IN MY SHOES: What It’s Like To Live In The Bronx
Here’s how New York Magazine describes this outer borough neighborhood: “[L]littered with half-built shells … large swaths of the neighborhood have come to resemble a city after an air raid.”
No, it’s not 1977 - and it’s not The Bronx. It’s 2009, and it’s once-so-trendy Williamsburg, Brooklyn:
Walk down virtually any block and you’ll come across an amenity-laden building that sits nearly empty: relics of a moment in history that seems, increasingly, like a fever dream. …
Most unsettling are the cases of the developers who seem to have vanished, leaving behind so many vacant lots and half-completed buildings - eighteen, to be precise, more than can be found in all of the Bronx ...
By way of contrast, here’s a New York Times vignette that shows how one Bronxite lives in style in the Grand Concourse section of the borough, which also boasts Yankee Stadium (um, both Yankee Stadiums):
On a frigid January day in 1975, two years before the sportscaster Howard Cosell informed the nation that the Bronx was burning, a 29-year-old nurse named José Diaz-Oyola moved into a two-bedroom apartment on the Grand Concourse. …
For $315 a month, he acquired a foothold in an Art Deco building that would escape many of the ravages that beset the city in the 1970s.
The area had been settled by upwardly mobile Jews, and the apartment, with its sunken living room, dining room, six closets and wraparound casement windows, reflected the prosperity and grace of decades past. The floors were parquet, a different design in each room. …
“Every Christmas I hold a big party here,” Mr. Diaz-Oyola said. “I have a huge tree and live wreaths; 150 people, maybe 200, show up. There’s dancing in the foyer.”
He cooks up a storm in his pocket-size kitchen, including what he describes as “some mean collard greens, even if I do say so myself.” He also serves a punch called Sex on the Beach, a concoction of orange juice, cranberry juice, peach schnapps and vodka.
“My friends,” he said proudly, “call it the social event of the year.”
Diaz-Oyola has lived in his apartment for 34 years; the rent is now $1,087 – a steal compared to what a landlord would charge for a Manhattan apartment the size of just one of his closets. Diaz-Oyola tells The Times: “I would not live anywhere else.”
Editorial Note: It’s a sure bet that the Bronx-born Sonia Sotomayor will be elevated to the Supreme Court. Watch The New York Times, New York magazine and other publications that purport to cover NYC suddenly de-emphasize their coverage of down-at-the heels Williamsburg and shift more resources to covering the up-and-coming Bronx. (Note to New York magazine: Next time you pull together a feature on NYC restaurants, why don’t you make an effort to cast a wider net in The Bronx than just a couple of pizza joints?)
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