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In my defense, I was not alone. Most members of the bourgeoisie experience history as they do their heartbeats: they know it’s there but only become aware of its presence when something goes wrong. Neither I nor my peers in the “creative class” of that faux-meritocratic New York understood that the…

When they say this, I feel dyspeptic and misunderstood

I GO FOR DRINKS with another writer friend and we argue about the new East Villagers. I tell her they’re boring and don’t belong here and she tells me I can’t know that, not really, not without talking to them. Maybe they’re fascinating people. This reminds me of an op-ed I once read in the Times. …

The Great Invasion began sometime in the late 1990s but didn’t really take shape until after September 11. That’s when the new people found the East Village. The new people, the emphatically normal, come from someplace else, the Midwest, the South, but that’s not what makes them invaders. Many of u…

Somehow, I doubt the new people worry about dying that sort of death. They know they won’t be trapped here. They have other places they can go. But if they don’t worry like New Yorkers worry, can they dream like New Yorkers dream? While they sleep, do the walls of their apartments miraculously open…