The Lower East Side
New York, N.Y.
Vision,
It was spring here, too, last week - Sunday afternoon I walked down the steps off Columbus Circle into Central Park, and the odor of piss rose up from the rest rooms, and I knew a year had passed. And down in your old neighborhood, darling, the bag ladies were sleeping outside again on the steps of the St. Marks Dispensary, and the whores were in hot pants, and the Polish men standing in front of your building in those dark suits & hats, as if they were waiting for a cortege to begin. EVeryone thought spring had come! And then it dropped thirty degrees in one afternoon, snowed the next morning, Bob was mugged on Ninth Street, and we are right back to a New York winter.
excerpt from Dancer From the Dance by Andrew Holleran
