The fairly recent establishment of Hudson Yards as a New York neighborhood – in real life – has done something to me gastro-intestinally. Go to its website. You will learn that these few blocks by the river are: “A triumph of culture, commerce and cuisine.” If you investigate apartment pricing, you may also feel, as do I, that the alliteration should be extended to include, “crass capitalism, co-op boards, and cash confiscation.” There’s yer triumph.
But that is not the point, really. The point is, and in defiance of the laws of physics, Manhattan has yet another Goddamned new neighborhood. Why? I’ll tell you why. So that Connor or Cheyenne or Megan – pronounced ‘Meeegan,’ thank you – can say, ‘No, I don’t live way west on 35th Street. Hell, no. I live in Hudson Yards.’
Goodness knows, minds far more nimble than my own have tackled this matter. Why, back in the 1970s, and when I was camped out in the West Village before it became a borough encompassing about seven icily defined neighborhoods, the sassy Fran Lebowitz offered new designations. These required cutting up existing stretches into the sub-atomic, residentially speaking; as I recall, for example, two adjacent brownstones on Jane Street got their own identity. I may be exaggerating but, if I am, not by much. This is and has been the reality. The pie of Manhattan has not been sliced. It is slivered. It been shaved like the corned beef meant to last three meals.
Strangely, some arenas defy the knife. I can’t explain why the Upper West Side is allowed to remain whole, and a pretty big whole, too. It may be due to the children and the schools, but that’s just gut feeling and I can’t back it up. The Upper East Side, too, remains, like the maiden in chivalry, intact. Step below Midtown, however, and anything goes. Step carefully, in fact, for it is likely that any moment may find you rebranded when you cross a street that used to be West 10th, and nothing but West 10th, and is suddenly WeVillMeatPack, or WeViMePa. This is the way things are.
Except for a patch of the West Side: Eighth Avenue, a block or two after Chelsea quits and running a few blocks shy of 42nd Street. To date, it has no fashionable name. Largely, it is a void in the frenzy of reclamation and gentrification. It is the unvarying eye of the storm. It is Brigadoon. And it is so odd, it doesn’t even have a cool or uncool name at all. Some brave souls have long tried to make ‘Midtown West’ happen, like Gretchen gave her all to ‘fetch’ in Mean Girls. But they fail, and they fail because such a blah tag can’t survive right next to the queen mother of all neighborhood brandings, Hell’s Kitchen. So no one thinks of it as anything at all, really, other than a Penn Station event horizon.
Lost boulevard! I christen thee MidEighthAveEternus, or MiAvE.
So, what is MiAvE? What is has always been, as long as we keep ‘always’ as the era of my youth. Not fashionable, it is a survivor, and the only real change I’ve seen there in about fifty years is the closing down of a few Blarney Stone bars. That’s bad enough, but everything else is the same. On every block will be found footwear emporiums, each staffed by about, no kidding, several hundred young Latinos. On every block is a narrow place, not quite café and not quite convenience store, in which you may purchase egg, cheese, and bacon on a roll. On every block is a retailer selling wigs. I swear to God. Inexpensive, scary wigs.
This, I love a lot. I love it so much, I’m glad that my naming of it has as much chance of sticking as a hefty painting hung to the wall by Command Strips. Manhattan has endured much, which may explain its feistiness. Mayor Jimmy Walker, devilish smile on his mug even when busted. Elevated trains, or the Industrial Revolution’s answer to the Matrix. Many, many Liza Minnelli impersonators. Even Liza Minnelli. Connors, Cheyennes, Meeegans – mitts off Eighth Avenue and the thirties. Fix your avaricious gazes elsewhere, if you please. Or just move to Weehawken. You’ll find it right near the coming Hudson Docks, or HooDo.
