Back on Bleeker Street

Back on Bleeker St.  How do you explain Bleeker St.?  I have to because my wife doesn’t really understand it as any different from the next block.  There is the washed up carcass of the Village Gate.  I worked there briefly, you see.  Hundreds of albums were recorded there.  Countless performers mounted one the venues’ three stages.  Now you can get throat lozenges and toilet paper there.  It is a CVS pharmacy. 

But this block was very important.  It was important before I ever visited it because all the people I idolized worked this block around the time I was born.  And by the time I was old enough to come here it was a unique place where you could travel to buy things and hear things and see things you couldn’t get anywhere else.  Mamouns’ falafel were $1.00 in 1982 if I remember correctly.  You couldn’t buy falafel in the suburbs.  And Bleeker Bobs has the latest Minor Threat single in 1982 and there wasn’t any place else that had that single, that music.  There was the place were you could get a tapestry for your room or a bong for your head, or visit Café Del Artist that had couches, (imagine that?, ) and of course there were all the music venues and all the people in their plumage.  

And as I tried to explain what that was like it quickly dawns on you that it isn’t so much that Bleeker St. has changed over the last thirty-five years.  Rather, America has become more and more like Bleeker St.  The tastes and the products of this street have become mainstream.  Starbucks and their comfy chairs are ubiquitous. No one needs to travel here to buy music.  It is all available anywhere, all the time, on-line.  The pressing physicality of cities, the criticality of this block, right here, doesn’t make much sense any more. 

Still, it’s a sunny day.  There are lots of NYU students bouncing around who I’m sure would beg to differ with my old fart reduction of Bleeker St. to an anachronism.  And the buildings are all still standing and they tell silent stories.  And the old couple at the adjacent table who are shuffling off now, they are still here.  I don’t know if they miss the Village Gate but perhaps there are glad they don’t have to walk so far to get toilet paper. 

I shouldn’t worry too much.  Neighborhoods change and migrate. But people still seem to want to meet somewhere, that isn’t virtual.  For now, at least.