A Letter to My Fellow New Yorkers: Greetings from Bushwick!

[The following is presented as though I was writing for a local publicaton, as an exercise, per a dear friend's advice... Even tho' it's directed towawd New Yorkers, everyone can get a feel for it...]

Hello, readers.

I’m assuming most of you are New Yorkers, so I won’t go into detail about exactly where I am. You know where I am, even if you’ve never been here.

Even if you’ve never been here, you’ve heard about it. You’ve heard about Bushwick. All of you New Yorkers have heard about Bushwick. If you haven’t, you pretend you have.

Don’t lie. You know you do. You know you pretend you’ve heard about Bushwick, even though you haven’t.

Except that you have. You have heard about it. You have heard about Bushwick. You’ve heard enough about Bushwick to know that you want to hear more. You want to hear more about Bushwick.

So what do you want to know first? How seedy it is out here on the outskirts of gentrification, or how dangerous? How grimy, or how insidious? What’s that, you say? Neither? Both? None of the above? All? Well, then, let me tell you…

But just for the record, let neither of us forget: You are the reader, and I am the storyteller. Yeah, that’s right. I’m the storyteller. That means I tell stories (as if you needed to know). But for some reason -- some strange silly reason – I felt the need to remind you of our dynamic. Because that’s all it is. A dynamic. And if you’re still reading, well then, you’re more of a voyeur than I expected you to be. ("Nice dynamic. Gooood dynamic…")

So welcome, my dynamic voyeur, to my dynamic world. To Bushwick. To Buswick at the turn of the New Millenium. The Late Turn of the New Millenium…

Don’t forget – you’re watching. You’re reading. I never asked you to. See, so much of the here and now in Bushwick has to do with our exhibitionistic tendencies (and, simultaneously, so much of that same here, and that same now, is dependent upon your tendency toward voyeurism), that it suddenly becomes difficult to decipher exactly who’s getting off and who’s getting them off, if y’know what I mean.

So don’t forget. That’s a big part of it. That’s a big part of Buswhick: Not forgetting that somebody is watching; that they know they’re watching, and that those they’re watching know they’re being watched. That’s a big part of it. A big part. Probably the biggest part of all of Bushwick. The biggest part of Bushwick is that it knows its Renaissance – if it can ever come near being called that – must occur under the microscope of the microcultural gaze. Shit, too much has happened already not to make it so. Too much. Too much history. Too much history, claiming its place in history, leaving only those cracks in history that know full well they’re nothing but cracks fruitlessly attempting to justify their existence. To live out their lives. Their lives amidst the other cracks. Their attempts at cracking into the cracks of history.

Come. Witness it. Witness life admist the cracks. It isn’t as bleak or banal as it sounds. As a matter of fact, it’s rich. It’s rich with richness… The almost earthen richness of a territory paved over for glory but then left to succumb to the whims of urban decay… Left, crying in near vain, for its original earthen richness to return.

What does one do with such territory? How does one revive the earth beneath an industrial park? It’s simple, really. One must merely show up, and then one must merely proclaim said territory to be his or her own. His own, her home.

So let’s talk about Bushwick, dear voyeur -- since you seem so interested. And I’ll be that one…