Die, Yuppie Scum
Here’s a motto I haven’t seen in a while.
Hand-lettered posterboard on a phone booth on Avenue A, near 9th Street, Manhattan. A nice, warm July night, walking past the new, happy, safer Tompkins Square Park.
Update: It seems like the sign could have been a leftover from John Penley’s “Die, Yuppie Scum” rally in the East Village in June. The Tompkins Square Park riots have their 20th anniversary next month, and (Republican!) Bruce Willis has just opened a wine bar in the neighborhood.
And I feel like I might have to educate myself a little bit.
In the meantime, I’ll defend my apparent apathy:
Knee-jerk, I feel that as a product of the New New York, I don’t get to have an opinion about matters like these. I’m an indirect beneficiary of the tidal wave of money (I assume it was the tidal wave of money that did it) that’s made New York a safer place to be. I never came here when I was a kid in the ’80s, and I wonder whether I’d have moved here as an adult if the city were still the way it was then. On the other hand, I take it for granted that New York’s merry-go-round will eventually throw me off, because I won’t be able to afford, or willing to do what it takes to afford living here, long-term, in the style in which I’d like to live as a full-fledged grown-up. Maybe I should be as mad as hell about that, but I don’t know. Maybe postmodern young people like me don’t expect to feel at home, rooted, entitled to a place. I like New York and I’ve been moving in and out of it for five years, but—I think I’ll stand by this statement—it still feels more like a carnival or a stage set than a home. I don’t feel enough ownership or sense of mine-ness to get action-takingly upset about the condos towers eating up the Williamsburg waterfront, or ringing McCarren Park. Yes, they’re ugly, and architecturally lame. Yes, I’m priced out of them anyway. But what claim have I got on Williamsburg?
Sister-Roommate and I are watching our way through Ric Burns’ PBS documentary about NYC. One quote from early in the show that’s stuck with me is that architecturally and structurally, the city is in a constant state of remaking itself. “Endlessly plastic” might have been the phrase. I’m all for historic preservation, neighborhood activism, and kicking against the pricks, AND I’ve been here long enough to know how much better things were before this or that enormous building or big box store got planted into the landscape, but it seems to me like an at least grudging acceptance of the city’s fundamental plasticity is a pre-requisite for living here happily.
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