Remembering New York: St. Mark's Place

I'm approaching 10 years in this City, and it feels like the streets have changed so much that I don't feel at home in it anymore. I feel more comfortable in the small town where I grew up, but haven't really lived in since high school. But instead of complaining, I think that I want to take some time to recount the aspects of the city that I loved so much when I was bright-eyed and new, still exploring, and unencumbered by work or the future. I feel like I'm returning to that state slowly, and as I try to enjoy the same habits and places that once thrilled me about living here, I realize that they have grown up and moved on, leaving the nostalgia to the nouveau-retro crowd.

So what was it about the City that I liked back then? I liked that walking down St. Marks Place, where I spent a lot of my first 2 years in the city, felt both safe in the general camaraderie of the confederation of misfits who hung out there, and still edgy, as strands of east village anarchy threatened still to take out the Gap that opened on Second Avenue. I remember the half-way home for addicts (now Chipotle and other various businesses). I remember the storefront that announced "Religious Sex" to anyone who cared. I remember St. Mark's deli with 2 video games out front, where I spent many quarters and many hours playing my favorite games until they replaced them. I remember my habit of cruising the block between second and third avenues for used CDs - and recalled with some degree of wonder that this was the block that had most immediately captured my imagination when I first hung out in the city a couple of years before.

I remember feeling, to paraphrase Samuel Selvon, a block was a world, with requisite shops that I'd never visit, music, comics, books, falafel, a subways where they were more generous with toppings than anywhere else, a Pomme Frites around the corner, Dojos - the grungy sibling of the sterile 4th Street incarnation - where punks, tourists, Japanese ex-pats, and various other bohemes came for a $3 meal.

I remember moving on from that block, and slowly feeling distant from it as my everyday life kept me away for weeks and then months on end. I remember feeling surprised at new developments on the block whenever I snuck time away to visit, perhaps for a new CD or just a trip down the block that formed my initial impression of the world. I was shocked when the Gap was gone, but the gradual sterilization of the neighborhood was evident, from the 3 Starbucks within 2 blocks of one another (Barnes & Noble Astor Place, Astor Place and Lafayette, and 3rd Ave/St. Marks Place) to the closing of many of the small non-tourist local spots. These "developments" have blended what was once a unique and vibrant neighborhood of artists, students, and dreamers, into the homogenized mess that has taken over most of Manhattan.

I can't even walk down some streets that were so familiar to me without feeling like a complete outsider. I can't stand seeing the yuppie (and buppie, and sauppie, etc) borg take over all that I once loved about the city - I can't even hang out in the East Village without feeling like I'm not chic enough to fit in, when the sheer non-conformity of the residents of past was the whole reason that I felt at home there.

But it's not all bad. At least this means that I'm not fixated on one neighborhood, and I can continue to explore the true neighborhood NY, which now resides in Queens and Brooklyn far more than most of Manhattan.