One of the many brilliant moments in this long, exquisitely uneven, and heart-deep essay about NYC's pjs...
Funny how things work out, my friend said, as she changed the channel on her flat-screen TV. “The other day at the bodega I ran into these four white girls. I started talking to them. They said they were living right across the street in this dumpy building paying $800. I thought, Well, that’s all right. Then they say they’re paying $800 apiece! One of them is sleeping on the couch. Sleeping on the couch in their own house! I went back to my apartment, looked at my view, and thought, Maybe my elevator is pissy, but if that’s gentrification, who’s the joke on now?”Back in 1994, I took Joe Wood, an NYC writer and critic who was killed by Mount Rainier in 1999, to visit our pjs, Yesler Terrace (a social housing program that's soon to be extinct). Wood was amazed. He could not believe his eyes. These could not be the projects. People were making art, planting flowers, and growing food. There was nothing like it in New York. The people here had it good. "Seattle has no idea what a ghetto is," he said, as we walked up and down Yesler.
