The Silent Epidemic of Middle-Class Homelessness

 Yesterday, I ran into a friend of mine in Soho. I hadn’t seen him in a long time.

“Long time no see,” I said to him. “You look good.”

He shrugged in his self-deprecating Jewish way.

“Well, at least you’re eating regularly and you have a roof over your head,” I said.

He shook his head.

“You’re homeless?” I asked, half-joking.

He nodded.

“You’re kidding me!” I said.

He told me that he’d been sleeping on the F train for the last two years, with the exception of one month, when he was able to stay at a friend’s co-op, and his birthday (his 60^th), when he treated himself to a room at the Y.

As I was talking to him, I realized that I personally knew four people who either are or have been homeless.

At this point, if you’re a Republican, you would probably say, “What’s wrong with these people?”

And I would say, “What’s wrong with our economy (and our society, in general) that people who were formerly what you would call ‘middle-class,’ people who played by the rules and did everything they were supposed to do, still wound up being homeless?”

It’s no surprise when people like Mitt Romney are tone-deaf on this issue. But the reality is that most politicians—Republican and Democrat—are so wealthy that they’ve lost touch with the challenges facing middle-class people. (And forget about the poor. Nobody even talks about them.)

My Soho friend, Norman (not his real name), is a photographer. I don’t know exactly what happened to his last apartment (he was living in New Jersey), but he’s been working as a messenger for the last few years because he couldn’t support himself as a photographer.

I have another friend who was recently forced to move back with his sister in Virginia because his landlord stopped accepting his rent check at the apartment he’d been subletting for the last 19 years. He had been working as a doorman at an apartment building in Soho, but quit his job, partly because the staggered hours were destroying his health. He retired shortly afterwards.

A third friend, who admittedly had certain mental health issues that prevented him from working in office buildings—a serious liability in a city like New York—slept for a period of time in a Korean deli on Fifth Avenue and 13^th Street before, after a long period in which he studied to be a priest among other things, he found a room in a house upstate. I’m not sure what he’s doing for a living now, but I know that at one point when he was still sleeping at the Korean deli, he was distributing flyers for a copy center.

A fourth friend, formerly a successful architect, has had to move back with his family on Long Island because he hasn’t been able to find work as an architect. I’m not sure what he’s been doing for money the last few years.

As you can see, some of my friends have been forced to take jobs (messenger, flyer distributor, doorman) that would make it hard for them to find so much as an apartment share, let alone their own apartment, in a city as expensive as New York. So what we’re seeing is a crisis in jobs, as well as housing.

A fifth friend just started a new job at half his normal salary after being unemployed for almost two years. Fortunately for him, he owns his apartment and had received a substantial severance package when he left his previous job.

But most people who describe themselves as “middle-class” are just one crisis away—one job loss, one medical emergency—from being homeless.

So the next time some Republican tries to blame a homeless person for being homeless, I would say, “There but for the grace of God go you.”

And I.

Goodbye to All That (with apologies to Joan Didion)

New York is dead.

The New York I moved here for over 30 years ago, the New York of writers and actors and musicians and artists and cheap apartments, restaurants and clothing stores, is dead and will never return. Bloomberg dealt the final death blow to the last bit of creativity that wasn’t extinguished by the twin evils of Giuliani and AIDS and, even if Bill DiBlasio becomes our next mayor (which I sincerely hope and seems likely), it won’t make a difference. The damage is done and there’s no turning back.

What has taken its place is the New York of fat-assed yuppies backslapping and high-fiving each other as they smoke their cigars and contemplate their next real estate deal over $300 prix-fixe dinners at Per Se. The New York of Sex and the City wannabes tottering through the Meatpacking District in high heels and yelling loudly to no one in particular. The New York of Russian oligarchs (read criminals) plunking down $88 million for an apartment and then never setting foot in it. The New York of the genetically and/or financially gifted, like the two models I saw walking their baby this morning without a care in the world.

The TV show that perfectly encapsulates this moment in time is, of course, “Girls,” a show by, about and for a generation of trust fund babies. As much as I admire the intelligence and talent of Lena Dunham, its creator and star—as well as being the most talented, she’s also the least blessed-by-rich-and-famous-parents of the four stars—I can’t help but have mixed feelings about a show that suggests that having your parents support you until you’re 30 (if not later) is normal.

And don’t tell me to move to Brooklyn. For all the hassle that would involve (both moving and living there), I might as well move to Los Angeles, an option which is starting to sound awfully attractive right now.

In fact, any second-tier city—whether it’s Los Angeles or Asheville, NC—sounds awfully attractive right now. Sure, I may not be able to get my beloved New York pizza and bagels or go grocery shopping at Dean and DeLuca, but surely there are pizza and bagels, as well as overpriced produce, elsewhere. (Hello, Whole Foods!) And as far as everything else goes, it would be a win-win.

The two things about New York that have really driven me over the edge lately are noise and the subway. New York has always been afflicted by these two facts of life, but lately they’ve gotten much worse. 

I live on what is perhaps the noisiest corner in the city, situated as it is in a direct line between the Williamsburg Bridge and the Holland Tunnel. The noise here has gotten so bad that recently the city took down its “No Honking” signs (which were never enforced even when they were still standing). The city itself has given up!

And the subway. While the population of New York has more than doubled since the subway was first built over a hundred years ago, there has not been a single new subway line added. And yet they keep building more high-rises!

When I look at the faces of people riding the subway, they seem completely drained of hope. Most people here are struggling just to stay on the treadmill. And many—like my best friend, who was forced to move back with his sister in Virginia—are falling off.

I can’t think any other place in America where people pay so much to live so poorly.

So, yes, I’m ready to move out of my beloved New York City, my home town, my heart and soul.

There’s just one problem: I can’t afford to move.

Confessions of a Frustrated Liberal

 I can’t pinpoint exactly when democracy ceased to exist in America, but I think I can safely say that it no longer exists and hasn’t existed for some time. I suppose as good an example as any would be the recent failure of new gun control legislation after the Newtown elementary school massacre. For the first time that I can remember, a powerful interest group (in this case, the gun lobby) proved that they were actually stronger than popular opinion. (If you recall, a majority of Americans at that time said that they supported stronger gun control laws, and yet they failed the pass.)

The other day I found myself walking down West 12^th Street in the West Village, looking at the sprawling new development taking shape where St. Vincent’s Hospital used to stand and thinking, “Gee, that really would be a nice place to live!” I had momentarily forgotten that a hospital used to stand in that location, a hospital that had cared for many AIDS patients during the worst days of the AIDS crisis and had stood at the ready to care for any survivors on 9/11.

How about the most recent stories about global warming? How scientists are now 95% certain that it’s because of human activity that the Earth’s temperature is getting warmer? Do you think that’s going to stop people from burning fossil fuels? If someone can light the water coming out of his garden hose on fire, do you think that’s going to stop fracking?

There have always been rich people, of course, but the rich today are so much richer than they ever have been before that it seems naïve to think they won’t always get their way. If Mayor Bloomberg wants to overturn term limits and serve a third term, he can just buy the election. If developers want to overturn zoning regulations and build high-rises around the entire length of the High Line, they can just do it. If chain stores want to take over every mom and pop store in the city, who’s to stop them?

The insidious thing about these kinds of changes is that once they happen, they never go back. You can’t undo them. You can’t tear down a high-rise once it’s built. You can’t reverse global warming. You can’t bring someone back to life once they’ve been killed with an assault weapon.

So, as the oceans continue to rise, extreme weather continues to increase, gun violence continues to escalate and the New Plutocracy continues to build their skyscraper canyons, all I can do is say, “It’s been real, planet Earth. Let the next generation worry about it. Thank God I won’t we around to see it. Not my problem.”

The Last Shower at Splash

I remember when I first heard that Splash was opening up in 1991. I had been going to Uncle Charlie’s in the West Village and the word on the street was that the gay scene was moving to Chelsea. In the last 20 years, I’ve seen the gay scene move from the West Village to Chelsea to Hell’s Kitchen as each succeeding generation of gay men prettied up the neighborhood, increased real estate values and watched straight people take over our turf. Of course, it didn’t help that a lot of us were also dying of AIDS.

One of the features that defined Splash (apart from the go-go dancers dancing under shower heads) was their videos. I think their most famous video was a scene from Mommie Dearest where Faye Dunaway, as Joan Crawford, slaps her daughter. They had spliced together a series of these slaps so that it became a veritable windmill of slapping. The boys ate it up. There’s nothing quite like being in a room full of grown men and watching them all scream in unison: “Don’t fuck with me, fellas!”

I can’t say that I was ever really a Splash boy. (In keeping with the gay community’s emphasis on youth, all men are “boys.”) It was a bit too preppy for me, a bit too upscale at first and, later, too bridge-and-tunnel.

But I feel sorry for the generation of gay men that’s coming of age now. (Hell, I feel sorry for the generation of people that’s coming up age now.) It seems like, as a society, we’re becoming more and more isolated the more social media claim they’re bringing us together. It’s one thing to post your “likes” on Facebook and it’s quite another to be in a room full of flesh and blood human beings expressing them. I feel like our lives as gay men are being reduced to a sexual act and there’s no more room for witty conversation, something for which we used to be famous.

I go back, once again, to one of my favorite experiences at Uncle Charlie’s, watching the season finale of Dynasty where the entire cast was gunned down. If that were on TV now, we’d all rush to our computers or cell phones to tweet about it, each of us isolated in our solitary apartments, alone in a city of eight million people. Our shared experiences are now virtual.

I prefer to live in the land of flesh and blood.

America Is a Third World Country

The only growth industry in our economy.

 America is a Third World country and it’s time we stopped kidding ourselves that it’s not. If the definition of a Third World country is a country where the top 1% controls everything (including the government), we have long since reached that point.

The top 1 percent of Americans owns 40 percent of the nation’s wealth[i]. Most CEOs took home an average 379 staffers’ worth in base pay[ii]. Just six Walmart heirs have as much wealth as 30% of Americans[iii].

There’s always been rich people. But the rich today are so much richer than before and power has become so consolidated in so few hands, it’s become impossible for anyone who is not born rich to get ahead.

Even Obama, who was elected on a platform of “change,” has stacked his cabinet with Goldman Sachs executives. So even our government, which used to be the only means available of leveling the playing field somewhat, has become useless.

Everywhere I look I see evidence that proves our Third World status. Whether it’s the book The Unwinding[iv], the documentary Two American Families[v], the daily articles I read in the New York Times or the evidence right in front of my eyes, there’s no denying that we’ve reached a point where the American Dream is dead and there’s no turning back.

This is especially evident if you’re not working 9-5. If you’re working 9-5, you’re shielded from a lot of the worst evidence of America’s decline. But if you’re not working 9-5, it’s amazing the people you see on the streets and on the subway. Hispanic women selling fruit on street corners, Asian women collecting bottles, young African-American teenagers selling candy on the subway. These are the job choices we’re offering people.

Even if you’re a college-educated white male like me, your options are dwindling.

When I first started working, it was still possible to get a so-called “permanent” job. Now companies can’t commit to more than three months at a time, if that. The fastest growing segment of the economy is temp workers[vi]. So-called “permanent” jobs are disappearing and they’re not coming back.

Today, I saw a post on Facebook saying that Manatus, one of the last existing diners in lower Manhattan, is being turned into a Calvin Klein store. Rents on Bleecker Street, formerly a quaint, residential street in New York City’s West Village, now surpass rents on Bond Street in London and Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles, according to the Web site Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York[vii].

A few days ago, there was an article in the New York Times about a bidding war for a $595,000 studio in the West Village[viii]. According to the article “it was the only condominium for sale in the West Village for under $600,000.”

And nowadays, even if you’re rich enough to be able to afford a $595,000 studio, the competition to buy that studio is so intense that you can’t really afford it unless you can afford to pay all cash. Because you’re not just competing with rich New Yorkers, you’re competing with rich people from all over the world, who will probably only be using the apartment as an investment or, at most, a pied-à-terre. There are now entire buildings, if not entire neighborhoods, in cities like New York[ix] and London[x] that consist of these uninhabited investment apartments.

My best friend (another college-educated white male like me) recently had to move back with his sister in Virginia because his landlord stopped accepting the rent he was paying on his sublet. He and my other best friend (also college-educated) have both been unemployed for over a year. The only reason I’m still living in New York City is because I’m rent-stabilized.

So let’s stop kidding ourselves that America is the “land of opportunity” and New York is the “city that never sleeps.” Because neither of those statements has been true for at least 20 years.

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[i] http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/03/334156/top-five-wealthiest-one-percent/?mobile=nc

[ii] http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2012/ceo-pay-ratios/

[iii] http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/08/1043438/-Just-6-Walmart-heirs-have-as-much-wealth-as-30-of-Americans#

[iv] http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0374102414

[v] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/two-american-families/

[vi] http://www.propublica.org/article/the-expendables-how-the-temps-who-power-corporate-giants-are-getting-crushe

[vii] http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/

[viii] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/09/nyregion/amid-housing-scarcity-many-buyers-are-going-home-empty-handed.html?ref=realestate&_r=0

[ix] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/nyregion/paying-top-dollar-for-condos-and-leaving-them-empty.html

[x] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/world/europe/a-slice-of-london-so-exclusive-even-the-owners-are-visitors.html?pagewanted=all

The Warriors: Bloomberg’s Worst Nightmare Meets a Multiethnic Paradise

 Last night I watched The Warriors, a movie that I had fond memories of watching on cable TV as a teenager after it came out in 1979. Boy, have times changed!

I’m pretty sure I didn’t think the movie was camp when I first saw it, even assuming I knew what camp was at that tender age. Watching it almost 35 years later, it’s an unintentional laugh fest on a par with Mommie Dearest. Is this the same movie that struck fear into the heart of suburbanites all over the country?

The first sign that you’re not in 2013 is the subway system: trains covered in graffiti, people using tokens, wooden turnstiles and an illegible subway map. Apparently, there was even an amusement park in Union Square station. Who knew?

But what really makes this a candidate for the Most Quotable Lines Since Scarface Screenwriting Award is the ridiculously clunky dialogue. My personal favorite is when the movie opens. All the gangs of New York are gathered at a park in the Bronx and the Grand Poobah of All Things Gang-Related exhorts the crowd with the following line: “Can you dig it? Can you dig it? CAN YOU DIG IT?!!!” I immediately wanted to break into that line from the old soul classic “Can You Dig It”: “I can digga digga digga, she can digga digga digga, we can digga digga digga digga, Can you dig it, Can you dig it, baby?”

While the gang members in this film exist in some kind of multi-ethnic paradise where all races apparently get along, the characters aren’t always so PC. The word “faggot” was used at least three times by my count, most often as a verb, as in “go faggot” or “gone faggot.” They make it sound like sexual orientation is a choice similar to deciding which restaurant to go to.

There’s another homophobic moment when the gang encounters a group of young women who are apparently lesbian. The call themselves the “Lizzies” and one of them has crimped hair! But they still make out with men (before they try to kill them)! I’m confused.

It’s fun to play “where are they now” with a movie like this. Mercedes Ruehl, who would go on to star on Broadway in Neil Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs” trilogy, plays a tough chick (an undercover cop?) who nabs one of the gang members by coming on to him in a park and then handcuffing him to the park bench.

And, of course, Michael Beck, the handsome lead, would go on to star in “Xanadu” the next year with Olivia Newton-John. Just out of curiosity, I decided to look him up on imdb.com. Let’s just say cute doesn’t age well.

There’s more fun to be had with the gang costumes. It’s hard to imagine anyone being scared of a gang of mimes, much less a gang of baseball players with face paint, a gang of pimps, and what looks like a gang of Asian monks. I hope the costume designer was at least nominated for an Oscar.

Another curious feature of the film is that, in a city of eight million people, almost no one seems to be on the street or the subway at the same time as any of the main characters. Normally, this is a sure giveaway that a movie was filmed on a sound stage. But I’m pretty sure this movie was filmed on location in New York City. I even saw my block show up in one scene. (Look for a sign that says “All State Glass.”)

All in all, good times for everyone. Unless you’re a woman. Deborah Van Valkenburgh plays the kind of female lead that actresses are still trying to overcome. The nicest thing that can be said about her character is that she’s “not a slut.”

But at least she’s not a “faggot.”

The Sadness of the Pet Shop Boys

 For me there has always been a sadness underlying a lot of the music of the Pet Shop Boys. For that reason, they were also the perfect gay band.

I was reminded of this when I was in a gay bar the other night and I suddenly heard what I think is the perfect Pet Shop Boys song: “Love Comes Quickly.”

While it can be read on the surface as an obvious play on words (see also Richard Hell’s “Love Comes in Spurts”), “Love Comes Quickly” perfectly encapsulates not only the sadness and loneliness of a life of one-night stands, but also the sadness and loneliness of the life of a pop star: traveling all over the world but never staying in one place long enough to develop a real connection.

The Pet Shop Boys are, arguably, the quintessential gay band because, while they never talked about anything explicitly gay, they perfectly encapsulated a “gay sensibility,” whether it was the emptiness of consumer culture (“Shopping”) or the power/economic dynamic of a lot of gay (and heterosexual) relationships (“I Love You, You Pay My Rent”). Even their name, the Pet Shop Boys, is a seeming allusion to the Richard Gere/gerbil myth that refuses to die.

What was it about the ’80s that gave birth to so many gay bands, and why have they suddenly disappeared at a time when gays are more visible than ever? Certainly, there was a lot of “gender-bending” going on, whether it was Eurythmics or Culture Club or Boy George’s pop star friend, Marilyn.

But you also had The Smiths, who were so melodramatic it was funny (“I was looking for a job and then I found a job. And heaven knows I’m miserable now.”).

But gays could also be outrageous/campy drag queens like Boy George and Pete Burns from Dead or Alive, although Boy George could also be melodramatic. Who could forget the Barbra Streisand-like production on “Mistake Number Three” and its correspondingly melodramatic video?

They could also be defiantly political and heart-rending, like Bronski Beat with their coming out anthem “Small Town Boy,” depicting the loneliness and isolation of gay life in a small town.

But there was something else about the Pet Shop Boys, whether it was Neil Tennant’s plaintive voice or Chris Lowe, the “cute” one whom you saw but who never said anything and always hid behind his keyboard and/or some outrageous costume.

Chris Lowe could be read as a symbol of the objectification of gay life.

But Neil Tennant was and is something more. Neil Tennant was/is that most feared thing in the gay community and, indeed, society in general: an intellectual.