Memoir installment #11

In which I make a start in New York

I lived at my mom’s place on West 60th Street for the first few weeks of my new job, and that was nice, but I was antsy to get my own apartment and be downtown. So I sublet the tiny, second-floor studio of the friend of a friend, on Norfolk Street, not too far from the 7 Days offices. It was above a gravestone maker and next door to a shabby, deconsecrated synagogue that would in later years become, as the neighborhood spiffed itself up, an arts foundation and popular wedding venue.

But this was 1988, and the Lower East Side was still pretty wild. Some nights, I’d leave my place for the evening to find a car or trash can just casually on fire out on the street. Empty crack vials and tiny glassine baggies littered the already filthy sidewalks, and there were enough sketchy characters loitering around that if I was coming home at night in a taxi, I’d tip the driver extra to wait until I got in the door safely before he drove away.

It was summer. There was no air conditioning in the one-room apartment, and I lived on the second floor right off the fire escape. Because there were no bars on the windows, I slept with those windows closed, even on the hottest nights. To do anything else would have been lunacy, in that neighborhood, at that time. Often, it would get so hot at the place on Norfolk Street that sleep would be impossible, and I’d end up at midnight heading back to my mom’s place just for the A/C.