Most advanced city in the world

WHAT if the intercom doesn’t work and you are living at the top of a six story apartment building in Manhattan? When I first moved to New York, this was a common predicament.

Nowadays the East Village, is one of the most sought after addresses in New York City. But when I moved there first it was a very different story. These classic red brick buildings with green fire escapes, the ones we have come to love from Edward Hopper paintings, were being deserted right left and centre. Landlords couldn’t afford to pay the taxes, so they simply abandoned them and left them to the homeless, winos, and junkies.

If you see the brilliant movie ‘Midnight Cowboy’ with Dustin Hoffman and John Voight, you will know what I mean. Dustin (Ratso) offers the penniless gigelo, Voight, a place to crash at his derelict N.Y. squat.

The building that I moved into was hanging on by the skin of its teeth. In fact, Wexford may have saved my landlord from losing his buildings. Several friends from Wexford ended up living along First Avenue in my landlord’s half empty houses. They came for six months and never left, just like myself.

These were not luxurious buildings, but they were alright. Yes the front door was hanging off its hinges, but the second door in the vestibule was locked. Sure, bums could sleep in the vesitabule and use it as a toliet, but they couldn’t get up the stairs!

My landlord who lived out in Brooklyn, visited the building on the first Thursday of every month. If you had’nt yet paid your rent, he would hammer the door with his fist. Because I had taken the apartment illicitly from a friend who was also illegal, I made sure to post my money order ahead of time. The landlord would’ve been happy to give me a new lease, but that would’ve hiked the rent up 1.5 per cent, and another for the fella before me. To combat that, we were all imitating the original guy’s handwriting on the money orders. If I hadn’t undertaken this careful procedure the rent would’ve gone up to a hundred and fifty a month! For God’s sake, couldn’t have that!

On those first Thursdays I could hear the landlord going from apartment to apartment hammering on the doors, shouting in a piercing tenor. I grew used to it, he had already received my rent, I was ahead of the game. Like a dignitary’s son in the CBS who could rest assured that he wouldn’t get whacked with the leather while the whole class was being massacred, I lounged in my chair, confidently smug.

Then bang!! Horror of horrors, he was at my door. ‘HELLO!!’ he yelled. I opened the door to a wiry, bald headed man in a tightly belted gaberdine coat. ‘Listen, I know you’re living here,’ barked he. ‘Here’s a new lease. Read it and sign it. I’ll be back in an hour. ‘Fair enough,’ says I to myself.

The Knotted Sock

One day, as we collapsed after climbing the stairs, my friend Bob handed me a white tube sock.

‘Here,’ he panted.

‘ This is the first requisite for living here.’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s a sock! Let me have your front door key’. He took the key, and nonchalantly dropped it into the long sock, tying a knot to keep it in.

‘Next time I ring your doorbell, go to the front window, and throw this down at me. Welcome to the most advanced city in the world.’ with pierce turner My World