small businesses out of existence.
